Escaping death

Through my blog I want to explain my connection to this investigation and how my family are affected by the Armenian Diaspora. After my initial post which only glanced at how I started to understand my Armenian identity I will share the story of my grandfather and how he escaped death on several occasions before dying of a heart attack in 1976, aged 66. I never met the man but I have been told this story by his son, my father, and other relatives.
Nerses Nerssessian was four when Ottoman troops massacred his family in front of him. One of twelve children, Nerses and his older sister, Anahid were the only survivors. They were just two of thousands of orphans following the events of 1915.

The pair escaped death only because they had visited their Uncle’s house and were returning when they saw their parents and siblings being slaughtered. After fleeing back to their Uncle, who was also later killed, they left the Ancestral homeland of Armenia escorted by Ottoman troops through the Syrian desert in the later named ‘death marches’.

Later in life he told my father:

“People used to die, left, right and centre. We would do anything to survive. Anyone who couldn’t carry on marching they just shot.”

Eventually he ended up in a orphanage in Greece and later Syria. The orphanage held roughly 500 Armenian children and many would die of malaria each day.  My grandfather, however had a trick, he would bathe in a warm spring to keep himself healthy.

Ten years after watching their parents die together, aged 19, Anahid left him to travel to the newly formed Armenia Republic. They lost contact and he never saw her again despite attempts to track her down.

As a teenager he trained as a tailor and would travel to Lebanon and Palestine, eventually becoming a master tailor in Haifa. He escaped death once again during the Jewish insurgency in the 1930’s. He left the shop to deliver a suit, as he walked back to the shop it exploded. A Jewish attack on an Arab business, several of his colleagues died.

Following the attack and as Palestine became Israel, he re-trained as a baker. Then in 1951 aged 40, he met my grandmother, a 20 year old Christian Arab born in Nazareth.

They were married shortly after. Seven children followed in the next eleven years. He wanted twelve to replace his brothers and sisters that had been killed in 1915 but my grandmother wouldn’t agree.

Nerses now worked on a farm in Rafat, near Jerusalem. The children were sent to Armenian boarding school in Jerusalem to save money.

A few years before his death they moved back to Haifa and the Arab area of ‘Wadi nissnass’ where the family home remains today.

He died while working as a security guard on a building site in the early hours of the morning.

Of his father, my grandfather, my dad said:

“He was a very well known, kind man. He never had much money, he spent it all on us. He was a loving father and always had sweets in his pocket. I remember he was quite skinny but very strong. And in the winter he would wear a pom pom hat. I think the one thing he taught me is to always be kind.”