Eva Harut lives and works in Germany. As a journalist reporting for Armenia’s GALA TV, Eva has a way with words. Burdened by the story of her great-grandmother Hripsime’s survival in the Armenian Genocide for so many years, Eva finally decided to write it down to mark the 100th Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. In September of 2015 she published a book titled “One Week in the Rug,” based on her grandmother’s accounts. Her true calling, however, is art.
Having graduated from the State Academy of Fine Arts in Yerevan with a distinction, Eva Harut is currently doing her postgraduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden. Alongside her studies she gives lectures and organizes a range of projects with renowned artists. Before moving to Germany Eva spent four years at the Fine Art Academy in Gyumri, Armenia. It was in her home town of Gyumri in 2011 that she came up with the idea for her first big art project, titled “Metamorphoses.” “Life in Gyumri is not easy. Many people – and women in particular – complain about their situation while appearing incapable of doing anything to change it,” Eva says. “The project is my way of showing how other women succeeded in turning their lives around by overcoming problems and obstacles.” Eva Harut was one of the first artists to raise the issue of the status of women in Armenian society.
Another project organized by Eva is called “La Realtà.” Its central message is simple: our way of thinking is what creates our reality. The project was so successful that it was shown multiple times in Yerevan, Moscow and Dresden.
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Eva Harut’s “La Realtà” exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Yerevan, October 2014. |
Shattered dreams
Eva’s great-grandmother Hripsime Betnesian came from an educated family in the city of Erzurum. Around 1910 she married an Armenian officer by the name of Lujs Paronian, who was deployed to the Persian front a few years later and never heard of again. “They had three daughters, three-year old Varsik and the six-month old twins Aghavni and Lusaber. In late 1914, all my great-grandmother’s seven brothers were drafted into the army. She stayed behind with her three little children, her sister Mariam and her parents,” Eva remembers.
“As time went by, a Turkish neighbor urged Hripsime to take her kids and leave, adding she was a fool to believe that her husband would ever return. Hripsime, however, refused to heed the warning. For her father, Hovhannes Agha, a well-known owner of a large rug store, it was even less conceivable that his Turkish customers could ever be capable of committing atrocious acts of violence against the Armenian people.”
It wasn’t until Turkish soldiers began searching Armenian homes for valuables that the family realized the true gravity of the situation. “Their first reaction was to hide their gold and jewelry in the yard and house, but it soon became unequivocally clear that it wasn’t just their wealth that was at stake, but their lives,” says Eva. Hripsime and her few remaining family members tried to make their way to Kars, from where they could take the train to Russia via Gyumri.
“En route, however, they were prevented from proceeding onto the bridge across the River Araks and forced to find another way to cross. My grandmother would always break down in tears at exactly this point of the story, as she tried to tell us about the tragic events of that day. All the Armenians were on foot, trying to run as fast as they could. Most of them stood no chance against the mounted Turkish cavalrymen, who would indiscriminately behead anyone they caught – men and women, young and old. When Hripsime came to she was in a small, dark room; that was all she remembered. She was safe with the Turkish neighbor to whom her family had left their house. The woman was married to an officer and must have found out through him about the Armenians’ attempt to flee across the River Araks. She went there to see if Hripsime had made it, only to find her passed out by the water, with her mother and children weeping bitterly beside the body,” Eva says.
“As soon as the neighbor kneeled down to see if my great-grandmother was still alive, she was approached by a Turkish soldier. She had the presence of mind to tell him she was only trying to collect gold from the dead, which seemed to satisfy him. As the crying twins were attracting too much attention, she quickly hid them behind a bush and left them to their fate.
That done, she waited until dark to take Hripsime, her old mother, and three-year old Varsik to her home, bringing them back on a handcart loaded with rugs that she had borrowed from a Kurd. In order to avoid suspicion, she hid the women in two of the rolled-up rugs on the cart and dressed the little girl as if she was her own.
Despite my great-grandmother’s utter helplessness that day, she could never forgive herself for not being able to save her twins, mourning them until the day she died,” Eva recalls.
Twice a day, the woman’s home was searched by soldiers, making it all the more dangerous to smuggle even a little food to where she hid her Armenian friends. “One day, her husband told her to stop it because of the risks involved. But she was determined not to leave them to die, so she used their few remaining valuables to a pay a Kurd who, under cover of darkness, would take them to Kars on his cart,” Eva says. The fate of Hripsime’s father and brothers remains unknown, but it is safe to surmise that they didn’t survive.
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“The train to Russia,” an illustration by Mariana Smith for Eva Harut’s book "One Week in the Rug” |
A fresh start in Russia
The train to Russia was crowded with Armenian refugees, most of them women, children and elderly. Disheartened and worried about his wife and three-year old son, a solitary young man slumped in the corner. His name was Aharon Schiroian. The week-long journey took a terrible toll: many died from exhaustion or the contagious diseases that spread among the passengers. Whenever the train stopped at a station, more dead bodies were unloaded. When Varsik was taken ill, Aharon cared for the little girl as if she was his own, while Hripsime was longing for death. “At one station, a Russian officer came into their car. A large scar ran down his face, distinctive enough a feature to be imprinted in my great-grandmother’s memory. When his eyes fell on her, he spoke these kind words that gave her fresh heart:
‘What is lost, is lost. Now you have to look ahead. If you made it on board this train, you are strong enough to go further.’
According to my grandmother, that encouragement was badly needed,” Eva recalls.
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Aharon Schiroian, Hripsime’s second husband, many years later in Gyumri |
Upon arrival in Krasnodar, little Varsik was immediately hospitalized. In the middle of the war, extra meals and beds were scarce, so Hripsime lay on the bare floor at her daughter’s bedside. After Varsik’s recovery a few days later, mother, daughter, grandmother and Aharon from the train moved into one of the wooden cabins built to accommodate the refugees, living four to a tiny room. Aharon had not left Hripsime’s side since the day they met, and proposed to her a year later. “The closeness the two of them shared was special, because they started out as best friends and became a couple later,” Eva believes. They had two sons and a daughter named Lusya, Eva’s grandmother. After finding a job as a bookkeeper, Aharon was able to provide for his new family.
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Lusya, Eva Harut’s maternal grandmother |
In the hope of locating surviving family members, the Armenian refugees wrote their loved ones’ names on small pieces of paper that were passed around. This is how Aharon was reunited with his mother and Hripsime with her sister Mariam, who was married with a child and living in Gyumri. Hripsime’s mother was the first to move there and soon asked her daughter to follow with her family. “Whenever grandma Lusya talked about her mother’s story of survival, there were always tears in her eyes. She spoke of the Turks, who took everything away, but she also spoke of praise and gratitude for the Turkish neighbor who saved her mother,” Eva recalls.
The story is verified by the 100 LIVES Research Team.
