Clip: Season 9 Episode 6 | 4m 27s | Video has closed captioning.
Joe Manganiello says his maternal great-grandmother, Terviz “Rose” Darakijan, survived the Armenian Genocide, during which over 1 million ethnic Armenians were murdered by the Ottoman state. Darakijan survived, but her entire family — her husband and seven out of eight children — were slaughtered by Turkish soldiers in 1915.
Aired: 02/07/23
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-[Henry VO] I started with Joe Manganiello, and with a story that begins in what was once a region of the Ottoman Empire and is now a part of the nation of Turkey.
Joe's paternal ancestors were caught here in one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, the infamous Armenian Genocide, during which over a million ethnic Armenians were systematically murdered by the Ottoman State.
Joe's great-grandmother, a woman named Rose Darakjian, miraculously managed to survive the slaughter and find refuge in the United States, but only after enduring a horrifying ordeal.
-The Turks came into her home in 1915 under the guise of World War I and tried to enact the genocide that they had begun.
They shot her husband dead, shot her, she laid on the ground, pretended that she was dead.
-[Henry] Mm-hm.
-While seven other gunshots went off, which were... her seven children.
-Mm.
-And she laid there unmoving, and the Turks left the house and left the eighth child, who was an infant, in the crib to starve to death, which was just the way that they did business.
So she got up and strapped the baby onto her back, and escaped the town, which, you know, for people that don't know, there were these death marches where they would just handcuff... chain the Armenians together and march them out into the desert, and release the Kurds and gave them military coats, horses, and guns to then go do what they wanted with their mortal enemies, the Armenians, and she escaped that, snuck past, got to the Euphrates River with the baby on her back, swam across the river, and when she got to the other side, the baby had drowned.
-Oh... -And she had a bullet in her still, and she lived in a cave -- to my understanding -- with other refugees until she was picked up by German military, who were stationed in Turkey at the time because the Turkish government worshipped German military might, so a lot of officers were invited to come and spend time in Turkey during the war.
-Mm-hm.
-And as the story goes, she was picked up by something like a Red Cross camp that would've been there at the time and went to work for this German officer, and wound up pregnant by this German officer, and gave birth to-- after the Germans left and went back to Germany, she gave birth to a very blonde half-German child.
-[Henry VO] This blonde child grew up to be Joe's grandmother, Sandra.
And though her mother never told her the name of her German father, Joe was hoping that we could find him.
It was an extraordinary challenge.
There were roughly 25,000 German soldiers stationed in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
What's more, the Turkish government refuses to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, and doesn't even permit researchers access to the records that would document it.
Our only hope was DNA.
Our genetic genealogist CeCe Moore compared Joe's mother's genetic profile to millions of other profiles in publicly-available databases, searching for matches.
-[Henry] You ready to see what we found?
-[sighs] Man...
Yes.
-Please turn the page.
Joe, the chart in front of you shows some of your mother's DNA matches, illustrated in the format of a family tree.
You're there at the bottom.
-[Joe] Yup.
-[Henry] Now go up one box and see your mother Susan.
-[Joe] Yup.
-[Henry] And then her mother, and then your great-grandparents, Rose and your unknown biological great-grandfather, the man we are trying to identify.
Joe, in your mother's DNA match list, we identified a distinct cluster of individuals that appear to be of German ancestry.
We soon learned that all those individuals descended from one couple.
Would you please read their names?
-[Joe] Johan Heinrich Beutinger... -[Henry] You got it.
-[Joe] And Catharine Friederike Reischle.
-Now, I'm assuming that you've never heard of these people before.
-Never.
-Well, Joe, guess what: you are a Beutinger.
-[whispering] No!
-[Henry] You are.
-[Joe] [whispering] Wow.
-That is your family name.
-[whispering] Wow, look at that.
Wow.
That's incredible.
Finding Your Roots.
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Episode Guide
A new season of Finding Your Roots premieres January 3, 2023 8/7c! Tune in for all-new episodes as renowned scholar Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. guides influential guests into their roots, uncovering deep secrets, hidden identities and lost ancestors.
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