The Armenian Genocide, as an international political crime against humanity, has become, by the brutal constraint of history, an inseparable part of the national identity, the thought and the spiritual-conscious inner world of the Armenian people.

As the years go by, interest toward the Armenian Genocide grows steadily due to the fact of the recent recognition of this historical evidence by numerous countries. However, the official Turkish and the pro-Turkish historiographers try, up to the present day and in every possible way, to distort the true historical facts pertaining to the years 1915-1922, a fatal period for the Armenian nation.

Numerous studies, collections of documents, statements of politicians and public officials, artistic creations of various genres about the Armenian Genocide have been published in various languages, but all these colossal publications did not include the voice of the people: memoirs and popular songs narrated and transmitted by eyewitness survivors who had created them under the immediate impression of the said historical events. These memoirs and songs also have an important historico-cognitive, factual-documental and primary source value. Inasmuch as the Armenian nation itself has endured all those unspeakable sufferings, consequently, the nation itself is the object of that massive political crime. And, as in the elucidation of every crime, the testimonies of the witnesses are decisive, similarly, in this case, the testimonies of the eyewitness survivors are of prime importance; every one of them has, from the juridical point of view, its evidential significance in the equitable solution of the Armenian Case and in the recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

I started this work as early as 1955, when it was not possible to speak explicitly about the Armenian Genocide in Soviet Armenia, when the exiled repatriates, the eyewitness survivors miraculously rescued from the massacres were living in fear of being unjustly accused and deported anew. At that time, I was a student at the Yerevan Khachatour^* Abovian Pedagogical University. Despising the difficulties of all kinds and conscious of the historico-scientific and the factual-documental value of materials associated with the popular oral tradition, I followed the call of my Western-Armenian blood in the beginning and acted on my own initiative. Later, starting from 1960, I continued my work under the patronage of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia (engaging, at the same time, in other scientific research works). Under the scorching summer sun and in the icy winter cold, I went on foot, from district to district, from village to village, searching and finding eyewitness survivors miraculously rescued from the Armenian Genocide. I approached them tactfully, without diverting their attention with irrelevant questions, and let them freely express their immediate impressions. I wrote down (and also tape-recorded) the bewildering memoirs, the impressive stories and the diverse historical songs which they narrated and sung. None of these materials had been recorded and published previously, either in the Motherland or in the Diaspora. [Svazlian 1984, 1994, 1995]

Subsequently, by making use of the possibilities provided by the directorate of the Museum-Institute of the Armenian Genocide of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia founded at Dsidsernakaberd (Yerevan), I have continued the work started [Svazlian 1997a, 1997b, 1999], not only by writing down and tape-recording, but also by video-recording (operator: Galust Haladjian) the memoirs narrated by the eyewitness survivors. These, coupled with other memoirs and songs written down and video-recorded by me in the past and ensuing years, have been deciphered and included in the voluminous edition "Hayots Tseghaspanutiun. Akanates veraproghneri vkayutiunner" ("The Armenian Genocide. Testimonies of the Eyewitness Survivors") (in Armenian). [Svazlian 2000]

The original references of the present study, that is, the fragments of the memoirs narrated by the eyewitness-survivors and the historical songs communicated by the latter, are quoted from the above-mentioned collection (600 units) with the corresponding numeration.

The original texts, the audio- and the video-tapes of all the popular materials assembled in this volume are kept at the archives of the Museum-Institute of the Armenian Genocide of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia.

The great majority of the eyewitnesses (600 survivors) who have transmitted these popular materials are representatives of the senior generation; they are Armenians, who were forcibly exiled from their historical native cradle, deported during the Armenian Genocide, in the years 1915-1922, from Western Armenia, from Cilicia (1921) and the Armenian-inhabited provinces of Anatolia (1922, the Izmir calamity).

In the course of these historical events, the vast majority of the Western Armenians were ruthlessly exterminated, while those who, having been plundered, left destitute and exhausted, were miraculously rescued, reached Eastern Armenia or scattered to different countries of the world, after going through the harrowing experience of deportation and witnessing the victimization of their compatriots. Subsequently, a fraction of those survivors was repatriated periodically to the Motherland Armenia from Turkey, Greece, France, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, the Balkan countries, and America. Those repatriates settled in the newly built districts on the outskirts of Yerevan, which symbolize the memory of the former native cradles in Western Armenia (Aygestan, Sari Tagh, Nor (New) Butania, Nor Aresh, Nor Kilikia, Nor Arabkir, Nor Zeytoun, Nor Sebastia, Nor Malatia, Nor Marash, as well as in Nor Kharbert, Nor Kessaria, Nor Hadjn, Nor Ayntap, Nor Moussa Ler (Dagh), Nor Yedessia (Urfa), Etchmiadzin, Armavir, Ararat, Talin, Hrazdan, Gyumri, Vanadzor and elsewhere).

Upon meeting the eyewitness survivors miraculously saved from the Armenian Genocide, I always found them to be silent, reticent and deep in thought. There was valid reason for this mysterious silence, since the political obstacles prevailing in the Soviet Motherland for many decades did not allow them to tell about or to narrate their past in a free and unconstrained manner. Consequently, I have discovered them and recorded the said materials with great difficulty.

During almost fifty years, owing to my consistent quests in the various regions of Armenia, as well as during my short-term personal or scientific trips to Greece, France, the USA and Turkey, I have constantly searched and discovered representatives of the senior, middle and junior generations of survivor-witnesses of the Armenian Genocide. I have gotten closely acquainted with them and have tried to penetrate the abysses of their souls.

Yielding to my solicitous exhortations, they began to narrate, with bursting agitation and tearful sobs, reliving anew their sorrowful past, the heart-breaking experiences they had retained in their memories, about how the policemen of the Young Turks had forcibly expelled them from their Motherland, from their well-organized and flourishing homes, and had inhumanly dismembered their parents and kinsfolk, had dishonored their mothers and sisters, and had crushed the new-born infants with rocks right in front of their eyes...

The popular memoirs narrated by the eyewitness survivors reflect the beauty of the native land, their daily patriarchal life and customs, the era in which they lived, the conditions of the communal-political life, the important historical events, the cruelties (the extortion of taxes, the mobilization, the arm-collections, the burning of people alive, the exile, the massacre and the slaughter) committed in their regard by the leaders of the government of Young Turks (Talaat, Enver, Djemal, Nazim, Bahaittin Shakir), the forcible deportation organized by the latter to the uninhabited deserts of Mesopotamia (Deyr-el-Zor, Ras-ul-Ayn, Rakka, Homs, Hama, Meskene, Sourouj...), the inexpressible afflictions of the Armenians (walking till exhaustion, thirst, hunger, epidemics, dread of death...), as well as the righteous and noble struggle of the various sections of the Western Armenians against violence to protect their elementary right for life (the heroic battle of Van in 1915, the struggle for existence in Shatakh, Shapin-Garahissar and Sassoun, the heroic battles of Moussa Dagh and Urfa, and later, in the years 1920-1921, those of Ayntap and Hadjn), the national heroes distinguished in the heroic self-defensive battles (Andranik Ozanian from Shapin-Garahissar, Armenak Yegarian from Van, the Great Murad [Hambartsum Boyadjian], Yessayi Yaghoobian from Moussa Dagh, Mkrtich Yotneghbayrian from Urfa, Adoor Levonian from Ayntap, Aram Cholakian from Zeytoun, the national avenger Soghomon Tehlerian), and numerous other well-known and unknown Armenians, who struggled shoulder to shoulder with the popular masses, who were martyred, who often warded off the danger and survived...

Every one of the eyewitness survivors told his/her memoir in his/her own Armenian parlance, often in dialect or in Armenian mixed with foreign languages, also in Turkish, Kurdish, French, or German.

The popular oral materials I have written down, tape-recorded or video-recorded are the eyewitness survivors' recollections of their direct impressions, their meditations, reflections and testimonies with the true and authentic reproduction of the live pictures of the lot having befallen the Western Armenians. All the eyewitness survivors, irrespective of their specialty, are, as a result of the cruel life experience they have had, enriched and sagacious individualities, for whom, first and foremost "a man should be a man, whether he is Armenian or Turk," as Artavazd Ktradsian (born in 1901 in Adabazar) has noted in the beginning of his memoir. [Svazlian 2000¹: Testimony¹ 220, p. 360]

In earlier times, the Armenians and the Turks had lived on friendly terms with each other. Arakel Tagoyan from Derjan (born in 1902) has testified to the friendly and peaceful neighborly relations with the Turkish and Kurdish populations, especially during the days of pilgrimage to the Monastery of St. Karapet in Moosh: "...Besides the pilgrims, Turkish and Kurdish inhabitants also gathered, ate the offering with us, rejoiced with us, sang and danced. They brought sick people on the tomb of St. Karapet to be healed." [Sv. 2000: T. 96, p. 203]

It should be noted that, even after experiencing so much affliction and tribulation, the Armenian survivors did not entertain hatred toward the ordinary Turkish people. "...I should say also that not all the Turks were bad; there were nice people among them, too. That was the work organized by the Young Turks; otherwise, the people were good and we were constantly in good relations with the Turks. There were good people among them, too; that is also a fact," related Nektar Gasparian, from Ardvin (born in 1910) [Sv. 2000: T. 74, p. 157]

In the present study, the true historical facts have been assembled, detailed and supplemented with the authentic testimonies communicated by the eyewitness survivors, representing, thus, the general historical course of the Armenian Genocide.

The memoirs transmitted by the eyewitness survivors provide also the possibility of subjecting peculiarities of similar materials in this typological genre to a scientific investigation.

The memoirs narrated by the eyewitness survivors of the Armenian Genocide, as a variant of the popular oral tradition, are either brief and concise in structure or voluminous and protracted, and include also various dialogues, citations, diverse genres of popular folklore (lamentations and heroic songs, tales, parables, proverbs, sayings, benedictions, maledictions, prayers, oaths) to confirm the trustworthiness of their narrative, to render their oral speech more reliable and more impressive. In particular, the survivors themselves have felt a moral responsibility and a sense of duty with regard to their narratives. Many of them have crossed themselves or have sworn before communicating their memoirs to me. And an oath is a sacred word and a holy thing, which does not tolerate falsehood. As Loris Papikian (born in 1903), from Erzroom, tells at the beginning of his memoir: "...I should tell you first that if I deliberately color the events and the people, let me be cursed and be worthy of general contempt..." [Sv. 2000: T. 90, p. 191]

By subjecting the said memoirs and historical songs to a scrupulous quantitative and qualitative analysis, I have ascertained that, as there is no man without memory, similarly, there cannot exist a nation without memory, inasmuch as memory is the life of a man or a nation, the past and the history of the years he or it has lived, as the Jews, the Greeks, the Gypsies and the other aggrieved nations have. [Porter 1982] And if any nation, in the present case the Turkish nation, has not preserved its historical memory, therefore it has not lived and has not felt all those afflictions. It is appropriate to mention here certain passages of the interview "Counterattack in the Virtual World" of Babur Ozden, the founder of the Turkish servers "Superonline" and "Ixir," where he noted that the Armenians had placed in the Internet Turkish-language memoirs and songs of historical character of the eyewitness survivors of the Armenian Genocide (it also concerns my book: V. Svazlian. "The Armenian Genocide in the Memoirs and Turkish-Language Songs of the Eyewitness Survivors." Yerevan, "Gitutiun" Publishing House of the NAS RA, 1999, as well as the Site: http://www.geocities.com/vsvaz333/) and he added: "...I found out that the "genocide sites" in virtual reality [are] the monopoly of the Armenians. ...We have to be organized. Turkey is not organized. ...However, it is very difficult to bring out these stories [life-stories of the survivors] in our culture. We have the cultural disadvantage of lacking self-promotion and individualization. ...They [Armenians] required a myth to keep their culture and past together. This is their only connection to their past. ...We [Turks] don't require such a connection. We want to forget the past and look forward. Our families got mixed up. [In the past] whatever was written was in a different alphabet. We could not get it [life-stories of the survivors] across. I cannot read my grandfather's notes. A person knowledgeable in old Turkish [Ottoman] is reading them. ...There is no gain in putting professors [and] historians on the Internet. Archives don't affect people. ...People are not affected by the life-stories of those like them, whose parents get destroyed [or] dispersed. They are affected as if they are hearing it [the story] firsthand. ...The Armenians even have "genocide songs" sections on the Internet in Turkish and English." ("Milliyet," 28.01.2001, p. 19).

It should be pointed out also that the materials of the above-cited collection of memoirs and songs [Svazlian 2000] I have written down, recorded and published on my own initiative are increasing with every passing day, following their publication in Armenia, and that is an interminable process, inasmuch as every Armenian has his family grief and losses. Besides, there are countless testimonies (in different languages, in different dialects, hand-written, audio- and video-recorded) in all the countries where thousands of Western Armenians were dispersed as a result of the Genocide, gathered in various archives and in private ownership. These also have to be deciphered, published and put into scientific circulation as factual-documentary testimonies of the collective historical memory of the Armenian nation about the Armenian Genocide.

The Armenian Genocide, which was perpetrated at the beginning of the twentieth century, has been directly perceived by the senses of the eyewitnesses and it has been indelibly impressed in their memory. As a survivor from Ardvin, Nektar Gasparian (born in 1910), has confessed: "...More than 80 years have passed, but I cannot forget up to this day my prematurely dead beloved father, mother, uncle, grandmother, our neighbors and all my relatives who were brutally killed, and we were left lonely and helpless. During all my life I have always remembered those appalling scenes, which I have seen with my own eyes and I have had no rest ever since. I have shed so many tears..." [Sv. 2000: T. 74, p. 157]

Verginé Gasparian (born in 1912), from Ayntap, has also narrated: "...The Turks slaughtered my father Grigor, my mother Doudou, my brother Hakob and my sister Nouritsa before my eyes. I have seen all that with my own eyes and cannot forget until this day..." (The survivor began to cry and was not able to continue narrating her memoir – V. S.). [Svazlian: Personal archive. Unpublished materials]

The eyewitness survivors have personally and directly lived that moral-psychological trauma, and all that has been so deeply pinned and stamped on their memory that it has been transformed into a poetic elegy. As a survivor from Sassoun, Shogher Tonoyan (born in 1901), her eyes wet with tears, has communicated to me:

The eyewitness survivors of those historical events, dolefully reliving their sad past, have transmitted to us their personal memoirs about their historical native cradle, their native hearth and their beloved kinsfolk, who, alas, have long since died. They have carried those personal memorial pictures during their whole life, unable to free themselves from the oppressive nightmare. And since the memoirs narrated by the survivors represent the immediate impressions of the particular historical events that became the lot of the Western Armenians, therefore they are saturated with deep historicity.

Objectively reproducing the life, the customs, the political-public relations of the given period, the memoirs communicated by the survivors are spontaneous, truthful and trustworthy, possessing the value of authentic testimonies. As Yeghsa Khayadjanian, from Harpoot (born in 1900), has bitterly testified: "Now, out of our 7 families, only I have survived." [Sv. 2000: T. 108, p. 218]

Verginé Nadjarian, from Malatia (born in 1910), has also confirmed: "...Our family was very large, we were about 150-200 souls. My mother's brothers, my father's sisters and brothers. They slaughtered them all on the road to Deyr-el-Zor. Only three of us were left: I, my mother and my brother..." [Sv. 2000: T. 125, pp. 239-240] This fact has also been confirmed by Hazarkhan Torossian (born in 1902), from Balou: "...So many years have passed, but up till now I cannot get to sleep at nights, my past comes in front of my eyes, I count the dead and the living..." [Sv. 2000: T. 120, p. 232] Thus, even the numerical calculations they have communicated are true. Hrant Gasparian (born in 1908), from Moosh, has particularly emphasized that circumstance, asserting at the end of his narrative: "...I told you what I have seen. What I have seen is in front of my eyes. We have brought nothing from Khnous. We have only saved our souls. Our large family was composed of 143 souls. Only one sister, one brother, my mother and I were saved." [Sv. 2000: T. 12, p. 71].

These factual evidences, calculated one by one, analyzed point by point during the whole of the eyewitness survivors' subsequent lives and assembled with the historical events, are beyond any doubt. They, nearly always, speak in their memoirs of the senior members of their family, their grandfather, grandmother, parents, as well as their close relatives and other members of the family, often mentioning their names and dates of birth. Consequently, the data they have transmitted to us are so exact and trustworthy, that even kinsfolk who had lost one another in the turmoil of the Genocide, by reading the memoirs printed in my books, have sometimes, after decades, found each other from various continents of the world and expressed their gratitude to me.

The main person appearing in memoir-telling is the character of the narrator. S/he not only tells about the important historical events, incidents and people, but is also interpreting them, displaying the main traits of his/her outlook and of his/her personality, the specific point of view of his/her approach, his/her particular language and style. Consequently, the memoir narrated by the eyewitness is unambiguous by its uniqueness; it is the personal biography of the given individual and his/her interpretation of the past, and its main essence remains practically unchanged every time it is retold, since the eyewitness has communicated it as a mysterious confession. And I, with my professional responsibility as a folklorist-ethnographer and remaining loyal to the oral speech of the witnesses, have written down word for word their narratives, realizing that they were entrusting to me their innermost and most sacred secrets to be transmitted to the future generations. It is appropriate to mention here the words of a venerable 90-year-old Zeytouni of proud bearing, Karapet Tozlian (born in 1903). Although he was not literate, "he had murmured every evening, before going to sleep, his memoirs and songs like a prayer, so that he would not forget them." Consequently he has communicated to me, with a sacred affection, his recollections so that "they would be written down, they wouldn't be forgotten and would be learned by the coming generations." [Sv. 2000: T. 342, p. 413] Worthy of remembrance, in this respect, are the words spoken by the survivor, the well-known literary critic Garnik Stepanian (born in 1909), from Yerznka, at the end of his narrative: "...That which befell our nation in 1915 was horrible. Of our large family, which consisted of more than a hundred people, only fifteen remained alive. My mother's kinsfolk were all killed or thrown alive into a large pit and covered with earth, which was moving over them. Among the victims of the Genocide were also all the Stepanians, the families of my father's four sisters. It was a full-scale holocaust. I always muse over those events and think about whether we can ever forget them, but we have no right to forget them, since we are small in number. I do not call for revenge, but I cannot advise my people to forget. The Armenian nation cannot forget that which it saw with its eyes. And, as Avetis Aharonian² has said: 'If our sons forget so much evil, let the whole world blame the Armenian nation'." [Sv. 2000: T. 95, p. 202]

At the same time, the memoirs told by the survivors are also similar, inasmuch as the memoirs narrated in different places, by different sex-age groups (men, women, senior, middle, junior generations) depict, independently from one another and almost identically, the historical events of the same period, the analogous historical happenings and characters, the same horrifying scenes and cruelties, which, when put together, confirm each other, continue and complete one another, tending to move from the personal and the material toward the general and the pan-national. One of the survivors, Tigran Ohanian (born in 1902), from Kamakh, had this circumstance in mind when he concluded his memoir with the following words: "...My past is not only my past, but it is my nation's past as well." [Sv. 2000: T. 97, p. 207] Consequently, the memoirs of the eyewitnesses, with their contents, describe not only the given individual and his environment, but also the whole community, becoming thus the collective historical memory of the Western Armenians.

Nevertheless, the historical memory of the nation also has the capacity to perpetuate. Although about 90 years have elapsed after these historical events and many of the miraculously saved eyewitness survivors are no longer in the land of the living, yet the narratives of the representatives of the senior generation have been so much heard, so many times repeated in their families that they have also become the heritage of the coming generations and, being transmitted from mouth to mouth, have continued to perpetuate also in the memory of the next generations as historical tales. These historical tales have been mainly written down from the subsequent generations as testimonies of the fact that the historical memory of the nation never dies, but it continues to persist also in the memory of the coming generations.

I have succeeded in also writing down the songs and the ballads of historical character communicated by the eyewitness survivors of the Armenian Genocide and which also form an inseparable part of the people's historical memory. The words of these popular historical songs are simple and unornamented; they artistically reproduce the various aspects of the public life of that period in Turkey, the mobilization, the arms collection, the deportation and the massacres organized by the government of Young Turks, as well as factual, stirring and impressive episodes about child-deprived mothers, orphans and orphanages, patriotism and heroic battles. With their originality and ideological contents, these songs are not only novelties in the field of Armenian folklore, but they also provide the possibility for comprehending, in a new fashion, the given historical period with its specific aspects. Consequently, having been created under the immediate impressions of the peculiar historical events that befell the Western Armenian segment of the Armenian nation, the popular and epic songs of this order are saturated with historicity and have the value of authentic documents.

These historical songs, created by endowed unknown individuals, have been widely spread in their time, have been transmitted to a large extent and, since the people's anguish was of a massive character, consequently the popular songs, too, had a massive diffusion. They have passed from mouth to mouth, giving rise to new, different variants, so that similar songs have been created simultaneously in different variants and versions, a fact, which testifies to the popular character of these historical songs.

During my numerous interviews and recordings, the same popular song or its similar variant has been communicated to me by so many informants that it was impossible to mention the names and surnames of all of them. Hence, I have only put in order the variants in the table of Commentaries of my above-cited book, mentioning the name, surname, and date of birth of the eyewitness survivor, who communicated the given song (or memoir), the time, place, language and character (handwritten, audio- and video-) of the recorded material, as well as its number in the archival fund (according to Dr. Prof. Isidor Levin's Method of Documentation of popular oral materials).

I should also point out, that the eyewitness survivors of the Armenian Genocide (men or women) have recalled with a bursting emotional experience and tearful sobs the popular songs concerning the abuses and the outrages (mobilization, deportation, exile, massacre and carnage) perpetrated by the Turkish government, as well as about child-deprived mothers, orphans, orphanages and about the lost Motherland, inasmuch as these events were directly connected with their historical memory. This circumstance construes the emotional-psychological peculiarity of this class of popular historical songs.

The diverse variants of those popular songs, in addition to their historical veracity, are distinguished by their concise figurativeness and by the subtle tunefulness characteristic of the medieval Armenian lament songs. Every line and phrase of those songs is an entire picture, a horrifying scene of the massive tragedy, and the plaintive refrains carry to completion the emotive-psychological aspect of the poetic, vivid mind. Some of the popular historical and epic songs (22 units) are presented also with their musical notation. [Sv. 2000]

The songs of historical character have been created not only in Armenian, but in the Turkish language as well, since under the given historico-political circumstances the use of the Armenian language in certain provinces of Ottoman Turkey had been prohibited.

Not excluding the mutual influences of the spiritual cultures of both nations in the course of a prolonged coexistence, it should be noted that, according to testimonies, "those who pronounced an Armenian word had their tongues cut; consequently, Armenians living in a number of towns of Cilicia (Sis, Adana, Tarsus, Ayntap) and their environs had lost their mother tongue," [Galoustian 1934: p. 698] or "the oppression and the persecution by the Turks were so severe that the Armenian-speaking Ayntap became Turkish-speaking, like the other principal towns of Asia Minor. And the last sharp blow to the Armenian speech came from the Yenicheris who mutilated the tongues of those speaking Armenian." [Sarafian 1953: p. 5]

The ethnographer-folklorist Sarkis Haykouni, living at the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th centuries, has described the political, economic and spiritual state of the Western Armenians of his period and has written: "The Armenian language was forbidden by Turk mullahs and the use of seven Armenian words was considered a blasphemy, for which a fine of five sheep was established." [Haykouni 1895: p. 297]

There are numerous testimonies in the memoirs we have recorded, stating that the Armenians living in Keutahia, Bursa, Adana, Kayseri, Eskishehir and other localities were mainly Turkish-speaking. According to the testimony of Mikael Keshishian (born in 1904), from Adana: "It was already forbidden to speak or to study Armenian and infringers not only had their tongue cut, but hot eggs were placed in their armpits to make them confess that they were teaching Armenian to others, and if they confessed, they were sent to the gallows or killed." [Sv. 2000: T. 182, p. 318]

The following fragment of a popular Armenian song I have written down also testifies to that fact:

since the school-mistress had dared to teach Armenian to the Armenian children. During the deportation and on the roads of exile, these strict measures had been reinforced. Therefore, the Western Armenians were compelled to express their grief and affliction in the Turkish language as well.

Taking into account the public-political aspects of this sad phenomenon representing the initial level of linguistic assimilation, I have not failed, along with the materials recorded in various dialects, to pay attention also to the Turkish-language (but explicitly of Armenian origin) popular historical and epic songs. Though the latter were created by Armenians and not with a perfect knowledge of the Turkish language (Armenian words and expressions, Armenian names of people and localities are often mentioned, grammatical and phonetic errors are noted), they have, with their ideological content, an important historico-cognitive value. The Turkish-language songs have been presented, along with the dialectal originals, in their literary Armenian (or English) translations.

While recording and deciphering the memoirs and the songs, I have endeavored to keep unaltered the original peculiarities of the oral speech of the survivors, presenting them with the accepted dialectal transliteration. When writing down the dialectal originals, I have taken into consideration the linguistic shades of the Armenians from historical Armenia, as well as of those from Cilicia and Anatolia.

In writing down, tape- and video-recording the popular materials, I have made special efforts to include survivors deported from more than 70 localities (densely populated with Armenians) of Western Armenia, Cilicia and Anatolia (Sassoun, Moosh, Bitlis, Shatakh, Van, Bayazet, Igdir, Alashkert, Kars, Ardvin, Ardahan, Babert, Shapin-Garahissar, Sebastia, Erzroom, Khnous, Yerznka, Derjan, Kamakh, Tokhat, Arabkir, Harpoot, Kghi, Balou, Malatia, Tigranakert, Merdin, Adiyaman, Yedessia, Zeytoun, Fendedjak, Hadjn, Marash, Ayntap, Moussa Dagh, Kessab, Beylan, Deurtyol, Adana, Hassan Bey, Tarson, Mersin, Konia, Ordou, Nidé, Kayseri, Tomarza, Everek, Afion-Garahissar, Eskishehir, Izmir, Yozghat, Sivrihissar, Stanoz, Amassia, Samsun, Adabazar, Nikomedia, Partizak, Bursa, Banderma, Biledjik, Keutahia, Kastemouni, Chanak Kalé, Rodosto, Istanbul and others) with a view to giving a fuller idea of the afflictions endured by all the Western Armenians, of their emotional sphere and their meditations.

* The Library of Congress system of transliteration has been used for the phonetic transcription of the Eastern Armenian proper names (V. S.):
¹ Svazlian 2000 – henceforth: Sv. 2000. Testimony – henceforth: T.
² Avetis Aharonian (1866, Igdirmava - 1948, Paris) – a public and political man, writer, member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnak) party.