The Ghosts of Our Past: A Personal Look Into Armenian’s Greatest Tragedy
By: Lucy Keroglyan
Tags: Personal Essay

I am the proud daughter of immigrants and the great-granddaughter of genocide survivors.

The year was 1915, and there were many Armenians living happily in the Caucasus Mountain Range and all through the middle eastern region. The Armenian people are known to be one of the oldest cultures in the world. Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as a whole. It is said that one of Jesus’ Apostles was Armenian. After Judas betrayed Jesus, Saint Matthias became his 12th Apostle.

Etchmiadzin Cathedral built in 483AD located in Vagharshapat, Armenia. One of the oldest Christian churches in the world. (Photo from Oldest.org)

Then came the Turks. The Turks thought the Armenians were living on their land like rats. So they decided to systematically murder 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. It almost happened again in 2020, but by Azerbaijan this time.



I grew up as a child hearing that Adolf Hilter himself was inspired by the Armenian Genocide. Stefan Ihrig, a professor at the University of Haifa and director of the Haifa Center for German and European Studies, defines genocide as a crime against humanity, characterized by the intent to annihilate a group defined by presumed group characteristics, such as ethnicity, religion, or class.

“The German-Turkish Treaty of Friendship of 1941.” (source: Wikipedia)

“Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Hilter said during his Obersalzberg Speech in 1939. When I first learned what Hilter did to the Jewish people during World War I, it horrified me. I ran out of the classroom, crying once when my teacher showed us a movie about the Holocaust. Then I learned that Hitler was inspired by what happened to my people, which was heartbreaking.



Just like all my fellow Armenian friends, I have stories of my ancestors during that period. Stories that have stuck with me my whole life. My great grandmother on my father’s father’s side and her family were fleeing the Ottoman soldiers. They were pushed out of their village in Usak, which is in modern-day central Turkey. Usak was mostly populated with Christian Armenians and some Muslim Turks. But before the war, everyone was friendly and neighborly. Folks from neighboring villages were coming to Usak with news of soldiers taking Armenian people into deserts and they would never return. Out of fear and knowledge, my great grandparents decided to leave before the soldier came.

Undated photo by Armin Wegner believed to be taken during the death marches during the Armenian Genocide. (Photo from Boston Globe)

They left their home with only the clothes on their back and whatever they could carry. They traveled on foot for days semi safely until one terrible night. My great grandmother was chased into a cave. They quietly waited for the soldiers to pass. She had a newborn baby who was barely alive. The cave was damp and moist, no place for a baby, even for a night. They were safe most of the night. But then the baby woke up from his sleep and started to cry.

The unspeakable had to be done. Like many other mothers during those days, my great grandmother had to kill her own child. She suffocated him with her own dress to save herself and her other children. My grandfather had not been born yet, but he told me that she didn’t stop crying for months after that. It had consumed her to the point where she wanted to kill herself when they arrived safely in Syria, where they lived in peace until they moved to Yerevan in the 1930s.

My great-grandmother’s story wasn’t the only one. Many young Armenians grew up hearing stories of their ancestors doing anything they could to survive.

Photo of an Armenian woman kneeling beside a dead child during the Armenian Genocide. (Photo from Armenianweekly)

My great grandparents on my father’s side were living in Istanbul in 1915. They were factory workers up until the war. The factory owner was a Turk who disagreed with what the government was doing to the Armenian people. He was a rich man with a kind heart, according to my grandmother. He secretly bought fake paperwork for all of his Armenian workers and was able to ship them off with his products to neighboring countries. Some people went to France, some went to America, and some ended up in modern-day Russia.

My grandparents were sent to Russia. My grandparents’ last name was supposed to be something else, but it sounded too Armenian. The factory owner gave everyone Turkish last names to help them not get caught while traveling. My grandparents have forgotten their original last name, and there is no way of finding out what it was. They had to burn all official documents of their previous names.

When I first heard this story, I was nine years old, and I struggled with my identity for several months due to this. Every time I would write my last name, I would remember back to the story and try to think what my real name was supposed to be. I thought I would have been a different person if I had a different name. I grew up out of it, but to this day, I wonder what my real last name would have been.

I was confused about how someone could forget their god-given last name, but my grandparents explained that when they were living in Russia, they still pretended to be Turkish. They told their new children they were Turkish out of fear of getting caught. When they moved to modern-day Armenia, they were able to relax and accept their religion again.



My personal fun-favorite is a story from my mother’s mother’s side. My great grandfather was living in Ankara when the war started. A Russian circus was in town, and one of the acrobats was willing to help my great grandfather flee the country. He was the last person alive in his family, and he did everything alone. He pretended to a circus worker until they got back to Russia. He was so grateful he changed his last name to the acrobat’s name. His name was Abraham, and now my maternal last name is Abramyan.



Growing up hearing these stories made me feel so lucky to be born Armenian. I am who I am today because I grew up hearing the sorrowful stories of my grandparents’ stories. It made me strong.