"It was in May 1915 that the Turkish Government uprooted us from Darman2 and all our villages and tried to destroy us all. Our houses, farms, sheep, cows, fuel, horses, donkeys, chickens, our furniture, beds, foods, and all belongings were collected and forcefully confiscated. They didn’t give even one piastre as payment for all they took.
My step-father, when they were going to kill him, pleaded that they let him pray before dying. As he knelt and prayed, they took a sword and cut off his head. They marched us into the mountains, fields and gorges to die of hunger. All the Armenian men and boys were killed with axes and swords. And all the women and girls were killed through thirst, hunger and an even worse fate that I don’t wish to say. Pregnant women were eviscerated, their stomachs cut open with swords and their babies ripped out, thrown against the rocks. These I saw with my own eyes.
In the summer heat, we were driven for days and weeks, without food and water, with our swollen bare feet bleeding from cuts. When we saw water, we ran to drink only to be beaten back by gendarmes on horseback who carried large wooden cudgels. We were beaten fiercely for just trying to drink water. We were led through the mountains for two months. On the way, many women couldn’t take it and, holding their babies in their arms, simply threw themselves from cliffs into the Tigris River. The Turk gendarmes singled out the prettier girls and women and took them for themselves. Many, myself included, smeared mud on our faces so as not to appear attractive. I even closed one eye so as to appear blind, and limped. With this and other tricks I managed to escape being taken.
My entire family, along mountains, gorges, and fields, my mother, father, sisters, and brother who was not quite ten years old, were left as unburied corpses, left as food for wild dogs. Darman consisted of a group of seven villages. All were uprooted - that’s several thousand people. By the time we reached Harput, weeks later, some 45 miles away, there remained only a few hundred. We knew they were leading us to die, we thought probably to dump us at sea, for none of us were allowed to leave the group nor allowed to drink water or even look for food. If they saw anyone leaving the group the gendarmes immediately killed them."
This was said by Khanum Palootzian, an eyewitness to the Armenian genocide.
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Armenia; Heaven on Earth
Non-FictionIt's 1915. The Turkish government has already made its choice. They will clear Armenians from the face of earth and leave only one last Armenian person, in the museum. They want to take over Armenia and take advantage of its beautiful nature and ble...
