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Grisha Balasanyan

Genocide Survivor Yepraksia Gevorgyan: Armavir Resident Loves to Entertain Guests

Yepraksia Gevorgyan is waiting for her guests to arrive.  

They’re bound to come. She’s a 1915 Genocide survivor and today is April 24.

Her passport notes her birthdate as April 21, 1914. It’s an approximation due to a lack of verifying documents.

Mrs. Gevorgyan estimates she’s around 112 years-old. She lives in the town of Armavir, in Armenia’s Armavir Province.

Gevorgyan’s daughter, 89-year-old Lena, says her mother enjoys receiving guests.

I first wrote about Yepraksia Gevorgyan nine years ago. She’s still as mobile as before. She gets around on her own. She loves to sit on the balcony warming herself in the spring sunshine.

Mrs. Gevorgyan has been written about in books and has been the focus of TV programs. Overseas reporters have even beaten a path to her door.

This year, Mrs. Gevorgyan decided she’d visit the Tzitzernakaberd Genocide Memorial in Yerevan. The government issued a special permit allowing her grandson Artur to drive her up the hill to the memorial’s eternal flame.

Mrs. Gevorgyan beams with pride and tells me that she receives congratulatory telephone calls from around the world on her birthday. She frowns and says that no one from the local government either called or visited to wish her well.

I had decided not to ask her about what she remembers about those dark days as a child. I didn’t want to tire her. Mrs. Gevorgyan would have none of it. She wanted to talk.

“I don’t tire.  Maybe you have?” she exclaimed.

Mrs. Gevorgyan says she was around eight when the massacres broke out. Most of her relatives were killed along the road leading to exile from their native town of Kars. She somehow survived and made it to Gyumri.

She says the image of the family house in Kars has never left her.

Mrs. Gevoryan loves to eat khash – a festive winter dish of boiled cow or sheep parts, which might include the head, feet, and stomach.

It’s a mandatory once a monthly dish for her.  

Two years ago, the family took Mrs. Gevorgyan to a restaurant on the slope of Mt. Aragatz that specializes in serving khash. Afterwards, they drove to Kari Lake 3,207 meters above sea level.

“There were so many people. I had a great time,” Mrs. Gevorgyan says.

She stopped watching TV two years ago. There’s nothing interesting anymore, she says.

The woman says too many in Armenia today are unemployed, making life tough. She recalls the plight of her neighbor.

“It’s pitiful. Every day he returns home pinching his back. There’s no decent work,” says Gevorgyan, adding that things were different in the Soviet era.

Yepraksia Gevorgyan used to live with her daughter Lena in the Armavir village of Amberd. Three years ago, the mother decided to return to her place in town.

Lena and her son moved as well, to take care of Yepraksia.

“She’s my mom. I have to watch after her. It’s no big deal. She might get up at three in the morning and want coffee. I make the coffee and sit beside her. Thank God she’s healthy. Just a bit hard of hearing. Her blood pressure is lower than mine,” says Lena Gevorgyan.

We departed late in the evening. Yepraksia didn’t want us to go. We promised to visit yet again.

Comments (1)

ani
thank you HETQ for the report ! I wish this family GOD's protection and help !

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