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  • Armenian Genocide survivors remember

    03/31/2011

    Armenian Genocide survivors remember

    by Andrew Benjamin , Chronicle Contributor


    Perouz Kalousdian, above, Charlotte Kechejian and Arsalos Dadir will
    all attend a commemoration of the Armenian Genocide they survived on
    May 1 in Manhattan. PHOTOS BY ANDREW BENJAMIN

    `We suffered and we suffered and we and suffered. I'll never forget,'
    recalled 101-year-old Perouz Kalousdian. Kalousdian is a resident of
    the New York Armenian Home in Flushing and is one of three survivors
    of the Armenian genocide who lives there.
    This year marks the 96th anniversary of the start of the
    Armenian genocide. Turkish leaders of the Ottoman Empire are believed
    to have slaughtered 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 through 1923, in
    what historians consider one of the first modern systematic campaigns
    to eliminate an
    entire racial group. Though some deny the systematic nature and
    extent of the killings, they were recorded in contemporaneous
    accounts, including in a book by the American ambassador to the
    Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau.
    The anniversary is to be commemorated with an honor to those who
    survived in Times Square on May 1 at 2 p.m.
    Three survivors who will attend the ceremony spoke to the press on
    Sunday about the horrors they saw and their struggle to survive.
    Despite her age, Kalousdian has a clear memory of Turkish soldiers
    rounding up the men in Palu, the village she lived in. `They took all
    the men. They took them and shot them,' she said.
    Just 6 years old, she also witnessed soldiers tying males up two by
    two and throwing them over a bridge into the River Euphrates.
    As a way to keep her safe, Kalousdian's mother put her in an
    American orphanage in Kharpet, now known as Elazig. At the orphanage,
    she learned how to knit and sew.
    Her father, who was living in the United States, sent money to her
    and her mother, with the hope they would eventually come to America.
    `It was always in my mind that we would be going
    to America,' she said. At 14, she and her mother came to New York and
    became citizens.
    The next survivor who spoke was 98-year-old Charlotte
    Kechejian. From Nikhda, she was 10 years old when her father was taken
    away and killed by the Turks. Her last memory of him was of his
    wanting to hug his family, but the soldiers refused to let him.
    She and her mother were forced to walk in the scorching desert to
    escape further persecution.
    Kechejian couldn't remember how long she traveled in the
    desert, but said it felt like an eternity. `I thought it was so long,'
    she said. `I'll never get out of it.'
    Kechejian and her mother barely got any food or water, but both
    managed to survive. Her mother instilled hope that it would not last
    long. `'It's a temporary thing,'' Kechejian recalled her mother
    saying. `'So just grin and bear it.''
    She was put into an orphanage for some time, and then came to
    America with her mother. Asking for her daughter's approval, her
    mother remarried, and Kechejian finished high school and found work at
    various department stores.
    The last survivor to speak was 97-year-old Arsalos Dadir. Growing
    up in the village of Shabin-Karahisar, she came from a wealthy
    family. Turkish soldiers forced her family out of their home. Her
    father was killed by the soldiers.
    Speaking through an interpreter, she talked of how little there was
    to eat. `My mother would go out and [take out bread] from the cupboard
    and it would be that small,' she said extending her
    pointer finger. She and her siblings `would cry for more.'
    She and her family survived thanks to her Turkish neighbors, who hid
    them in a chicken coop.
    Her family moved to Constantinople, now Istanbul. On the
    way there, her three siblings contracted tuberculosis and died. She
    was the only survivor. She married there and raised two sons, who
    brought her to America.
    After she was done speaking, she looked at everyone and remarked
    `May God never reduce the number of people like you all around us.'


    ©Queens Chronicle 2011
    http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid458905&BRD=2731&PAG=461&dept_id=574 902&rfi='




    From: A. Papazian
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