My Great-Grandmother — A Genocide Survivor
My dad’s paternal grandmother, Lusik Avetisyan, grew up in Nakhijevan. Nakhijevan is now located in present-day Azerbaijan. She was only 14 years old when the Ottoman Turks invaded. Her two siblings, along with her parents had no choice but to leave everything behind and escape in order to secure their survival.
Her parents died on the journey to Yerevan. My dad speculates that they died from heartbreak as they witnessed massive amounts of death and destruction. Upon their arrival to Yerevan, my great-grandmother, the oldest of her two siblings was advised to relinquish her siblings Hamazasp and Heghine Avetisyan to the local orphanage.
My great-grandmother would visit her siblings every day at the orphanage. One day, when she went to visit her siblings, she was notified that her siblings had been transferred to another orphanage in Gyumri, the second-largest city in Armenia.
Yerevan is 120 km (~75 miles) from Gyumri. My great-grandmother walked all the way from Yerevan to Gyumri so that she can be reunited with her siblings. By the time she had arrived at the orphanage in Gyumri, it was too late. Her siblings had been adopted by Americans.
My great-grandmother spent the rest of her life longing for her siblings, never losing hope that she would be reunited with them someday.
