Missak Khralian

Palahovid Missak Khralian

This is a memoir and village history of the Armenian Genocide. The author was 14 years old when the Ottoman Turks began the extermination of the Armenian Genocide. While the men in his village of Til (Palou region) were arrested and executed, most of the remaining population was "deported" and perished on their way to the Syrian deserts. The author and around 20 other women and children remained in their village and subjected to an assimilation process to become Turks. They had their names changed, converted to Islam and renounce their Armenian identities. This is a detailed, harrowing account of the author's suffering, as well as the suffering (and deaths) of others around him. Originally written in the 1930s and published in Armenian in 1938, this is an early account of the Armenian Genocide on the eve of the Nazi Holocaust in Europe.