INQUEST RULES DEATH OF BRITAIN’S LAST REMAINING ARMENIAN GENOCIDE SURVIVOR AN “ACCIDENT”
12:24, January 10, 2013
One of the few remaining survivors of the Armenian genocide died
after falling over and fracturing her hip.
Astrid Aghajanian, described as an “incredible woman” by her GP, fell
over at More Hall Convent nursing home in Stroud in April last year.
The 99-year-old was believed to be Britain’s last survivor of the
Armenian massacres, which saw around 1.5 million people killed between
1915 and 1923.
Astrid was aged just two when the Ottoman rulers began the annihilation
of the Armenians and her father was killed. She was deported with her
mother and marched into the Deir ez-Zor desert with her grandmother
and baby brother dying.
Her mother refused to let Astrid go with officials, who were burning
children alive, and the pair hid under a pile of corpses for a night
before venturing into the desert alone.
They were found by a Bedouin tribesman, who then sold them to another,
where they were given shelter, but lived in fear until a Turkish
officer took them to the city of Deir ez-Zor.
They made their way to relatives and began rebuilding their lives
before moving to Jerusalem in the 1920s.
Astrid became a teacher, married husband Gaspar in 1942 and the pair
had two daughters before fighting between the Arabs and Jews started.
The family fled to Cyprus, where she volunteered for the Red Cross
and ran a kindergarten.
But the Turkish invasion in 1974 saw the family lose everything again
and end up in England as refugees.
At a Gloucester inquest into her death yesterday, her GP Noah Thomson
said she was in good health before the unwitnessed fall.
In a statement he wrote: “She was an incredible person I feel humbled
and honoured to have attended and I wish her family well.”
Deputy Gloucestershire coroner, David Dooley said Astrid, who died
at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital on May 11, was a “99-year-old with
an interesting, but traumatic early history”.
He ruled her death an accident.
The Gloucestershire; January 9, 2013
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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Direct link to this article: https://www.armenianclub.com/2013/01/11/inquest-rules-death-of-britains-last-remaining-armenian-genocide-su/
