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

To Speak or to Stay Silent, to Tell or Not to Tell(“My parents were avoiding speaking about this”)It has been already discussed that those survivors who settled in Eastern Armenia were facing difficultiestalking in public about their tragedy; memories related to that period of their life story were either limitedto small social micro networks or their own families. The problem of telling or not telling, however, was,and still is, related to personal decisions of an individual - his mindset, the commitment of surrounding individualsto listen to him, and a number of other factors. Not everyone is able, or willing, to talk about thismost difficult period of their lives. They are not able or willing to speak about everything. The ways of tellingor not telling, talking or keeping silent, were also different, and they remain different.Judging from the stories of our narrators, women were the main source of delivering stories about themassacres or the escape. Some were speaking readily about what had happened to them, what they hadseen, talking all the time about hardships that they had suffered, telling this to everyone. Others wereweeping all the time. Mother of Grish Badalyan and Nranhat was dedicating every day of her difficult lifeto stories about her parents and her greater family, forcing her children to become nolens volens witnessesof her sufferings. Being elderly people now, up to this day, they are not able to speak about thiswith dry eyes. Up to the end of her days Almast Harutyunyan’s mother, who survived at the age of 13,was weeping daily while repeating the extreme sufferings of her own mother. Thereat, the word “Turk”is almost never mentioned in the stories of Almast’s mother Haykanush; her stories are mainly comprisedof descriptions of their suffering. When telling her story, Haykanush never referred to the causeof their sufferings, she never looked to find who was guilty... She was just talking about these – aboutthe killing of her father and her mother, about the deaths of her underage sister and brother from coldand starvation, along with [giving descriptions of] the overwhelming sights that she had witnessed. It isamazing to see how small the theme of personal hardship was in the story of Haykanush. It was her dayto-daytragedy that forced Almast to deliver her mother’s stories to paper, publishing them as a book.This partially relieved Haykanush. It seemed to Haykanush that, if many people would find out aboutwhat had happened to her mother, then her mother would feel relieved in the other world.Men were less talkative, and their narrations were partially different from stories told by women. Firstof all, since men were killed in excess, there are fewer men among survivors. Second, it seems to us thatthe feeling of guilt has also played a role among men: they should have helped out their family membersbut weren’t able to do so. Their pride was hurt more, therefore they were talking and telling with greaterdifficulty. If male survivors have not lost their spirits and their human face as a result of new hardships-having to look after orphans, having to find a job and earn their living, etc.-, then they were mainlykeeping silent or, like their children - our present narrators – have indicated, they mainly preferred to128