Ovsanna Kaloustian, who was the oldest Armenian woman in France, passed away before turning 107. Kaloustian was born in 1907 in Adabazar, was the daughter of a barber and café owner and was one of the last survivors of the Armenian Genocide, reports Nouvelles d’Arménie.

The following words of Ovsanna Kaloustian’s grandson, Federic about the events of 1915 are cited in Giyom Pere’s article printed in the January 2014 edition of French Le Monde newspaper: “It was Sunday, Ovsanna’s mother had returned from church. The priest had announced that the residents of all districts had to leave the city in three days.”

Everyone knows what happened after that…Thousands of Armenians were driven to the deserts of Syria.

Reaching Marseilles in December 1928, Ovsanna Kaloustian gets married to an Armenian by the name of Zaven and spends her entire life with him. The Armenian woman left a collection of poems that she started writing at the age of 65. In one of her interviews, the old Armenian woman said: “God has let me live so that I can tell this story.” Her grandson, Federic added: “To deny the Genocide means to deny my grandmother’s words.”

Nouvelles d’Arménie