Soni Razdan on her German ancestry: ‘A long story with a happy ending’

Soni Razdan is a talented actress who has featured in films such as Raazi, Saaransh, Nazar, and Daddy, among others. She is married to filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt and is the mother to actress Alia Bhatt and Shaheen Bhatt. Not many know that Soni has mixed Kashmiri and German ancestry. Soni recently shared a post on social media about her mother’s lineage and the role her family played in fighting Hitler.

Soni Razdan speaks about her German ancestry

Soni shared a post on Instagram about her mother, Gertrude, who fled Germany with her mother as her father was secretly running a newspaper. Soni's father settled in London, where Gertrude met Soni’s father, a Kashmiri Pandit.

The actress wrote, “Once upon a time a lovely little German girl whose name was Gertrude had to leave Germany with her mama when she was just 6 years old...They left secretly because her father was in prison. He was at the time running an underground newspaper against Hitler and the Nazi regime. They were not amused. Anyways Gertrude and her brave mother went to Czechoslovakia for 2 years. Then they were forced to leave because the 2nd World War had begun and Hitler had invaded Prague.”

She continued to write, “It’s a long story that has a happy ending so to cut it short- the long and the short of it was they finally ended up in England as political refugees. And luckily Gertrude’s father was released too. On one condition. That he would never enter Germany again..And so they came to live in England. Many years later Gertrude met a handsome Kashmiri Pandit who was studying architecture in London. They fell in love. They got married..”

Soni Razdan on her life in Mumbai

Soni went on to speak about her life in the post, revealing how she came to live in India when she was only three months old. She also spoke about meeting Mahesh Bhatt and giving birth to her beautiful daughters, Shaheen and Alia.

She wrote, “A while later I was born. I came to India when I was 3 months old. And have lived here ever since. Years later I too met a man and fell in love with him. And our first child Shaheen was born in Bombay. Some years later Alia was born. Gertrude is Alia and Shaheen’s grandmother and is 95 today! Alia and Shaheen are born of many streams. As are we all. We just don’t realise how many..”

Soni concluded by saying, “This then, in a nutshell is a part but a small part of our family history. There is so much more..But that I shall leave for another day. And another post. Till then my friends..”

Soni captioned the post, “Every person has a story to tell. Every family has a history. And every history is linked to so many other histories in a long chain of events that shape our world. This, in a few words, is ours.”