Joe Manganiello Details His Great-Grandmother’s Heartbreaking Escape From The Armenian Genocide

Joe Manganiello recounted his great-grandmother’s harrowing escape from the Armenian Genocide for the PBS series Finding Your Roots.

Airing Tuesday, February 7 at 8 pm ET, the jaw-dropping show, which recently told Edward Norton that his 12th great-grandmother was Pocahontas, also reveals that Manganiello is descended from slaves.

In an exclusive video shared with PeopleManganiello detailed the harrowing survival story of how his great-grandmother fled Armenia in 1915 after witnessing the murder of her husband and seven children.

He said: ‘The Turks entered his home in 1915 under the pretext of World War I and tried to enact the genocide they had started.

They shot her husband dead, they shot her. She lay down on the ground, pretended to be dead while another seven shots were fired, which were… her seven children.

Manganiello’s great-grandmother played dead on the ground until the Turks left her home.

The True Blood alum explained: “He stood there motionless and the Turks abandoned the house and left the eighth child, who was a baby in the cradle, to starve, which is the way they did business.”

Joe went on to detail how his great-grandmother “tied the baby to her back and ran away from town.”

But he narrowly evaded the gruesome fate of a “death march,” which Manganiello described.

“They would just handcuff and chain the Armenians and drive them into the desert, and free the Kurds, give them military coats, horses and weapons, and then do what they want with their mortal enemies, the Armenians.

“She ran away from it,” the actor said. “She Sneaked By, She Came To The Euphrates River With The Baby On Her Back, She Swam Across The River And When She Got To The Other Side, The Baby Was Drowned.”

Manganiello added that his great-grandmother “still had a bullet in her” and “lived in a cave with other refugees until she was picked up by the German army.”

Manganiello’s great-grandmother eventually became pregnant in the military camp by a German officer and “gave birth to a very blond, half-German boy.”

Heartbreaking: In an exclusive video shared with People, Manganiello detailed the heartbreaking survival story of how his great-grandmother fled Armenia in 1915 after witnessing the murder of her husband and seven children.

One of the best: The show’s host, Henry Louis Gates Jr., told Rolling Stone, “If I have a short list of the greatest hits of all time, Joe Manganiello’s paternal ancestry is on that list.”

In an interview with Rolling StoneThe Magic Mike star, who is married to the stunning Sofia Vergara, 50, spoke about what led him to follow Finding Your Roots and described the powerful experience of lighting up his family tree.

He said: ‘I knew since I was a child about the history of the survivors of the Armenian genocide and that there was this German soldier who was my great-grandfather.

‘For the last ten years, I had been trying to get into a genealogy program to find out who this German was. I always got a no.

“And about two years ago, Finding Your Roots said yes to us because they felt the technology had gotten to the point where they could move forward.

“

The show’s host, Henry Louis Gates Jr., told Rolling Stone: ‘If I have a short list of the greatest hits of all time, Joe Manganiello’s paternal ancestry is on that list.’

Finding Your Roots discovered that the German officer who impregnated Manganiello’s great-grandmother was named Karl Wilhelm Beutinger.

Beutinger eventually returned to his family in Germany, where one of his sons would become a Nazi SS officer.

Speaking about the reveal, Joe said Rolling Stone: ‘You have to take the good with the bad. And there’s something of that with the story. I think there’s a tendency to say, ‘I’m very proud that my ancestors were on the right side of history,’ but that’s not you, that’s someone else.

Explosive revelations: The True Blood alum, who is married to Sofia Vergara, 50, has also learned that he was descended from a German officer with strong Nazi ties.

Finding His Roots: Airing Tuesday, February 7 at 8 pm ET, the jaw-dropping show also reveals that Manganiello is descended from slaves.

And that wasn’t the only bombshell, as the show discovered that Joe’s DNA didn’t match any individual with the last name of Manganiello.

“It was a real shock,” said Joe Rolling Stone. ‘Finding out that your last name isn’t really your last name, and that I was related to zero percent of the Manganiellos in the world is… wow.

‘

Finding Your Roots learned that Manganiello’s fifth great-grandfather was an African slave named Plato Turner who eventually became a free man and fought in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

“I’m a descendant of survivors,” Joe said. ‘To raise a child in a camp that is blond when no Armenian is blond, without a father, and come to the United States and raise that child under the scrutiny of other adults around? That’s hard.

‘To come from West Africa in chains, on a boat, and come to the United States and win your freedom…’

The Justice League star went on to discuss how these revelations affected his family, specifically his father.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘My father and I… we’re not… my father and I don’t talk, so I can’t talk about it.

‘For me, it’s fascinating to know what I am, to be able to explore ground zero. I love history and storytelling, and it’s part of the reason I chose my profession. I’m thankful.’