Overview
- A Dec. 26 BBC One Christmas special of The Repair Shop featured Martin Landau’s Holocaust-linked cello but did not explicitly state that he was Jewish or that the Kindertransport chiefly rescued Jewish children.
- The BBC added a note on iPlayer saying the Kindertransport evacuated about 10,000 children, the majority of whom were Jewish.
- Production company Ricochet defended the edit, saying Landau’s Jewish identity was implicit and the historical context would be evident to viewers.
- The Jewish Chronicle reported that a spoken reference to the word “Jew” by Helen Mirren appeared to have been edited out of the broadcast.
- Some coverage noted the BBC’s main website episode description still lacked explicit reference to Landau’s Jewish identity, as the episode’s handling drew scrutiny alongside other recent controversies over the broadcaster’s Israel- and antisemitism-related content.