An Armenian Genocide survivor's story | Lucine Z. Kinoian | TEDxBergenCommunityCollege

Lucine Z. Kinoian's talk is on the circumstance and luck that allowed her paternal great-grandparents to survive the Armenian Genocide in spite of the demoralizing suffering they endured, and the looming, inevitable fate that took the lives of their relatives and loved ones. Kinoian's talk will focus specifically on her great-grandmother, whose story is that of abduction and abuse. Kinoian believes that who we are as individuals is a product of all those who came before us, and that we have an obligation to ourselves, to our society, and to the world at large, to know, acknowledge, and learn from the stories of our past. Over a century has passed since the events that mark the start of the Armenian Genocide, and in telling her great- grandmother's story, Kinoian hopes to be the voice of a generation that is long gone and in danger of being forgotten.

Lucine Z. Kinoian is a third-generation Armenian-American who is active in the respective New York and New Jersey Armenian communities. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Comparative Literature and Philosophy from Rutgers University and a Master’s degree in English Education from Columbia University. Kinoian currently works as an English teacher in the Tenafly, NJ school district.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

In 1913, the Ottoman Empire
came to be ruled

by Talaat, Enver and Djemal Pasha.

Under their leadership,

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

and ultimately remove
all non-Muslims from the land.

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

was not conducive
to this new Turkish ideology,

and thus the Armenians were subjected
to systematic decapitalization,

deportation and ultimate extermination.

Over a hundred years have passed

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

From 1915 into the early 1920s,

over 1.5 million Armenians
lost their lives

at the hands of the Ottoman
Turkish government.

Over 1.5 million lives cut prematurely,

over 1.5 million stories were never told.

But I'm here today

to tell one story of
an Armenian Genocide survivor,

my great-grandmother, Anna Tutundjian.

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

She was 11 years old in the summer of 1915

when Ottoman Turkish
officials came into town

and rounded up all of the Armenians.

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

and Anna watched

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

Shortly after the men were
removed and killed,

the infant babies were taken
from their mothers,

including Anna's baby brother.

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

and Anna watched
as horses trampled over them.

All that remained at the end of the day

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

But fate wouldn't spare them much longer.

Soon after, the officials came back,

and they ordered
all of the Armenian women,

and all who remained,

that they needed to evacuate their homes.

Anna remembers helping her mother
tie whatever belongings they could

into sheets,

and sew their belongings into sheets.

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

began a march, a death march,

ultimately through Turkey
into and through the Syrian desert.

On this march, they had no food,

other than whatever
they had carried from home.

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

They walked all day,
and only stopped at night.

Water was scarce.

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

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

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

without being noticed.

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

and she remembers
it took about two or three days

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

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

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

While at the well, a man grabbed her.

Anna screamed and kicked and cried out,

and her sisters ran back
to get their mother.

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

Anna had been taken.

Anna does not know
where her abductor took her,

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

He already had a wife though.

Many, in fact,

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

just like herself, in his harem.

Anna says that he would
pretty much leave her alone,

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

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

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

Although she loved her children,

day after day, she thought
only about running away,

she missed her mother and her sisters,

and wanted more than anything
to leave this man.

The problem was she was never alone.

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

let alone escape.

The girls always had
to accompany each other

no matter where they went,
or what they did.

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

the girls would squeal on one another

in hopes of being rewarded
by their captor.

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

was too tired to do so.

She let Anna go alone,

figuring probably
that Anna has two daughters,

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

But Anna took that
as an opportunity to escape.

And she did.

She ran and managed to escape ...

although alone.

She ran through the night,

and eventually made her way
to an Armenian church.

However, the church couldn't help her,

and she ended up running away
from them as well.

She's still only 13 years old.

She found an Armenian priest

who took her in, gave her a refuge,

and ultimately helped her
to get to Aleppo, Syria,

which at the time was becoming
a makeshift resettlement community

for all of the Armenians

who were surviving
the death marches through the desert.

Anna lived in an orphanage for years.

She worked with other survivors,
other girls her age,

working, and weaving rugs.

And every Armenian she met, she'd ask,

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

Have you heard what happened to them?"

And one day, her question was answered.

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

They're alive. They survived.

They're living in Marseilles, France."

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

an Armenian humanitarian organization,
still very active today,

Anna was able to go to France,

and was finally reunited with her mother.

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

This reunion, however, was short-lived

because, unbeknown to Anna,

halfway around the world in America,

her future husband
was making his way to France.

Now, by 1925, my great-grandfather,

Kevork Malikyan,

had been living in America
for over 20 years.

He was married

and had two daughters of his own.

One of them was a newborn,

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

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

This, however, caused her
to get pneumonia,

and she died,

leaving Kevork alone
to care for his two girls.

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

But after some time,
these relatives were saying,

"This is too much for us.

You need to remarry.

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

He was told that there was
a large Armenian community

living in Marseilles.

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

So he did.

In 1925, my great-grandfather
went to Marseilles.

He went to the rug factory
where Anna was working,

and admired her.

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

By the time Anna came home
from work that night,

the arrangements were all made.

Kevork and Anna were married the next day.

Shortly after their little
wedding ceremony,

they boarded a ship and came to America.

Kevork and Anna went on
to have three more children.

Their first, born in 1927,
is my grandmother.

Growing up, my grandmother knew

that her mother was
an Armenian Genocide survivor.

However, the genocide
was never spoken about,

except in very generalized terms,

like, "The horrors we Armenians saw",

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

After Kevork's passing in 1962,

Anna started receiving letters
from relatives in Turkey.

When my grandmother questioned her
about these letters,

she would say that they were
from sisters of hers.

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

These were sisters that, growing up,

my grandmother never even knew existed.

In the beginning of the summer of 1964,

Anna announced
that she was going to go visit them.

This caused my grandmother great stress

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

let alone to another country.

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

But Anna was a stubborn woman,
and she persisted,

and in the beginning of
the summer of 1964,

she went back to Turkey.

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

she sat my grandmother down
and admitted to her

that the sister she had gone to visit,

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

weren't actually her sisters.

They were her two daughters,

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

In the letters of correspondence

she had been sending
back and forth to Turkey,

she found out that her abductor had died.

So for the first time in nearly 50 years,

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

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

It took Anna 50 years to speak the truth

of what she witnessed with the massacres

and with her experience
of being abducted and the rape.

And ...

while I could have chosen to tell -

While I chose to tell Anna's story,

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

all of whom survived the genocide,

all of whom experienced
equally incomprehensible hardships.

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

and I see that strength
continue to be embodied every day

in my parents and in my grandparents.

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

but it might be more fitting to say

that I am a third-generation
Armenian Genocide survivor,

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

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

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

to tell their story

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

Thank you.

(Applause)