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

and can generally be located in Turkey’s region, which, starting from 1923, is called Eastern Anatolia), aswell as those fleeing other parts of Turkey found refuge in the territory of Eastern Armenia, at that timea part of Tsarist Russia, as well as in present Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Iran, Greece, Russia,Georgia and elsewhere. Some of them later moved from these countries, to Western Europe and to theAmerican continent. In those years, many foreign governments and people helped Armenians by openingorphanages, which for many years remained the only chance of survival for the orphaned children.In the twenties, towns and villages in all Arab countries, Greece, Russia and Georgia were full of Armeniansliving in self-built wooden houses. While they were looking for jobs on the one hand, on the otherthey were trying to find their missing children, parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends withwhom they had started the dangerous journey of deportation, only to either lose them because of multipleattacks, or to leave the weakest and sickest along the way. There was no time to mourn the losses;the survivors had to look after each other to be able to start their lives all over again. There was no timefor grief, as they had to find those who were lost or missing, so they searched the newly opened orphanages. Young widows and widowers that lost their spouses joined together to help each other and raisetheir surviving children.Eastern Armenia was full of orphans, starving, emaciated and homeless people who begged every passer-byfor a piece of bread. Those who asked for food largely outnumbered those who could provide it.The population of Eastern Armenia, who was fighting in World War I on the side of Russia, was strugglingthrough a difficult period due to both the war and the persisting unstable political situation in Russiaas well as to the crisis that turned into genocide against the Armenians in Turkey. Additionally, therewas a significant Turkish-speaking 1 Muslim population on the territory of Eastern Armenia whose sympathieslay with the Turkish side. Therefore those Armenians who survived the massacres could onlylook for sympathy and support among the Armenian population in Eastern Armenia, which was the minorityof the country’s population. The resources of the Etchmiadzin Catholicosate and Armenian charitableorganizations were not sufficient enough to provide adequate food to the survivors. Soon, epidemicdiseases spread among the tired, frightened, orphaned and broken people and part of them died fromdisease, cold and hunger. During these years, hearses collected people who died overnight from theirwounds, hunger, cold and epidemic diseases from the streets of Etchmiadzin and Yerevan every day.In 1916-1917, some of the refugees began to return to their homeland, and in 1919 the rumor spreadamong the refugees that there was a coup d’état in Turkey and Armenians could now return home.Some people believed the rumors and returned with great hardship. However, the massacres were repeated,and in 1918-22 after losing more people, the returnee Armenians became refugees again, evictedfrom Western Turkey. The second wave of massacres in the environs of Van took place in the spring of1918. These were the very events which became the main reference point for the perception and mem-1 In this context the term “Turkish-speaking” was chosen because of the absence of a proper term denoting the identity of thisgroup. In the beginning of 20 th century their identity was expressed through religious affiliation – Muslim. Russian sourcescalled the Turkish-speaking Muslims in Southern Caucasus “Caucasian Ttars”; Armenians were calling them “Turks”.78