I listened to my great-grandmother’s genocide testimony; now, I carry her voice
It was February 17, 1985, in Van Nuys, California.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to be present in the living room of my grandparents’ home, awaiting a conversation with my great-grandmother, Mary Antekelian.
The room was full of reminders of my deep-rooted cultural heritage and ties to my historic motherland—a painting of the majestic Mount Ararat overlooking Yerevan, a bone inlay plaque of the Armenian alphabet, embroidered doilies, a miniature carving of a khachkar (cross-stone) and, of course, a large pomegranate-red wool rug with floral motifs. In the kitchen, my grandmother watched over her simmering signature dolma dish—stuffed grape leaves, eggplant, and tri-color bell peppers with rice and meat—which spread the aromatic scents of cumin, paprika and all-spice across the room.
Mary began to tell her story—one that I never believed I would ever hear. A story that would fill the missing void, the mystery of who my great-grandmother truly was, and how she and her family survived the Medz Yeghern—the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923.
Born in 1904 in the town of Gaziantep (Aintab), Turkey (then the Ottoman Empire), Mary Antekelian (maiden name, Belamjian) was the second eldest child of six, born into a loving family of Armenian Christian tailors. Months after the Ottoman Empire entered into the First World War, Mary’s father was drafted into the Ottoman army and forced into brutal working conditions in the winter snow. After a few weeks, he managed to escape and spent several months evading capture as he traveled back to his family.
While he was away, official orders from the Young Turk government in the spring of 1915 called for the deportations of Armenians, starting from the eastern Ottoman provinces, then extending across Anatolia and Cilicia—including Aintab. Mary’s family was spared. Boldly, her mother secured an exemption from the deportations—possibly because, as tailors, they could contribute to the war effort by sewing uniforms. When Mary’s father returned, close to a year later, he stayed hidden in the house, helping the family with their sewing.
Then, I opened my eyes and was brought back to my own reality.
The truth is that I wasn’t actually there that day in 1985, sitting in my grandparents’ home listening to Mary tell her story. I was in my own room, about 40 years later, listening to her recorded audio testimony from the Richard G. Hovannisian Oral History Collection, now digitized in the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.
This unique collection is a part of the largest archive of genocide testimonies in the world, including more than 61,000 accounts from survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, contemporary antisemitism and other crimes against humanity.
April 24, 2025 marks the 110th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, which began under the cover of the World War I, when the Ottoman Young Turk government arrested over 200 Armenian political, cultural and religious leaders in Constantinople. Most were executed; few escaped. This was followed by government-ordered mass killings of Armenian men in towns and villages across the empire. Armenian homes were looted, families torn apart, and women and girls subjected to sexual violence and other brutalities. Elderly people, women and children who survived were forcibly marched into the Syrian desert, left to die from exposure and starvation.
Of the two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire in 1914, an estimated 1.5 million perished. Mary’s family was a rare exception. As she continued to tell her story, I felt her pain and guilt—but most of all, her gratitude to God that she and her family remained alive.
For many survivors, the pain continued into the decades afterwards. Their suffering deepened as they learned more about the harrowing stories of others, and as successive Turkish governments continued to deny the validity of their stories and experiences.
In a 1984 interview with the Armenian Film Foundation, Hagop Asadourian—born in March 1903 in Kayseri as the youngest of seven children—shared his anguish. His testimony, also preserved in the USC Shoah Foundation’s collections, included these haunting words: “These things dig into you… I forget what I saw yesterday, maybe, but I could not forget any of these things. And yet, we have to beg nations to recognize genocide. I lost 11 members of my family, and I have to beg people to believe me. That’s what hurts you most. It’s a terrible world…terrible experience.” Hagop is no longer alive today, but that hurt—the need to beg to be believed and acknowledged—unfortunately, lives on.
There are no living survivors of the 1915 Armenian Genocide today, but their stories—including the humanity of their struggle and their resilience—live on in their testimonies. We are now the witnesses. We must uplift their voices, impart knowledge of their experiences and apply these understandings to our everyday lives. We have to face the ugly truths of human behavior—and understand how they happen—in order to make sound decisions for a better world. This is the basic tenet of genocide education.
I am a fourth-generation Armenian survivor—a descendant of the proud shoemakers of Antakya and the tenacious kilim (rug) weavers of Aleppo, the loyal Christian Reverend from Hadjin and the kind-hearted young mayrig (mother) from Adana, the enchanting singer from Erzurum and, lest we forget, the courageous tailors of Aintab.
Each day, I honor an unspoken promise to carry their legacy and to teach the world their story.
Sedda Antekelian
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