Journal ArticleOpen Access

Religion and Spirituality in the Memoirs of Child Survivors of the Armenian Genocide

Seppälä, Serafim · 2025

Argues that Armenian Genocide survivor memoirs remain an understudied genre despite their value as a grassroots record of the events and of how trauma is remembered. Seppälä brings together two neglected facts: that many memoirs were written by child survivors and dwell on childhood experience, and that religious material (God, faith, prayer, providence) runs all through them. Because most texts were composed decades after the events, the analysis rests on a theory of narrative subjectivity and retrospective narration. The findings emphasize the paradoxical character of survivors' spirituality: after the genocide religious conviction does not cohere into a system but survives as detached fragments, ranging from astonishing faith to deep bitterness.

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Published in

International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 81–101 (Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, Yerevan); DOI 10.51442/ijags.0064

Year

2025

Language

English

DOI

10.51442/ijags.0064

Citation

Seppälä, Serafim 2025. Religion and Spirituality in the Memoirs of Child Survivors of the Armenian Genocide. International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 81–101 (Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, Yerevan); DOI 10.51442/ijags.0064. https://doi.org/10.51442/ijags.0064

What this offers a reader

For students

A humane, readable way into survivor testimony; good for anyone writing on memory, trauma, or faith.

For academics

Peer-reviewed literary/theological analysis of an understudied testimonial genre; author is Professor of Systematic Theology, University of Eastern Finland.

For the community

Takes seriously how our grandparents' faith survived, or didn't, after what they lived through as children.

For a general reader

What survivors wrote about God, decades after they lived through the genocide as children.