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Family secrets leave Magda in tears

While filming Who Do You Think You Are? Magda Szubanski admits she opened a Pandora's Box of family truths. "What the hell have I done?'"

The opening sequence of Magda Szubanski’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? features a scene from Kath and Kim in which she is doing Irish dancing in a pub.

In many ways it echoes the different sides of her family tree.

Strezlecki, the surname given to her character Sharon, was a Polish explorer (who named Mount Kosciuszko). Szubanski’s father was Polish. And her whilst her mother is Scottish, her grandfather was Irish.

But the Szubanski family knew very little about his life, until it was uncovered in the third season of SBS’s genealogy show.

“I was hoping they would call me because I’d seen the programme and it was riveting. I love things like that. But I’d just never had the time to do family genealogy and to be honest I thought it would be about stuff further back. But these stories were very close and very personal,” she says.

“My family history is a trail of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

Indeed, what she learned about her grandfather took an emotional toll. An Irish historian detailed his shellshock  from fighting for the English in WWI, followed by a life of poverty. It triggered within her, as she puts it, wall to wall crying.

“I was thinking ‘Oh God’ how am I going to tell my mum? All the stuff with her father, we knew nothing about his life in Ireland at all,” she says.

“We all know that families have skeletons in closets, but I did think it would be further back. But this was so close to home and I kept thinking ‘My mum is still alive.’ And you’re thinking ‘How bad is this going to get?'”

Szubanski had to dig deep as home truths were revealed to her all without any support system in a foreign location. Everything is kept from the subject in order to capture natural reactions for the camera.

“You’re doing it all on camera, undiluted. You don’t have friends or family or anyone with you. You’ve got the camera crew but then you’re on your own.

“It was actually really stressful. You’ve got your passport and any more than that you just don’t know. They only tell you what temperatures to prepare for. More than that, you don’t know where you’re going,” she explained.

“I got plunged straight into the deep sadness on my grandfather’s side and then it just kept getting worse. I just didn’t know where it was going.

“I thought ‘Oh my God I’ve opened this Pandora’s Box, what the hell have I done?'”

She was Skyping madly with friends and family back home just to help process all the daunting information.

Later she would learn more about her father’s resistance fighting in Poland during the second World War. Many did not believe he served in a Counter-Intelligence Unit as an assassin, who had to escape the Nazis via a sewer.

“Shitty doesn’t even begin to describe it. There were levels of hell that were incomprehensible,” she says.

“It’s so hard for fifth generation Australians here to even conceive of that horror which is why I never really talk about it. But there’s something about having it told visually and seeing the images.

“I think that’s the thing that’s great about this show. It’s not about famous men. It’s about real people and how history actually impacts on real human beings.

“The Irish stuff I really didn’t know anything about. But the one thing I was disappointed about is that there was another whole storyline. I’m actually part Italian too. My great great grandfather was an Italian sculptor who came over to Scotland. It’s a funny story, a little bit ‘Sweeney Todd,’ it takes a funny turn.

“He was from Lake Como so I was hoping to find out that I came from great wealth and that I would in fact own George Clooney’s villa. I’m hoping the paperwork is lying around somewhere!”

Szubanski, who admits most people don’t even pronounce her first name right let along her surname, says the experience was gruelling but ultimately worthwhile and a healing experience for her family.

It also reiterated some of the family traits that have lived on with her today.

“The Irish and the Poles have got great senses of humour. You need to, to survive.”

Who Do You Think You Are? returns 7:30pm Sunday on SBS ONE.

6 Responses

  1. Magda watched your story tonight & cried with you. I have onle recently found out that I twas told the truths of my family. I had to find out the hard way. I found out that My grandmothers younger brother after moving from Scotland to Australia under a curtain of information or lack of information and the WW1 threa as well as my grandmother’s father whowas a merchant sailor, died at sea. I was not told of my great Uncle joining the Australian Army and being sent I think to Belgium, I was told only that her father died at sea. Apparently her brother was wounded several timesand after being treated in England and sen tback to the front recieved horrific wounds and died a horrific death several days later. On my father’s side I new my grandfather went to war in WW1. I was never really told what had happened. Until I found his War recod. I really never new what had happened to him. What I found was that he was not only wounded twice (once in the back & once in the thigh)& sent back to England for treatment, but also had to be sent back to England several times because of Illness!!! What ever that might be. But, both my Grandfather , father & grandmother along with what my mother must have known never told me anything but the very basic account of what happened during those times. Then along came WW2 that as well was never spoken of. This time I had at least 2 uncles on my mothers side & 2 uncles plus my father before I was even a twinkle in his eye, was envolved in someway with the army in WW2. It is only now that I am finding out how much was with held from me and I think all my cousins

  2. This was a really moving episode; I think Szubanski will have a better appreciation of life now. (I’m not saying she had a poor attitude, but when you get revelations like what she experienced tonight, they are life changers.)

  3. Yup – I aint a fan of Magda but this show tends to bring out the most interesting sides of their subjects. I’m sure she’s got a heck of a story to uncover!

  4. Looking forward to this – a brilliant show.
    Perhaps they should look at providing psychologists as well as camera crews on location? If it’s good enough for the kids on MasterChef…

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