Comment number 2446 submitted by Sylvia-MD-Poetry attracted my attention, since she mentioned that her granduncle’s wife Katrina, the daughter of Yousef Karagulla was the only survivor in his family.

Yousef Karagulla was my maternal great-grandfather. My father, now deceased, was born in Mardin, and spoke often of Katrina, Numan his uncle and of course Stella and their son Philip. Sadly, we have known about the tragic deaths of my great grandfather and also of his son Numan and Stella, although my father said that the latter two were massacred by local Kurds. Our family, though not Armenian, also suffered the massacres and loss of property.

Those murderers, those assassins, were COWARDS. They relied on their vast numbers and a tremendous supply of military superiority in arms, to massacre a minority Christian population, almost totally unarmed.

One little detail, Numan also had another son, who survived, and who in fact was brought by the Kurds to my grandmother (Yousef’s daughter), to be sold to her. My father said in fact that she did buy him (her own nephew), but that he died shortly afterwards beacause he was already in such terrible condition.

One last detail, Numan, graduated in surgery from Johns Hopkins University in 1905,not Harvard, and Stella was from Baltimore.

My father also met with Mr Gulbenkian, Mr. 5% as he was known at the IPC in Baghdad.

Keep up your good work.

Genocide Victims in My Family
The story of our family. My grandfather, Mihran Dabbaghian (head of the
customs department), left for work and was never to be seen again. His
uncle, Garabed Dabbaghian, famous lawyer/judge, given the short name
Natick Effendi (“Mr. Speaker” in Turkish)—he and all his extended family
where slaughtered in Diyarbakir. We still have the official papers that state
we are owners of many lands in Diyarbakir.
Other related families are the Abrahamian (changed their surname to
Sabri to save their life—we recently discovered that their real surname
name was Abrahamian before the massacres of 1915), Chilingirian,
Kazandjian, Ouzounian, Misakian, and Simsarian (owners of silk factory
in Diyarbakir).
My granduncle’s wife, Katrina, the only survivor from Yousif Karagulla’s
family (feudal lord in Mardin), had a brother, Numan Karagulla, who was
graduated from the medical school of Harvard (1905?), and married to an
American woman named Stella. They raped his wife in front of him then
slaughtered him, his wife, and their son Philip. The genocide survivors are
American citizens. There are endless stories, so which one to tell?
My father’s family in Baghdad never experienced the same situation.
However, in Turkey, his two cousins (from the Ohanessian family) who
were medical students in Vienna (Austria) vanished when they came home
in April to Diyarbakir for the Easter holiday.