99 - all you should know about the Genocide April, 2014 | Page 54

Until the 1960s, the men and women miraculously

to them, no matter how cruel it seemed. At that

saved

narrating

same time, a new generation had come about in

anything about the bitterest years of their lives.

Soviet Armenia as well, which had gained more

This was the case both among the migrant families

or less freedom of expression after the “great and

who had found shelter in Soviet Armenia and the

small thaws” that followed Stalin’s regime. They

Armenian households that had settled across the

began to extract testimonials from their fathers

world, in the Diaspora.

and grandfathers about the tragedy of 1915. That

It was not acceptable for an elderly Armenian

tragedy was simply called the Metz Aghet (“Great

woman to tell her children how she and the other

Catastrophe”) till the 1960s, because there was

young girls suffering with her had been assaulted

no other word to describe what had happened.

by gangs. An elderly Armenian man could not tell

Using the term “genocide” had not been permitted

his grandchildren how his parents were humiliated

due to political considerations (which is why the

and his sisters violated before his eyes. The

Tsitsernakaberd monument was called the Metz

survivors preferred to stay silent and take their

Yeghern memorial).

from

the

Genocide

avoided

pain and shame with them to the grave.

In the mid-1960s, Armenian society heard the

However, after the Second World War, when

testimonials of Genocide witnesses for the first time.

Jewish mothers began to obligate their children to

60-70 year old grandmothers and grandfathers

remember the names of every German responsible

spoke to the world for the first time and narrated

for the Holocaust and to carry the spirit of

what

vengeance with them to the death, the Armenian

Armenians, voice recorders in hand, began to knock

Diaspora communities started to narrate stories

on the doors of survivors in order to document and

that had nearly been forgotten.

archive the memoirs of a disappearing generation.

In the 1950s and 60s, a new generation had come

And it turned out that there was almost no family

about in the Diaspora which had been born, raised,

in Armenia and the Diaspora that had not felt the

educated and ideologically developed in the free

blow of the Genocide. What began as a witness

world. They simply forced their parents to tell the

testimonial turned into a group confessional by the

truth, to confess everything that had happened

Armenian nation.

The family of Genocide survivor Hripsime Haji Sargsyan, 1911

had

happened

to

them.

Many

young