BBC "Who Do You Think You Are?" Jane Seymour (WDYTYA Series 12 Episode 2)

[clairec666]

I like the range of eras covered by the programme. And it often draws our attention to records we haven't considered, outside the usual census / parish records... such as school records, military, hospital records.

I'd like it if the research involved was shown in greater detail, though. Often we see a celebrity type a name into ancestry, and magically they find their ancestor in the census! We all know it's not that simple! I imagine a large number of viewers will have an interest in genealogy, and are given a misleading version...

[larkspur]

I was surprised no death certificate was available for the aunt "found in a bush"!

[Finley 1]

I watched every second and felt I had to -  I would too have loved to find descendants - as I always do... it gives the prog, that fairy tale ending.  But yes people may not want to be shown on TV - if the research has now been passed on to Jane or whoever is featured then maybe they can trace further up or down as they may want.

For me it is a TV programme and I never expect too much of them these days   I watch the ones that I feel will hold my interest and if they are someone that has a worthiness ? ( is that the right word ?)  I just can't be bothered watching people who I don't feel are worth their 'salt'  but that's a personal thing.

Uhm all in all I did (can't say enjoy cos it was so very sad) take a lot from last nights programme.

xin

[LizzieW]

Jane said that her father had gone to Poland after the war to find one of the sisters (without success)

No she didn't, she said her father had gone to a concentration camp to find the daughter of the sister who lived in Poland, - who would have been his cousin - so he must have learned from someone that this young lady was in a concentration camp.  I wonder who?  It couldn't have been the sister who died in Switzerland, who had told her other sister this could it?  If so, then Jane should have know all about her family history, unless her father didn't talk about it.

[ThrelfallYorky]

Oddly enough, I rather enjoyed this episode - although I didn't really expect to, thinking it'd be another programme full of the harrowing images of the Death Camps! It was a rather different slant on it all, and even the "subject" - i.e. Jane Seymour - came over rather better than I'd have anticipated. I preferred it to the previous week's offering, but I can agree, it might have been nice to have a reference sometimes to exactly where/how these diligent researchers had got their information.

[Old Blue]

I also found it compelling and more fast-paced than most - Jane's direct questions seemed to keep things ticking over nicely with a lot of story/history to pack in.

Sad, as the holocaust ones always are, but not as harrowing as I found the Natasha Kaplinsky one.

[loobylooayr]

Jane's journey searching for answers regarding her 2 great aunts and their families in occupied Poland and France was both compelling and poignant.
A lot of hard work must have taken place to uncover all those documents.
But of course as interesting as the story was it did leave a few unanswered questions, like :
  How did Jane's father find out that he had a cousin or cousins in Belsen? There must have been some communication with the Polish aunt at the end of the war for him to know that and look for her/them.
And what happened to the surviving Aunt with her husband and girls in Switzerland?
I can only assume that if the programme makers did find out their fate they decided for privacy reasons not to disclose that info to the viewers. But us being nosey, it doesn't stop us wondering?

Looby

[panda40]

I enjoyed this episode more and found the documents very interesting. I have no family who were interned but it was interesting to see hat records were used and also survived.
Regards panda

[StevieSteve]

In an exclusive scene that was cut from Jane Seymour's episode, the star visits the grave of her great uncle Dr Herman Temerson, where she is also introduced to a long lost relative...

http://www.rootschat.com/links/01fy4/

Don't have access to sound at the mo, so don't actually know who