A Letter from an Armenian Survivor

By Emilia Valente

Student #100610598

February 8, 2011

Prof. Zdenka Acin

Women and War

GHUM 1070
This is a translation of a letter that was to an American Missionary in Istanbul form Beirut,
Lebanon:

January 25th 1924,

Beirut, Lebanon

To whom it may concern,

My name is Seda Saroyan. I am a survivor of the massacre that occurred against my people in
my birth country of Turkey between the years of 1915-1923. At the time it started I was 15
years old. I use to live in Van, a small city in located in what is now called Eastern Turkey.
There were a large number of my people living throughout Eastern Turkey, about 2 million of us.
Van and Eastern Turkey had been part of our homeland for more than 3,000 years. Before the
Great War the Ottoman Empire and the Turks were suffering, while the minority communities
were still fairly wealthy. Under the Ottoman Empire we minorities, the Christians Greeks,
Armenians and the Jews were still oppressed, over-taxed and our rights were limited. We were
given some religious freedom, but that would soon change. The Kurds were given more rights
than us because they practice Islam. Here Christians such as us are oppressed greatly. In the
early 1900’s the Turkish monarchy headed by Sultan Abdul Hamid II collapsed and the CUP
(Committee Union and Progress) formed a government coup. In Turkish the party was called
Ittihad ve Terakki Jemiyeti. They were a nationalistic group who dreamt of a Pan-Turkish
country of Anatolia. Ideally they only wanted Turkish Muslims in the country however they
allowed the Kurdish to stay. Anyone else, including my people, were ordered to leave. We were
considered to be the most treasonous minority. The insecurity of the CUP caused them to order a
“deportation” all Armenians in Turkey.
I remember in mid-April 1915 one evening my entire family and I - all 15 of us gathering for
dinner. Our house was located in the Armenian quarters of Van. Turkish and Kurdish soldiers
broke into our home and demanded we leave immediately and take nothing with us. My father,
grandfather and my two uncles tried to defend us against these soldiers. They shot my father and
my uncle in the head in front of all of us. I remember my mother and elder sister screaming at
the men to stop. I was crying and ran over to my father’s body, begging him to wake up. One of
the Kurdish soldiers pushed me off of him and told me to be quiet. All of women and children
were rounded up in my family and ordered to leave with the Turkish men. My grandfather and
my uncle were taken away and were never to be seen again. We were rounded up and taken to a
train station and, like cattle, loaded into these trains. We were taken to the neighbouring town.
There we met other Armenian families and all of us, over thousand people or so, were forced to
March south non-stop to Syria. In order to get there we had to travel through the Syrian Desert.
We were targets for attacks by government agents and tribes. We had no food, so many of my
younger family members starved to death during this long journey to Syria. My aunt and mother
stayed behind to be with my dying younger cousins and sibling. This would be the last time I
saw them. My mother told me, my elder cousin and sister to stay together. We stayed together
for awhile but that come to an end when my older sister was kidnapped by a group of Kurdish
soldiers. She was being taken away and raped. We tried to rescue her but were beaten back into
line and forced to keep walking. Beatings were common if we lagged behind the rest of the
group. Any individual who was too weak to go on was left to die. God only knows what
happened to my younger brother, mother and cousins who we were forced to leave behind. My
sister Aleena, while being dragged away, was screaming for our parents and then myself and my
cousin, Yeghia. I cried and never found out what happened to Aleena and it still haunts me to
this day. My cousin and I walked together for days until one day once again we were attacked
by more government agents. This time I was one of many young girls kidnapped. Yeghia was
hopeless in rescuing me. As I was being dragged away I yelled to him in Armenian so they did
not understand what I was telling him, “Yeghia, go on, stay alive, go to Syria. Once you get there
you will be free and I will join you there as soon as I can”. Two years later Yeghia and I would
be reunited in Beirut. That was the most joyful experience in my life. Meanwhile, I was
dragged through the dessert along with fifteen other women. We were taken to a neighbouring
town, where we were raped and beaten on a daily basis. A few of us realized if we didn’t escape
from the Turks we would die. I met a woman there named Rahan Kachian. Together we
managed to escape out of the town and literally for two days ran to safety until we reach a Syrian
town in the State of Aleppo. When we reach Syria, we knew we were safe for now.

While in Syria I got to know Rahan’s story and it was heartbreaking like mine. Rahan is 4 years
younger than me, she grew up in small Armenian town in the province of Van. She told me
“Kurdish and Turkish soldiers surrounded my house and took everything that they could carry”.
Her entire family was massacred and her village was destroyed too. Only she and younger family
members and an elder relative survived. However her father was killed instantly and she
witnessed her father’s decapitation. She recounts the time to me in tears, what she told me will
forever be in my mind. Rahan told that “the ones who survived, we ran away, my father who
was also there, he ran into the woods. Army soldiers went after him and cut his head off. Oh we
cried. What can we do? We hugged him and took the head and we cried some more. Then with
our hands we dug the ground and buried him”. She told me there were hundreds of dead bodies
in the streets of her village. The soldiers would burn houses and churches - sometimes people
would be in them. Rahan and I parted ways some years later. I learned she immigrated to
America. Traveling through Syria, I met other Armenians who told me of stories of the rapes,
executions and torture they had witnessed. Many talked of their towns being massacred and
destroyed. Survivors saw hundreds bodies of others on the ground either dead or dying. Some
even saw children literally dying on the street from starvation. Others could hear the cries of
woman being raped or gang-raped by army soldiers. One woman who was from Hadijan, told
me in the earlier part of 1920 said her town which had a population of 25,000 to 30,000
Armenians was totally wiped out. By the end of the war we learned 8,000 people from the town
were left.

Last year I travel down to Beirut, Lebanon where a huge amount of Armenians had settled.
There I met a young man. His name was Bedros Gezoulian. He told me about his experiences.
Bedros said to me that “My family was large one, about 70 of us, only about 7 or 8 survived, 61
members perished.” Bedros also told me that as his mother “died crying”, they watched his little
brother died of starvation and learned of his two older sister’s deaths. His other siblings, he
remembers, were given up by his mother for adoption to increase the chances of there survival.
One can only hope the homes they were adopted into would have people with some sense of
compassion. Not all Turkish people were horrible to us - it was mainly the government officials.
However most families who adopted Armenian child or hired adults forced my people to convert
to Islam and stop speaking Armenian. Many did to survive and stayed in Turkey, if they wanted
to be safe in our homeland, which had to erased our entire culture. I learned through reading
news paper articles and speaking with others that disease also claimed a lot of people in my
community because many had not had a proper meal, bath or clean clothes for months or years.
Many people suffered from such serious illnesses as Typhus and Cholera. Reports that I read
about the situation in Turkey from an American relief organization called NEAR EAST RELIEF,
which had relief centers in Greece and in Eastern Turkey that were established to care for
motherless children who mainly survived being taken to the mountains. Those sent to the
mountains were meant to die.
I am writing to you to let you know of my personal experiences and that of my friends, in the
hopes that you and your government will pressure the League of Nations to condemn the Turkish
government for massacring my people. I hope this evil shall never be repeated again. Because
of the actions that have happen over the past seven years, the scares of this period in our history
will forever be in hearts and minds of my people. One day we shall hopefully overcome this and
the Turkish and Armenians will once again live together in peace. My wish is for all people to
live together in harmony regardless of our differences.

Thank you for your time. I hope to hear back from you. Enclosed are some pictures for you to
better understand the suffering we went through.

Sincerely,

Seda Saroyan