Papken Injarablian tells ...

[Gavur]

Speech made in January 2006 with the evangelic church of Issy Moulineaux.

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In 1984, the Permanent Court of the People devoted a session to the genocide of the Armenians. Mr. Papken Injarabian, author of the loneliness of the massacres and today centenary, are one of the four survivors of the genocide to have testified in front of the members to the jury.
The exodus is too painful to tell, very little as me survived. Under a heat from 30 to 40 degrees, the deportees famished, assoiffés, stripped and exhausted by walk, fell per thousands A very pleasant young woman telephoned to me and asked to me whether I could testify with the Court People on the Armenian genocide; I answered yes.

After having hung up again, I said myself, but why me; there are other witnesses who can express themselves better than me; I thought that it was perhaps because of my two books (one in Armenian, the other in French) which tell my life. The man who is in front of you is 78 years old; I should have died with the age of 9, 10 or 11 years, but God kept me.

I will briefly tell you my history. I was born in Amassia, i.e. in the south of the Black Sea. In 1915, according to the history of Amassia, there were in this city 38.000 inhabitants of which more than 15.000 were Armenian, approximately 1.000 Greeks, the remainder was Turks of the Kurdish tribes, Abdal, Turkmain, Tatar, Kezelbach, Alévi, Becdachi, all Moslems.

My family was Armenian, we were five children, three boys and two girls. I young person and the most were spoiled. I went to the school, I could read and to write the Armenian and I learned even Turkish. My two sisters taught me French. My father hoped that I become a great man.

My elder brother made his service in the Turkish army. When the war was declared, one mobilized all the Armenians from 18 to approximately 50 years. Thus my second 19 year old brother left without return. A few weeks after, the Turks raflé all the Armenians which they saw in the street, they took them along in prison under pretext that they had hidden of the weapons. All these men disappeared a little later; the remainder of the Armenians accepted the order to leave the city… It was on June 23, 1915, and the beginning of our exodus…

I left Amassia with my sick father, my mother and my two sisters. My parents had taken with them what they could; they had the tears with the eyes while crossing their birthplace. The Turks had prepared their plan very well: they had choked any possibility of revolt while moving away all the valid men. Our caravan thus took its way of cross. The more we advanced, and the more the odor of death increased, because other caravans had preceded us.

The exodus is too painful to tell, very little as me survived. Under a heat from 30 to 40 degrees, the deportees famished, assoiffés, stripped and exhausted by walk, fell per thousands; children from 2 to 3 years abandoned and which could not speak yet tightened their small arms and begged to be taken. A child devoured by clouds of flies. The child drove out them because his/her mother had said to him: my son remains near me, when I rise, I will give you bread and water… A woman precipitated in front of me and threw herself to the river to die further; I saw it carried by the current and hung to heaps of corpses…

I could tell these images of the genocide during hours.

By places, the odor of deaths was so strong that we walk the open mouth to breathe.

During our exodus, one of my sisters was removed by Turks, my father assassinated. At the end of three months of walk, I will never forget this Kurd who separated us from the caravan, far from all, and under the threat of his knife, it stripped us my mother and me and left with my sister that one re-examined forever…

My mother died eight days after, of disease and sorrow, and I opened my eyes of orphan at a Kurd. He lived in a cave; I kept his goats the naked feet, the naked head and badly nourished: I was miserable…

I agreed to become Moslem without including/understanding what it was; all that I knew, it is that one was not going any more to cut me the head. I remained more than four years with the Kurds, and I usually spoke their language. I changed nine times of owners throughout all my slavery which led me until Mésopotamie to keep camels. I never slept on a mattress, nor taken bath. When I intended to say that an orphanage was opened in Ourfa to collect the children survivors, I wanted to escape. I was caught up with by my Master who threatened me of his rifle and said: “you inaccurate dog, you are not even worth two cartridges, the next time I will kill you with only one cartridge”.

But the Lord helped me, and I could escape to me and join the orphanage. I was saved like thousands of Armenian children.

Paris, on April 14, 1984
Papken Injarabian

[Gavur]

NEF Overwhelmed by Heartfelt Gift from Rescued Armenian Orphan Donor

http://www.neareast.org/main/news/article.aspx?id=554

- posted Sunday, March 04, 2007
When Papken Injarabian celebrated his 100th birthday in Paris, surrounded by his family, they gave him a crisp $100 bill to commemorate his centennial. However, Mr. Injarabian chose not to spend the money--he had another idea. A year later, now 101, he gave his daughter, Mrs. Elisabeth Eaker, an important mission. When she accompanied her academic husband's student tour of New York financial institutions, she must present his birthday gift to NEF (Near East Foundation) at our international headquarters in lower Manhattan.

"He insisted on my coming to see you...with a strange intensity," she told NEF Development Officer, Andrea Couture, who accepted Mr. Injarabian's very, very special donation on February 26th. "He wants me to thank you again," she continued, "All I can add is his love for Near East Relief (NEF's original name)--and I mean it--for you saved his life. He never forgets what you did for him."

This benign-looking, smiling man, whose face reflects his genuine absence of anger and bitterness despite what he was forced to suffer, was one of over 100,000 orphans rescued by Near East Relief during the Armenian Genocide. (For the full story of Near East Relief's organization see link NEF History.)

HIS STORY

Papken Injarabian was born December 31, 1905, in Amassia, Turkey, the youngest of five children. When World War I was declared, his older brothers joined the Turkish army--and never returned. Ten-year-old Papken was forced to heave his hometown with his sick father, mother, and two sisters on June 23, 1915.

The precision of his memory bespeaks how searing the experience. He recalls the terrible heat and how people died by the thousands during their forced march across treacherous mountains. During the exodus, his father was murdered, one sister was taken away by the Turks, and later a Kurd separated the remaining members of his family from their caravan and took his other sister. His mother died soon after of cholera and he thinks of sorrow too.

Now an orphan, Papken says he was enslaved by poor Kurds, renamed Azo, and became a Muslim to spare his life. He was passed around to nine different masters and for four years never slept on a mattress nor had a bath, stealing food and on the sly suckling milk from goats to survive. One day he heard of an orphanage in Urfa and tried to escape, but was caught and threatened publicly, "You, 'gervour' (unfaithful dog), you don't deserve two bullets, next time I'll kill you with only one!"

But he ran away again and this time succeeded in making his escape "after much suffering" (his understated comment) to the Near East Relief orphanage. He managed by eating grass and daisies on route and arrived at Urfa very sick with gastro-intestinal problems as well as skin diseases from food deprivation and poor hygiene during his captivity. He spent two months in bed, but with good care, resurrected, although Mr. Injarabian continued to have stomach and intestinal difficulties for the rest of his life. It was at the orphanage that he became a Christian, influenced by the Armenia adults on the staff. Later, when all the orphans were evacuated because of Turkish threats, he found himself in Antrias, near Beirut, Lebanon.

Mr. Injarabian remembers life was difficult, but he was safe at last, and stayed at the Near East Relief orphanage for two years. His was the first group to arrive and every morning they worked to clear the grounds and build, preparing facilities for yet more orphans desperately in need of shelter and sustenance. They lived on very little food, only olives, onions, bread, and to improve his meals, he sold socks that he knitted in secret using the wool in his mattress. (Today this site is the seat of the Armenian Catholicos of Lebanon.)

At the age of 17, Mr. Injarabian arrived in Marseille, France, a political refugee, and established a new life, complicated by not being allowed French citizenship and work permits. First a farmhand, he fled the countryside for the city of Bordeaux, where without the necessary papers he held a series of jobs in restaurants, later moving to Paris where he was a hairdresser for a time, eventually having success in sales. He married Nazenig, his wife of 72 years, also of Armenian origin, who had escaped the Genocide at the age of nine when her family successfully crossed into Syria. The couple had three children, Monique, Jean-Jacques, and Elisabeth, and now have six grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

However, Mr. Injarabian's traumatic experiences were always with him and finally published in 1980 in his memoir, "The Solitude of the Massacre." In 1984, he was one of only four witnesses to testify as a survivor of the Armenian Genocide at the People's Tribunal, established by the United Nations, and held at the Sorbonne in Paris. Through the years he has been repeatedly interviewed as a witness to the Genocide on the French radio stations France Culture and Radio Armenia, and last November was the first history witness to participate in a new radio program of the very prestigious Paris School of Political Science.

MASTER BUILDER

He never forgets Armenia either. Following the devastating December 1988 earthquake, a secret unknown to his family, Mr. Injarabian bought a building in the small town of Amassia, the name of his hometown later reestablished by Armenian refugees from Turkey. The two-story, double-winged property has been refurbished as a social service center, primarily for children, providing after-school and nutrition programs as well as cultural activities. A sign pays tribute to its benefactors, the Papken Injarabian family.

"He has spent his life building," his daughter comments. "I think he had this feeling as an orphan, as that little boy who took sand from the beach near Beirut to build for the arriving new orphans, to build for others. He has this energy, this patience, this strength--he just doesn't give up! He has his goal. He turned 100 and hasn't finished his mission on earth."

Mrs. Eaker also commented on her father's deep religious faith, motivating him to devote a large part of his life to church activities. "He is Christian in his heart, never bitter, never angry," she emphasized.

But he can be insistent! "My coming here while in New York City was no suggestion. It was a demand, a command, something imposed upon me. He wants me to thank you again, so the words 'Armenia,' 'Genocide,' and 'Near East Foundation' are never separated," she concluded, her mission at last accomplished.