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The Armenian Genocide and Survival Narratives of Children

  • Original Article
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Childhood Vulnerability Journal

Abstract

This paper provides an account of the survival strategies of Armenian children during the genocide and its aftermath with an approach that resists victimizing them. Available literature on the Armenian genocide is denser on issues of death and suffering than on survival and resilience. Recent research on the conversion to Islam, child adoption/fosterage, and abduction of women and children is more interested in survivors and survival, but does not necessarily take into account Armenian actors’ agency. Constructing the history from children’s point of view, one notes that Armenian children were not only victims. They had strategies of endurance and resistance. In their struggle to survive, Armenian children took initiative, made personal decisions, manipulated circumstances, and thus became active agents. Dwelling upon survivor testimonies in different forms (oral histories, memoirs, diaries), my research brings into light the resilience and self-confidence of children in their self-portrayals. Through playing games, getting into different sorts of adventures, building friendships, children tried to cope with the death and loss of loved ones, along with holding onto life. Heroic adventure narratives determined how they made sense of their survival.

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Notes

  1. David Oswell, The Agency of Children: From Family to Global Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

  2. Hans-Lukas Kieser, Talaat Pasha: The Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide (Princeton University Press, 2018).

  3. For a general discussion of the Armenian genocide, see Ronald Grigor Suny, “Armenian Genocide,” in 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2015-05-26. 10.15463/ie1418.10646.

  4. Matthias Bjørnlund, “‘A Fate Worse Than Dying’: Sexual Violence during the Armenian Genocide,” in Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century, ed. Dagmar Herzog (Basingstoke: Springer, 2009), 16–58; Katharine Derderian, “Common Fate, Different Experience: Gender-Specific Aspects of the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1917,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 19/1 (2005): 1–25; Ara Sarafian, “The Absorption of Armenian Women and Children into Muslim Households as a Structural Component of the Armenian Genocide” in In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century, eds. Omer Bartov and Phyllis Mack (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 209–221.

  5. Asya Darbinyan and Rubina Peroomian, “Children: The Most Vulnerable Victims of the Armenian Genocide,” in Plight and Fate of Children During and Following Genocide, ed. Samuel Totten (New York: Routledge, 2018).

  6. Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

  7. Vahakn N. Dadrian, “Children as Victims of Genocide: The Armenian Case,” Journal of Genocide Research 5/3 (2003): 421–437.

  8. Miller and Touryan Miller, Survivors, 115–117.

  9. Haigaz, (2015) Four Years in the Mountains of Kurdistan, 30.

  10. Prime Ministry’s Ottoman Archives (BOA), Ministry of Interior, Cipher Telegrams (Dahiliye Şifre Kalemi, DH.ŞFR.), 54/411, 12 July 1915.

  11. BOA, DH.ŞFR., 63/142, 30 April 1916.

  12. Nazan Maksudyan, Ottoman Children and Youth in World War I (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2019), Chapter 1.

  13. The Society was established in 1916 by the Minister of War, Enver Pasha and it was a typical wartime “voluntary association” defined by the CUP policies. See Yavuz S. Karakışla, “Kadınları Çalıstırma Cemiyeti Himayesi’nde Savaş Yetimleri ve Kimsesiz Çocuklar: ‘Ermeni’ mi, ‘Türk’ mü?” Toplumsal Tarih 6 (1999): 46–55.

  14. Ayşe Gül Altınay, “In Search of Silenced Grandparents: Ottoman Armenian Survivors and Their (Muslim) Grandchildren,” in Der Völkermord an den Armeniern, die Türkei und Europa = The Armenian Genocide, Turkey and Europe, eds. Hans-Lukas Kieser and Elmar Plozza (Zürich: Chronos, 2006), 117–132; Ayşe Gül Altınay and Yektan Türkyılmaz, “Unraveling Layers of Gendered Silencing: Converted Armenian Survivors of the 1915 Catastrophe,” in Untold Histories of the Middle East: Recovering Voices from the 19th and 20th Centuries, eds. Amy Singer, Christoph K. Neumann, and Selçuk Akşin Somel (London: Routledge, 2011), 25–53.

  15. Keith D. Watenpaugh, “‘Are There Any Children for Sale?’: Genocide and the Transfer of Armenian Children (1915–1922),” Journal of Human Rights 12 (2013): 283–295.

  16. The report of Professor Samuel T. Dutton, Secretary of the Committee on Armenian Atrocities, “Armenian Women put up to Auction”, The New York Times, 29 September 1915.

  17. BOA, DH.ŞFR., 59/150, 30 Dec. 1915; BOA, DH.ŞFR., 63/142, 30 April 1916.

  18. BOA, DH.ŞFR., 61/23, 17 Jan. 1916.

  19. The Directorate of Public Security openly announced that the state had no objection to state officials adopting Armenian girls for educational purposes. BOA, DH.ŞFR., 61/23, 17 Jan. 1916.

  20. Watenpaugh, “The League of Nations’ Rescue,” 1329; Shemmassian 2003; 2006; Tachjian 2009.

  21. Testimonial production of the educated writers in the Armenian language was numerous. Some of them were published right after the events. Aram Andonian, Medz Vochirı [The Great Crime] (Boston: Hayrenik, 1921). Quite a few of those have been translated into English and other European languages: Grigoris Balakian, Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, trans. by Peter Balakian and Aris Sevag (New York: Vintage, 2010); Yervant Odyan, Accursed Years: My Exile and Return from Der Zor, 1914–1919 (London: Gomidas Institute, 2009); Aram Andonian, En ces sombres jours, trans. by Hervé Georgelin (Geneva: MétisPresses, 2007a); Aram Andonian, Sur la route de l’exil (Geneva: MétisPresses, 2007b); M. Salbi (Aram Sahakian), Our Cross, trans. by Ishkhan Chinpashean (Studio City, Calif.: H. and K. Manjikian Publications, 2014); Paylazu Kaptanyan, 1915 Ermeni Soykırımı: Bir Tanığın Anıları, trans. by Fatma Özgen (Istanbul: Pencere Yayınları, 2012); Mikael Shamdanjian, The Fatal Night: An Eyewitness Account of the Extermination of Armenian Intellectuals in 1915, trans. by Ishkhan Jinbashian (Studio City, Calif.: H. and K. Manjikian Publications, 2007); Garabed Kapiguian, [Tales of the Yeghern] (Boston: Hayrenik, 1924).

  22. The Armistice of Mudros (Oct. 30, 1918), signed between the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain (representing the Allied powers), stipulated that the Allies could seize “any strategic points” in case of a threat to Allied security. . The Ottoman army was demobilized; ports, railways, and other strategic points were made available for use by the Allies. In 1918 and 1919, the Allies occupied a large part of the Ottoman territories (Istanbul, Mosul, Iskenderun/Alexandretta, Kilis, Antep, Maraş, Urfa, Mersin, Osmaniye, Adana, Antalya). In terms of the Armenian refugee situation, Allied rule marked the beginning of a new era. Thousands of Armenian survivors poured into Istanbul hoping to secure permanent shelter and protection. About 35,000 Armenian exiles came to the city from the provinces between 1914 and 1920. Refugee centers and orphanages were packed. With not only Armenians, but also Russians, Greeks, and others, Istanbul was a center of exile in the aftermath of World War I.

  23. Marc Nichanian, The Historiographic Perversion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 104.

  24. This is the case regarding the diary of Vahram Altounian, entitled “Everything I endured from 1915 to 1919”. The notebook written in Turkish with Armenian alphabet was discovered in 1978 and was translated into French in 1980. Vahram Altounian, Janine Altounian, Krikor Beledian, Mémoires du génocide arménien: héritage traumatique et travail analytique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France-PUF, 2009). The memoir was translated into Turkish based on the original manuscript. Vahram Altounian, Janine Altounian, Geri Dönüşü Yok: Bir Babanın Güncesinde ve Kızının Belleğinde Ermeni Soykırımı (Istanbul: Aras Yayıncılık, 2015).

  25. For further information, see Nazan Maksudyan, “Self, Family, and Society: Individual and Communal Reflections on the Armenian Genocide,” Journal of Levantine Studies 5/2 2015): 197–206.

  26. Aram Andonian, [Medz Vochirı, The Great Crime] (Boston: Hayrenik, 1921).

  27. Asya Darbinyan, Rubina Peroomian, “Children: The Most Vulnerable Victims of the Armenian Genocide,” in Plight and Fate of Children During and Following Genocide, ed. Samuel Totten (New York: Routledge, 2018), 57–84.

  28. Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, “A Climate for Abduction, a Climate for Redemption: The Politics of Inclusion During and After the Armenian Genocide,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55/3 (2013): 522–553; Keith D. Watenpaugh, “‘Are There Any Children for Sale?’: Genocide and the Transfer of Armenian Children (1915–1922),” Journal of Human Rights 12 (2013): 283–95.

  29. Antranig Dzarugyan’s (1913–89) autobiographical book, (1985) Men Deprived of their Childhood (Mangutyun çunetsoğ martig, Beirut, 1955), kept referring to the talented (carbigner) and the untalented (ancaragner), Antranig Dzarugyan, (1977) Çocukluğu Olmayan Adamlar, (Istanbul: Aras Yayıncılık, 2016), 11, 16, 31, 33, 49, 74. Papken Injarabian also referred to the talented and untalented, Papken Injarabian, Azo the Slave Boy and His Road to Freedom (London: Gomidas Institute, 2015), 93. Also see, Miller and Touryan Miller, Survivors, 113.

  30. Dirouhi Kouymjian Highgas describes how hard her parents tried to hide her so that the gendarmes would not take her away. Refugee Girl (Watertown, MA: Baykar, 1985).

  31. Miller and Touryan Miller, Survivors, 109.

  32. Ibid., 113.

  33. Injarabian, Azo the Slave Boy, 1–14.

  34. Kerop Bedoukian was also 9 when the deportations in Sivas had started. The Urchin: An Armenian’s Escape (London: Butler and Tanner Ltd., 1978).

    Injarabian, Azo the Slave Boy, 83.

  35. Food scarcity and hunger was a common problem in all orphanages, in Turkish, Armenian, or American alike. Ramela Martin, who was a very little girl during the genocide, had been in different Near East Relief orphanages in Aleppo, Beirut, Istanbul, and Corinth. Her account of each were equally sad, filled with accounts of children dying from hunger and several illnesses. Ramela Martin, Out of Darkness (Cambridge, MA: Zoryan Institute Publications, 1989).

  36. Injarabian, Azo the Slave Boy, 100–111.

  37. Injarabian, Azo the Slave Boy and Aram Haigaz, Four Years in the Mountains of Kurdistan: An Armenian Boy’s Memoir of Survival, trans. Iris Haigaz Chekenian (Bronxville, New York: Maiden Lane Press, 2015) are full of examples of these.

  38. BOA, DH.EUM.2.Şb, 48/56, 28/Ra/1336 (10.02.1918).

  39. BOA, MF.MKT., 1238/71, 13/N/1337 (14.05.1919).

  40. The abridged memoirs are recently published in English (with a different title). Karnig Panian, Goodbye, Antoura: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015).

  41. Ibid., 83.

  42. Ibid., 85–89.

  43. Ibid., 97.

  44. Altounian, Geri Dönüşü Yok, 14–24.

  45. Abrahamian, (2014) Avedis’ Story, 72.

  46. MacKeen, (2016)The Hundred-Year Walk, 118.

  47. Dzarugyan, Çocukluğu Olmayan Adamlar, 21–26; Injarabian, Azo the Slave Boy, 99; Panian, Goodbye, Antoura, 117.

  48. Miller and Touryan Miller, Survivors , 119.

  49. Injarabian, Azo the Slave Boy, 34.

  50. Miller and Touryan Miller, Survivors , 114.

  51. Panian, Goodbye, Antoura, 101.

  52. Ibid.

  53. Panyan, (2018) Yetimlik Anıları, 302.

  54. MacKeen, (2016) The Hundred-Year Walk, 14.

  55. Panian, Goodbye, Antoura, 33.

  56. Karnig Panyan, Yetimlik Anıları (Istanbul: Aras Yayıncılık, 2018), 101–102.

  57. George Eisen, Children and Play in the Holocaust: Games Among the Shadows (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 10.

  58. Panian, Goodbye, Antoura, 67.

  59. Abrahamian, (2014) Avedis’ Story, 39.

  60. Abrahamian, Avedis’ Story, 70.

  61. Dzarugyan, Çocukluğu Olmayan Adamlar, 200.

  62. Panyan, Yetimlik Anıları, 184–185.

  63. Miller and Touryan Miller, Survivors , 115–117.

  64. Dzarugyan, Çocukluğu Olmayan Adamlar, 167.

  65. Ibid., 176.

  66. Eisen, Children and Play in the Holocaust, 42.

  67. Krikor Beledian and Janine Altounian stress the numbness and the absence of graphic descriptions of pain in Vahram Altounian’s diary. Régine Waintrater also underlines the overall respect for the “craft of survival” in the narrative. Altounian, Geri Dönüşü Yok, 103, 122, 124, 160; Nichanian, M. (2006) Entre l'art et le témoignage: Le roman de la catastrophe, vol. 3., Geneva, Metis Presses.

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  1. Centre Marc Bloch, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Nazan Maksudyan

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Maksudyan, N. The Armenian Genocide and Survival Narratives of Children. Childhood Vulnerability 1, 15–30 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41255-019-00002-8

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