Scarlett Johansson Discovers Her Family’s Holocaust Tragedy on PBS’s Finding Your Roots

In a deeply moving 2017 episode of PBS’s acclaimed genealogy series Finding Your Roots, Scarlett Johansson came face-to-face with a heartbreaking chapter of her family’s history: the loss of relatives during the Holocaust in the Warsaw Ghetto. The revelation added new depth to Johansson’s understanding of her Jewish heritage and cast a powerful light on the fragile thread of survival that brought her family to the United States.

Hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Finding Your Roots takes prominent public figures on emotional journeys through their ancestral pasts, often revealing long-lost relatives, forgotten legacies, or— in Johansson’s case—profound personal tragedies. When Johansson sat down to explore her roots, she expected to learn more about her Eastern European Jewish background. What she didn’t expect was the emotional weight of the truth.

The episode, which aired on October 31, 2017, revealed that Johansson’s maternal great-grandfather, Saul Schlamberg (born Schlachne), immigrated from Poland to New York in 1910. He settled on Ludlow Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a historic landing spot for Jewish immigrants, and made a humble living selling bananas at a local market. His decision to emigrate likely saved his descendants from the horrors that later consumed Europe.

But the family he left behind was not as fortunate. Using documentation from Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and archive in Jerusalem, researchers uncovered that Saul’s brother, Moishe Schlamberg, along with his wife and their children—Zlata, age 15, and Mandil, 17—perished in the Warsaw Ghetto under Nazi occupation.

Johansson was visibly shaken by the revelation. “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. But it’s hard not to,” she said, tearfully reacting to the fate of the uncle and cousins she never knew she had. She reflected on the jarring contrast between her great-grandfather’s life selling fruit in New York and the fate of his brother’s family in war-torn Poland. “It’s crazy to imagine that Saul would be on the other side selling bananas on Ludlow Street and how different it would be being in America at that time.”

The moment served as a stark reminder of how immigration, often driven by desperation or hope, can determine the difference between survival and tragedy. “It makes me feel more deeply connected to that side of myself, that side of my family,” Johansson added, expressing a renewed appreciation for her maternal lineage.

The episode resonated far beyond Johansson. Viewers around the world responded to her vulnerability, and one family even contacted producers to share that they had discovered they were related to the actress through the Schlamberg family line.

Johansson’s story underscores the enduring impact of the Holocaust—not just on survivors, but on their descendants, many of whom are only now learning the full scope of their family histories. It also highlights the invaluable role of archival institutions like Yad Vashem and programs like Finding Your Roots, which use historical records and DNA research to reconstruct lives that were nearly erased.

For Johansson, the journey into her past was more than a televised discovery—it was a personal reckoning with history, memory, and the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit. And for audiences, it was a sobering reminder that the past is never far from the present.