In this week’s “Finding Your Roots” episode, Jewish stand-up comedian Iliza Shlesinger uncovers a newfound family tie to the Holocaust. Schlesinger and fellow actor Bob Odenkirk are featured in the episode titled “Hold the Laughter,” and can be seen Tuesday, Jan. 30 on NinePBS at 7 p.m.

In the episode, Shlesinger and host Henry Louis Gates Jr, discuss her great-grandmother Esther, who was not in Europe during the Holocaust. It’s during this conversation that Gates reveals that Esther had a brother, Lipa, who remained in Poland during the Nazi invasion.

Lipa’s story was not openly discussed within Shlesinger’s family. Gates then prompted Shlesinger to draw parallels between Esther’s feelings towards Lipa and how she would feel if her own brother, Ben, were in a perilous situation.

Iliza Shlesinger

Raised in a Reform Jewish household in Texas, Shlesinger, 40, is raising her daughter, Sierra, in the Jewish faith and is expecting her second child, a son. Following the Oct. 7 attack in Israel, she penned an op-ed for the Hollywood Reporter on antisemitism and Israel, asserting her belief that antisemitism is “very real and very tolerated.”

Later in December, while on tour in Europe, Shlesinger went viral after taking her daughter to a Hanukkah service at the Grand Synagogue in Paris, established in 1847, where she was called up to light the candles with little Sierra.