Speaking to One Another - The International Raoul Wallenberg ...

Water, Fire, Desert“There was an order. When they finished the first massacres, they took the corpses to the river and threw them inthe water. Later they received a complaint from the government that the water in the rivers is getting polluted fromcorpses. So they decided, rather than wasting ammunition, it would be better to incinerate the corpses. So after incinerating,again, they received complaints that foul smell was spreading over. This smell of burning human flesh isterrible, it was a terrible smell. So then they chased the victims to the Der Zor desert, the third genocide was in theDer Zor desert. They drove these people far away from inhabited areas and slaughtered them there. Grandpa usedto tell this all the time: it was in three stages” (from the story told by Eleonora Ghazaryan).Stories about victims of fire, water and the desert are present in the memories of many respondents.Some people remember incineration of some members of their family or the whole population of somesettlements, others remember drowning and throwing of corpses into the river, many others rememberthe horrors of wandering.“Those who come from the Moush region, they do not celebrate the Vardevar 1 festival. There was a global massacreon the Vardevar day; nobody was left alive in the village. My grandpa said, they gathered everyone and pushedthem into some mow storage - my grandmother told the same story. By that time grandpa Aram was 14 years old,he was a student at the Araqelots Monastery. He said it was a very hot day and it was very hot at the mow. ThatMako’s mother was holding a small child in her hands, and he cried, because he was thirsty. She was a courageouswoman, so she asked a Turkish soldier many times, she asked him just to let her give some water to the kid. Theyallowed Mariam to give some water to the kid, so Mariam took Zorik and got out of there. Mariam said she wouldgive a golden coin if somebody comes and brings her water. She got my granddad Aram’s hand, as a boy, to fetchsome water; he was 14 then. He tells she was holding Zorik and Aram, they were in the field, went there to bringsome water, when they put fire to the mow. He tells that he cried and wanted to run there – his whole family wasthere, but Mariam held him, she said to Aram “do not go there, they will incinerate you too.” He recounts, “Thiswoman, holding her own child in her hands, took me with her”. “We went for quite some time until we met Tavriz– granddad’s cousin.” Granddad told her that they incinerated everyone. Tavriz said “So, you are the only one leftalive from my uncle’s family – then, wherever I go, you will be with me, and I will save at least someone from myuncle’s family line.” That woman went by the road on her own, maybe she got away, hiding in the gorges. Tavrizhad many children. One of her sons was with the cattle that day and she didn’t know whether he was alive ornot. Only Khoren was on her lap, he was still a breastfeeding baby at that time. Tavriz ran away from home, hold-1 Vardevar-vardavar- an Armenian festival celebrated in June-July, which is celebrated with large pilgrimages and watergames.115