Alanis Morissette learns about a painful chapter in her family's past during an appearance on "Finding Your Roots."
According to an an exclusive clip from the the Jan. 2 episode of "Finding Your Roots," Morissette's maternal grandfather, Imre Feuerstein, tried to find his brothers, Gyorgy and Sandor Feuerstein, after they went missing during the Holocaust.
"In 1949, four years after WWII ended, your grandfather asked the Red Cross to look for his brother," Gates, Jr. told Morissette. "Did you know this?"
"I did not know this," Morissette responded.
"Can you imagine what that was like for your grandfather, carrying that burden?" he said.
"Not knowing where your sibling is, if they're alive or dead... No, God," Morissette replied.
The Jan. 2 episode will reveal more from about Morissette's Hungarian-Jewish family, including the fate of her uncles.
Speaking to TODAY.com Jan. 15, Morissette said she only learned of her Jewish roots when she was 28, since her mother and grandmother concealed their ancestry.
The seven-time Grammy-winning artist said her grandmother feared the reemergence of antisemitism.
“Now I understand her reticence,” Morissette said.
Morissette said there were "many forks in the road" in her family's history, including her grandparents’ harrowing escape from Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Originally, her grandfather planned to take his family to Australia, but ended up missing their ship because he stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. Morissette’s family to settled down in Canada — and the rest is history.
“So I like to say that cigarettes my made my life possible," she told TODAY.com with a laugh.