Harry Potter star Radcliffe cries over anti-Semitic treatment of great-grandpa

Actor Daniel Radcliffe breaks down in tears upon reading on television his great grandfather’s suicide note, possibly after suffering anti-Semitic prejudice at the hands of British police.

The scene was filmed for the television show “Who Do You Think You Are,” a television show in which celebrities are presented with dramatic findings about their own family, The Sun of London reports. The BBC show’s episode about Radcliffe’s family is scheduled to air on July 22.

The Harry Potter actor’s relative, Samuel Gershon, had been ruined by a 1936 robbery at the family’s jewelry business in the London neighborhood of Hatton Garden. Police accused the Jewish businessman of faking the raid to claim insurance cash in what may have been anti-Semitic treatment by the officers. Gershon took his life aged 42. The insurance company eventually paid the claim.

Evidence suggesting that detectives were anti-Semitic and reluctant to properly investigate the crime include a police report that said, according to The Sun: “Jews are so frequently responsible for the bringing down of their own business premises.”

Radcliffe says it was “very jarring to see being a Jew to be taken as a piece of evidence in itself.” Everything his great-grandfather “had worked for and that his father had worked for, has sort of been destroyed,” The Sun quotes Radcliffe, who is Jewish, as saying upon revisiting the case in front of the show’s cameras.

— JTA