Canadian Armenian Genocide survivor Sirvard Kurdian dies aged 106
Armenian Genocide survivor Sirvard Kurdian from Toronto has passed way at the age of 106, Horizon Weekly reports.
She was born three years before the forced deportations began, when she was forced with her siblings and mother to walk from Erzerum in eastern Turkey to Mosul in Iraq. The journey took six months. Her father was killed by Turks in 1915.
When the family reached Mosul, in what is now Iraq, they were welcomed by Arabs. After a while they moved on to Aleppo in Syria, where more than 100,000 Armenian survivors settled, including orphans.
There, Sirvard attended school and rose to the top of her class, enthusiastically reading and reciting poetry. At 15, she met and married a young orphaned Armenian man, Khatchik Kurdian.
In 1974 Khatchik Kurdian passed away. In 1991 Sirvard moved with her family to Canada.
