This photograph is the only evidence or knowledge I have of a family that existed before or even during the Armenian Genocide, or as we say in Armenian, Medz Yeghern (“Great Crime.”) It was taken in Morenig, Kharpert, circa 1890, a place that now only exists in the remaining shards of Armenian history. The young girl sitting in the lower right corner in the striped dress is my grandfather’s mother – my great-grandmother, Sara. The microscopic amount I know of her story is pieced together from fragments, and I know nothing regarding the names or fates of anyone else in the photograph.
Media coverage of the Armenian Genocide and demands for recognition have been at an all-time high these past few weeks, and for that I am grateful. But on April 24, Armenian Martyrs’ Day, we must center the 1.5 million that were murdered, and the overwhelming sense of loss and erased history that haunts Armenian families – history that was intentionally, violently eradicated with the goal of acting like it was never there in the first place, because that calculated destruction is, above all else, the central component of genocide.