EGHISABETH PALAPANYAN

In 1920, following the fall of Hadjin, around 2000 captives were taken to Saint Hakob Temple. The wife of landlord Haji — Eghisabeth, appeared to be among them as one of rare survivors among the women of Hadjin. “Chetens”—bands of robbers, were taking a number of groups of women to a place which was named “Donuz Seqisin”, then were transferring them to “Chantres”— Turks. First, these predators were exposing them to torture, then killing them by beats of axes and knives.

Mother Balaban was in this group. Women were giving to murderers all golden items and jewelry hidden in their hair and were begging them to be killed by shooting in order to avoid tortures. These savage people were placing them pressed against each other in order to kill all of them by one shot. Mother Balaban was lying wounded. In the evening, when the criminals left, Eghisabeth somehow slipped out of the corpses of deceased people, in a poor appearance, took off the clothes from deceased people, then put them on and ran away by hiding herself in a cave in the vicinity, wherein she met the other survived women. After having wandered for 15 days in the forests she reached Sis Tlan. When she found her only son named Sargis, she migrated to France and settled in Chas region. Till the end of her life Eghisabeth kept the clothes which she had worn during migration, as a memory of her fatherland. Some years later Eghisabeth was photographed wearing those clothes.

Bullet used during heroic battles of Hadjin in 1920.

The 19-year-old nurse named Aguline Tatulyan acted also as a soldier during those fateful days: sheengaged in battles for survival in parallel with males against the Turkish army which was several times larger. During one of the regular battles a bullet from a Turkish weapon penetrated the body of ...
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