Mandy Patinkin says he never thought he had any family members who perished during the Holocaust. But the team behind the long-running PBS genealogy show “Finding Your Roots” proved that the acclaimed 68-year-old Jewish actor and singer was mistaken.
In an episode airing Apr. 26, Patinkin, a Chicago native and cousin of former Jewish Museum of Maryland executive director Marvin Pinkert, learned that he had relatives who were rounded up in the northeastern Polish town of Bransk and sent to the Treblinka concentration camp.
While reading aloud a description of how his family members — along with thousands of other Jews from Bransk — were burned in a crematorium at Treblinka, Patinkin broke down in tears.
In the past, he said he always explained in interviews that he was not directly related to any Holocaust victims. “I don’t have words,” he said in this video clip.
Before becoming emotional, the Tony- and Emmy Award-winning Patinkin — best known for his work in “Yentl,” “The Princess Bride,” “Chicago Hope,” “Evita” and “Homeland” — was asked by “Finding Your Roots” host Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. how he thinks the Holocaust could have happened.
“My job is to imagine, that is my profession,” Patinkin said. “I have never been able to get ahold of that.”
Among Patinkin’s best-known albums is his 1998 Broadway concert “Mamaloshen,” a collection of traditional Yiddish tunes and Yiddish translations of English songs by Jewish composers such as Paul Simon, Leonard Bernstein and Harold Arlen.
During a 2016 episode of “Finding Your Roots,” Academy Award-winning actor Dustin Hoffman became emotional after learning that his Jewish grandfather and great-grandfather, Frank and Sam Hoffman, died at the hands of Soviet secret police, something that his father, Harry Hoffman, never shared with him.
In addition, the actor learned that his great-grandmother spent five years in a Russian concentration camp before immigrating to the United States.
He said the discovery brought him closer to his Jewish heritage. “People ask me today, ‘What are you?’ ” Hoffman said. “I say, ‘I’m a Jew.’ “
Gabe Friedman writes for the JTA global Jewish news source. Jmore staff contributed to this report.
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