WEBVTT

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In 1913, the Ottoman Empire
came to be ruled

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by Talaat, Enver and Djemal Pasha.

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Under their leadership,

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a national movement was orchestrated
to unify the Turkic people in the region,

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and ultimately remove
all non-Muslims from the land.

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The presence of the Armenian people,
as well as other Christian minorities,

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was not conducive
to this new Turkish ideology,

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and thus the Armenians were subjected
to systematic decapitalization,

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deportation and ultimate extermination.

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Over a hundred years have passed

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since the events that marked
the start of the Armenian Genocide.

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From 1915 into the early 1920s,

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over 1.5 million Armenians
lost their lives

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at the hands of the Ottoman
Turkish government.

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Over 1.5 million lives cut prematurely,

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over 1.5 million stories were never told.

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But I'm here today

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to tell one story of
an Armenian Genocide survivor,

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my great-grandmother, Anna Tutundjian.

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Anna's story begins in Sivas, Turkey,
where she was born in 1903.

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She was 11 years old in the summer of 1915

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when Ottoman Turkish
officials came into town

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and rounded up all of the Armenians.

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The men and young boys
were soon separated from the group,

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and Anna watched

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as her father, uncles and beloved cousins
were shot to death.

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Shortly after the men were
removed and killed,

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the infant babies were taken
from their mothers,

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including Anna's baby brother.

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These babies were then buried
in the ground only up to their shoulders,

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and Anna watched
as horses trampled over them.

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All that remained at the end of the day

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were the women, the young girls,
and the elderly.

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But fate wouldn't spare them much longer.

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Soon after, the officials came back,

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and they ordered
all of the Armenian women,

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and all who remained,

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that they needed to evacuate their homes.

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Anna remembers helping her mother
tie whatever belongings they could

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into sheets,

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and sew their belongings into sheets.

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And very soon, the women, including Anna,
her mother and her sisters,

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began a march, a death march,

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ultimately through Turkey
into and through the Syrian desert.

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On this march, they had no food,

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other than whatever
they had carried from home.

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And, as you can imagine,
it didn't last very long.

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They walked all day,
and only stopped at night.

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Water was scarce.

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Anna says that whenever they saw
a spring or a well,

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they would try to go to it
and fill their jugs.

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But that's only if they were able
to get away from the caravan

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without being noticed.

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Anna says she was with hundreds
of women - women, children alike,

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and she remembers
it took about two or three days

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before the first of these women
began to drop out of formation.

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One morning, early one morning,
before the march began again,

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Anna and her sisters were at a well
filling their water jug.

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While at the well, a man grabbed her.

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Anna screamed and kicked and cried out,

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and her sisters ran back
to get their mother.

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But by the time their mother returned,
by the time the sisters returned,

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Anna had been taken.

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Anna does not know
where her abductor took her,

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but, at 11 years old,
he chose her to be his new wife.

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He already had a wife though.


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Many, in fact,

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and she became one of about 15 or 20
other young Armenian girls,

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just like herself, in his harem.

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Anna says that he would
pretty much leave her alone,

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but that he also called her
his "pretty one".

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Within the year,
Anna had given birth to a daughter.

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And by the time Anna was 13 years old,
she had given birth to another.

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Although she loved her children,

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day after day, she thought
only about running away,

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she missed her mother and her sisters,

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and wanted more than anything
to leave this man.

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The problem was she was never alone.

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There was never a window of opportunity
for her to do anything by herself,

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let alone escape.

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The girls always had
to accompany each other

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no matter where they went,
or what they did.

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If a girl stepped out of line,
or tried to do anything on her own,

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the girls would squeal on one another

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in hopes of being rewarded
by their captor.

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One night, the girl who was supposed
to accompany Anna to the outhouse

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was too tired to do so.

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She let Anna go alone,

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figuring probably
that Anna has two daughters,

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she's going to go,
do her business, and come back.

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But Anna took that
as an opportunity to escape.

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And she did.

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She ran and managed to escape ...

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although alone.

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She ran through the night,

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and eventually made her way
to an Armenian church.

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However, the church couldn't help her,

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and she ended up running away
from them as well.

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She's still only 13 years old.

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She found an Armenian priest

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who took her in, gave her a refuge,

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and ultimately helped her
to get to Aleppo, Syria,

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which at the time was becoming
a makeshift resettlement community

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for all of the Armenians

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who were surviving
the death marches through the desert.

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Anna lived in an orphanage for years.

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She worked with other survivors,
other girls her age,

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working, and weaving rugs.

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And every Armenian she met, she'd ask,

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"Do you know my family?
Do you know my mother?

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Have you heard what happened to them?"

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And one day, her question was answered.

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"Yes, I know your mother.
I know your sisters.

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They're alive. They survived.

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They're living in Marseilles, France."

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With the help of the AGBU,
the Armenian General Benevolent Union,

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an Armenian humanitarian organization,
still very active today,

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Anna was able to go to France,

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and was finally reunited with her mother.

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At this point, she was in her early 20s.

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This reunion, however, was short-lived

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because, unbeknown to Anna,

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halfway around the world in America,

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her future husband
was making his way to France.

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Now, by 1925, my great-grandfather,

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Kevork Malikyan,

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had been living in America
for over 20 years.

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He was married

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and had two daughters of his own.

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One of them was a newborn,

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and his wife was having a hard time
producing milk for the newborn

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and was given the advice
that she should ice her chest.

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This, however, caused her
to get pneumonia,

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and she died,

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leaving Kevork alone
to care for his two girls.

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And he was able to get by for a while
with the help of some relatives.

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But after some time,
these relatives were saying,

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"This is too much for us.

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You need to remarry.

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You need to find a wife
and someone to take care of your girls."

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He was told that there was
a large Armenian community

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living in Marseilles.

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He should go there, find a wife,
bring one home.

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So he did.

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In 1925, my great-grandfather
went to Marseilles.

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He went to the rug factory
where Anna was working,

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and admired her.

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He then found her mother,
told her of his intentions,

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By the time Anna came home
from work that night,

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the arrangements were all made.

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Kevork and Anna were married the next day.

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Shortly after their little
wedding ceremony,

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they boarded a ship and came to America.

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Kevork and Anna went on
to have three more children.

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Their first, born in 1927,
is my grandmother.

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Growing up, my grandmother knew

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that her mother was
an Armenian Genocide survivor.

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However, the genocide
was never spoken about,

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except in very generalized terms,

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like, "The horrors we Armenians saw",

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or, "The crimes the Turks,
the Ottoman Turks, did to us".

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After Kevork's passing in 1962,

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Anna started receiving letters
from relatives in Turkey.

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When my grandmother questioned her
about these letters,

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she would say that they were
from sisters of hers.

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But these were sisters that Anna
had never previously spoken about.

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These were sisters that, growing up,

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my grandmother never even knew existed.

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In the beginning of the summer of 1964,

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Anna announced
that she was going to go visit them.

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This caused my grandmother great stress

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because Anna had never traveled
anywhere alone in her adult life,

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let alone to another country.

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And she hadn't been to Turkey
since she was an 11-year-old child.

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But Anna was a stubborn woman,
and she persisted,

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and in the beginning of
the summer of 1964,

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she went back to Turkey.

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When she returned
at the end of the summer of 1964,

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she sat my grandmother down
and admitted to her

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that the sister she had gone to visit,

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the relative she had gone to visit,
the women she was calling her "sisters",

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weren't actually her sisters.

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They were her two daughters,

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the two daughters she had abandoned
when she was 13 years old.

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In the letters of correspondence

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she had been sending
back and forth to Turkey,

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she found out that her abductor had died.

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So for the first time in nearly 50 years,

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she felt it was safe to go back
and to go find these girls,

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who, of course, themselves
were women at the time.

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It took Anna 50 years to speak the truth

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of what she witnessed with the massacres

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and with her experience
of being abducted and the rape.

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And ...

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while I could have chosen to tell -

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While I chose to tell Anna's story,

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I could just as well have told
any of my great-grandparents' story,

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all of whom survived the genocide,

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all of whom experienced
equally incomprehensible hardships.

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I am here today because of
the strength that they had,

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and I see that strength
continue to be embodied every day

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in my parents and in my grandparents.

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I say that I'm an Armenian-American,
a third-generation Armenian-American,

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but it might be more fitting to say

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that I am a third-generation
Armenian Genocide survivor,

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because I am the great-great-grandchild
of men and women

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who never even had an opportunity
to dream that I would exist.

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So I like to think
it's my duty and my obligation

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to tell their story

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and to keep the history of all of those
who came before me alive.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)