American actress Lisa Kudrow (best known for her role as Phoebe Buffay on the sitcom Friends) traces her family roots to Ilya, where her paternal grandmother, Gertrude "Grunia" Farbermann, had emigrated from. Her paternal great-grandmother (Grunia's mother), Mera Mordechowicz (Мера Мордехович), however, stayed, and was among the citizens murdered. In the episode, Kudrow goes to the market square, where the Jews of Ilya had been marched to a pit in the middle of the town.