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One of last Canadians to survive Armenian Genocide dies aged 104

Armenian Canadian woman believed to have been one of the last Canadians to have survived the Armenian genocide died on Thursday, four months shy of her 105th birthday, Horizon Weekly reported. Eugenie Papazian was born in Turkey, in the Ionia district of Samsun by the Black Sea in 1915. She never knew her parents. Her father was taken to the army in 1915 and did not return home, while her mother died when she was still a newborn.

One of last Canadians to survive Armenian Genocide dies aged 104

One of last Canadians to survive Armenian Genocide dies aged 104
STEPANAKERT, JANUARY 17, ARTSAKHPRESS: She had a large family: two sisters, Arousiag and Azniv, three brothers, three maternal aunts and uncles, whom she has not seen.
At the start of the 1915 deportations, the members of her extended family gather and find refuge in the mountains and then descend into the gorge! It is there that she was born. After Eugenie’s birth her mother, exhausted, died in a place her daughter would never know.
For three years, her maternal grandmother struggled to look after her, then gave her to an orphanage when she was no longer able to feed her.
So began her painful odyssey through three children’s homes in Greece, where an American relief organization had arranged the placement of Armenians in 13 orphanages.
An Armenian couple took her to Egypt, and she spent her early teens in Cairo, where she met her husband, Garabed Kokorian. She was 15 years old when she married Garabed.
Eugenie Papazian had 5 children, 9 grandchildren, 14 great grandchildren and 1 great-great-grandchild.

     

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