When Zack Polanski delivered an emotional account of his ancestors escaping the Nazis, he received a standing ovation at last year’s Green Party conference.
However, questions have since emerged over the Holocaust story after genealogical research indicated that all four of his grandparents were born in Britain, decades before the Second World War.
The Greens declined on Thursday to explain the striking but confusing claim made during Mr Polanski’s keynote address, leaving the mystery unresolved.
Speaking in Bournemouth a year ago, shortly after becoming party leader, Mr Polanski spoke proudly about his Jewish background. “I am literally the product of migration. It’s why defending migrants matters so much to me,” he said.
He described his family history as “confusing and muddling” because “we were constantly on the run”. He continued: “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.”
Public birth, marriage and death records show that Mr Polanski’s great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents had roots in Latvia and Russia.
But census records from 1891, 1901 and other publicly available sources indicate that members of the family had settled in Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
That means his more recent ancestors were already in the UK years before the Second World War, prompting questions about which relatives he meant when describing a flight from the Nazis.
Zack Polanski delivering his speech to the Green Party’s conference in Bournemouth in October 2025
Mr Polanski’s parents were born in Manchester, while all four of his grandparents came from northern England.
On his father’s side, Benny was born in Manchester in 1916 and Ethel was born in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, in 1925. His maternal grandfather, Maurice, was born in Manchester in 1931, while his grandmother Shirley was born in nearby Heywood in 1934.
Following the attention generated by his 2025 conference speech, Mr Polanski repeated the account of his family’s Holocaust history in several media interviews.
On the podcast The Rest Is Politics on December 1 last year, he said his ancestry involved fleeing to Ukraine, “then fleeing the Nazis and then end up in the UK”. The same account also appeared in newspaper interviews with the Green Party leader.
During a BBC Question Time immigration special on December 4, he told the audience: “This is personal to me.” He added: “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. And this is what people have done throughout history.”
The references to antisemitic pogroms are consistent with the known history of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. However, the Holocaust element is less clear because available records suggest his grandparents were born in Britain before the German invasion of Poland in 1939.
When Our News Outlet asked the Green Party whether there was an explanation, the party declined to respond. Instead, it said the question was “an attempt to discredit him”.
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Last month, Mr Polanski told political interviewer Iain Dale that “my great-grandparents actually came here way before the Second World War”, adding to the uncertainty surrounding his earlier claim that his ancestors had escaped the Nazis.
It is highly likely that, like many Jewish families, members of Mr Polanski’s wider family were persecuted during the Holocaust. However, it remains unclear which relatives he was referring to when he described his ancestors fleeing Nazi persecution.
The Mail showed the Green Party the key elements of the family tree and asked for help in explaining the riddle.
A party spokesman responded: ‘Jewish family history is often confusing and muddled, as Zack has acknowledged.
‘It’s astonishing that the only current Jewish leader of a British political party is having his family history raked over by the press in an attempt to discredit him.’
Mr Polanski, 43, has long been proud of his Jewish background. His paternal grandfather anglicised the family name to Paulden, and the Green Party leader was born David Paulden in 1982.
He changed his surname back to Mr Polanski to honour his heritage (although he later found out the original name was spelt Polinsky; and he changed his first name to Zack to distance himself from a disliked step-father called David).
Mr Polanski explained the name changes in the Iain Dale podcast by saying: ‘I was told that my name had been changed because of the Second World War and to evade the Nazis.
‘And I wanted to reclaim my name so I could take pride in my Jewish identity rather than feeling like I needed to hide.
‘The bit that was really interesting, that I found out a few years later, though, was my great-grandparents actually came here way before the Second World War.
‘And the reason why they changed their name was actually to evade anti-Semitism in the UK. And that felt even more poignant at that time once I found out.’
The Greens’ 2026 conference opens in Brighton on Friday, with Mr Polanski vowing it will be ‘our biggest and most exciting ever’. He said: ‘We have shown that when Greens win, the Labour government listens – whether that’s finally banning trade with illegal settlements or starting to open safe routes for refugees. Our work is just beginning.’
It is less than a week before the by-election in which Mr Polanski is fighting to become an MP. He is standing as the Green Party candidate in Sir Keir Starmer’s old seat of Holborn and St Pancras in north London.
The seat has been held by Labour since it was created in 1983, but the Greens are confident they have a real chance of taking it.
It is not the first time Mr Polanski’s comments have caused confusion. Earlier this year he apologised for an ‘unintentional mistake’ over not paying council tax on a houseboat in east London.
The London Assembly member – paid almost £66,500 a year by taxpayers – was cleared after an investigation by the Greater London Authority into his living arrangements resulting from ‘financial hardship’. He pledged to immediately ‘take steps to pay any council tax’ he owed.
In May, he admitted he had not voted in the local elections, despite having publicly told Hackney’s Green candidate ‘you have my vote’ and his spokesman saying he had used a postal vote. The Greens said there had been some ‘miscommunication’ and that Mr Polanski was not registered to vote.
