AN EPIC ACCOUNT OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RELEASED: ACCURSED YEARS: MY EXILE AND RETURN FROM DER ZOR, 1914-1919 BY YERVANT ODIAN

Azg
April 23 2009
Armenia

An epic survival account of the Armenian Genocide, the memoirs of
Yervant Odian, Accursed Years, was launched in Los Angeles on April
1st, 2009 at Glendale Public Library, sponsored by the Tekeyan Cultural
Association and Glendale Public Library. The main speakers were Vatche
Semerjian and Ara Sarafian.

Yervant Odian was one of very few Armenian intellectuals who were
sent to the killing fields of Der Zor in 1915 and survived to tell of
his ordeal. He was one of the greatest writers in Armenian literature
until his death in 1926.

Surviving the Armenian Genocide

Yervan’s Odian survival during the Armenian Genocide lay in avoiding
arrest on 24 April 1915 by going into hiding. He was not arrested
and exiled until September of that year. Initially sent to Konia,
he escaped several times before being sent to Der Zor. He survived
due to a number of other factors such as: being able to secure money
for most of his exile; travelling by carriage or railroad most of
the way; enjoying the favour of well meaning individuals, Armenian
railroad workers and others such as the Shalvardjians in Tarsus and
the Mazlumians in Aleppo. He had no other family members with him,
so he could escape more easily. He changed his name and papers several
times. In any event, he managed to escape to Tarsus, Aleppo and Hama,
before being apprehended by the authorities.

Fortunately for Odian, by the time he was sent to Der Zor in 1917,
most Armenian deportees who were sent there were dead as a result of
privation and massacre, and there was no further systematic killing
after he arrived. In fact there were hardly any Armenians left there
from the hundreds of thousands who were sent to this region in 1915-16.

His account of his own survival is also that of the killings that took
place during deportations or other massacres. This is because Odian
recorded the testimonies of survivors, including Armenian women and
children held in captivity.

Odian was sent to El Bousera, past the town of Der Zor. After failing
to escape to Baghdad, he ran away back to Der Zor, where he worked in
a military workshop, later becoming a German officer’s interpreter. He
eventually managed to escape with a group of Armenians to Aleppo,
where he was captured and sent to Konia, and then Sultaniye, until
the end of WWI.

Odian’s memoirs make incredible reading and constitute a classic
account of the Armenian Genocide.

Extract from Sebil, East of Aleppo: (Accursed Years, pp. 97-100)

Killing your own family

I was witness to a very sad, heart-wrenching scene that took place
in the camp at Sebil. A short distance from the tents there were
trenches for the deportees which acted as latrines. I was near these
trenches when I saw some boys who were standing above them, looking
at something and saying to one another, "Is she dead?… No, she’s
not dead… Look, she moved…" and so on.

Curious, I came close to the boys and looked down into the trench.

A horrific sight met my eyes. A quite pretty, slim, half-naked young
woman, about 25-26 years old was lying in the filth at the bottom
of the trench. She was not yet dead, occasionally moving, trying to
turn one way and raising an arm or leg, then becoming motionless but
moaning. Her legs, breast and arms were naked and she wasn’t wearing
a dress. It was obvious that she had been brought from the camp and
thrown there, but why?

I asked the boys, but they knew nothing.

I returned to the camp and told a few people what I’d seen. No one
gave it any importance. Everybody was trying to save themself: who’d
be concerned about a dying woman?

I returned to the trench a few hours later to see what had become
of the woman. A young man and a woman stood there sadly; they looked
sorrowfully at that horrific sight. The woman occasionally wiped her
eyes. Indeed it was impossible not to be affected. The woman lying
in the excrement was still not dead, but it was obvious that she
was dying.

"What a dreadful thing this is," I said to the young man standing
there. "It’s obvious that this woman has been brought from the camp
and thrown here, without waiting for her to die… can such horror,
savagery and heartlessness like this really happen?"

The man silently listened to my words, then sorrowfully said, "This
poor lady is my sister-in-law, the sister of the woman standing
here. We threw her here last night…"

"You?" I shouted, amazed.

"Yes," he continued, "stop and listen to me, then you can judge
us." And the man told his story. He apparently belonged to a well-to-do
family from Dikranagerd (Diyarbekir). They had been badly robbed
on the deportation march. "My wife, daughter, sister-in-law and I
reached Sebil almost completely naked, without even one para, hungry
and thirsty. It was certain that we should have all died here, if we
hadn’t met a family the members of which were our friends. They took
us into their tent, dressed and fed us and are looking after us even
now. There’s not enough space or beds in the tent. We are forced to
sleep in close groups of two or three. Under these circumstances
my sister-in-law caught dysentery very badly. There’s no doctor
or medicines. You know that dysentery is a contagious disease. The
family looking after us said that either we take the sick girl out of
the tent, or we’d all have to leave. For my wife, daughter and I to
leave the tent is simply to go to our deaths. Four people would have
died instead of one, for no reason. My wife and I thought and thought
and found no other way out. Crying, we brought my sister-in-law here
at night and threw her in…. life is sweet." And man and wife began
to shed bitter tears.

"Please forgive what I said before," I mumbled, and went away.

Indeed, dysentery carried out a horrible massacre of many in the camp
at Sebil. December had arrived, the rain fell in torrents and the cold
was unbearable, especially at night. Rickety tents made out of thin,
torn canvas were not good enough to protect the people inside from
the harsh weather conditions. Add to this the insufficiency of food
and you can imagine how many people were lying sick in the camp.

A wagon, used to carry rubbish, which was now utilised as a mortuary
cart, went backwards and forwards carrying the dead from morning till
night. They would pile eight or ten bodies in it each time and take
them away.

"Satlik Chojuk Var Me?" (Any Children For Sale?)

I saw, for the first time, the dreadful, heart-rending trade in
children in the camp in Sebil. Arab, Turkish and Jewish women would
come from Aleppo in carriages and start going from one tent to another,
asking, "Are there any children for sale?" ("Satlik chojuk var me?")

Those parents who were wealthy would send these women away with horror,
but the poor and the hungry hesitated. That hesitation was enough to
begin the haggling.

"Let’s let him go," the husband would say, holding his son’s hand.

"I’ll die before I’m separated from my son," the wife would cry.

The women buyers would intervene. "You’re already going to die, at
least let this boy live. We want to do you a favour by taking the
boy. We’ll make him our son… If you survive and return, we’ll give
him back to you." And thousands of persuasive words like these. And
the mother, who knows what it’s like to see her son hungry, and who
has no means of feeding him, hopelessly gives way. The women would
put one or two mejidiehs in the husband’s hand and, putting the child
in a carriage, would leave. The crying and sorrow would begin. Then
both father and mother would cry, regret what they did, and wish to
run after the carriage, but it would already have left…

I saw a woman go mad a few hours after selling her two children. Others
fell into a sort of lethargic, stupid state, silent, their
gaze distant, sitting for hours on the ground. You’d think
that their feelings and consciousness were dead; they’d become
animal-like… Thousands of boys and girls were sold in Sebil in
this way to Arabs, Turks and Jews from Aleppo. The small children
of about 7-10 years old were usually considered to be valuable,
especially the girls.

The sale of children was the most terrifying side of the dreadful
crime of deportation. It’s impossible to imagine that humanity could
sink any lower.

BIBLIOINFO: Yervant Odian, Accursed Years: My Exile and Return
from Der Zor, 1914-1919 translated from original Armenian by Ara
Stepan Melkonian, with an introduction by Krikor Beledian, (Gomidas
Institute), 2009, xvi + 326 pp., foldout map, photos, index, pb., ISBN
978-1-903656-84-6. Price US$25.00 / GB£17.00. For more information
please contact info@gomidas.org or info@garodbooks.com