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Horrors still living in vivid memory, never forgotten
Haroutian Kouyoumbedjian lost his eyesight in Aleppo in 1923. But by
then, the 15-year-old had already seen more than enough for one
lifetime.
`The Turkish guards took me with my mother and sister in a big group
down to the river next to the camp in Ras al-Ain,' he says, the words
coming out in a torrent of emotion undiminished by the passage of
time. `They tied up my sister and put her on a horse to take her
away, but she kept throwing herself off so they had to keep putting
her back. My mother was screaming, she begged them to leave my
sister, then they started to kill us.'
It was 1916, and Haroutian never saw his sister again. What followed
was a sight he can still remember. `They beat my mother to death in
front of me,' he says, his voice becoming disembodied. `The Turks
killed many people in the camp, I saw this many, many times. The
people who could, threw themselves into the river before the Turks
could kill them.'
Haroutian was 8 years old.
He considers himself lucky. Before he could be killed and thrown into
the river with the other bodies, a Syrian man spirited him away and
for the next three years, Haroutian lived with his new Arab family in
the desert near Deir ez-Zor.
Like many residents at the Armenian Old People's Home in Bourj
Hammoud, Haroutian's life reads like a catalogue of horrors. Deported
with his family from their home near Adana in 1915, he found himself
first in an Aleppo detention center and then in the infamous Syrian
desert camp at Ras el-Ain.
By then he had lost his father - killed shortly after arriving in
Aleppo - and his four brothers and two sisters who managed to escape
from Aleppo, never to be seen again. In a matter of weeks, his family
of 10 was reduced to just three members.
The memories might be clouded by age - Haroutian turns 93 this year -
but the emotions they provoke are still strong enough to reduce some
residents to tears.
`Tell him about my husband. Oh, the stories he could tell if he was
still alive,' says Elise Tashnakian. `He had to watch the Turks kill
his sister and brother in front of him.'
`My aunt told me they threw my mother and her into a well,' remembers
92-year-old Araxi Felekian, her slightly milky eyes beginning to
tear. `But they were the last ones thrown in, and there was a big
pile of bodies underneath, this is how they survived.'
Her aunt and mother lay quietly in the well, hoping they would not be
detected. Finally, after an hour, all appeared to be clear so the two
climbed out and ran down to the riverbank.
Shortly after this incident, things went very wrong for Adana's
Armenian community. Araxi's father was killed and the French, who had
been stationed in Adana effectively safeguarding the city's
minorities, were forced to withdraw. The Turks began to drive
everyone out of the city.
`That day, mother wrapped me in a sheet and put me under her arm, she
ran from church to church with my sister, looking for shelter,' she
says, gesturing to make sure her story is clearly understood. `It was
only when she reached safety that she realized she had dropped me.'
Luckily, Araxi was discovered by some retreating French soldiers.
They picked her up and took her to the French missionary school on
the outskirts of the city, where many of the city's Armenians had
sought refuge.
There, she was reunited with her mother, sister and aunt. The school
was to be her home for the next eight years.
`Inside, we were safe,' she says of the school, which is all she
remembers of her home city. `We could not go outside.'
In 1923, the school was evacuated and Araxi, her sister and her
mother sailed from Mersin to Beirut, where she spent her first few
months in the refugee camps of Karantina. After the close confines of
the school, the camp at Karantina was a taste of paradise.
`I was free from prison,' she says. `I was so happy to be in the
camp.'
Alice Bedrossian was also one of those who escaped by boat from
Mersin. `They tried to catch us at sea but we got away,' she says,
still shaken by the memory. `It was really a miracle.'
Like some of her fellow survivors at the home, Bedrossian, a former
resident of Kayseri in Central Anatolia, found the only way to make
sense of her life was through her belief in God.
`My father was a true martyr, the villagers tried to make him
renounce God because they said they needed his skills as a doctor,
but he wouldn't, so they killed him,' she says, momentarily losing
herself in the past. `We have forgiven them - yes, forgiven them, but
forgotten?
`No, we will never forget.'
Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News Archives