The Armenian genocide: Yepraksi’s story - Hoofdinhoud

Apricot trees line the road from Yerevan to Amberd, the home town of Yepraksi Gevorgyan, one of the 33 living witnesses of the Armenian genocide.

The 107-year old has blue eyes, unlike most Armenians, and speaks in Western Armenian dialect, which is seldom heard in the capital city.

She shows her age when she talks about Aram I and Karekin II, the prelates of the Armenian church, whom she saw on TV last Thursday (23 April) performing a ritual for the genocide centennial.

“They’re good boys”, she says.

She also shows her age in memories of events most people know through books.

“We beat the Germans. We danced in the streets of Berlin”, she says, laughing, of the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.

Her testimony is important because Turkey, the EU, and the US refuse to recognise the Ottoman Empire’s killing of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 as genocide.

The Turkish refusal is linked to concern on reparation claims, but also to the neo-Ottoman nationalism of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan i.

The international refusals are due to Turkey's strategic value.

It’s an issue which continues to shape Armenia’s economy and foreign policy.

It’s locked away from Europe behind its closed border with Turkey and its preoccupation with national security makes it cling to its old alliance with Russia.

The reparation concerns are not unfounded.

Gevorgyan was born in a village near Van, in what is now eastern Turkey. She was seven when she fled, but she remembers what she left behind.

“We had five cows, 40 sheep, and a big house. My mother had lots of jewellry. The land in Van is so rich we had too much food. We used to store some of it underground and then we ate it in winter. Now it’s Turkey. But they have to admit that this land is ours”, she told EUobserver in an interview.

When she speaks of the killings, she cries. Then she composes herself. Then she cries again.

She saw her parents being killed. But she also saw other things.

“I saw them take babies from their cots and cut off their feet with knives. They cut their throats. They threw them in the air and then the babies fell onto their knives”.

“When I saw them do this, I knew that I couldn’t help anybody, that I could only try to save myself”.

She fled at night with two brothers.

She remembers crossing a river which “had turned red, because of all the blood in it”.

She also remembers eating grass out of hunger: “We were lucky because we had wild herbs and grass. We ate them to survive. We were walking, and walking, and walking. There was no one around”.

When asked if any Turkish people helped them, she says “No”.

“There is no kindness in Turkish people. That’s why there was a genocide. We saw only violence and torture, by soldiers and by ordinary people”.

“I don’t know why they did this. Nobody knows. Maybe they were jealous of the Armenians, of our culture and of our bright minds”.

Gevorgyan was found by US charity workers and spent the rest of WWI in an orphanage in Gyumri, western Armenia.

She speaks fondly of “the Americans”, saying they served tasty food and had a good school.

She also speaks well of Russia, saying the Russians would have helped the Armenians if they'd known what was going on.

She left the orphanage in 1926, aged 18, when her aunt found her. “At first, I didn’t want to go, because I was so comfortable and because I didn’t recognise her after all this time. But she recognised me by my eyes,” she says.

She studied Armenian, English, and Russian literature and later worked as head of the Amberd library.

She now lives with her daughter, 85-year old Lena, and Lena’s son, Sasha, a veteran of Armenia's war with Azerbaijan. She has 61 living descendants, many of whom live in France.

Despite her experience, some Turkish people did help Armenians in 1915.

Thousands of Turks, last Thursday and Friday, also joined memorials to Armenian victims in Istanbul.

But Gevorgyan’s testimony show how hard it will be for the two countries to come together.

“It’s impossible to have peace. It will never be possible. I watch the news and when I see Turkish and Armenian people sitting round the same table I say to myself: ‘This is crazy’,” she notes.

Asked if she feels safe today, she says: “This is my home, where I live with my daughter and my grandson. This is my family and here I feel safe”.

“Most of my grandchildren are in France. They are safe.”