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Topic:child survivors
Showing 1 of 1 matching publications (200 total) · catalogue updated 2026-07-22
Journal ArticleOpen Access

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

Seppälä, Serafim, 2025
International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 81–101 (Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, Yerevan); DOI 10.51442/ijags.0064

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.

survivor testimonychild survivorsmemoir studiesreligion and traumamemory
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