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TESTIMONIES OF THE EYEWITNESS SURVIVORS OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AS PRECEPT FOR THE GENERATIONS
AZG Armenian Daily
24/04/2007
Ethnographer Verjine Svazlian writing down the tragic memoirs and songs
narrated by the Genocide survivor, Mariam Baghdishian (born in 1909,
Moussa Dagh)
The Armenian Genocide, as an international political crime against
humanity, has become, by the brutal constraint of history, an
inseparable part of the national identity, the thought and the
spiritual-conscious inner world of the Armenian people.
As the years go by, interest toward the Armenian Genocide grows
steadily due to the fact of the recent recognition of this historical
evidence by numerous countries. However, the official Turkish and
the pro-Turkish historiographers try, up to the present day and in
every possible way, to distort the true historical facts pertaining
to the years 1915-1923, a fatal period for the Armenian nation.
Numerous studies, collections of documents, statements of politicians
and public officials, artistic creations of various genres about the
Armenian Genocide have been published in various languages, but all
these colossal publications did not include the voice of the people:
the memoirs and popular songs narrated and transmitted by eyewitness
survivors who had created them under the immediate impression of
the said historical events. These memoirs and songs also have an
important historico-cognitive, factual-documental and primary source
value. Inasmuch as the Armenian nation itself has endured all those
unspeakable sufferings, consequently, the nation itself is the object
of that massive political crime.
And, as in the elucidation of every crime, the testimonies of the
witnesses are decisive, similarly, in this case, the testimonies of
the eyewitness survivors are of prime importance; every one of them
has, from the juridical point of view, its evidential significance
in the equitable solution of the Armenian Case and in the recognition
of the Armenian Genocide.
In the course of these historical events, the vast majority of the
Western Armenians (more than 1.5 million) were ruthlessly exterminated,
while those who, having been plundered, left destitute and exhausted,
were miraculously rescued, reached Eastern Armenia or scattered to
different countries of the world, after going through the harrowing
experience of deportation and witnessing the victimization of their
kinsfolk and compatriots. Subsequently, a fraction of those survivors
was repatriated periodically to Eastern Armenia from Turkey, Greece,
France, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, the Balkan countries, and USA.
Those repatriates settled in the newly built districts on the outskirts
of Yerevan, which symbolize the memory of the former native cradles
in Western Armenia.
Upon meeting the eyewitness survivors miraculously saved from the
Armenian Genocide, I always found them silent, reticent and deep in
thought. There was valid reason for this mysterious silence, since
the political obstacles prevailing in Soviet Armenia for many decades
did not allow them to tell about or to narrate their past in a free
and unconstrained manner.
Consequently, I have discovered them, inscribed, audio- and
video-recorded, studied and published the said materials (700 units)
with great difficulty.
During more than 50 years, owing to my consistent quests in the
various regions of Armenia, as well as during my short-term personal
or scientific trips to Greece, France, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Canada,
the U.S.A. and Turkey, I have constantly searched and discovered
representatives of the senior, middle and junior generations of
survivor-witnesses of the Armenian Genocide. I have gotten closely
acquainted with them and have tried to penetrate the abysses of
their souls.
The popular memoirs (315 units) narrated by the eyewitness survivors
cover a wide range of topics: they reflect the beauty of the native
land, their daily patriarchal life and customs, the era in which
they lived, the conditions of the communal-political life, the
important historical events, the cruelties (the extortion of taxes,
the mobilization, the arm-collections, the burning of people alive, the
exile, the murder and the slaughter) committed in their regard by the
leaders of the government of Young Turks (Talaat, Enver, Djemal, Nazim,
Behaeddin Shakir), the forcible deportation organized by the latter
to the uninhabited deserts of Mesopotamia (Deir-el-Zor, Ras-ul-Ayn,
Rakka, Homs, Hama, Meskene, Surudj...), the inexpressible afflictions
of the Armenians (walking till exhaustion, thirst, hunger, epidemics,
dread of death...), as well as the righteous and noble struggle of the
various sections of the Western Armenians against violence to protect
their elementary right for life (the heroic battle of Van in 1915,
the struggle for existence in Shatakh, Shapin-Garahissar and Sassoun,
the heroic battles of Moussa Dagh and Yedessia (Urfa), and later,
in the years 1920-1921, those of Ayntap and Hadjn, etc.).
Every one of the eyewitness survivors told his/her memoir in his/her
own Armenian parlance, often in dialect or in Armenian mixed with
foreign languages, also in Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, English, French
and German. The memoirs narrated by the eyewitness survivors of the
Armenian Genocide, as a variant of the popular oral tradition, are
either brief and concise in structure or voluminous and protracted,
and include also various dialogues, citations, diverse genres of
popular folklore (lamentations and heroic songs, tales, parables,
proverbs, sayings, benedictions, maledictions, prayers, oaths) to
confirm the trustworthiness of their narrative, to render their oral
speech more reliable and more impressive.
In particular, the survivors themselves have felt a moral
responsibility and a sense of duty with regard to their
narratives. Many of them have crossed themselves or have sworn before
communicating their memoirs to me. And an oath is a sacred word and
a holy thing, which does not tolerate falsehood.
The Armenian Genocide, which was perpetrated at the beginning of
the 20th century, has been directly perceived by the senses of the
eyewitnesses and it has been indelibly impressed in their memory. They
have carried those personal memorial pictures during their whole life,
unable to free themselves from the oppressive nightmare. And since the
memoirs narrated by the survivors represent the immediate impressions
of the particular historical events that became the lot of the Armenian
people, therefore they are saturated with deep historicity.
Objectively reproducing the life, the customs, the political-public
relations of the given period, the memoirs communicated by the
survivors are spontaneous, truthful and trustworthy, possessing the
value of authentic testimonies.
Hrant Gasparian (born in 1908), from Moosh, has particularly emphasized
that circumstance, asserting at the end of his narrative: "...I told
you what I have seen. What I have seen is in front of my eyes. We
have brought nothing from Khnous. We have only saved our souls. Our
large family was composed of 143 souls.
Only one sister, one brother, my mother and I were saved."
The main person appearing in memoir-telling is the character of the
narrator. He/she not only tells about the important historical events,
incidents and people, but is also interpreting them, displaying
the main traits of his/her outlook and of his/her personality,
the specific point of view of his/her approach, his/her particular
language and style. Consequently, the memoir narrated by the eyewitness
is unambiguous by its uniqueness; it is the personal biography of the
given individual and his/her interpretation of the past, and its main
essence remains practically unchanged every time it is retold, since
the eyewitness has communicated it as a mysterious confession. And I,
with my professional responsibility as a folklorist-ethnographer and
remaining loyal to the oral speech of the witnesses, have written down
word for word their narratives, realizing that they were entrusting
to me their innermost and most sacred secrets to be transmitted to
the future generations.
At the same time, the memoirs told by the survivors are also similar,
inasmuch as the memoirs narrated in different places, by different
sex-age groups (men, women, senior, middle, junior generations) depict,
independently from one another and almost identically, the historical
events of the same period, the analogous historical happenings and
characters, the same horrifying scenes and cruelties, which, when
put together, confirm each other, continue and complete one another,
tending to move from the personal and the material toward the general
and the pan-national. One of the survivors, Tigran Ohanian (born in
1902), from Kamakh, had this circumstance in mind when he concluded
his memoir with the following words: "...My past is not only my past,
but it is my nation's past as well." Consequently, the memoirs of
the eyewitnesses, with their contents, describe not only the given
individual and his environment, but also the whole community, becoming
thus the collective historical memory of the Armenian people.
Nevertheless, the historical memory of the nation also has the
capacity to perpetuate. Although more than 90 years have elapsed
after these historical events, and many of the miraculously saved
eyewitness survivors are no longer in the land of the living, yet
the narratives of the representatives of the senior generation have
been so much heard, so many times repeated in their families that
they have also become the heritage of the coming generations and,
being transmitted from mouth to mouth, have continued to perpetuate
also in the memory of the next generations as historical narratives
(70 units). These historical narratives have been written down not
only from the eyewitness survivors, but also from the subsequent
generations as testimonial evidences of the fact that the historical
memory of the nation never dies, but it continues to persist also in
the memory of the coming generations.
I have succeeded also in writing down the songs and the ballads
of historical character (315 units) communicated by the eyewitness
survivors of the Armenian Genocide, which also form an inseparable part
of the people's historical memory. The words of these songs are simple
and unornamented; they artistically reproduce the various aspects of
the public life of that period in Turkey, namely, the mobilization,
the arm-collection, the deportation and the massacre of the Armenians
organized by the government of Young Turks, as well as other factual,
affecting and impressive episodes, bold sentiments of protest and of
rightful claim.
The psychological traumatic effect of the national calamity was
perceived by every eyewitness survivor.
Those horrifying impressions were so strong and profound that these
songs have often taken a poetic shape as the lament woven by the
survivor from Sassoun, Shogher Tonoyan (born in 1901), which she
communicated me with tearful eyes and moans:
...Morning and night I hear cries and laments,
I have no rest, no peace and no sleep,
I close my eyes and always see dead bodies,
I lost my kin, friends, land and home...
With their originality and ideological contents, these historical
songs are not only novelties in the field of Folklore and Genocide
Studies, but they also provide the possibility for comprehending,
in a new fashion, the given historical period, the circumstances and
the details of the implementation of the Armenian Genocide.
Consequently, having been created under the immediate impression of
these historical events, the popular and epic songs of this order are
saturated with historicity and have the value of authentic documents.
These historical songs, created by endowed unknown individuals of
different sex-age groups, have been widely spread in their time,
have been transmitted to a large extent and, since the people's
anguish was of a massive character, consequently the popular songs,
too, had a massive diffusion. They have passed from mouth to mouth,
giving rise to new, different variants, so that similar songs have been
created simultaneously in different variants and modifications, a fact,
which testifies to the popular character of these historical songs.
The songs of historical character have been created not only in
Armenian, but in the Turkish language as well, since under the given
historico-political circumstances the use of the Armenian language
in certain provinces of the Ottoman Empire had been prohibited. The
following fragment of a popular Armenian song I have written down
also testifies to that fact; it was communicated to me by the survivor
from Konia, Satenik Gouyoumdjian (born in 1902):
They entered the school and caught the school-mistress,
Ah, alas!
They opened her mouth and cut her tongue,
Ah, alas!
The school-mistress had deserved that punishment, since she had dared
to teach Armenian to the Armenian children. During the deportation
and on the roads of exile, these strict measures had been reinforced.
Therefore, the Western Armenians were compelled to express their grief
and affliction in the Turkish language as well. The songs narrating
about the slaughter and massacre of the Armenians have been woven on
the roads of exile to Deir-el-Zor:
Der Zor dedikleri buyuk kasaba,
Kesilen Ermeni gelmez hesaba,
Osmanlý efradý donmuþ kasaba,
Dininin uðruna olen Ermeni!
The place called Der-Zor was a large locality,
With innumerable slaughtered Armenians,
The Ottoman chiefs have become butchers,
Armenians dying for the sake of faith!
Armenians were dying "for the sake of faith" in order not to betray
their Christian fate and national identity.
The eyewitness survivors deported from more than 100 localities have
not only told me what they had seen and felt, but they have also
come to certain political conclusions, as the survivor from Ayntap,
Pargev Makarian (born in 1915), who communicated me: "...The Great
Powers deceived the Armenians; they gave Cilicia to the Turks. The
Armenians of Zeytoun, Adana, Sis, Marash, Kilis, Ayntap, Yedessia,
Kamourdj and other towns left their native lands. We were forced to
leave Cilicia. We were obliged to abandon our country. And in 1922
they provoked the disaster of Izmir; the Armenians and the Greeks
escaped through the flames, threw themselves into the sea; all those,
who were saved, went to other countries. Thus, the Turks "cleaned"
Turkey of Christians. Turkey, along with Western Armenia and Cilicia,
remained to the Turks..."
Or Hakob Holobikian (born in 1902), from Harpoot, has concluded,
after describing in detail the afflictions he and his compatriots
had suffered: "...This crime committed by the Turkish Ittihad members
will never be forgotten and should never be forgiven..."
Whereas, the Turkish propaganda and official historiography of today
are not sparing efforts to distort the true historical evidences,
with a view to carefully concealing from the coming generations the
Armenian Genocide, perpetrated by the Young Turk government. They are
trying to sidestep the historical truth that the Turkish authorities
themselves undertook, from the beginning of 1919, the organization
of the trial of the Young Turk criminals, by condemning them to death.
Thus, the memoirs and songs of historical character communicated
by the eyewitness survivors, saved, in this manner, from a total
loss and entrusted to the coming generations, become, owing to their
historico-cognitive value, testimonies elucidating, in a simple popular
language, the Armenian Genocide and the historical events following it;
they are authentic, objective and documental evidences, which are not
only attestations of the past, but are also a warning for the future.
Genocide is a political massive crime and it should not go unpunished,
but it should be juridically elucidated also on the basis of the
testimonies of eyewitnesses. And the greatest witness is the People,
who, painfully reliving, have narrated and continue to narrate and
testify to their tragic past. That past, which is the past of the
Armenian people, their history, their collective historical memory,
which should be presented to the world and to the righteous judgment
of mankind.
It is time, therefore, that the present government of the Republic
of Turkey, too, has the courage not only of recognizing the obvious
historical truth, which has been substantiated by written and oral
evidences and is not in need of any further proof, but also of
condemning the accomplished fact and of compensating the Armenian
people for the moral, material and territorial losses of the tragic
historical event, which is called the Armenian Genocide.
By Verjine Svazlian, Dr. Prof., Leading Researcher, Institute of
Archaeology & Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences, Armenia.
--Boundary_(ID_j8uZBJnZhLgVqdMhDzU6tA)--
AZG Armenian Daily
24/04/2007
Ethnographer Verjine Svazlian writing down the tragic memoirs and songs
narrated by the Genocide survivor, Mariam Baghdishian (born in 1909,
Moussa Dagh)
The Armenian Genocide, as an international political crime against
humanity, has become, by the brutal constraint of history, an
inseparable part of the national identity, the thought and the
spiritual-conscious inner world of the Armenian people.
As the years go by, interest toward the Armenian Genocide grows
steadily due to the fact of the recent recognition of this historical
evidence by numerous countries. However, the official Turkish and
the pro-Turkish historiographers try, up to the present day and in
every possible way, to distort the true historical facts pertaining
to the years 1915-1923, a fatal period for the Armenian nation.
Numerous studies, collections of documents, statements of politicians
and public officials, artistic creations of various genres about the
Armenian Genocide have been published in various languages, but all
these colossal publications did not include the voice of the people:
the memoirs and popular songs narrated and transmitted by eyewitness
survivors who had created them under the immediate impression of
the said historical events. These memoirs and songs also have an
important historico-cognitive, factual-documental and primary source
value. Inasmuch as the Armenian nation itself has endured all those
unspeakable sufferings, consequently, the nation itself is the object
of that massive political crime.
And, as in the elucidation of every crime, the testimonies of the
witnesses are decisive, similarly, in this case, the testimonies of
the eyewitness survivors are of prime importance; every one of them
has, from the juridical point of view, its evidential significance
in the equitable solution of the Armenian Case and in the recognition
of the Armenian Genocide.
In the course of these historical events, the vast majority of the
Western Armenians (more than 1.5 million) were ruthlessly exterminated,
while those who, having been plundered, left destitute and exhausted,
were miraculously rescued, reached Eastern Armenia or scattered to
different countries of the world, after going through the harrowing
experience of deportation and witnessing the victimization of their
kinsfolk and compatriots. Subsequently, a fraction of those survivors
was repatriated periodically to Eastern Armenia from Turkey, Greece,
France, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, the Balkan countries, and USA.
Those repatriates settled in the newly built districts on the outskirts
of Yerevan, which symbolize the memory of the former native cradles
in Western Armenia.
Upon meeting the eyewitness survivors miraculously saved from the
Armenian Genocide, I always found them silent, reticent and deep in
thought. There was valid reason for this mysterious silence, since
the political obstacles prevailing in Soviet Armenia for many decades
did not allow them to tell about or to narrate their past in a free
and unconstrained manner.
Consequently, I have discovered them, inscribed, audio- and
video-recorded, studied and published the said materials (700 units)
with great difficulty.
During more than 50 years, owing to my consistent quests in the
various regions of Armenia, as well as during my short-term personal
or scientific trips to Greece, France, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Canada,
the U.S.A. and Turkey, I have constantly searched and discovered
representatives of the senior, middle and junior generations of
survivor-witnesses of the Armenian Genocide. I have gotten closely
acquainted with them and have tried to penetrate the abysses of
their souls.
The popular memoirs (315 units) narrated by the eyewitness survivors
cover a wide range of topics: they reflect the beauty of the native
land, their daily patriarchal life and customs, the era in which
they lived, the conditions of the communal-political life, the
important historical events, the cruelties (the extortion of taxes,
the mobilization, the arm-collections, the burning of people alive, the
exile, the murder and the slaughter) committed in their regard by the
leaders of the government of Young Turks (Talaat, Enver, Djemal, Nazim,
Behaeddin Shakir), the forcible deportation organized by the latter
to the uninhabited deserts of Mesopotamia (Deir-el-Zor, Ras-ul-Ayn,
Rakka, Homs, Hama, Meskene, Surudj...), the inexpressible afflictions
of the Armenians (walking till exhaustion, thirst, hunger, epidemics,
dread of death...), as well as the righteous and noble struggle of the
various sections of the Western Armenians against violence to protect
their elementary right for life (the heroic battle of Van in 1915,
the struggle for existence in Shatakh, Shapin-Garahissar and Sassoun,
the heroic battles of Moussa Dagh and Yedessia (Urfa), and later,
in the years 1920-1921, those of Ayntap and Hadjn, etc.).
Every one of the eyewitness survivors told his/her memoir in his/her
own Armenian parlance, often in dialect or in Armenian mixed with
foreign languages, also in Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, English, French
and German. The memoirs narrated by the eyewitness survivors of the
Armenian Genocide, as a variant of the popular oral tradition, are
either brief and concise in structure or voluminous and protracted,
and include also various dialogues, citations, diverse genres of
popular folklore (lamentations and heroic songs, tales, parables,
proverbs, sayings, benedictions, maledictions, prayers, oaths) to
confirm the trustworthiness of their narrative, to render their oral
speech more reliable and more impressive.
In particular, the survivors themselves have felt a moral
responsibility and a sense of duty with regard to their
narratives. Many of them have crossed themselves or have sworn before
communicating their memoirs to me. And an oath is a sacred word and
a holy thing, which does not tolerate falsehood.
The Armenian Genocide, which was perpetrated at the beginning of
the 20th century, has been directly perceived by the senses of the
eyewitnesses and it has been indelibly impressed in their memory. They
have carried those personal memorial pictures during their whole life,
unable to free themselves from the oppressive nightmare. And since the
memoirs narrated by the survivors represent the immediate impressions
of the particular historical events that became the lot of the Armenian
people, therefore they are saturated with deep historicity.
Objectively reproducing the life, the customs, the political-public
relations of the given period, the memoirs communicated by the
survivors are spontaneous, truthful and trustworthy, possessing the
value of authentic testimonies.
Hrant Gasparian (born in 1908), from Moosh, has particularly emphasized
that circumstance, asserting at the end of his narrative: "...I told
you what I have seen. What I have seen is in front of my eyes. We
have brought nothing from Khnous. We have only saved our souls. Our
large family was composed of 143 souls.
Only one sister, one brother, my mother and I were saved."
The main person appearing in memoir-telling is the character of the
narrator. He/she not only tells about the important historical events,
incidents and people, but is also interpreting them, displaying
the main traits of his/her outlook and of his/her personality,
the specific point of view of his/her approach, his/her particular
language and style. Consequently, the memoir narrated by the eyewitness
is unambiguous by its uniqueness; it is the personal biography of the
given individual and his/her interpretation of the past, and its main
essence remains practically unchanged every time it is retold, since
the eyewitness has communicated it as a mysterious confession. And I,
with my professional responsibility as a folklorist-ethnographer and
remaining loyal to the oral speech of the witnesses, have written down
word for word their narratives, realizing that they were entrusting
to me their innermost and most sacred secrets to be transmitted to
the future generations.
At the same time, the memoirs told by the survivors are also similar,
inasmuch as the memoirs narrated in different places, by different
sex-age groups (men, women, senior, middle, junior generations) depict,
independently from one another and almost identically, the historical
events of the same period, the analogous historical happenings and
characters, the same horrifying scenes and cruelties, which, when
put together, confirm each other, continue and complete one another,
tending to move from the personal and the material toward the general
and the pan-national. One of the survivors, Tigran Ohanian (born in
1902), from Kamakh, had this circumstance in mind when he concluded
his memoir with the following words: "...My past is not only my past,
but it is my nation's past as well." Consequently, the memoirs of
the eyewitnesses, with their contents, describe not only the given
individual and his environment, but also the whole community, becoming
thus the collective historical memory of the Armenian people.
Nevertheless, the historical memory of the nation also has the
capacity to perpetuate. Although more than 90 years have elapsed
after these historical events, and many of the miraculously saved
eyewitness survivors are no longer in the land of the living, yet
the narratives of the representatives of the senior generation have
been so much heard, so many times repeated in their families that
they have also become the heritage of the coming generations and,
being transmitted from mouth to mouth, have continued to perpetuate
also in the memory of the next generations as historical narratives
(70 units). These historical narratives have been written down not
only from the eyewitness survivors, but also from the subsequent
generations as testimonial evidences of the fact that the historical
memory of the nation never dies, but it continues to persist also in
the memory of the coming generations.
I have succeeded also in writing down the songs and the ballads
of historical character (315 units) communicated by the eyewitness
survivors of the Armenian Genocide, which also form an inseparable part
of the people's historical memory. The words of these songs are simple
and unornamented; they artistically reproduce the various aspects of
the public life of that period in Turkey, namely, the mobilization,
the arm-collection, the deportation and the massacre of the Armenians
organized by the government of Young Turks, as well as other factual,
affecting and impressive episodes, bold sentiments of protest and of
rightful claim.
The psychological traumatic effect of the national calamity was
perceived by every eyewitness survivor.
Those horrifying impressions were so strong and profound that these
songs have often taken a poetic shape as the lament woven by the
survivor from Sassoun, Shogher Tonoyan (born in 1901), which she
communicated me with tearful eyes and moans:
...Morning and night I hear cries and laments,
I have no rest, no peace and no sleep,
I close my eyes and always see dead bodies,
I lost my kin, friends, land and home...
With their originality and ideological contents, these historical
songs are not only novelties in the field of Folklore and Genocide
Studies, but they also provide the possibility for comprehending,
in a new fashion, the given historical period, the circumstances and
the details of the implementation of the Armenian Genocide.
Consequently, having been created under the immediate impression of
these historical events, the popular and epic songs of this order are
saturated with historicity and have the value of authentic documents.
These historical songs, created by endowed unknown individuals of
different sex-age groups, have been widely spread in their time,
have been transmitted to a large extent and, since the people's
anguish was of a massive character, consequently the popular songs,
too, had a massive diffusion. They have passed from mouth to mouth,
giving rise to new, different variants, so that similar songs have been
created simultaneously in different variants and modifications, a fact,
which testifies to the popular character of these historical songs.
The songs of historical character have been created not only in
Armenian, but in the Turkish language as well, since under the given
historico-political circumstances the use of the Armenian language
in certain provinces of the Ottoman Empire had been prohibited. The
following fragment of a popular Armenian song I have written down
also testifies to that fact; it was communicated to me by the survivor
from Konia, Satenik Gouyoumdjian (born in 1902):
They entered the school and caught the school-mistress,
Ah, alas!
They opened her mouth and cut her tongue,
Ah, alas!
The school-mistress had deserved that punishment, since she had dared
to teach Armenian to the Armenian children. During the deportation
and on the roads of exile, these strict measures had been reinforced.
Therefore, the Western Armenians were compelled to express their grief
and affliction in the Turkish language as well. The songs narrating
about the slaughter and massacre of the Armenians have been woven on
the roads of exile to Deir-el-Zor:
Der Zor dedikleri buyuk kasaba,
Kesilen Ermeni gelmez hesaba,
Osmanlý efradý donmuþ kasaba,
Dininin uðruna olen Ermeni!
The place called Der-Zor was a large locality,
With innumerable slaughtered Armenians,
The Ottoman chiefs have become butchers,
Armenians dying for the sake of faith!
Armenians were dying "for the sake of faith" in order not to betray
their Christian fate and national identity.
The eyewitness survivors deported from more than 100 localities have
not only told me what they had seen and felt, but they have also
come to certain political conclusions, as the survivor from Ayntap,
Pargev Makarian (born in 1915), who communicated me: "...The Great
Powers deceived the Armenians; they gave Cilicia to the Turks. The
Armenians of Zeytoun, Adana, Sis, Marash, Kilis, Ayntap, Yedessia,
Kamourdj and other towns left their native lands. We were forced to
leave Cilicia. We were obliged to abandon our country. And in 1922
they provoked the disaster of Izmir; the Armenians and the Greeks
escaped through the flames, threw themselves into the sea; all those,
who were saved, went to other countries. Thus, the Turks "cleaned"
Turkey of Christians. Turkey, along with Western Armenia and Cilicia,
remained to the Turks..."
Or Hakob Holobikian (born in 1902), from Harpoot, has concluded,
after describing in detail the afflictions he and his compatriots
had suffered: "...This crime committed by the Turkish Ittihad members
will never be forgotten and should never be forgiven..."
Whereas, the Turkish propaganda and official historiography of today
are not sparing efforts to distort the true historical evidences,
with a view to carefully concealing from the coming generations the
Armenian Genocide, perpetrated by the Young Turk government. They are
trying to sidestep the historical truth that the Turkish authorities
themselves undertook, from the beginning of 1919, the organization
of the trial of the Young Turk criminals, by condemning them to death.
Thus, the memoirs and songs of historical character communicated
by the eyewitness survivors, saved, in this manner, from a total
loss and entrusted to the coming generations, become, owing to their
historico-cognitive value, testimonies elucidating, in a simple popular
language, the Armenian Genocide and the historical events following it;
they are authentic, objective and documental evidences, which are not
only attestations of the past, but are also a warning for the future.
Genocide is a political massive crime and it should not go unpunished,
but it should be juridically elucidated also on the basis of the
testimonies of eyewitnesses. And the greatest witness is the People,
who, painfully reliving, have narrated and continue to narrate and
testify to their tragic past. That past, which is the past of the
Armenian people, their history, their collective historical memory,
which should be presented to the world and to the righteous judgment
of mankind.
It is time, therefore, that the present government of the Republic
of Turkey, too, has the courage not only of recognizing the obvious
historical truth, which has been substantiated by written and oral
evidences and is not in need of any further proof, but also of
condemning the accomplished fact and of compensating the Armenian
people for the moral, material and territorial losses of the tragic
historical event, which is called the Armenian Genocide.
By Verjine Svazlian, Dr. Prof., Leading Researcher, Institute of
Archaeology & Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences, Armenia.
--Boundary_(ID_j8uZBJnZhLgVqdMhDzU6tA)--