On April 24, 1915, all of the leaders and intellectuals of Armenia were gathered and slaughtered by the Turkish government of the time. By the end of the Armenian Genocide, 1.5 million people were killed. Today, few who survived the massacres remain. One of them, Col. Jirayr H. Zorthian, lives here in the Pasadena area, 92 years old and still going strong. The things he saw as a child are unimaginable. The things he had to do survive, incomprehensible. Loved ones were lost; friends were never to be heard from again. When all seemed lost, Jirayr and his family managed to escape the inhumane acts of terror being carried out by the Ottoman Empire. He was four years old when the ordeal began in 1915.

I was born in Turkish Armenia, and at that time the Armenians still owned a considerable amount of it and, and I was born in 1911, before the Genocide and I witnessed two of the massacres, in my very young years. I saw beheadings, heads chopped off; I saw children being mangled to pieces, rapes, oh the horrible things. It was a traumatic experience, especially for a child my age. I lost my sister to the Genocide, she was sick and they couldn’t get us the medicine to cure her because of the way they had our city, Katahyah, where I was born actually, because of the way it was locked up. Many of our friends didn’t make it, but somehow, miraculously, my father escaped death seven times, I escaped death twice, my mother escaped death three times, and we all just by the skin of our teeth… It was a very, very traumatic experience.

I had to dress up to look like a girl when I was a little boy. The Turks did vicious things. A boy who was five years old could escape; he’s big enough, strong enough. They used to take little boys, who were not quite five or six and kill them, they killed them. So the Armenians didn’t differentiate between the sexes. In my pictures I have a dress and curly hair. Both of my brothers did this also; we had to, we did anything to survive. And only because I was disguised as a girl and not a boy, I wasn’t killed.

In the very beginning my father was taken away, they took him away long before the Genocide. At that time the English and the French had their battleships in the Constantinople harbor; it was called Constantinople, not Istanbul. So the Turks were very cautious who they killed and who they didn’t kill. My father was a writer and he was a politician, he spoke seven languages. He was a very bright person and so they took him away with eight others; there were nine of them accused of plotting to overthrow the Turkish government. The night before he was to be executed, my father was in a tent with the others, and he decided that he was going to try to escape. He knew he was going to be done away with; he knew that he had nothing to lose, so he might as well try to escape. In the middle of the night, he was watching the guard sitting down with his rifle. The guard fell asleep for a short time and my father stepped over him and ran through the dessert not knowing where he was going, he just ran wildly. Finally, the next day when the sun came up, he noticed that he had been going around in circles and he could see the tents, and the other men. The other eight were executed, he escaped and for three days, without knowing where he was going; he wandered through the dessert in the direction of what he thought was a city. On the way because of lack of food, lack of water, everything, he developed malaria, and he passed out. Someone, an Arabic woman, brought him to the hospital. When he came to consciousness, he was passed out for three days, when he came to his consciousness, he realized what the situation was. So my father, he crawled out of his bed with great effort. The man who had been in the bed next to his had just died the night before. My father went through the dead man’s papers, and took out his identification, and when he finally gained complete confidence, he escaped. He went under this assumed name for three years. In those days, if you were caught without a license, you were taken away immediately. So not as Zorthian, but whatever the other name was he got a job at a railroad.

This whole time we thought he had been killed, and one day he arrived at our home. At this time, the Greeks had come in and temporarily conquered Turkey to get their own people out; the Turks had been killing Greeks too. It was then, in 1920, when we escaped. My father, mother, two brothers, and I escaped and went to Italy and waited there for a year and a half before we could get our Visa to come to this country. We moved to New Haven, Connecticut where I went to school. I used to speak fluent Turkish, and I of course speak Armenian. When we came to this country, almost immediately, my father, I think on the very first day, he said “I want my family to line up in front of me. I want to make a proclamation, there is to be NO Turkish spoken in my house!” He made us forget Turkish; however I used to speak it quite well until the Second World War.

About ten years ago, after the liberation of Armenia, any Armenian who was born before the Genocide automatically became an Armenian citizen, because we had gone through so much, so the only thing I can’t do is not vote, nor can I join the army (laughs). But otherwise I can buy property there and I can go in an out any time I want. It’s an interesting thing.

We’re having trouble getting the Armenian Genocide recognized. The Turks are still denying that this even happened. Just like the Germans, they denied that Hitler even existed. I’ve gone to quite a few Armenian affairs. I have to admit I don’t have as much contact with Armenians as I’d like to. But whenever I can, I try to go to the Armenian events, especially on April 24^th to remember those who were killed in the Genocide. When they had the AAA, the Armenian Allied Artists, I was very active in my younger years. But gradually you know, I got married and I’m getting older now. You know, to do all the things I have planned in my life I have to live to be 120 years old. I always say    “I don’t have time to die”.

Interview done by Narek Der-Sahakian

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