Joe Manganiello recounts his great-grandmother’s shocking escape from the Armenian Genocide and discovers his ancestry from slaves in a new episode of Finding Your Roots

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

The beautiful show, which airs Tuesday, Feb. 7 at 8 p.m. ET, and which Edward Norton recently told that his 12th great-grandmother is Pocahontas, also reveals that Manganiello is descended from slaves.

In an exclusive video shared with People, Manganiello recounted the heartbreaking 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 broke into her home in 1915 under the guise of the First World War and tried to carry out the genocide they had started.

“They shot her husband, shot her. She was lying on the ground pretending to be dead, when seven more shots went off, which…were her seven children.”

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

The True Blood former explained: “She lay motionless and the Turks left the house, leaving the eighth child, who was a baby, in the cradle of starvation while they did business.”

Joe went on to tell how his great-grandmother “strapped the baby on her back and ran out of town.”

But she narrowly escaped the gruesome fate of a “death march” described by Manganiello.

“They just handcuffed the Armenians, chained them together and marched into the desert and freed the Kurds, gave them their military coats, horses and guns and then did whatever they wanted with their arch-enemies, the Armenians.

“She escaped it,” said the actor. “Slid through, reached the Euphrates River with the baby on her back, swam across the river, and when she got to the other side, the baby was drowned.”

Manganiello added that his great-grandmother “had another 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 a German officer’s military camp and “gave birth to a very blond, half-German child”.

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 had a short list of greatest hits of all time, Joe Manganiello’s paternal lineage would be on that list.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone, the Magic Mike star – who is married to the beautiful Sofia Vergara, 50 – opened up about what made him want to continue Finding Your Roots and described the powerful experience of shedding light on his family tree.

He said: “Ever since I was a child, I knew about the story of the survivor of the Armenian Genocide and that there was a German soldier who was my great-grandfather.

“For ten years I have been trying to get to a genealogy fair to find out who this German is. I always got no.

“And about two years ago, we got a yes from Finding Your Roots because they felt the technology was at a point where they might be able to make progress.”

The show’s host, Henry Louis Gates Jr., told Rolling Stone, “If I had a short list of greatest hits of all time, Joe Manganiello’s paternal lineage would be on that list.”

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

Beutinger eventually returned to his family in Germany, where one of his sons grew up to be a Nazi SS officer.

Of the revelation, Joe told Rolling Stone: “You have to take the good with the bad. And there is something of that in the story. I think there’s a tendency to say, “I’m so proud that my ancestors were on the right side of history,” but it’s not you—it’s someone else.

Bombshell revelations: The True Blood graduate, who is married to Sofia Vergara, 50, also learned he is descended from a German officer with strong Nazi connections

Finding his roots: The beautiful show, which airs Tuesday, Feb. 7 at 8 p.m. ET, also reveals that Manganiello is descended from slaves

And that wasn’t the only bombshell, as the show discovered that Joe’s DNA did not match a person with the last name Manganiello.

“It was a real shock,” Joe told Rolling Stone. “Learning that your last name isn’t actually your last name and that I’m related to zero percent of the Manganiellos in the world is…wow.”

Finding Your Roots discovered that the 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 descended from survivors,” Joe said. “To raise a blond child in a camp when none of the Armenians are blond, without a father, and come to the United States and raise that child under the supervision of other adults in the area? It is difficult.

“Come in chains on a ship from West Africa and come to the United States and earn your freedom…”

The Justice League star went on to talk about how these revelations have affected his family, especially 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.

“It’s fascinating to me – to know what I am, to be able to explore Ground Zero. I love history and storytelling, that’s one of the reasons why I chose my profession. I am grateful.’