All Four Grandparents Born in Britain: Polanski's Nazi-Flight Story Unravels
October 3, 2026 · Frisian News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Birth records show all four of Green Party co-leader Zack Polanski's grandparents were born in northern England, the youngest in 1934, contradicting his repeated public claim that his family fled Nazi persecution.
All four of Zack Polanski's grandparents were born in northern England, the youngest in 1934, five years before Germany invaded Poland. Birth records uncovered by the Daily Mail and reported by the Daily Sceptic show that every grandparent was already settled in Britain before the war began, cutting directly against the Green Party leader's repeated public claim that his family fled Nazi persecution.
Polanski delivered the claim to applause at the Green Party conference in Bournemouth in October 2025. Standing at the podium as the newly installed leader, he said: "From what I can gather, my ancestors started in Latvia in a Jewish town, but they fled because of Pogroms. They fled to Ukraine where they faced more Pogroms. Then they ended up in Poland where they faced the Nazis. Then they arrived in England and met antisemitism here too." He linked the story to his political stance on migration: "I am literally the product of migration. It's why defending migrants matters so much to me."
The records tell a different story. Public birth, marriage and death records confirm that Polanski's great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents had roots in Latvia and Russia. Census records from 1891 and 1901 and other public sources suggest the family had settled in Britain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His parents were born in Manchester. His four grandparents all came from the north of England.
The birth years are exact. On his father's side, grandfather Benny was born in Manchester in 1916 and grandmother Ethel in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, in 1925. On his mother's side, grandfather Maurice was born in Manchester in 1931 and grandmother Shirley in nearby Heywood in 1934. Germany did not invade Poland until 1939, by which point all four grandparents were already British-born.
Polanski did not confine the claim to one conference speech. On the podcast The Rest Is Politics on December 1 last year, he described his ancestry as involving flight to Ukraine, "then fleeing the Nazis and then end up in the UK". Three days later, at a BBC Question Time immigration special, he told the studio audience: "My great-grandparents lived in Latvia. They're Jewish and we fled because of Pogroms. We ended up in Ukraine. We fled again; more Pogroms. Then in Nazi-occupied Poland. Then fled again."
The account became harder to follow when Polanski spoke to political interviewer Iain Dale last month. He said his great-grandparents "actually came here way before the Second World War" and that the family name had been changed not to evade the Nazis, as he had previously been told, but to escape antisemitism in Britain. Polanski was born David Paulden in 1982 and changed his name later. When the Daily Mail presented the Green Party with the family tree and asked for an explanation, a party spokesman declined to address the substance, saying only that it was "astonishing" that Polanski was "having his family history raked over by the press in an attempt to discredit him".
The sources note that, like many Jewish families, Polanski's wider family almost certainly includes relatives who were persecuted in the Holocaust. The pogroms account, tracing flight from Latvia and Russia in the late 1800s and early 1900s, fits the documented history of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. The Nazi-flight element does not fit the documentary record for his immediate ancestors.
Polanski faces a by-election in Holborn and St Pancras, Sir Keir Starmer's former seat held by Labour since 1983, within days of this report. The claim that his family fled the Nazis is the story he used to explain why migration policy is personal to him. The Daily Mail asked the Green Party for an explanation of the discrepancy. It has not answered.
Published October 3, 2026 · Frisian News