[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 105 (Thursday, July 15, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1340]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     STORY OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE SURVIVOR: FLORA MUNUSHIAN MOURADIAN

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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:

  (Submitted by Kay Mouradian, EdD, Professor Emerita Education, Los 
   Angeles Community Colleges, daughter of Flora Munushian Mouradian)

       ``As a child growing up in Boston, my mother, Flora, would 
     tell me stories of her childhood in Turkey. `Hunger is a pain 
     that never sleeps,' she said recalling the trauma she 
     experienced in 1915, when at age 14 she and her immediate 
     family of nine were forced to leave their home in Hadjin, 
     Turkey. She told me of the hardships during the forced march 
     . . . no food or water, the terrifying fear as Turkish 
     soldiers tried to abduct her and her 16-year-old sister, 
     helplessly watching soldiers take away her 18-year-old 
     brother, no sanitation at the outdoor camps, the smell of 
     disease and death in those camps, one of which cramped 
     150,000 emaciated Armenians before they were allowed to 
     continue on, witnessing the already dead lining the roads, 
     painfully watching her father bury her 70-year-old 
     grandmother, becoming hopelessly traumatized as her father 
     leaves her and her sister in Aleppo, Syria. Can you imagine 
     the painstaking decision made by loving parents to leave 
     vulnerable teenage daughters behind in a strange, huge Arabic 
     city hoping their chance for survival would be greater?
       ``No longer having the protection of her father and not 
     knowing a word of Arabic, Flora's fear of becoming an orphan 
     explodes and is compounded when working as a `slave' in a 
     Syrian home, Flora is sold to a wealthy Turk. When her sister 
     learns Flora is in the harem, she stealthily sneaks into the 
     harem and steals Flora to safety. Both girls were the only 
     ones from the family to survive.
       ``In 1984, at the age of 83, my mother, Flora, having 
     outlived her husband and two of her four children, was 
     hospitalized. She was diagnosed as terminally ill with 
     congestive heart failure and could not feed herself because 
     she suffered from severe hand tremors. Confused, she did not 
     recognize people she once knew. The day I took her to 
     emergency she did not know who I was.
       `` `Let her spend her last few days at home,' her doctor 
     said.
       ``With a heavy heart, I brought her home. Her final moments 
     were near. I did not expect her to survive the night. But I 
     was wrong. As time passed, not only did my mother rebound but 
     she literally recovered! Her hands quieted and no longer 
     trembled and more amazingly, her mind was again clear and 
     alert as if her brain cells had been renewed. I watched as 
     she developed new relationships with friends that only 
     recently she hadn't recognized. The most miraculous and 
     wonderful part of all of this was that my mother had become 
     more loving.
       ``Until her heart attack, her life had been colored by the 
     Armenian tragedy. She was filled with anger and self-pity, 
     and dwelt on the horrors of the past. She often talked about 
     her family who had perished at the hands of the Turks. Now, 
     incredibly, that dark shadow was gone. It was as though 
     something happened inside Flora's heart, something beyond my 
     ability to understand.
       ``My mother had three more episodes in the next five years. 
     Each time I was told she would not survive without the help 
     of a respirator and each time we, the family, refused, 
     feeling she needed to move on if it was her time. But my 
     mother's fourth encounter with death really stunned me. In 
     1988, I went to Aleppo, Syria, to search for the family that 
     gave my mother refuge and found the one remaining descendant. 
     The next day I received a call from home. Mom had another 
     attack, her fourth. I prepared myself for the worst and flew 
     home.
       ``When I saw Mom in the hospital, she tried to smile but 
     was too weak. `I don't know why I didn't die,' she said, her 
     voice barely audible.
       ``I leaned close and gently asked, `Mom, do you think you 
     will die now?'
       `` `It doesn't look like it,' she said, her voice cracking 
     and her face reflecting her own disbelief. Somehow, she knew. 
     Two days later, when I entered cardiac care I was astonished 
     to see my mother sitting up in bed, unattended. A day earlier 
     she couldn't even turn her head without help. When she saw me 
     she shouted something in Turkish, a language she hadn't 
     spoken in more than 50 years!
       ``I was startled. She was filled with energy and animated. 
     What was she shouting in Turkish? `Mom, I don't understand 
     you,' I said, trying to calm her. `Speak to me in English. 
     Repeat everything I say.'
       ``I went through the entire English alphabet. She repeated 
     each letter dutifully, as if she were in school following a 
     teacher's instructions. We counted numbers and she repeated 
     those in English. But then she started to shout in Turkish 
     again. An occasional English or Armenian word was in the mix. 
     `They took my education! They took my family! Do you know 
     what it was like? I went crazy!' She looked straight into my 
     eyes and said loud and clear in English, `The bastards!'--a 
     word not in my old-fashioned mother's vocabulary. I couldn't 
     hold back a laugh.
       ``Throughout this wild scenario, even when she was shouting 
     in Turkish, she was joyful. 'Mom, are you happy?' I asked 
     trying to understand this phenomenon.
       `` `Yes!' she said emphatically.
       `` `Why?' I questioned.
       `` `Because I'm awake!' she said with authority.
       ``Had she been given an opportunity to release her own 
     intense hatred of the Turks? Was that hatred released with 
     the strong expulsion of her anger when she shouted, `The 
     bastards!' I'll never know for sure, but I can state for a 
     fact that my mother was so filled with love after this fourth 
     brush with death she couldn't harbor hatred, even toward the 
     Turks. Love poured out of her heart, like a flower releasing 
     its perfume. Everyone around her felt it.
       ``Escaping death time and time again, Flora became more 
     alert and loving each time. Her amazing transformation during 
     those last five years of her life taught me a lifetime of 
     understanding. The greatest of these is the fact that when 
     negative matrixes like hatred and anger no longer rule the 
     heart, streams of fragrant love pour out of every cell in the 
     body. She shined like a thousand suns.

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