At 23, my Jewish grandmother was fleeing Hitler

A former Britain's Got Talent comedian and impressionist reveals how men abusing power affected them both.

- By Hannah Stephenson

Jess Robinson and her Grandma Rosi

WHEN comedian and impressionist Jess Robinson decided to dig into the archives of her German Jewish ancestry, she found an unlikely shared sense of identity with her maternal grandmother, who had lived through the Holocaust.

At 23, Robinson, now a regular on shows including Dead Ringers, Spitting Image and Horrible Histories, was then struggling with a fledging acting career.

At 23, her German Jewish grandmother Rosi Schul, a teacher, documented in her diary how she was deported to Poland by the Gestapo, suffering and witnessing the horrors of the treatment of her countrymen by the Nazis.

So forms the juxtaposition of Robinson's book, Life Is Rosi, as the diary entries of each woman's life experiences at a particular moment in time - Grandma Rosi's from 1938 to 1943, Robinson's running concurrently from 2006 - are compared and contrasted.

Rosi suffered the horrific internment in the Polish town of Zbaszyn, where she stayed more than six months. Robinson, at the same age, was trying to sort out a mortgage. There's a lot of gallows humour.

"She was so stoic and so compassionate, and that compassion and her love for children really saved her life," says Robinson.

The book blends humour and seriousness, exploring how both women coped with trauma in their young lives. Robinson suffered sexual harassment by a director and an assault by a taxi driver, which she didn't report.