[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 105 (Thursday, July 15, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1339]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


   STORY OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE SURVIVOR: VERGINE DJIHANIAN KALEBDJIAN

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                          HON. ADAM B. SCHIFF

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 15, 2010

  Mr. SCHIFF. Madam Speaker, I rise today to memorialize and record a 
courageous story of survival of the Armenian Genocide. The Armenian 
Genocide, perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulted 
in the death of 1.5 million Armenian men, women, and children. As the 
U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau documented at 
the time, it was a campaign of ``race extermination.''
  The campaign to annihilate the Armenian people failed, as illustrated 
by the proud Armenian nation and prosperous diaspora. It is difficult 
if not impossible to find an Armenian family not touched by the 
genocide, and while there are some survivors still with us, it is 
imperative that we record their stories. Through the Armenian Genocide 
Congressional Record Project, I hope to document the harrowing stories 
of the survivors in an effort to preserve their accounts and to help 
educate the Members of Congress now and in the future of the necessity 
of recognizing the Armenian Genocide.
  Below is one of those stories:

       Nora Hovsepian, the granddaughter of Vergine Djihanian, a 
     Genocide survivor, expressed a story on her grandmother's 
     behalf:
       ``Vergine Djihanian was an Armenian girl who lived with her 
     parents and eight brothers and sisters in the city of 
     Erzinga, Turkey.
       ``In the summer of 1915, Vergine witnessed her father and 
     uncle being beaten and axed to death in front of her eyes by 
     Turkish gendarmes. Her mother and aunt frantically gathered 
     up all of their children, took them to the nearby banks of 
     the Euphrates River, said their prayers, and holding hands 
     together at the river's edge, threw themselves into the 
     raging waters, choosing to die by their own hands rather than 
     falling victim to the barbarity of the Turkish soldiers 
     surrounding them.
       ``All of them drowned, except 9-year-old Vergine, who clung 
     to the branch of a weeping willow tree overhanging the river, 
     instinctively wanting to survive. Vergine was too young to 
     understand why her family was dying around her. She was too 
     young to understand the fear of being raped or enslaved by 
     Turkish soldiers, but she was old enough to know that if she 
     could just hold on a little longer to the hanging branch, 
     then maybe she could be saved. She hung on for what seemed an 
     eternity. However, she felt hopeful again when a 
     compassionate Kurdish family came to the river's edge, saw 
     her desperation, and rescued her. She was the only one who 
     survived the ordeal, saving her from an agonizing death.
       ``She worked as a maid in the house of her rescuers for a 
     few years. Then American missionaries had come to the region 
     trying to find lost souls. Vergine was taken to an American 
     orphanage, and at the age of 14, she was reunited with her 
     two older brothers who had been in America for several years 
     and who were frantically trying to find any surviving members 
     of their large family.
       ``Vergine came to New York on a ship through Ellis Island 
     in 1921 and built her life there. She met and married Missak 
     Kalebdjian, another survivor of the Armenian massacres, in 
     Adana in 1909, and she never told her only son or anyone else 
     about the unspeakable horrors she had witnessed.
       ``Vergine Djihanian Kalebdjian was my grandmother. She told 
     me her story when I was 10 years old, sitting me down with a 
     serious and sad look, preparing me for what I was about to 
     hear. As I listened, I could not even fathom what she had 
     gone through at the same age, and until now, and for the rest 
     of my life, I will never forget her story.
       ``Nearly 60 years after her nightmare, the memory remained 
     fresh within my grandmother's mind. She wept uncontrollably 
     as she told me the story of her family's fate. I tried to 
     comfort her, telling her I did not want her to cry, but she 
     wanted to get it out, as it had been festering inside her for 
     all those years. She could not bring herself to tell my 
     father, her only son, about her childhood as he was growing 
     up, because she wanted to spare him the pain she had endured. 
     She wanted to give him a better life and happy memories.
       ``My grandmother said that she had to pass down the legacy 
     of what happened to her and her family to my generation, so 
     that we could tell the world and seek justice for the 
     unspeakable crime against our people.
       ``I will forever cherish her words and her memory.''

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