Phoebe Buffay in Friends isn’t Jewish (though, arguably, both Rachel and Monica are). And yet Lisa Kudrow, the absolutely brilliant comedian who plays her in the show, was the only Jewish woman in the main cast (Jewish dad David Schwimmer, who plays Ross, is also Jewish — and so is his character).

Kudrow, who is also known for roles in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, The Comeback and Web Therapy, is intimately connected with her Jewish heritage and generational Jewish trauma — which, in her case, has deep ties to the Holocaust.

When she was filming the romcom P.S. I Love You in Ireland, she discovered the British genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? which takes its participants to the site where their ancestors lived. She was fascinated by the format and managed to bring it to the US back in 2010 (fellow Jewish parent, Dan Bucatinsky, is also an executive producer on the show). The 11th season of the show just finished airing on CBS this month.

In the first season of the show, Kudrow explored her own family’s harrowing history.

She talked about the experience in a recent episode of the podcast Podcrushed: “My grandmother told me when I was like 7 that her parents were killed by Hitler,” she recalled, saying her grandmother often cried as she said, “Hitler, he killed my mother, he killed my sisters, brothers and the babies.”

Still, growing up, Kudrow, 59, said she was…