I stayed there for a long time. I fasted and said ‘Xizir, Xizir, you are the Xizir of the Kirmanc (Kurdish people). Either take my life or save me from this place. What can I do?’ I fasted for three days, washed my face and hands at night, implored and begged ‘Either kill me or save me’. I wanted to be with people of my own kin. But what could I have done? I was left an orphan, I was a child. I ran away. The policeman said to me that he will talk with my madam and that he will take me back to them. I cried and cried, and tried to explain to him with my broken Turkish ‘Kill me, tear me into pieces, feed me to the dogs, but please don’t give this orphan back to them.’ (x)
Thousands of children were taken away by soldiers or sent to boarding schools in 1938. The Missing Girls of Dersim, which contains more than a hundred stories as well as several documents detailing the painful experiences of the surviving children of Dersim, who were kidnapped by Turkish soldiers or bureaucrats following the massacre. The first thing they did to all of the children who were forcibly displaced was to shave their hair. They did that to humiliate the children. Shaving the girls’ hair was a way to alienate them from their roots. After the massacre, the surviving children were gathered into concentration camps in the provinces of Elazig and Dersim. Boys and girls were segregated from one another. Girls between the ages of five and 10 and who were beautiful and healthy were given to soldiers. Others were put in black railroad carriages and distributed to the rich people or tradesmen in every station where the trains stopped. With all of the deaths, destruction, forced assimilation and forced displacements, the Dersim massacre manifestly demonstrates the treatment of Kurds at the hands of the Turkish state.
Today marks the 80th anniversary of the Dersim Massacre
