Survivors

My heritage means having compassion: compassion towards my family’s suffering and the suffering of countless persons all over the world. It even means compassion toward the Turk, the Azeri, the Kurd, the perpetrators of the genocide against my people, for they bear a heavy burden as well.

I am unique, I am a survivor, and no matter where I am in the world I will always call myself an Armenian.

To this day I think about my father’s superior officer. He was a Turkish sergeant – I don’t even know his name – but without him my grandmother, my aunts and dozens of others would never have survived the genocide.

Every voice deserves to be heard and every story is worth telling. Here are six survival stories submitted by our users. More coming soon!

Aharon Manukyan was born on March 20, 1914 in the Kendananc village in Van. Aharon was only one year old when his family had to leave home. He has no memories of those days, but his mother Mariam told him that she had managed to escape with her three sons: Aharon, Meliqset and Vahram.

Zaruhi Ghazaryan was born in 1911 in Sasun. She passed away on December 16, 2014.

Margarita Mkhitaryan was born in 1915 in Kars. She escaped the massacres with her mother and brother in 1917-1918.

Nvard Sudjyan is from Van (modern day Turkey). According to her documents, she was born in 1915, but she insists that she was in fact born two years earlier, in 1913.

Mariam Sahakyan turned 100 in January 2015. She was born in Sasun, a district in the Batman Province of modern-day Turkey. She survived thanks to the Kurds, who helped her family.

One hundred and three-year-old Knyaz Shirinyan is from the Alashkert district (now Eleshkirt in North-Eastern Turkey). He is the firstborn of his parents: Abraham and Khanum. The family escaped from Zrchi and crossed the Arax River in 1918.