male narrator: this season on who do you think you are? seven of the world's most beloved celebrities will embark on life-altering journeys into their family history. they will travel the world in search of their heritage. - ooh. - oh! narrator: family mysteries will be revealed. - i had always thought she was dead. - this is the only known picture of him? - that's the only known picture. - how absolutely terrifying. narrator: and everything they thought they knew will be rewritten. - oh, my god. - what? - this is a story that's getting good. - yes. - "gettysburg." - gettysburg. - that's history right there. - it sure is. narrator: lives will be changed.

- my name is lisa kudrow... - uh-huh. - and--and i think we're related. narrator: roots will be discovered. - amazing. this is incredible. - this is it. this is where it all began. - it all started here. narrator: because to know who you are... - [gasps] narrator: you have to know where you came from. - it's like learning that there's something different in your being than what you always thought. - i have found what i was looking for. - so do you know who you are? - oh, i've always known who i am, but now i know more. - it's changed everything about who i thought i was, everything. narrator: tonight lisa kudrow uncovers a tragic family story... - they killed all the jews in town. my grandmother was one of them. narrator: and discovers a mystery. - he smiled. he patted me on the head. and that was the last i ever saw of him. narrator: her journey will take her

to the homeland of her ancestors... - this is exactly what i pictured. narrator: and reveal some devastating truths. - oh, my god. narrator: and as the journey unfolds, lisa will discover new clues... - we know that they had a son. narrator: that will solve a 60-year-old mystery and rewrite her family's history. - yay. [upbeat music] ♪

narrator: emmy award-winning actress lisa kudrow first shot to fame in 1994, playing the eccentric phoebe buffay on the hit sitcom friends. she lives in los angeles with her husband, michel, and son, julian. - family is the most important thing to me. my parents, brother, sister, and i are very close, and still live within a few miles of each other. my father, lee, grew up in brooklyn, new york, in very poor conditions. the world i grew up in is a completely different world from the world he grew up in, completely different. i grew up, you know, in a nice suburb of los angeles. you know, and he grew up in poverty. but he just worked so hard, and he finally became a doctor, and he is the one who pulled the family out of hard times.

- hi, babe. hi. how are you? - hi, dad. hi, mom. - hi, sweetheart. hi, sweet. - my dad's parents were both eastern european jews. most american jews from eastern europe, you know, they have a holocaust story. there were relatives that were left behind. i want to find out my family's story. i feel like i want some details. to know what they went through, not just for myself, for my father, for the whole family. oh, i know these pictures. - you do? - yeah. my grandmother, gert, she came in 1921 for a better life, and, well, it's her family's history that my father and i want to look into further. when i was very young, she was babysitting me, and we were playing cards, and i asked her, you know, "don't you miss your parents?" 'cause i was little. and she started crying. it was, like, you know, 40 years later, right? and she's crying, and she's saying, "yes."

she said, "my mother was killed by hitler with a knife in the back." and, uh... - oh, oh. i know what she's talking about. i'll tell you. i'll tell you what she was talking about. it was a story that we heard from a cousin. it was 1947 or 1948. knock on the door, and the door opens. i was there. i remember it like it was yesterday. i'm looking at the door opening, and there's this guy standing there, young guy in a uniform that i had never seen before. his name was yuri barudin. he had just come from his ship, which was the batory. uh, it was a polish ship, and, uh, yuri told our family that he was playing in the woods near their shtetl, and the shtetl was called ilya. and he came to the edge of the forest, and he could see that they were shooting, and he was watching his family being cut down by the nazis.

they killed all the jews in town. my grandmother was one of them, your grandmother's mother, your great-grandmother, meri mordejovich. - ooh, this is tough, huh? - [chuckles] - so that's the story that yuri told? - that's the story that yuri told. he smiled. he patted me on the head. and that was the last i ever saw of him. and then somehow we heard that he died. - died doing what? - honey, i don't-- i don't remember. - okay. oh, god. that story still haunts my father. he was a child when this relative came over. and what i know of young boys is i don't know how much they pay attention to when the grown-ups are talking. so, you know, we don't really have the full story, and so if i can find anything

that he doesn't know and fill in gaps that are possible to fill in, then that will be a huge success. i know grandma gert's mother's name was meri mordejovich. and as far as our family knows, she and the other jews in ilya were rounded up and murdered during the holocaust. i want to find out exactly what happened to my great-grandmother's family. and if possible, if there is a final resting place, i want to see if i can find it. and i still want to know more about yuri. what became of him? i think that's the question. narrator: lisa is traveling to ilya, her great-grandmother's village near minsk, which is now in belarus. she's meeting tamara vershitskaya, a noted jewish historian and the curator of the museum of history and jewish resistance. - lisa? - yes. - nice to meet you. my name is tamara. - tamara, hi. - hi. thank you.

- it will be amazing if i can find any documentation. i'm worried that records were either lost or destroyed in the war. narrator: minsk, the capital of belarus, is about 40 miles southeast of ilya. before world war ii, communities like ilya had strong jewish roots going back hundreds of years, but world war ii forever changed the culture of eastern europe. - after the war, jewish communities were reduced to... 5% were left alive from the total community, 10% at most. yeah. - oh, my gosh. narrator: tamara has brought lisa to the state archives outside minsk to see if they can find out what happened to her great-grandmother, meri mordejovich. - hello.

is it possible to know-- are there any documents if she were killed in ilya in that massacre? - yes, yes. - oh, there are documents? - they have copies of documents. - yeah. - the originals of them are kept in moscow. - wow. - ugh. narrator: coming up, lisa discovers the fate of her great-grandmother. - oh, my god. narrator: and later, she visits the village where her grandmother grew up. - this is what i pictured. this is exactly what i pictured.

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narrator: lisa kudrow is trying to solve a 60-year-old mystery about her father's side of the family. she knows her grandmother, grunia, immigrated to the united states from belarus before world war ii, leaving her mother, meri, behind. it's the fate of meri and her family's holocaust story

told to her father by a mystery relative that have led her to belarus in search of the truth. - his name was yuri barudin, and he was watching his family being cut down by the nazi side. my grandmother was one of them, your grandmother's mother, your great-grandmother. narrator: now she's at the state archives outside minsk to find out the details of what happened to her great-grandmother, meri mordejovich. - are there any documents if she were killed in ilya in that massacre? - yes, yes. - oh, there are documents? oh. [clears throat]

oh, my god. i knew my great-grandmother was murdered, but to hear the words "killed and burned," that's worse than i thought. i'm heading to ilya to find out of there are any other details of the massacre missing from yuri's story. - [goat bleats] - that's the place... - wow. - where the mordejovich family lived. - that's where gertie grew up. this is the view that she saw.

this is what i pictured. this is exactly what i pictured. it's unbelievable. i feel connected to the smile that would come across her face when she'd say, "it was so beautiful." and i'm so happy that she got to grow up here. and it's so pretty. and i'm also so... happy that she, um, got out, and her sisters got out, and i'm sorry for everybody else. my grandmother learned... from yuri what happened here. it's a huge loss. it's--it's... it's her whole family. it's her mother, who she loved, and she'll never see her again. she could have at least dreamt about seeing her one day or coming back to visit and being able to, like, breathe in this air and be here again, and that's gone too.

well, it would make sense for yuri's story. he must have seen the germans... take them out of the house and take them away. narrator: lisa and tamara are going to see a villager who lived in ilya during the massacre and may have known lisa's family. - thank you for talking to me. my grandmother grew up here. - [speaking native language] - grunia? - grunia, grunia, grunia, grunia.

- i'm sorry that she has to remember it. i feel badly coming here and asking her to remember it, 'cause it's got to be really hard. it's so... sad. ugh. i-- narrator: coming up, lisa visits the holocaust memorial in ilya, and later, she comes closer than ever to solving the mystery of yuri barudin. - we know that they had a son. - [gasps] [ male ♪ nouncer ] ziploc presents ziplogic. 4 lbs of sirloin, but only wrap half, i'll just throw it out anyway. [ male announcer ] we throw out over $500 in food every year. help save more of it with ziploc freezer bags featuring the smartzip seal. edge-to-edge protection you can hear. now that's ziplogic.

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narrator: lisa kudrow is trying to solve a mystery for her father. she's searching for details about what happened to her great-grandmother during the holocaust and is on the trail of the mysterious relative,

yuri barudin, who brought her father the tragic news of the massacre. her search has brought her from los angeles to belarus... - on that list, you can see "mordejovich, mera." - it is stated here that she was killed and burned. - oh, my god. narrator: and now to ilya, where lisa has tracked down someone who knew her great-grandmother. - [speaking native language] narrator: in 1941, two years after world war ii began with hitler's invasion of poland, nazi murder squads occupied towns like ilya and created ghettos for the jews all over eastern europe. the nazis then embarked on the systematic murder of jews in a program of ghetto clearances called actions.

- so where are we now? this is the... - uh, this is the center of ilya. - uh-huh. - it used to be a market square before the war. - mm-hmm. - and all the jews were collected here in the market square. they were driven out of their houses, out of their homes in march, 1942, and this is the place where the selection took place. - selection? - selection. i've got evidence translated into english, so you can have a look on it. - "as soon as the nazis arrived in ilya, "they showed extreme cruelty toward the jewish population. "they soon started going from home to home, "searching for every man, woman, and child. "they removed them from their homes "and forced them to run to the designated central locations in the market." that's where we are. - yeah.

- "during the soviet time, "they had established a huge freezer "for fruit and meat products, "and next to it was a deep hole in the ground to store the ice." "this ice-storage area "was used that day for the mass burial "of 900 jews from ilya-- "men, women, children, and babies alike. "all the jews selected to be killed in the market "were taken to this site. "on both sides of the entrance "stood s.s. men armed with machine guns. "as soon as the people arrived, "they were ordered to remove their clothes "and run inside, "where they were shot from all sides, "and fell directly onto the frozen pit. "this was the last walk "of most of the jews of our town "on this day of slaughter. "the murderers then poured oil onto the walls of the building and set it on fire." "the local christian population

"later told us that for many hours, "they could hear from afar the screams "and anguished cries of the wounded "who did not die from the bullets. "thus ended ilya, a jewish community with centuries of a glorious history." huh. - [speaking native language]

- oh. oh. oh.

how do you prepare for the last moment of your life, knowing what's coming? you watch the people before you and know that's your fate, while you're naked and humiliated and waiting for your turn to get shot. but those poor parents with their children, you know-- my great-grandmother, if she had grandchildren around. [sighs] that's what is so hard. i get so angry when i start... thinking about the children. i mean, these people were no threat. they were nothing. it's just the ravings of a madman who decided that jews didn't fit into the way he saw the human race. that's what fear can whip people into.