Game of Thrones actress Laura Pradelska opens up about her family’s Holocaust past on John Bishop’s podcast

Award-winning German actress Laura Pradelska is the latest guest to appear on John Bishop’s Amazon Prime podcast. The 35-year-old is most famous for her recurring role as ‘Quaithe’ in HBO’s Game of Thrones. She has been in more than 20 theatre productions in London’s West End and voiced everything from high-end luxury brands to BBC productions.

Speaking on John Bishop’s Three Little Words podcast, which he hosts with Tony Pitts, Laura movingly discussed her family’s story and what life was like growing up in post-war Germany. Laura comes from a Jewish family, and her grandparents are survivors of the Holocaust. She said the three words that mean the most to her are blanket, refugee and delicate.

Laura said: “Refugee is a word that I really connect to hope and survival, and so often, in the media today, it is made as a dirty word, and it riles me up. It has a lot of beauty in it, and I really wanted to talk about that. I have a personal connection to it in the sense that I’m a grandchild of holocaust survivors.

“My paternal grandmother went through trauma because she had spent five years in Auschwitz. She couldn’t speak about it. The trauma was too deep. My grandparents decided to stay in Germany because they couldn’t go anywhere else. It really wasn’t an option. People always say, ‘Why did they stay?’. They came with nothing on them. My parents were born in displaced people camps. There was no luxury.”

The 35-year-old works for the Holocaust Foundation, which aims to preserve the stories of holocaust survivors, and she has previously appeared as a keynote speaker at the annual Yom Hashoah commemoration. John asked: “When you were growing up as a Jew in Germany, post second world war, and for your parents as well, how did it feel? How did it relate to you? Was there a sense that the nation felt guilty for what had gone on?”

Laura replied: “There was definitely a sense of guilt, and I’ll proudly say that my grandmother accepted money from the government to stay in Germany as a payout because of the war crimes against her. I actually respect her for that. There wasn’t anywhere to go. She took that money and opened a fish restaurant. Does that mean she was living amongst essentially the very people who wanted her dead? Yeah, but she’s a survivor.”

John and Tony invite new celebrity guests onto their podcast every week and have interviewed the likes of Robbie Williams, Tony Bellew, Jimmy Carr and Ian McKellen. They ask their guests to list and discuss three words that mean the most to them.