Mandy Patinkin breaks down in tears as he discovers his relatives died in a Nazi concentration camp

Jewish actor Mandy Patinkin broke down in tears on television after learning some of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust. 

The revelation came as part of an episode of the PBS celebrity genealogy show ‘Finding Your Roots’ which will air on Tuesday night. 

In it, presenters prove to Patinkin some of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust, despite the actor’s long-held belief that was not the case. 

Jewish actor Mandy Patinkin has broken down in tears on television after learning some of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust

The revelation came as part of an episode of the PBS celebrity genealogy show ‘Finding Your Roots’ which will air on Tuesday night. In it, presenters prove to Patinkin some of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust, despite the actor’s long-held belief that was not the case

Presenters give the Jewish actor documents which prove his family members were killed at Treblinka, a concentration camp in north-eastern Poland. 

Patinkin, 68, cries as the revelation that his family were rounded up in Bransk, a town in northeastern Poland, and sent to Treblinka, dawns on him.

‘According to the evidence’, Patinkin reads. ‘All the Bransk Jews, men and women separately, breathed their last in the Treblinka gas chambers on the 10th of November 1942, at four o’clock in the afternoon. Their bodies were burned in the crematorium in Treblinka.’ 

‘I don’t have words’, the Jewish actor says as he sheds tears on the program, which premiered on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

‘Oh my god’, Patinkin says. ‘You know, I went there and I would say to people, I’ve been interviewed so many times. I would say, I don’t think any of my relatives died in the holocaust. I was never given this information.’

Born in Chicago, Patinkin was raised in an upper-middle class, conservative Jewish family in the city. His father ran two metal factories and his mother was a homemaker.

He attended religious school daily “from the age of seven to 13 or 14” and sang in synagogue choirs.

The program builds to the reveal as Patinkin is given a series of documents detailing what happened in his relatives’ final days. 

‘The gendarmes appear when it is time to  light the candles, and report on that Shabbos morning at seven o’clock, everyone must report as families at the entrance of the ghetto’, he reads.

‘They are told to bring only bread and water. There is terrible crying in the ghetto.’

The Jewish actor goes on to tell host Henry Louis Gates Jr. that he can’t imagine the holocaust. 

‘My job is to imagine, that is my profession. I have never been able to get ahold of that’, he says.

Patinkin’s relatives were rounded up in Bransk Ghetto in November 1942 and transported to Treblinka concentration camp, where they were killed

Presenters gave Patinkin a series of documents to read which explained the truth about his family history