Things We Don't Discuss

GATES: I'm Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Welcome to "Finding Your Roots."

In this episode, we'll meet actors Pamela Adlon and Kathryn Hahn.

Two women whose family trees have been obscured by family secrets.

HAHN: They went to a new world and they shut a door completely.

ADLON: What?!?

How do you know that?

GATES: To uncover their roots, we've used every tool available.

Genealogists combed through paper trails stretching back hundreds of years, while DNA experts utilized the latest advances in genetic analysis to reveal secrets that have lain hidden for generations.

ADLON: Plot twist!

GATES: And we've compiled it all into a book of life.

HAHN: Oh wow!

(gasps) GATES: A record of all of our discoveries.

You are the product of this scandal.

HAHN: I know.

GATES: You are the end result.

HAHN: Isn't that nuts?

ADLON: It's the most exciting thing in the world.

This is an amazing gift.

HAHN: What a freaking story!

GATES: My two guests are tied together by a common thread: both descend from people who concealed the most basic details about themselves, leaving their descendants to wonder who they really are.

In this episode, we'll separate fact from fiction, introducing Kathryn and Pamela to ancestors whose names and stories had been hidden for generations, forever altering how they see themselves.

(theme music plays) ♪ ♪ GATES: Pamela Adlon is at the top of her game.

After years in the show business wilderness, she's the writer, director and star of one of television's most celebrated shows: the Peabody-award-winning "Better Things".

But to appreciate just how far Pamela's come, you need to go back to where she started.

Pamela was born in New York City, where her mother, an English expatriate, struggled to fit in and where her father, a Bostonian, struggled to make a living, bouncing from job to job as a writer and television producer.

Watching her dad work, Pamela picked up a taste for acting, and found an agent when she was just 11 years old, in a story that sounds straight out of Hollywood.

ADLON: I met a girl, and she was saying I have an agent, and I was like what's that?

And she showed me her composite picture with like, her like you know, eating an apple and throwing a baseball and it said Beverly Hecht Agency on it.

GATES: Huh.

ADLON: And so then I went home and I looked in the phonebook and I called her and I made an appointment.

And I sat my parents down and I was like, yo, I want to get an agent and whatever.

And they didn't fight me.

So, we went in to meet her.

She had me read copy of a tide commercial, and it was, like, totally like one of those old movies.

She brings my mother in.

It's like she's got a cigarette.

The kid's terrific.

She's a natural.

GATES: Pamela was, indeed, a natural.

By the time she was 20, she'd appeared in a series of hit sitcoms, JO: Oh, well look who's here.

GATES: And was essentially supporting her parents financially.

ADLON: Not bad, huh?

GATES: Then the roles stopped coming, and Pamela went through a long dry period, earning money as a voice actor, and wrestling with a host of personal challenges: from the death of her father to a divorce which left her the single mother of three young girls.

Miraculously, she not only managed to recover, she turned her ordeal into art.

"Better Things", is a brilliantly stylized riff on her own experiences, a fact that makes Pamela all the more grateful for its success.

ADLON: I finally took the bones of my life.

My show is about single mom, three daughters, English mother lives next door.

GATES: Mmm-hmm.. ADLON: And what people have responded to is that they're passionate about the show and the content but it's the story of this lady who made it at 50.

How crazy is that?

GATES: How crazy is that.

ADLON: I should be in the dust bin at the Jewish Council Thrift Store in Sherman Oaks, California.

Like, that all of a sudden at 50 I become a boss, a director, producer, show-runner, star of my own show.

It's absolutely incredible.

GATES: Ironically, while "Better Things" explores some dark territory, particularly between Pamela's character and her mother's... ADLON: Get out.

MOTHER: Don't be ridiculous.

GIRLS: Mom!

ADLON: Get out!

GATES: Making the show has actually brought the two closer together in real life.

ADLON: My mother used to drive me crazy and she would tell me these stories and I would be like oh, god, really.

Do I need to hear about Verizon or like going to the store?

So one day, I stopped being driven crazy by my mom and I just looked at her and I went, oh, she's funny.

This is funny.

Let me embrace this.

And now my mom is like my biggest muse.

And she got really extra sassy with me in the past few years and her answer is, oh, you love it because it's material for your show.

GATES: Much like Pamela, my second guest, Kathryn Hahn, has spent almost her entire life in show business.

But the beloved actor, who became a breakout star by stealing scene after scene in "Wanda Vision", didn't start off big, marching into an agent's office.

Quite the contrary.

Growing up in a suburb of Cleveland, Kathryn got her first acting job when she was in fourth grade, on "Hickory Hideout," a children's program produced by a local news station.

It wasn't exactly a plumb role, but Kathryn was hooked.

HAHN: Wow, to be a movie star.

It involved a tree house and two squirrel puppets, Nutso and Shirley Squirrely, and, uh, an owl puppet called know-it-owl.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

HAHN: And I played a character named Jenny, and it would involve me asking know-it-Owl, uh, various questions about getting braces, or, you know, my parents got a divorce, in the show, and I would ask the owl for advice about how to deal with it.

It was local television, you know?

12 people saw it.

It was on at like 6:00, 6:30 in the morning on Saturdays in Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

GATES: Right.

HAHN: But to me, I was very excited.

I took it as seriously as if I, as if, that I, you know, I was in "The Deer Hunter".

Like I was so serious about it.

GATES: Perhaps unsurprisingly, "Hickory Hideout" didn't lead to bigger roles.

Nevertheless, Kathryn was determined to act, and her parents supported her ambitions.

For years, that seemed like a foolish choice.

After college, Kathryn moved to New York City and was forced to confront the reality of her profession, working in restaurants and hair salons, as she chased jobs that never came.

HAHN: Those 20s were a bl, a mad blur of racing towards auditions and not getting them and handing out head shots.

GATES: Yeah.

HAHN: Trying to get an agent.

I mean, I would write on my head shot, "You've got to see this girl!"

and I'm like, "Just fake it!"

And, like, not getting any calls.

It was awful.

GATES: So what, what kept you going?

HAHN: There was no choice.

I had no choice.

There was no other option.

GATES: Right.

None.

HAHN: None.

GATES: But did deep down you think I'm going to make it?

HAHN: Yes!

I didn't think I was going to, didn't know.

Again, I didn't know if I was ever going to land somewhere successfully.

I didn't know how it was going to look, but I had no option.

GATES: Kathryn's "options" would take time to appear, but once they did, they came in bunches.

Starting out with small parts in big budget comedies, she slowly moved into prestige television, and became a star.

Creating a string of indelible characters.

HAHN: The name's Agatha Harkness.

Lovely to finally meet you, dear.

GATES: And now, at an age when Hollywood historically provides fewer starring roles for women, Kathryn is a phenomenon.

It's been an incredible journey.

But when she looks back for the source of her success, Kathryn returns to the people who were there all along: her parents.

HAHN: Both of them believed in me and my, this bananas dream to be an actor without a question from the beginning.

GATES: Wow.

HAHN: And that support I think was clearly imperative to where I am.

GATES: Crucial.

HAHN: Crucial.

GATES: Crucial, but what's wrong with your parents?

Normal parents would say, "Are you crazy?"

You know like... HAHN: Yeah, they just didn't.

I mean, I was just all of a sudden in a U-Haul going to New York.

GATES: Yeah.

HAHN: And they were like, "okay."

GATES: That's amazing.

HAHN: They just didn't have any...

There was no question that it was just going to happen.

GATES: And never once from the time you were a little kid when you first voiced this fantasy, never once did they say, "Baby, it's a hard way..." HAHN: Never.

GATES: Or, "You got to eat," or you know?

"You'd make a lot more money as a lawyer?"

HAHN: Never.

GATES: Never.

HAHN: I mean, it was just an unquestioned thing.

GATES: You were lucky.

HAHN: I was so lucky.

GATES: Yeah.

No, you were.

HAHN: I agree with you.

GATES: My guests both come from tight-knit families that nurtured their dreams.

Those same families also harbored secrets that shrouded their roots in mystery.

It was time to bring these secrets to light.

I started with Pamela, who came to me with a very basic question: she wanted to know the identity of her mother's father.

She'd heard rumors that the man whom she believed to be her grandfather wasn't in fact related to her at all, and that her mother was the product of an affair.

But Pamela didn't know if these rumors were true.

And her mother's family, with its very English sense of propriety, wasn't about to help her find out.

ADLON: It's it's very hard, the English side, because there are things you don't do.

And so, um, when one generation does not reveal certain things then the next generation feels that they're not to be revealed.

GATES: Yes.

ADLON: If they have gone to their graves without talking about it, it's not anybody's business... GATES: Right.

ADLON: And that's frustrating for me.

GATES: It's the generational cone of silence.

ADLON: Yeah, man.

I want to know and I don't want to disrespect my lineage, but I really, I'm so curious.

GATES: Pamela's curiosity was palpable, but satisfying it would test our team to the limit.

Her mother, Marina Lucy Leece, was born in Birkenhead, England in 1935.

According to her birth certificate, her parents were Leonard and Phyllis Leece.

And there were no documents to suggest that Leonard was not Marina's father, but that's exactly what Marina believed.

This left us with only one option: DNA.

We compared Marina's DNA to that of millions of others in publicly-available databases, and we found that she has roughly 250 matches within the last five generations.

But when we started looking among them for matches that connect her to Leonard Leece, we got a very a different number.

ADLON: I see the word zero.

Zero!

GATES: So, you know what that means?

It means that your mother was absolutely right.

She has absolutely no genetic relationship to Leonard Leece.

She is not his biological daughter.

ADLON: Damn.

GATES: So, that's the first thing we had to establish.

ADLON: Copy.

GATES: Was this story true?

ADLON: Wow.

GATES: And it's true.

So, this is where things get a little tricky.

ADLON: Who is this interloper?

GATES: DNA was clearly telling us that Leonard was not your biological grandfather but it wasn't telling us who was your biological grandfather.

ADLON: Mm-hum.

GATES: Part of the problem is that DNA testing just isn't as popular, and this will not shock you, or as mainstream in the united kingdom as it is here in the United States.

For reasons that we have discussed already.

ADLON: Oh my god.

GATES: That is a secret that we are not going to discuss... ADLON: Yes.

GATES: And it will be taken to the grave.

ADLON: Totally.

GATES: Lacking enough DNA samples, the next phase of our research would consume almost five years, more time than we've ever spent on a guest before.

But it was worth it.

Eventually, we were able to tie Pamela's mother Marina to a married couple named Benjamin and Rose Walthew.

Benjamin and Rose lived in Birkenhead in the early 20th century.

Based on the genetic profiles of their descendants, we knew that they were Marina's biological grandparents, and that one of their sons was Marina's father.

The only problem?

Benjamin and Rose had five sons!

And we didn't have enough DNA evidence to tell us which was our man.

But then our researchers noticed something.

One of the five sons, Joseph Walthew, had fathered a daughter in Birkenhead two years after Marina was born.

Her name was Gloria.

If Gloria were still alive, she could help us.

But that raised yet one more problem.

Unfortunately, we couldn't find Gloria anywhere in England.

ADLON: You found her in?

GATES: Upstate New York.

ADLON: Stop it.

Stop it.

GATES: Gloria is alive and in great health and living in Upstate New York, and we found her.

ADLON: Oh, my god.

Can we stop right now so I can go call Gloria?

GATES: No.

ADLON: Okay.

GATES: She's a widow and her name is now Gloria Walthew Wood, and she agreed when we contacted her just on a dare, as it were, to take a DNA test.

ADLON: Stop it.

GATES: Yeah.

So, I'm going to show you your mother's DNA compared to Gloria's DNA.

ADLON: Ok. GATES: And what we're going to do is for the parts of Marina and Gloria's DNA that are identical, they will be colored in red.

ADLON: Okay.

GATES: Alright.

So, when you turn this page you're going to be looking for red, all right.

And the more red you see the more closely your mom and subsequently you are related to this wonderful person in upstate New York named Gloria.

ADLON: Gloria.

GATES: Are you ready?

ADLON: Yes.

GATES: Would you please turn the page?

ADLON: Oh, my god.

How much red is there going to be?

GATES: How much red do you see?

Just glancing all down.

ADLON: A lot.

A lot.

GATES: Pamela, your mother and Gloria Walthew Wood share about 25% of their total DNA plus they share their entire paternal X chromosome.

So you know what that means?

ADLON: That's?

GATES: Gloria is your mother's half-sister.

ADLON: Oh, my god.

This is crazy.

(crying.)

GATES: Your mom's got a sister and she's alive and well and she's 83 years old.

ADLON: My mother's going to be so happy.

She's going to be so happy.

GATES: Pamela's mother was indeed in for a great deal of joy.

Thanks to Gloria, we'd not only solved a mystery that had haunted her for decades, we were actually able to bring her face-to-face with her biological father.

ADLON: Oh, my god.

GATES: Take a good look.

ADLON: Oh, my god.

GATES: You are looking at your grandfather Joseph Walthew.

ADLON: Oh, this is just the best.

Wow.

I'm so happy that I get to give this to my mom.

GATES: I am, too.

You just discovered a whole new... ADLON: Yes.

GATES: A whole new family.

ADLON: It's really, really cool.

GATES: What's your mom going to say when she sees that picture?

ADLON: Freak out.

Oh, I can't wait.

I just can't.

Yes.

This is awesome.

GATES: Pamela wondered how her grandparents met.

We can't be certain, but we know that Joseph worked as a bus driver in Birkenhead, and also made deliveries for the post office, jobs that could easily have put him in contact with Pamela's grandmother Phyllis.

We also suspect that both parties wanted to keep their relationship a secret.

Not only was Phyllis married, but Joseph himself was likely engaged.

He'd marry a woman named Emily mercer about seven months after Marina was conceived.

ADLON: Holy crap.

Wait, what?

GATES: Joseph got married two months before Marina was born.

ADLON: Oh, damn.

GATES: So, the act would have been seven months before he got married, right.

Nine months.

ADLON: Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Well, wow.

GATES: Pamela's grandfather didn't stay married for long.

He and Emily divorced around 1952 and Joseph never remarried or had any other children, at least not as far as we know.

As for Pamela's grandmother Phyllis, her marriage to Leonard Leece was, reportedly, a very unhappy one, but it endured until Leonard's death in 1970.

Phyllis, herself, died seven years later.

And there's no evidence that she and Joseph ever re-connected, but Pamela remembers Phyllis as a creative, independent woman, and it heartened her to think that her grandmother had followed her passions, however briefly, in her youth.

ADLON: It makes sense because we are very like outside the box people.

GATES: Mmm-hmm.

ADLON: Um, and she wouldn't be afraid of that but I guess the rest of the family like wanted to cover it up.

Probably she had to, too.

GATES: There's one more thing I want to show you before we move on... ADLON: Okay.

GATES: And I think you'll like it.

Would you please turn the page?

ADLON: Yes.

Is that Gloria?

GATES: That is your aunt.

That is your mother's half-sister.

ADLON: I love her.

Thank you, Gloria.

GATES: She is excited to meet you and to meet your mom.

ADLON: Really?

GATES: Now, she doesn't know who you are or who your mom is but Gloria now knows that she has a mysterious half-sister.

Gloria's exact response, when she was told about the DNA match was, a brief pause and then an excited, 'isn't that wonderful.'

isn't that great?

ADLON: That's what I think, too.

GATES: Much like Pamela, Kathryn Hahn had a scandal in her family tree, only this one was buried even deeper in the past.

The story begins in 19th century Germany with Kathryn's third great-grandparents, Wilhelm Lünenschloss and Elizabeth Thernes.

They are the original immigrants on this branch of Kathryn's family tree, and two of her very first ancestors to put down roots in America.

They would end up settling in Wisconsin in the 1850s, a common destination for German immigrants at the time.

But a quick glance at their ages showed that they were not a typical couple.

As you could see, Wilhelm was 20 years older than Elizabeth.

HAHN: Yes.

GATES: Did you know that?

HAHN: No, I did not.

GATES: Now, I understand that there's a family story about Wilhelm.

Apparently, he was born in Germany and he left for the United States under some very unusual circumstances.

HAHN: Uh-oh.

GATES: Do you know this story?

HAHN: Please illuminate.

GATES: Okay.

Your mother's brother, Eddie, told us that your ancestor had to leave Germany because he married a french girl and created a scandal.

HAHN: Oh!

GATES: So we wanted to see if this scandal was true.

And we found quite a lot.

HAHN: Oh, goodness.

GATES: Records reveal that Kathryn's third great grandfather, Willhelm, was born in 1816 in Barmen, a small city in what was then the German state of Prussia.

His father was a factory worker, but Wilhelm became a baker.

And by 1840, we found him in cologne, a larger city, where he married and started a family.

He seemed to be thriving.

But his wedding record revealed something unexpected.

Wilhelm is marrying a woman named Katerina Gertrud Himberg, who is not your third great grandmother Elizabeth... HAHN: No.

GATES: He's marrying another woman.

Have you ever heard anything about this?

HAHN: No.

GATES: All right.

Would you please turn the page?

This is another record from cologne that's dated, the 4th of July, 1853.

Would you please read the translated section?

HAHN: Okay.

"Appeared, Friedrich Wilhelm Lünenschloss, age 37, who declared that a child had been born on the second day of the month of July, at 2:00 in the afternoon to him, and to Gertrud Himberg, his wife, age, 42 years.

He further declared that the child had been named Amalia Francisca."

GATES: This is a birth record for Wilhelm and Katerina's daughter, a girl named Amalia.

By this time, Wilhelm and Katerina had five other children, who ranged in age from two to ten years old.

Right?

HAHN: Okay.

GATES: That's, so what do you think their family life is like?

That's a lot of little kids to take care of, right?

HAHN: Yes.

GATES: Yeah.

HAHN: He's a baker.

GATES: He's a baker.

That's a lot of mouths to feed.

So let's... HAHN: Older lady.

GATES: Let's see what happens.

Could you please turn the page?

Now, we're jumping forward roughly seven years from the birth record we just saw to the 1860 federal census for Ithaca, Wisconsin.

HAHN: Oh, my god.

GATES: Would you please read the transcribed section?

HAHN: William, William!

All right, "William Lünenschloss, 42, farmer", hmm, "Place of birth, Prussia."

GATES: Uh-huh.

HAHN: "Eliza, 24.

Francis, six.

Place of birth, Wisconsin.

Charles", oh, no, "Three.

Place of birth, Wisconsin.

Eliza, seven months.

Place of birth, Wisconsin."

GATES: So you realize what has happened in the intervening seven years?

HAHN: Did he just leave her and marry someone else?

GATES: Bingo.

That's your third great grandfather, Wilhelm, living in Wisconsin, in another country, with your own biological third great grandmother, Elizabeth, listed here, as Eliza.

HAHN: Mm-hmm.

GATES: And that six year old boy, is your great, great grandfather, Francis.

HAHN: Frank.

GATES: You got it.

HAHN: Oh, wow.

GATES: We now set out to discover how Wilhelm and Elizabeth came together, and whether Kathryn's family story, that Wilhelm had married a french woman, might have held a grain of truth.

We knew that Elizabeth was just 17 when she met Wilhelm.

And we knew that her surname, Thernes, is not invariably of German origin.

Could she have been a young Frenchwoman, traveling through Prussia when she caught his eye?

The reality proved to be more mundane.

So these are excerpts from the city directory of the wonderful metropolis of cologne, from the year 1854.

And as you could see on the left, Wilhelm and his wife, Katerina, are living at Ergenstrasse 50.

And on the right, you could see the name of the man who lived at Ergenstrasse 48, just a few doors down.

Could you read his surname?

HAHN: Anton Thernes.

GATES: And whose surname was Thernes?

HAHN: Hers.

GATES: That's right.

HAHN: Yes.

GATES: They were living next door to each other.

HAHN: Ohhh.

GATES: Anton Thernes was Elizabeth's or Eliza's father.

So you know what this means.

Elizabeth was the daughter of Wilhelm's neighbor.

HAHN: God!

There's so much to unpack right there.

Eliza, Elizabeth.

I mean, wow.

That is so complicated.

GATES: Well, one thing you should know, that you don't have to worry about in the guilt, uh, chart.

HAHN: No guilt.

Just, like, "What?!"

GATES: 17-year-olds were allowed to marry.

HAHN: Oh, I'm sure 14-year-olds were.

It's a whole thing.

GATES: There was nothing at all unusual about a 17-year-year old, at that time.

HAHN: I'm sure Anton was like, "Please.

Take her."

It was a whole different time.

GATES: Yeah.

HAHN: Anton Thernes.

GATES: What a story.

HAHN: What a freaking story!

What a story!

GATES: There was still a question in front of us: what happened to the family that Wilhelm left behind?

We found the answer in the death notice of his German wife, Katerina, which was filed in 1892 by one of Wilhelm's German daughters.

It indicates that Katerina never remarried or left cologne, and states that almost 40 years after his departure, Wilhelm's whereabouts remained a mystery.

HAHN: Oh, damn it.

Wilhelm!

GATES: She lived the rest of her life, and had no contact, the kids and the mother had no contact with your third great grandfather, ever again.

HAHN: "Whereabouts are unknown."

GATES: Whose whereabouts were unknown.

HAHN: Wow.

I mean, wow.

You know, this reads to me that she never let it go.

GATES: Nope, she never let it go.

HAHN: She needed to put that in this death notice.

GATES: Yeah.

They go, "Daddy, wherever you are, screw you."

HAHN: Mm-hmm.

GATES: "I'm calling you out."

HAHN: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

GATES: Kathryn wondered whether Wilhelm ever regretted leaving his wife and children behind in Germany.

There's no way to know for certain, but his obituary, which celebrates his life in detail, contains a telling clue.

HAHN: "He was esteemed for his stern integrity, his shrewd business methods, as a pleasant companion and true friend."

Hmm.

"Thus, in the course of nature, has a well-rounded life reached its close", wow, "And the loved and loving husband and father has gone to his last and long repose."

GATES: That is the obituary of your third-great-grandfather, Wilhelm.

He died on February 21st, 1900, in Wisconsin.

And there is absolutely no mention... HAHN: No mention.

GATES: Of that family he left behind.

HAHN: It sounds like they chose to just, they went to a new world... GATES: Right.

HAHN: And they shut a door completely.

GATES: Big time.

They shut a vault of memories and associations and responsibilities.

Your third-great-grandparents came to the United States and totally reinvented themselves.

HAHN: Yup.

GATES: That's the bottom line.

All immigrants reinvent themselves.

HAHN: But this... GATES: But they really reinvented themselves.

Do you think they kept all of this a secret from everyone?

I mean, this is a lot of secret to keep.

HAHN: Yeah.

I think so.

But, like, what a thing to take to the grave.

GATES: Yeah.

HAHN: I mean, what a thing, to take to the grave.

GATES: But on the other hand, he followed his heart.

He fell in love.

HAHN: Yeah.

GATES: And you're here.

HAHN: Yes, exactly!

GATES: I mean... HAHN: The fact that that had to happen for this to happen, is.

GATES: Yeah.

You are the product of this scandal.

HAHN: I know.

GATES: You are the end result.

HAHN: Isn't that nuts?

GATES: We'd already introduced Pamela Adlon to her biological grandfather, uncovering a host of secrets in the small English city where her mother grew up.

Now, turning to Pamela's paternal roots, we found ourselves in a very different place, confronting secrets of a very different nature.

Pamela's father descends from eastern European Jews, and Pamela told me that while she felt connected to her Jewish ancestors, the family never spoke about their past, so she knows almost nothing about their lives.

We set out to change that, starting with the 1910 census for the town of Medford, Massachusetts, where Pamela's grandfather, Harry Segall, was raised.

ADLON: Man.

"Frank Segall, head of the family.

Age, 46.

Place of birth, Russia.

Native language, Yiddish."

GATES: Mmm-hmm.

ADLON: "Occupation, janitor."

Respect.

Fanny, awe, his wife, age 36.

Place of birth, Russia.

Native language, Yiddish.

Love that.

Year of immigration 1895.

Dora, daughter, age 12.

Place of birth, Massachusetts.

Harry, son, age nine.

Place of birth, Massachusetts."

GATES: That is your grandfather Harry when he was nine years old listed in the household of his parents in the federal census and his parents are your great-grandparents, Frank and Fanny Segall.

ADLON: Wow!

GATES: Have you heard of Frank and Fanny?

ADLON: No.

GATES: Really?

ADLON: I mean Frank is a family name.

GATES: But if I said what are the names of your great-grandparents?

ADLON: Oh, no.

GATES: Well, you just met your great-grandparents.

ADLON: That's incredible.

GATES: This census indicates that Frank Segall was born in Russia sometime around 1864.

From a genealogical perspective, this information wasn't terribly useful.

Russia, at the time, was a huge empire, and no other documents named Frank's birthplace with any greater specificity.

It seemed like we'd hit a brick wall.

But then, expanding our search, we uncovered a U.S. Army draft registration card for Frank's younger brother Samuel.

It indicated that Samuel was born in a town called Gritsev, and, suddenly, that brick wall collapsed, can you see in what modern-day country the town is?

ADLON: Ukraine.

GATES: Ukraine.

Frank came from the area of the Russian empire that's now Ukraine.

ADLON: Wow.

GATES: Have you ever been to Ukraine?

ADLON: No.

GATES: No.

Well, please turn the page.

ADLON: Wow.

Belarus.

I had... A guy came to fix my dishwasher once.

He was from Belarus.

He was a scary man.

GATES: Pamela, you're looking at a photo of a gravestone taken around 1912, likely in Gritsev, would you please read the translated section of the Hebrew inscription on the stone?

ADLON: Okay.

Good.

I was having PTSD of Hebrew school and I thought you were going to make me read the Hebrew on the stone.

"Here is buried a pure and honest man.

He was famous rabbi Yitzhak son of Tzvi Halevy."

GATES: Yitzhak was the father of your great-grandfather Frank Segall.

You're looking at your great- great-grandfather's gravestone.

ADLON: And he was a rabbi.

GATES: He was a rabbi, dear.

You just read it.

ADLON: Yes.

Oh, my god.

GATES: Were you bat mizvahed?

ADLON: I mean the amount of time I spent in temple.

If somebody had just said to me your great, my great-great?

GATES: Great-great-grandfather.

ADLON: Was a rabbi I would have been like, oh, wait, let me catch up to this sermon right now.

It's mind-blowing.

GATES: This photo was likely taken around the time of Yitzhak's death in 1912.

The women in it are his daughters, Zhenya and Menikha.

They are the younger sisters of Pamela's great-grandfather, Frank.

And thus Pamela's great-grand aunts.

ADLON: Oh, my god.

GATES: See any family resemblances?

ADLON: They're so beautiful.

No.

I mean they almost look like Italian.

GATES: Or maybe Russian.

(laughter) Maybe Ukrainian.

ADLON: Oh, wait.

Oh, wait.

Um, yes, that's what I meant.

GATES: Pamela had never heard of either Zhenya or Menikha, and we soon uncovered the likely reason why.

Unlike Frank and three of their other siblings, neither of the sisters chose to immigrate to America.

And that decision would cost them dearly.

In 1941, Nazi Germany invaded Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union, and began to exterminate its Jewish population.

We don't know what happened to Zhenya, but her sister Menikha was evacuated to the interior of Russia because her husband, a technician, and two of her daughters, were considered to be essential to the soviet war effort.

One of her daughters, however, a woman named Clara Birman, chose to stay behind.

GATES: Her name is nowhere on the list of those who were evacuated.

ADLON: Oh.

GATES: So, we wanted to find out what happened to her.

ADLON: Yeah.

GATES: We feared for the worst, of course.

Could you please turn the page?

Pamela, that photograph was taken just before the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

It shows Clara Birman with her Ukrainian husband, Anatoly and their two young children: Vladimir, born in 1940, and Lyudmila, born in 1938.

ADLON: Oh, my god.

GATES: Did you ever hear of any of these people?

ADLON: Never.

GATES: Well, upon the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Clara's husband, Anatoly was activated for military duty and before he reported he took Clara and the children to stay with his mother in one of the ethnically Ukrainian villages outside of Kiev.

No one but Anatoly's mother knew that Clara was Jewish.

ADLON: Wow.

GATES: Well, guess what happened?

When the German army reached the village her mother-in-law gave her and the children up.

ADLON: Oh, she told on them.

She narked on their Jewishness.

GATES: Yeah.

ADLON: Wow.

His mom?

GATES: His mom.

She gave them up.

ADLON: Why?

GATES: The answer to Pamela's question is part of a terrible history.

The nazis, tapping into a current of anti-Semitism as old as the middle ages, found many willing collaborators.

Simply put: the holocaust was the culmination of centuries of hatred.

Even so it's appalling to contemplate.

And Pamela was now compelled to do so.

According to a family friend, Clara Birman and her children were among the roughly 33,000 Jewish people who were massacred in a large ravine on the outskirts of Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine.

Clara was 27 when she was murdered.

Her daughter was three years old, her son one year old.

Did you know that you had a tangible family connection to the holocaust?

ADLON: No.

Not at all.

Not at all.

And I was hoping that they could still be alive.

GATES: Yeah.

ADLON: The babies.

GATES: Yeah.

(sighs) There is a small grace note to this story, Clara's mother Menikha survived the war, returned to Ukraine, and was able to rebuild her life.

She died in Kiev on may 6, 1969 at the age of 85, when Pamela was about three years old.

GATES: What's it like to learn that you had family in Ukraine as recently as the 1960s?

ADLON: That's nuts.

GATES: Yeah.

ADLON: That's nuts.

I mean I'm just, yeah.

GATES: Your great-grandfather Frank died right around the time of the German invasion of soviet Ukraine.

Frank's son, your grandfather Harry died in Boston the same year as his aunt Menikha died in Ukraine.

ADLON: No.

GATES: Yeah.

ADLON: Harry died in 1969?

GATES: Yeah.

In Boston.

ADLON: Oh, god.

He was a funny guy.

GATES: Do you think your grandfather knew that he had such close relatives in Ukraine?

ADLON: Maybe he did.

GATES: I wonder.

ADLON: I wonder.

I don't... GATES: What's it like for you to learn this part of your father's family story?

ADLON: What's, what's so...

Incredible to me is how little families know about their stories and how we just accept the crumbs and how, you know, we don't preserve our histories, you know, and how I think people need to know this.

Seeing all of these people, that's what makes you realize that everybody is important.

GATES: Right.

ADLON: It's, it's... And how precious life is.

It's just absolutely incredible.

All of us are against all odds.

GATES: Yes.

All of us.

Our survival has been against all odds.

ADLON: Yes.

It's a miracle.

GATES: We'd already explored Kathryn Hahn's maternal roots, revealing how her third great-grandfather came to America, leaving a wife and six children behind.

Now, turning to Kathryn's father's ancestry, we had another story to tell, with similar themes, but a much happier ending.

It began with a ship that arrived in New York from Ireland on December 9th, 1882.

On board, was Kathryn's great-great-grandmother, Mary O'Connell, traveling on her own with six young children.

Which raised a question: where was their father?

We knew his name, John O'Connell, but we couldn't find him anywhere on the passenger list.

HAHN: And she, there was no husband?

GATES: That's right.

HAHN: Partner.

GATES: So, the husband's missing.

Any idea why?

Just take a guess.

HAHN: He died.

GATES: That's a good guess, but nope.

And he didn't run away with a 17-year-old... HAHN: Yeah, right.

I was gonna say he's in Wisconsin with a 17-year-old.

GATES: Yeah.

Yeah, at the same, at the same bakery.

HAHN: Right, exactly.

GATES: No.

Good story.

He had emigrated to the states around 1880, two years before.

HAHN: Oh, to set up shop.

GATES: Yeah.

Likely to establish roots and send money back home to pay for their passage.

And that was common among immigrant families.

HAHN: Yes.

GATES: And it must have placed a great burden on both of them.

But still, I think I'd rather be John than Mary.

HAHN: Yes.

GATES: On a ship with all those kids.

HAHN: Wow.

GATES: As it turns out, Mary's husband wasn't the only member of her family waiting for her in America.

Her arrival marked the close of a long and likely painful period in her life.

Census records revealed that Mary's parents, Patrick and Honora Daly, had settled in Michigan in 1860.

At the time, Mary would have been about 13 years old.

So you know what this record means?

It means that when your third great-grandparents immigrated to the United States they left their daughter Mary behind in Ireland.

And we don't know why.

Likely it was economic.

HAHN: Yes.

GATES: They probably couldn't afford to bring her so they had to make choices.

HAHN: God.

GATES: She likely stayed with her grandparents back in Ireland, you know, waiting for them to bring her over.

HAHN: Yes.

GATES: But that had to be heart wrenching.

HAHN: I've got a lot of that in my family.

GATES: Yup.

HAHN: Separation.

GATES: This story was about to darken.

Digging deeper, we realized that Mary's parents emigrated much earlier than 1860, likely when Mary was very young, around the year 1849.

At the time, Ireland was in the midst of the great potato famine, a cataclysm that claimed the lives of roughly one million people, and drove another two million to leave the country, meaning that Mary grew up surrounded by a massive amount of suffering.

Waiting, and likely praying to join her parents in America.

HAHN: Whew.

That sounds intense.

GATES: Well, guess what?

HAHN: What?

GATES: She waited 30 years.

She was separated from her parents for 30 years.

HAHN: Yeah.

Oh wow, okay.

GATES: Patrick and Honora even had a child, Mary's younger brother David, while they were living here and she was living back there.

HAHN: Hmm.

GATES: It would be so long David died before his sister Mary finally was able to immigrate to the United States.

HAHN: Unh-uh.

GATES: They had David, David dies.

Imagine having a baby brother on the other side of the Atlantic whom you would never meet?

HAHN: Mmm, I mean, it's interesting to me because I'm having echoes of my maternal side and the family that I... GATES: Oh yeah.

HAHN: I just keep seeing that ocean between... GATES: That's true.

HAHN: Families.

That is really profound.

GATES: Fortunately, the ocean between Mary and her parents would close in 1882 when finally Mary arrived in the United States, it's difficult even to imagine what that reunion was like, or what emotions remained unspoken.

But we found an obituary, published almost 20 years later, which suggests that separation didn't break the family's bonds.

HAHN: "Mrs. Nora Daly died at 607 Pine Street last night, age 77 years.

During the past two years she's lived with her daughter, Mrs. Mary O'Connell, at Lima, Ohio."

GATES: Nora is, of course Honora.

And Honora, here listed as Nora, spent the last years of her life living with the daughter she had left behind in Ireland for over 30 years.

HAHN: Oh my god.

Oh my god.

So she raised, without her parents, by herself, six children?

GATES: Mmm-hmm.

HAHN: And then came over and took care of her mom.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

HAHN: In Lima, Ohio?

GATES: That's right.

HAHN: Hmm.

"During the past few years she has lived with her daughter, Mrs. Mary O'Connell, at Lima".

Wow.

Yeah.

GATES: Yup.

So do you think they were making up for lost time?

HAHN: Yeah, I mean, wow, I'm just still, like... (gasps) GATES: We had one more detail to share with Kathryn.

As we combed through the archives in Ireland, we came upon what's called a "house book" for the year 1849.

Conducted for tax purposes, this book records the owners and conditions of much of Ireland's property at the time.

Its entries, for the town land of Port, in County Limerick, allowed us to glimpse a crucial part of Mary's story.

HAHN: "Name and description: David Connors.

House: quality letter 3C."

GATES: We believe that this is the relative who took in your great-great-grandmother Mary Daly, when her parents immigrated to the United States.

David would have been Mary's maternal grandfather.

HAHN: Oh.

Oh my god.

GATES: And as you're guessing from the picture you're looking at, you see that "3C"?

That was a technical term to describe the, uh, nature of the dwelling in which they lived.

It was a designation used to rate buildings by age and materials.

It means Patrick's house would have had stone or mud walls with a thatched roof.

And it was old and out of repair.

And on your left, you can see an image of what these houses would have looked like.

Can you imagine having to live in a house like that?

HAHN: No.

GATES: And remember, 1849, the year that house book record was taken was smack dab in the middle of the great potato famine.

So it would've been rough.

Now, as Mary grew older, she would've assumed a caregiving role for her grandparents until she married your great-great-grandfather, John O'Connell, in 1865.

So, what's it been like to learn her story?

HAHN: I mean, this is, I, I'd always known that the, that I was, you know, Irish, but I had no idea that it, that there was a paper trail that went this far.

GATES: Mmm-hmm.

HAHN: And there is something very, um, moving to me about, about seeing, these things and these people.

Like, this is, this is, this is really crazy.

GATES: The paper trail had now run out for each of my guests.

HAHN: Oh my god.

GATES: It was time to unfurl their family trees.

Now filled with names they'd never heard before.

ADLON: So cool!

GATES: What is it like to see that you are descended from all these people?

HAHN: It really is beautiful.

Just beautiful.

GATES: And our journey wasn't over.

Turning to DNA, we were able to add a few more very surprising names to their newfound families.

When we compared Pamela's mother's DNA to that of other people who have been in this series, we found a match, evidence of a relative that Pamela didn't know she had.

Close your eyes and make a wish.

Of all the people you know, who would you, like, die to be cousins with?

ADLON: Redd Foxx.

Let's go.

Shut up.

What?

GATES: That's right.

You are cousins with Meryl Streep.

ADLON: Are you kidding me?

What how.

I love her so much.

Look.

Juicing.

I love her.

GATES: Meryl and Pamela's mother share an identical segment of DNA on their X chromosomes, meaning that they share a common distant ancestor.

So, it means if you had an ideal family tree going back god knows how long there would be somebody on both family trees.

ADLON: This is unbelievable.

That's so cool.

GATES: Kathryn, too, has a DNA cousin, one whose identity would expand her sense of her own.

HAHN: What?

I am so excited!

Wait, what is happening?

GATES: Your mother shares an identical stretch of DNA on her fourth chromosome with actor and director Regina King.

And since your mother is related to Regina, that means you are related to Regina, too.

Regina is about, like an average African American, Regina is 24% European.

HAHN: I love it so much.

This is the best.

I love it.

GATES: And Regina is, her European lines are descended almost exactly from the very same places in Europe from which you descend.

So that's how you're related.

How about that?

HAHN: Oh my god.

That makes me so happy.

I, I, that is incredible.

GATES: That's the end of our journey with Kathryn Hahn and Pamela Adlon.

Join me next time when we unlock the secrets of the past for new guests, on another episode of "Finding Your Roots."