Finding Your Roots | In the Blood | Season 10 | Episode 9

GATES: I’m Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Welcome to “Finding Your Roots”.

In this episode, we’ll meet Michael Douglas and Lena Dunham, two children of celebrated artists whose ancestors came to fame in highly unusual ways.

DOUGLAS: “Anyone who knows the whereabouts of Danielovich is obliged to inform the court…” GATES: Your great uncle, Michael, was a wanted man.

DOUGLAS: This is wild.

This is, this is, do we know what he was wanted for?

DUNHAM: My eighth great-grandfather was the mayor?

GATES: You descend from the Mayor of New York!

DUNHAM: That is not something that I ever would’ve guessed at.

GATES: To uncover their roots, we’ve used every tool available… Genealogists combed through paper trails stretching back hundreds of years.

DOUGLAS: Whoa!

Whoa!

GATES: While DNA experts utilized the latest advances in genetic analysis to reveal secrets that have lain hidden for generations.

DUNHAM: This is the hottest information I could have ever gotten!

GATES: And we’ve compiled it all into a book of life, a record of all of our discoveries… DOUGLAS: That’s incredible.

GATES: And a window into the hidden past… DUNHAM: Do a lot of people cry when this happens?

GATES: Every once in a while.

DUNHAM: Okay.

It’s beautiful.

DOUGLAS: I feel, more of a spiritual, religious connection, uh, to Judaism, than, than I ever had before.

DUNHAM: Noooo!

You saved the best for last!!

GATES: My two guests descend from extraordinary artists, yet each of them chartered a unique path for themselves.

In this episode, they’re going to be introduced to ancestors who did the same thing, meeting women and men who took chances that their parents never could have imagined.

(theme music plays).

♪ ♪ (book closes) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ GATES: Michael Douglas has been surrounded by cameras his entire life.

The Oscar-winning star of “Wall Street” and “Fatal Attraction” is himself the child of two stars: Broadway’s Dianna Dill and Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas.

But Michael didn’t set out to join the family profession.

His childhood was dominated by tensions between his parents, and his father, a complicated man, was not someone whom he initially sought to emulate.

DOUGLAS: They were, you know, the yin and the yang.

GATES: Mmm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: Truthfully, their early marriage, they were not married that long, they were, they were married I think six years, six or seven years, was, was difficult.

Um, very soon after they were married my father got a contract to go out to, to Hollywood and needless to say, like a lot of people in our business, career was, took over everything.

Ahead of marriage or children and all of that.

And so they, they, they fought a, a lot and, and I think, uh, my father was a little overwhelmed by Hollywood.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: Let’s just leave it at that.

(laughter) GATES: I understand.

DOUGLAS: Right.

Exactly.

GATES: Michael’s father ultimately found success that few actors can even dream of: Kirk appeared in more than 75 films, many of them still beloved today, but Michael did not try to follow in his father’s footsteps until he himself moved to California to go to college in Santa Barbara.

And even then, it was only as a last resort.

DOUGLAS: I didn’t know what else to do.

GATES: Right, mmm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: And then I must say, God bless my father who then, as busy as he had been, made like almost every single production that I was in up there at, at school.

And I remember he came up for the, the first productions I ever had was a messenger in “Much Ado About Nothing”.

GATES: Yeah.

DOUGLAS: And, um, and unfortunately, I had an entrance to the theater down the aisle and they taught me how to stand and all that.

And I ended up standing right by my father’s, um, aisle.

And I had like a messenger speech, they taught me how to, to stand it up, “My Lord… (gibberish with British accent) Then bowed and went out.

And the whole audience said, “What did he say?”

“What did he say?”

And, uh, they had, they had, you know, afterwards, Michael, you were terrible.

You were just terrible.

And he, in, in hindsight, he was so relieved, he said, “Oh God, I don’t have to worry about my son thinking about being an actor,” you know?

GATES: Of course, Kirk actually had a good deal to worry about.

Michael would eventually master his craft, and become a leading man in Hollywood, taking roles that Kirk might once have claimed for himself.

But even so: Michael told me that he struggled for years, both personally and professionally, to separate himself from his famous father, and that the breakthrough would only come when was he in his 40s, and he won his Academy Award for “Wall Street”.

DOUGLAS: On a personal level, it was crucial for me because it, it was the first time that I felt I was out of the shadow… GATES: Mm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: Of my father.

That I didn’t feel like I was Kirk Douglas’s son.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: Uh, and I’d done a fair amount of stuff, uh, before “Wall Street,” but getting that Oscar for me, getting the acknowledgment from my peers, you know, the, in the Oscars, it’s only the, the acting members who first give the nominations.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: This is why I was so touched is, this means that my fellow actors… GATES: Right.

DOUGLAS: Are saying that I’m worthy.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: And so, for me personally, it was a, a tremendous need that I had to get out of the shadow of my dad.

GATES: My second guest is writer-director-and-actor Lena Dunham… creator of “Girls” the iconic HBO series.

Just like Michael Douglas, Lena is the child of artists.

Her mother is a renowned photographer.

Her father, a celebrated painter and sculptor…

But Lena’s childhood was fundamentally different from Michael’s.

She grew up in very a stable home in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, where she was surrounded by her parents’ art and encouraged to pursue her own creative dreams.

DUNHAM: I was constantly getting to use their tools.

So if I wanted to borrow a camera that was in my mother’s studio or play with my father’s paint brushes or work with the clay that he was using to make the sculpture.

It was fun because as kids we had access to these, what felt like these really adult tools.

GATES: Big time.

DUNHAM: Yeah.

GATES: Yeah.

That was… DUNHAM: And so it was nice.

You weren’t just like using your paint-by-numbers set.

GATES: Did you ever want to be a doctor or a lawyer or was it always… DUNHAM: It was always a writer.

Something…

I always felt really connected to the fact that my parents got you this amazing thing of going into a room and, and being creative for the day.

And I, I think I was always, my parents always were conscious and made me conscious of what a gift that is.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DUNHAM: What a privilege it is to be able to do that for your life.

GATES: Lena not only appreciated the world of her childhood, she used it to launch her career.

After college, she decided she wanted to become a film-maker and ended up shooting a low-budget feature in her family’s apartment, guided by a pragmatism she’d gleaned from watching her parents work.

DUNHAM: The thing about my parents is that they’ve always really treated being artists like a business.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DUNHAM: And I think that’s the thing that made it make sense to me is, you know, they treat it like a 9:00 to 5:00 job, they go into the studio, they do it, they think about, you know, what they have the resources to make, what they don’t have the resources to make.

And in life, I’m just not…

I don’t like to like entertain things I can’t have.

I’m not a window shopper.

I don’t like to tour houses that I couldn’t afford.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DUNHAM: I don’t get crushes on people who don’t have a crush on me.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DUNHAM: It’s just not my thing.

And so I was really thinking I’m not gonna try to, you know, create a film that would be shot on the moon.

I really wanna do something that I can actually make.

And, and that’s still the way that I think.

I think I mean, my resources have grown, but to this day, I think, “Okay, where am I?

What’s practical to actually create?”

And then I write to that.

GATES: Lena’s first film was a hit on the festival circuit, but Girls took her to the next level… creating an array of memorable characters, and exploring emotions that are rarely even acknowledged on-screen…

It’s no wonder the series became a classic, or that it made Lena a celebrity, the subject of both praise and controversy… Fortunately, through it all, Lena preserved both her creative vision, and her mental health.

A feat that she credits to her parents.

DUNHAM: I really often tell people that the difference between people who get swept up in this business in a negative way and never come back and the people who… GATES: Hmm.

DUNHAM: Get to hold a shred of reality is whether you have a family that supports you and believes you and sees you and doesn’t try to benefit from your success… GATES: Mm-hmm.

DUNHAM: In ways that are destructive.

And I am so blessed.

GATES: Mmm-hmm.

DUNHAM: I mean, It’s not like I wouldn’t be standing here with you.

I wouldn’t be alive if I didn’t have that, that safety and that love.

GATES: You know, whatever stork that dropped you in that, uh, apartment in SoHo… Yeah, that’s a good dude.

DUNHAM: I feel he’s a good dude and I feel like he got it really right.

GATES: Meeting my guests, it was clear that both had inherited creative talent from their parents.

Now it was time to see what had been passed down to them from their more distant ancestors.

I started with Michael Douglas, and with his father Kirk, whose accomplishments are all the more remarkable given how he began.

Kirk was born “Isadore Demsky” in Amsterdam, New York, the only son of Harry Demsky, a Jewish immigrant who sold rags from a cart, when Kirk was a boy and was by all accounts, cold and difficult at home.

Indeed, many of Kirk’s own struggles seem to have flowed out of his relationship with his troubled father.

DOUGLAS: My grandfather was just a very closed-off individual.

GATES: Hmm.

DOUGLAS: A lot of us, that has to do with, I don’t think he spoke.

Uh, he didn’t write.

GATES: Right.

DOUGLAS: Um… GATES: Spoke Yiddish.

DOUGLAS: Spoke Yiddish, exactly, all the time.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: And so it was like a, it was a closed world, um, that never, even after dad had achieved some success and, he, as an immigrant, had not achieved the success that his, his son had, so I think he probably was, even the more, how much dad wanted the love and affection was probably what even shut him off even more from, from dad.

GATES: Right.

Yeah, he couldn’t allow himself to enjoy it.

DOUGLAS: Yeah.

GATES: Right, because it made him feel like he had let the slide down.

DOUGLAS: Yeah, that he’d, he’d done nothing.

GATES: Harry Demsky would prove to be as challenging to our researchers as he was to his son.

Michael had heard that Harry came to America to avoid serving in the Russian Army, and that the family’s original surname was not Demsky, rather it was “Danielovich”.

But beyond that, Michael knew nothing about his grandfather’s roots.

And for a time, neither did we.

There were no records of Harry at Ellis Island.

So we couldn’t determine when he came to America, or where he came from.

What’s more, Harry had two brothers who immigrated to the United States, Mosha and Abram… And we couldn’t find an arrival record for Mosha.

Happily, our luck changed with Abram, and the passenger list for a ship that arrived in New York in April of 1911.

Please read who was on board.

DOUGLAS: “Danielovich.

Abram, age 42.

Occupation: Dealer.

Nationality: Russia.

Race or people: Hebrew.”

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: “Last permanent residence: Chausy, Russia.”

GATES: Chausy, Russia.

You know who that is?

That’s your father’s uncle.

DOUGLAS: Oh, whoa.

GATES: That is the arrival of your great uncle Abram, recorded with the surname Danielovich, arriving in New York.

Chausy is your ancestral hometown.

DOUGLAS: Whoa.

GATES: It was then part of the Russian empire.

Did you know, have you ever heard of this place, Chausy?

DOUGLAS: Never heard of it.

Chausy.

Wow.

GATES: Today, Chausy is a small town in eastern Belarus.

But when Michael’s relatives lived here, it was part of the notorious “pale of settlement”, the vast region where Russia confined and severely restricted its Jewish population.

Jews in the pale were second-class citizens, subject to continuous, sometimes violent, discrimination.

And though it is often difficult to learn about their lives, with Michael’s ancestors, we were fortunate: we found photographs of the neighborhood in Chausy where we believe his family lived.

In essence, it was the town’s Jewish quarter… 90% of the residents there were Jewish.

DOUGLAS: Okay.

GATES: It’s the ghetto, right?

DOUGLAS: It’s the ghetto.

GATES: What’s it like to learn this?

DOUGLAS: Well, I, it just gives you a better understanding of, of how it all, how it all worked.

You know, even, even then, how it all worked.

I mean, I, I’m sure that all the Jews liked to be together, but not together that much.

GATES: By law, Jewish people in the pale were barred from owning land and denied access to higher education.

As a result, most worked as tradespeople.

But as we researched Michael’s family, we discovered that his great uncle Mosha found a more unusual way to support himself… Crime.

DOUGLAS: Under the decree of the Mogilev District Court is wanted a Chausy town person Mosha Danielovich… GATES: Uh-huh.

DOUGLAS: Accused under Article 1654.

Anyone who knows the whereabouts of Danielovich is obliged to inform the court where he is.”

GATES: Your great uncle, Michael, was a wanted man.

DOUGLAS: This is wild.

This is, this is, do we know what he was wanted for?

GATES: We do.

But have you ever heard this story?

DOUGLAS: No, no.

I’ve never heard… GATES: Well, as I said, we didn’t find any firm record of his arrival to the United States.

So, it’s possible he may have been in Russia as late as 1906, which is when that article was published.

DOUGLAS: Right.

GATES: It’s also possible that he’d already left when this wanted notice was issued because he was… DOUGLAS: Sounds more likely.

GATES: According to this newspaper, in 1906, Mosha was accused of what we would call “armed robbery.”

We don’t know anything further about the case, so it’s possible that he was innocent…

However, as we dug deeper, that possibility seemed increasingly unlikely.

Records show that five years earlier, in 1901, Mosha was imprisoned for a different crime.

What’s more, we discovered that Michael’s grandfather Harry was born “Gersha Danielovich”, and that he, too, had trouble with the law… DOUGLAS: “November 12th, 1903, Gersha Danielovich… GATES: Mmm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: Alexander Ferpechka… GATES: Good!

DOUGLAS: And Nobleman Alexander Venkofvsky.

Charged under articles 13 and 1642.”

Wow, you got yourself a little gang here.

GATES: Your grandfather Harry’s real name was Gersh Danielovich.

He was charged with robbery, like his brother, but not with a weapon.

DOUGLAS: Okay.

GATES: This is your grandfa… No family stories about this?

DOUGLAS: Incredible.

No.

Never.

I guess this is kinda the part that they were not proud about when they first came to this country.

GATES: We left that behind.

DOUGLAS: Yeah.

Yeah.

GATES: What’s it like to learn that?

DOUGLAS: Well, it, it just all kind of comes to life, and they must have been struggling, um, to make ends meet.

It looks like it was somewhat of a professional gang.

I mean, it doesn’t seem like a one-off.

It seems like they made, they lived and survived by, by robbery.

GATES: You know the records at Ellis Island are pretty good.

DOUGLAS: Yeah.

GATES: So, we, we were thinking, how come these guys don’t show up, neither of them?

Probably aliases.

DOUGLAS: I’m kind of reeling.

Reeling with this information, but sure, it makes all the sense in the world.

They were… GATES: And let’s go back to the story your father told you, that his father came to America to escape the army.

DOUGLAS: Right.

GATES: He came to America to escape prison.

DOUGLAS: Prison.

Yeah.

This is blowing my mind a little bit.

This is really blowing my mind.

GATES: Now that we’d figured out who Michael’s grandfather actually was, we were able to trace his roots…

Starting in the archives of Belarus, where we uncovered the birth record for another one of his brothers, a man named Ruvim Danielovich.

This record lists Ruvim’s grandparents, adding yet another generation to Michael’s family tree…

Both were likely born in the 1830s, almost 200 years ago.

DOUGLAS: 200 years ago, and that would be my great-great-grandparents.

GATES: That’s right, your second great-grandparents.

DOUGLAS: Great-great-grandparents.

GATES: Right.

Tolstoy was born in 1828.

They are contemporaries of Tolstoy.

DOUGLAS: I can’t get over this!

GATES: What’s it like to see that?

DOUGLAS: Well, it makes me feel, um, that I have some connection or continuity beyond just my grandfather or back there, because, for me, it’s always bothered me that I didn’t really know anything from, just pretty much from when he, when he got here to this country.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: And so you can, to see this, and you got to, I didn’t even know he had two brothers.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: So, to see that, and, and to understand their background, just totally brings it to, brings it to, to life.

GATES: We had a final detail to share regarding Michael’s roots in Belarus.

Our researchers were able to find the cemetery where we believe his Danilovich ancestors are buried…

It likely dates back to the early 1700s… and has survived over three centuries of war, unrest, and upheaval… DOUGLAS: Well, I’m glad to know they’re buried.

Is this a Jewish cemetery?

GATES: It’s a Jewish cemetery.

You know, you’re likely looking at the resting place of your biological ancestors in your homeland.

DOUGLAS: That’s incredible.

GATES: So I have to ask you, Michael, what are you feeling now, what’s it like to see that?

DOUGLAS: The overall feeling right now is, is feeling my Judea, Judeo roots.

But I feel a deep, um, a, a deep sense of, of my relatives, and what’s happened, and what’s gone, what the history has, which is a little different from the history books.

And I’m feeling it personally and understanding the struggles that they had.

And their inspiration to motivate them to get here for me to have the life that I have now, rather than somewhere in some small town in Belarus.

GATES: Right.

DOUGLAS: Uh, so, uh, I feel, more of a, of a spiritual, religious connection, uh, to Judaism, than, than I ever had before.

GATES: What would your dad make of all this?

DOUGLAS: I think he’d be very, very, very touched, and, and really appreciate it.

He, uh, he always, even though, you know, his path, his career took him away from Amsterdam, New York, and everything else.

He, he tried to always touch base with his, his six sisters, uh, back there to some degree.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: Um, and I think would have, uh, would feel very blessed and cherished to be able to share this.

I mean, I’m not sure any other thoughts go through my mind.

I wish I could go through a family album with him now.

GATES: Yeah.

DOUGLAS: And, uh, yeah.

Be something, be able to show him.

GATES: Like Michael, Lena Dunham is half-Jewish, with roots in Eastern Europe that were rarely discussed.

We set out to restore those roots.

Beginning with her maternal grandparents, Samuel Simmons and Dorothy Trussel.

Samuel and Dorothy were beloved figures in Lena’s childhood.

And we found their wedding announcement!

DUNHAM: “The bride was attended by her 10-year-old sister Miss Helen Trussel.”

“After a wedding trip, the couple will live at Parris Island, South Carolina, where the bridegroom is stationed.”

GATES: They were married on May 22, 1943, in Lawrenceville, New York.

DUNHAM: Wow.

GATES: Dorothy was 23 years old at that time and Samuel was 30.

What’s it like to see that?

DUNHAM: I am, do a lot of people cry when this happens?

GATES: Every once in a while.

DUNHAM: Okay.

It’s beautiful.

Thank you.

Um, she wasn’t particularly forthcoming with information.

She lived very much in the present, not in the past.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DUNHAM: And so, I was that kid who was always trying to find out, okay, what’d you wear when you were getting married?

And, what’d you think the first time you saw Grandpa?

And, what was your wedding like?

And, she was very much onward, onward, onward, and just seeing their names written down, and her being 23 years old… And the expectation.

It’s very profound to think about.

GATES: When Dorothy married Samuel, he was a lieutenant in the United States Navy Dental Corps, and that seems to have been quite important to him.

His service records show that he volunteered on December 19th, 1941, less than two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor… At the time, Samuel was 29 years old, with an established career.

DUNHAM: Wow!

GATES: Did you have any idea?

DUNHAM: I knew that he had been a lieutenant.

I knew that it was, you know, using his specialty of dentistry.

He was very proud to be a dentist.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DUNHAM: We still have his tools and, um…

He would tell jokey stories like, “I was on a boat and I met a shark and it said, ‘Someday you’re gonna have a little blonde granddaughter.

Her name’s gonna be Lena,’ and I said, ‘I don’t believe you,’ and he said, ‘No, meet me back in Sheepshead Bay.'”

Like it was always jokes.

There was no… And so, it’s amazing to think that after Pearl Harbor he felt that sense of duty, and made that choice.

GATES: Samuel did more than volunteer.

He twice requested to be put on active duty, and eventually ended up serving in the Battle of Saipan, one of the most significant battles of the entire war, sometimes called the D-Day of the Pacific.

The battle began with a marine assault on a heavily defended Japanese island.

Casualties were staggering as the Americans were forced to fight for every inch of their beachhead… And your grandfather was there.

DUNHAM: Really?

GATES: Yeah.

Did he ever tell you any stories?

DUNHAM: Nothing.

GATES: Well, as a dentist, Samuel would have been on a ship helping wounded Marines during the initial invasion.

Once they cleared the beach, he likely landed and set up a dental hut to treat the wounded more quickly.

DUNHAM: Wow.

GATES: And either way, he was very close to the fighting and likely, in near-constant danger.

And you had no idea?

DUNHAM: No.

GATES: Take a look at that.

That is one of the huts used as a dental dispensary in Saipan at the time of the battle.

What’s it like to see that and to think of your grandfather working out of that hut?

DUNHAM: It’s definitely a different vibe than his office in Great Neck, Long Island, and I, I feel very proud.

GATES: Samuel likely assisted on emergency surgeries, often for Marines who were shot, unfortunately, in the mouth or the jaw.

DUNHAM: Wow.

GATES: What do you think that must have been like compared to that dental practice back home?

DUNHAM: I, I can’t imagine.

I mean, going from, you know, drilling out people’s cavities or doing orthodonture, which was later his, you know, putting braces on, you know, brats who didn’t want braces, I can’t imagine.

And he was a very empathetic person.

GATES: Hmm.

DUNHAM: Um, my grandfather, like I remember he was, he was a friend to, you know, any kid who was, uh, in the, in the town who was experiencing trouble or who didn’t have a father figure.

My grandfather really felt a duty to like step in for people, and so, that empathy must have made him really good at this job and also made it really, really hard to see the things that he saw.

GATES: We now attempted to trace Samuel’s roots, but immediately hit a wall.

There were no records to take us past his parents.

Fortunately, we had more success with his wife Dorothy.

We able to trace back from her to Lena’s great-great-grandmother, a woman named Regina Seltenwirth.

Regina immigrated to New York when she was 14 years old, and married when she was 19.

Her marriage record indicates that she was born in a place called Tarnów, which is now in southeastern Poland.

This proved to be a gold mine for our researchers.

In Tarnów archives, we found Regina’s school records, offering Lena a precious glimpse of her ancestor’s childhood.

DUNHAM: That’s beautiful.

GATES: Isn’t that amazing?

DUNHAM: Amazing.

GATES: That that still survives?

DUNHAM: It’s amazing.

GATES: She was attending an all-girls elementary school.

DUNHAM: What a little cutie.

GATES: What was it like to see that?

DUNHAM: It’s incredible.

I mean, to think of her as a little girl who has not yet come to America, who has not yet given birth to the child who will then give birth to my grandmother, it’s, um, it’s beautiful.

GATES: Well, Regina made the journey to America while her parents stayed behind in Tarnów.

And that means she likely never saw them ever again.

DUNHAM: Wow.

GATES: Can you imagine when you were 14, your parents have put you on a boat… DUNHAM: No, I can’t.

GATES: And they go, “We’ll be… We’ll follow.”

DUNHAM: And they never did.

GATES: And they never did.

DUNHAM: Wow.

GATES: This story was about to darken significantly.

Records show that Regina left at least 11 siblings behind in Europe.

We don’t know what happened to them all, but one of her brothers, a man named, “Moses Seltenwirth”, moved to Hungary, and was living there with a wife and children when World War II broke out.

The family was soon split up, and Moses’ daughter Ilona was sent to a place called “Kamenets-Podolsk”, where she met a terrible fate.

DUNHAM: Wow.

GATES: Between August 26th and August 28th 1941, Kamenets-Podolsk was the site of a horrific crime.

The SS rounded up newly arrived deportees, and together with the local Jews, marched them to the outskirts of town and murdered them on the spot.

Over three summer days, it’s estimated that 24,000 Jewish people were murdered.

DUNHAM: Wow.

GATES: And more than half of them were Hungarian Jews.

Miraculously, Regina’s brother Moses, along with his wife and son, somehow managed to survive the Nazi terror.

They appear on a list of Hungarian Jews compiled by Allied soldiers at the end of the war.

But Ilona is missing from this list… and we found no trace of her in any postwar document.

DUNHAM: It’s an amazing thing to see those names, and to know that they’re a part of our family, but to also know that they had to spend the rest of their lives with this other person who was so important to them missing, and wondering about her fate.

Must have made surviving a very complicated thing.

GATES: Yeah, absolutely.

DUNHAM: As it was for everyone who survived.

GATES: Yeah.

So, what’s it like to even begin to contemplate that you have a genetic connection, now, to the Holocaust, of which you weren’t aware?

DUNHAM: It’s an incredibly painful thing to think about people with whom I share probably not just DNA but, you know, the features and emotional responses and an approach to life, those people being placed in this situation and having their lives extinguished this way.

I don’t think there is a way to, there’s not a way to reckon with it.

Um, it’s too big and it’s too, and the whole act is too vast.

But to, to see a personal connection to it literalizes it, in a way that is, that’s very, very powerful.

GATES: We’d now traced the roots of both of my guests back to Eastern Europe.

It was time to look westward… For Michael Douglas, that meant turning to his mother, Diana Dill.

Though she never found fame like Michael’s father, Diana was a superb actor in her own right.

And she played a significant role in shaping Michael, exposing him to a creative world, and a creative temperament, that was markedly different from his father’s… DOUGLAS: My mother was a wonderful optimist.

She, uh, dad used to always call her “Everything is Lovely Dill.”

‘Cause you had, “Hi, Mom, how are you?

“Lovely.

All good.

Lovely.”

You know, very English in that way.

GATES: Did she influence you at all in any way as an artist, as an actor?

DOUGLAS: Oh, yes, in terms of hanging around with her, and, and all her, her, uh, both theater, uh, friends, and as well as others… going down and hanging out backstage.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: Understanding, for instance, how, you know, we’re one of the few businesses where men and women were relatively equal… Not necessarily in pay.

We, um, we know that.

In, in, in the theater.

But you shared the same dressing rooms together.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: Uh, and backstage and these things.

So she helped me, I think, a lot in terms of understanding that, that, that world, that community, the comfort factor.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: Of, uh, of, of that world.

She was a, she was a, a lovely, lovely lady.

I miss her deeply.

And, um, she had nothing but the best intentions.

And very, very proper.

GATES: Diana was born in the British territory of Bermuda, where her father’s family, the Dills, had lived since the 1600s.

Michael knew a great deal about this part of his ancestry, which includes prominent lawyers and merchants, as well as slave owners…

But when we shifted our focus to Diana’s mother, a woman named Ruth Neilson, we uncovered generations of ancestors leading us back centuries to a place that Michael had never associated with his roots: colonial New Jersey… DOUGLAS: Wow!

GATES: What’s it like to be able to name your ancestors in a continuous paper trail, back before the creation of the United States, on a line about which you knew nothing?

DOUGLAS: I guess, it’s all the more, uh, appreciative and impressive in contradiction to my father’s family, and the lack of information, and then seeing this.

GATES: Right.

DOUGLAS: And also thinking of their own, I wouldn’t say chauvinistic ways, but I, I’m, I know so little about my grandmother never talked about that.

It was about the Dills.

GATES: Right.

DOUGLAS: Always talking about the Dills.

Then you’re looking at this, this chain of, of lines.

So, and this is obviously a major family that, uh, that my grandmother came from.

GATES: As it turns out, this newfound branch of Michael’s tree contained one particularly fascinating character: Michael’s fourth great-grandfather, a man named John Neilson.

John was born in New Jersey in 1745, when the American Revolution broke out, he was a successful merchant.

Many men in his position remained loyal to the British crown, fearing that they might lose their fortunes, and even their lives, if they sided with the Patriots.

But John had an independent mind.

You know who’s that statues of?

DOUGLAS: John Nielson?

GATES: That is… DOUGLAS: My, my, my, my great-great-great-great grandfather.

GATES: That is a statue of your ancestor in downtown New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Have you ever seen that?

DOUGLAS: Oh my, no.

I never knew what, what to look for.

GATES: On July 9th, 1776, John stood on a table in front of a tavern in New Brunswick and read the Declaration of Independence out loud.

DOUGLAS: Ah, I love him already.

God bless him.

GATES: When John raised his voice, the Declaration of Independence was only five days old.

In fact: his was just the third official reading of the document in public.

And that wasn’t all that John did for the revolution…

Within weeks, he was appointed colonel of a battalion of a New Jersey militia.

And in February of 1777, he set off to raid a British stronghold outside of New Brunswick… John’s soldiers were poorly equipped, and were forced to attack uphill, in the dead of winter… Luckily, their leader had a plan… DOUGLAS: “We took up our line of march in the evening about sundown and proceeded in a steady march without being discovered, although there was snow on the ground and frosty night, until we were in the midst of the British quarters of Bennet’s Island and succeeded by completely surprising and capturing the whole of the party.

And returned in safety to our quarters near Cranberry having lost but one or two men.”

Whoa.

Wow.

GATES: So, what’s it like to read that?

Your ancestor fighting at night in February?

Snow on the ground… DOUGLAS: It’s given me just, just a, a tremendous appetite to learn more and more, um, and, and it’s just very impressive.

GATES: Mmm.

DOUGLAS: Um.

Very, very impressive.

GATES: This attack, known as the Battle of Bennet’s Island, earned the attention of none other than George Washington, who wrote to the Continental Congress, celebrating John’s achievement… (laughing) DOUGLAS: Ah, this is incredible.

This is really incredible.

GATES: That is George Washington praising your ancestor.

How does that make you feel?

DOUGLAS: Uh, proud to say the least.

Proud.

But just, just know what an integral part he played in helping us start our new country.

GATES: I mean, he was willing to risk his life.

DOUGLAS: Yeah.

GATES: I want to show you something else.

Could you please turn the page?

Michael, this is a letter to your fourth great-grandfather, dated June 26th 1778.

So almost a year and a half after the letter we just showed you.

DOUGLAS: Right.

GATES: Would you please read that transcribed section?

DOUGLAS: “To Colonel John Nielson.

I have received your favor and thank you for the intelligence contained in it.

Various and uncertain relative to the enemies’ movements has made it difficult to determine the part to be taken by his army.

I shall rely upon you to advise me constantly of their situation.

I am, sir, your most obedient servant… George Washington.”

Oh.

Whoa!

Whoa!

My, uh.

GATES: After his attack on Bennet’s Island, your ancestor began providing military intelligence directly to General George Washington.

And that is an actual letter that Washington wrote to him.

So, he knew him.

What’s it like to see that?

DOUGLAS: Well, it’s just, it’s, it’s hard to articulate.

It, it just, um, I mean obviously it brings to life the history at that particular time, but to think that he’s your direct descendant, of somebody of that heroic proportion is, um, is cool.

GATES: It’s very cool.

DOUGLAS: Very cool.

GATES: John Nielson served in Washington’s army until the end of the war, making numerous contributions to the patriot cause.

Then, when peace came, he returned home and thrived, living well into his 80s.

But as we searched through the records that John left behind, we discovered his will, written in 1827, and it added a layer of complexity to his story… DOUGLAS: “I, John Nielson, give and bequeath to my son, James Nielson, the time of my servant, colored boy Mark, while he arrives at the age at which he will be free by law.

I give and bequeath to my son Abraham Nielson, my colored servant girl Anna until she arrives to the age at which she by law will be free.”

GATES: So, your fourth great-grandfather was a patriot, but… DOUGLAS: A slave owner.

GATES: But he also was a slave owner.

So what do you make about this contrast?

DOUGLAS: I mean, he’s inspirational other than the fact that he was still a slave owner.

GATES: Yeah.

DOUGLAS: I think the overwhelming feeling for me is for him to risk as early as he did, reading that Declaration of Independence, is a very courageous, um, act you know, and his war record is amazing.

And you just try to try to equalize that with, um, with hanging on to slaves, uh, 40 years, 40 years later.

GATES: Hmm.

DOUGLAS: Is the essence of what the United States is about.

We have in Hebrew this expression, tikkun olam, which means to make the world a better place or to try to repair the world.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DOUGLAS: And, uh, you just, you feel that obligation or that sense much, much more when you see something like that.

GATES: Right.

DOUGLAS: It makes you want to be a better person.

GATES: Like Michael, Lena Dunham was about to see a branch of her family tree traced back deep in colonial America…

But this story began much closer to home… Lena’s paternal 8th great-grandfather was a man named Stephanus van Cortlandt.

Stephanus was born in 1643, in what was then the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam and is now part of New York City.

DUNHAM: Holy moley.

GATES: Did you have any idea that your roots in this city go back to the 1600s?

DUNHAM: Absolutely not.

I mean, I always felt like, okay, my parents came to New York in 1971 or now I, and, and then came me.

And I knew that we’d had relatives who lived in upstate New York, and maybe had homes in the city, but this is…

This is a pretty wild connection to the city.

GATES: Stephanus was not just any New Yorker.

He was a successful merchant, with a talent for politics.

When the British conquered New Amsterdam in 1664, he won their trust, held onto his business, and ultimately became the first mayor of New York who had actually been born in the city.

DUNHAM: He was the mayor?

GATES: He was the mayor.

DUNHAM: My eighth great-grandfather was the mayor of New York?

GATES: He was the mayor.

And not only was he the mayor, he served two terms as the mayor.

DUNHAM: Wow.

GATES: First between 1677 and 1678, and then later, from 1686 to 1688.

DUNHAM: That is not something that I ever would’ve guessed at.

GATES: Stephanus had some positive effects on his hometown and even helped to plan New York’s first public wells.

But he also made a series of deals with the Lenape, a Native American tribe, obtaining access to thousands of acres of land in exchange for goods that were likely of little value.

A revelation that saddened Lena, even though it didn’t surprise her.

DUNHAM: I’d always assumed that there’d be plenty of things that my ancestors had been involved with that were things that I would find to be sort of, morally and spiritually reprehensible, if we wanna use that word.

And we all have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we have members of our family who may have thought that they were doing the right thing for their families and for the people in their, you know, he may have thought he was doing the right thing as a leader.

Um, but I think we understand now that that’s not how we want people to lead.

And so we all have to find a way to both be interested in our history and embrace our history and also really, um, reckon with the parts of it that we, um, would love to rectify.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

Parts that you find unsavory?

DUNHAM: That’s exactly right.

And I think it’s important not to hide from those things or pretend that they’re not there, but instead to examine them and think about how we can not do modern repetitions of ancient behavior like that.

GATES: There was another beat to this story, one that would render it even more “unsavory”.

In 1691, Stephanus wrote a letter to a fellow merchant, detailing some of his business plans, and laying bare one source of his wealth… DUNHAM: “I’ve written to you before my departure for Long Island.

I am now going to Staten Island to rouse up the collection of the tax there.

I will supply myself in order to send up as much pork in the spring as you will order.

If you can, let Rensselaer to provide the people with small beer.

He got a Negro boy from me, and thus it will be easy for him and me to settle with each other.

GATES: So you know what that means?

DUNHAM: Yeah.

GATES: Most of us think of slavery as unfolding in Mississippi and Alabama, right?

DUNHAM: Yeah.

GATES: But it was everywhere in the United States and… DUNHAM: Absolutely.

GATES: Certainly in, in New York in the 17th century.

DUNHAM: Yeah.

GATES: Did you ever assume that your ancestors would’ve owned slaves?

DUNHAM: I think like many Americans, I naively hoped that because they had always been living sort of in Yankee territory, that it looked different.

But, of course, that is a part of the lives of those people, too.

Especially stretching this far back.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

DUNHAM: Um, and it makes it impossible to kind of celebrate or be excited about any of these other, you know, right, he was the mayor, but that’s, to me, that’s the, the stain on the record.

GATES: Like Michael Douglas, Lena had now seen the best and worst of humanity interwoven within the branches of her own family tree… Surveying it all, she struggled to balance the good with the bad.

DUNHAM: It’s an overwhelming mix of emotions.

You get the joy of discovering relatives that you didn’t know existed, of remembering things about the relatives that you did, the pain of finding out things that happened to them that were, you know, parts of very dark parts of history, and the reckoning with the things that they may have done that were parts of dark parts of history.

And to have all of that intersecting and interweaving, I guess, is really a part of the complexity of being a modern American.

GATES: The paper trail had now run out for Lena and Michael.

It was time to see what DNA could tell us about their deeper roots.

For each, we had a surprise…

When we compared their DNA to that of other guests who have been in the series, we found matches, evidence within their own chromosomes of distant cousins that they never knew they had.

DOUGLAS: Ah, are you kidding?

GATES: Your DNA cousin is the actor, Scarlett Johansson.

DOUGLAS: Oh, that’s amazing.

All right.

This is cool.

This is so cool.

GATES: Michael and Scarlett share identical stretches of DNA on four different chromosomes, all of which appear on Scarlett’s maternal lines, which stretch back to Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.

DOUGLAS: That’s incredible.

Well, I look forward to seeing Scarlett next time.

GATES: Yeah!

Like Michael, Lena’s cousin flows out of her Jewish heritage as well, tying her to someone for whom she, and her family, have had a longstanding affection.

GATES: Please turn the page.

DUNHAM: No!

My husband’s gonna freak out.

It’s Larry David, the other LD.

GATES: Your, your DNA cousin is Larry David.

Larry shares… DUNHAM: This is the hottest information I could have ever gotten.

GATES: Larry shares multiple long, identical segments of DNA with you and your mother.

DUNHAM: No way.

GATES: This means that you share at least one common ancestor somewhere on your mother’s side of your family tree.

DUNHAM: This is…

I could not have turned the page and been more delighted!

This is incredible.

You saved the best for last.

GATES: That’s the end of our journey with Lena Dunham and Michael Douglas.

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