Aghop Der-karabetian

Jail to Jail: Autobiography of a Survivor of the 1915 Armenian Genocide Aghop Der-karabetian

Jail to Jail is the personal account of an Armenian soldier in the Ottoman army during the First World War who survived the genocide of his people. Accused of desertion while on medical leave in the summer of 1915, he was dragged form one prison cell to another for three years on his way form Marash, Turkey, to Mosul, Iraq, where he was set free. He endured constant beatings, hunger, torture, humiliation, and endless walks in shackles. He witnessed and heard about the gruesome mass atrocities against men, women, and children during his journey. After being set free, he was recaptured and sent to die in labor battalions with thousands of other Armenian men. He survived by the sheer force of his faith, the kindness of strangers, and by giving of himself to those who were physically and spiritually more needy than he was. After the war, he returned to the ruins of Marash, then found and married his fiancé, only to escape to Athens after Turkish Kemalist forces attacked the French occupiers and harassed the repatriated Armenians. Ending up in a refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, he served the destitute refugee Armenian communities of the Middle East as a touring preacher.