Vahan's Triumph: Autobiography of an Adolescent Survivor of the Armenian GenocideVahan's Triumph is the personal account of one adolescent Armenian boy, a survivor of the premeditated genocidal practices of the Ottoman Turkish government around the time of the First World War. Born into a prosperous family in an Armenian town in Ottoman Turkey, Vahan witnesses the sudden disintegration of life around him. He watches his father being beaten, humiliated, and marched to his death, and he bears witness to forced deportations of entire villages to hellish destinations. who experience unspeakable horrors at the hands of Ottoman gendarmes as well as Turkish and Kurdish villagers-turned-killers. He loses his sisters and mother to hunger, thirst, disease, heat, and bitter cold. He sees helpless people hacked, stabbed, and drowned to death, and women and children abducted and converted to Islam. Now an orphan, he manages to survive only by the kindness of strangers. This personal story of triumph reflects the resiliency of an entire nation and their rise from the ashes of annihilation. |
