Recovered Testimony Brings Light, More Questions, to an Armenian Family

In 1914 about 30,000 Armenians — some 4,000 families — lived in Gaziantep. From the testimony, I gathered that Mary’s mother was able to secure her family an exemption from the deportations, possibly because as tailors they could contribute to the war effort by committing to sew military uniforms. When Mary’s father returned, close to a year after he was drafted into the Ottoman Army, he stayed in hiding in the house helping the family sew uniforms.

Mary shares that only a few other local Armenian families were also spared, as their skills and craftsmanship were deemed useful to the government. However, thousands were violently sent away in several waves of deportations to either the deserts of Dayr-al-Zawr, the region of Hama, Homs and Selimiye or the Jebel Druz region, in southern Syria and areas of present-day Jordan. Mary remembers that only a few Armenians returned to Gaziantep after the war.

Out of an estimated population of close to 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1914, around 1.5 million Armenians were killed during the Genocide, mostly in 1915 and 1916 but continuing even after. Today, Armenians make up a small percentage of Turkey’s minority population.

Mary expresses heartache reflecting on the loss of other family members and neighbors. I had assumed Mary had been orphaned during the Genocide, so I was shocked and heartened to hear that her parents and siblings survived.

While listening to her testimony, it was also endearing to learn the story of how Mary and my great-grandfather, Yeghia Antekelian, became engaged. Initially, when Yeghia’s family had asked Mary’s father for her hand, he had refused, since Mary was only 16. However, Yeghia continued to show up for months at their home every day until, exasperated and worn down, Mary’s father agreed to let them marry.

They were engaged in 1920, but a new war broke out in Gaziantep between Turkish Nationalists and the French Army who occupied the region. The Armenian community, including Mary and Yeghia’s families, were forced out of the region during the Siege of Aintab (Antep). The couple finally reunited and wed in Aleppo, Syria, in 1921. Shortly after, they moved to Alexandria, Egypt, where their sons Levon (my Grandpa) and Gevork were born in 1928 and 1938. In 1948, many Armenians, including Yeghia and Mary, repatriated to Armenia, which was then a part of the Soviet Union.

Levon Antekelian married Sirvard Danayan in 1956. They had two sons, my father, Andranik and his brother, Hovannes. Levon and Sirvard and their sons immigrated to Los Angeles in 1976, with Mary following in 1981 with her son Gevork and his family.

Though my Grandma and Grandpa have both passed away, they left behind a treasure trove of family photos.

On a recent Sunday evening, I visited my Uncle Hovik, hoping to rummage through these old photographs. I walked into his house to find that he, my aunt and my cousins already had the albums stacked on the dining room table and photos piled all around them.

I joined the expedition into family history. We passed around photos, laughing at familiar faces from a different era, and wondered at faces no one could name. My uncle and aunt shared memories about the photos—funny, sad, and heartwarming stories that my cousins and I had never heard.

Around that dining room table, I asked my uncle if he was ready to listen to some of the testimony. Yes, he said, he was. As I played a clip from my laptop—voices recorded nearly 40 years ago about events that occurred more than 100 years ago—I watched this man, who has the biggest heart, transported back in time, just as I had been.

More than a century after the Genocide, Armenian families still live with its reverberations. We inherited trauma, we inherited fear, we inherited a sense of indignity that our trauma was not recognized or honored.

But we also inherited a passionate and deep commitment to our culture, to our history, to remembrance, and to family.

(Sedda Antekelian is USC Shoah Foundation’s Senior Learning and Development. She is a fourth-generation survivor of the Armenian Genocide. This article was originally published on the USC Shoah Foundation website.)