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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How many Armenians out of one group of 18,000 reached the city of Aleppo after their march?

2. Until what year were Christians forbidden to serve in the Ottoman army?

3. Who did the Armenian refugee, Soghomon Tehlirian, assassinate in 1921?

4. What kind of business did Dovey's family run in the United States?

5. In what decade did Abdul Hamid massacre Armenians?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why did Balakian take the bones from the memorial site at Der Zor?

2. What was the deeper significance of the 500 pairs of shoes stolen by the Turks from Balakian's grandfather?

3. How does genocide denial affect the survivors and their descendants?

4. How has the Turkish government used its influence to prevent honest discussion of the Armenian genocide over the years?

5. Why is Der Zor considered the Armenian equivalent of Auschwitz?

6. Why did Balakian eventually come to see his family's silence about the genocide as a gift?

7. How did American Ambassador Morgenthau attempt to help the Armenians?

8. How did Balakian's aunts justify the family's inability to talk about the genocide when he was a child?

9. What did Dovey mean when she said that Turkish culture was theft?

10. According to Aunt Gladys, why did the Armenians in America never talk about the genocide?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Armenians in the United States--including Balakian's family--generally attempted to assimilate into American culture. How did this assimilation impact their ability to thrive after the genocide? Did assimilation mean an abandonment of Armenian culture? Or did they maintain traditions that could no longer be maintained in their wiped out homeland? Did assimilation make it easier for the survivors and their descendants to deal with the fact of genocide?

Essay Topic 2

Balakian wrote frequently about the central role food played in his extended family. What importance does food have in Armenian culture? How did the experience of starvation during the genocide impact Armenian immigrants to the U.S.? Would food still have had the same importance if the Armenians had not experienced starvation? How do immigrant families transmit their culture to their children through food? How do they express their love at the dinner table?

Essay Topic 3

At least some of Balakian's relatives would appear to have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their sufferings. Nafina, in particular, seemed to suffer as evidenced by her breakdown when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. How did her suppression of her memories affect her over the long term? Had she been more open about the genocide, would she have been spared the breakdown in 1941? Why did she continue to suppress the memories after recovering from the breakdown? Can this suppression ever be healthy or does it inevitably lead to PTSD? Would the survivors of the Armenian genocide have had a different post-war experience if the genocide had occurred after PTSD became a well-known malady?

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