Elizabeth Sweeney

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Elizabeth Sweeney is a 16 year old girl who wrote about her family's story and their experiences in the Armenian Genocide. She is not 100% Armenian but she mentions the experiences her uncle, her dad, and her grandmother faced through the Genocide. It all started out with her uncle Tim who is a Russian Armenian. Tim's father was a teacher. One day during class while he was teaching his students, the Turks broke down his door of his classroom and shot him in front of all his students. Sadly, he did not survive. The Turks later came back and gathered Tim's father's family and marched them across the dessert. Along the way, his grandma and one of his brothers died of dehydration. Tim's father and one of his other brothers were able to escape back to Armenia and marry. However, this was an arranged marriage where Tim's father had to marry a 14 year old girl before she would be deported. With Elizabeth's grandma, she attended first grade and knew not one single word of English. In California, after World War 2 ended, she met Elizabeth's Irish grandpa, got married and moved to New York. Grandma became a micro-biologist and is considered the only person that's really good at math in the family. Her grandma's Father came to move into her house but later died of old age. Elizabeth is still trying to find more information about her family's experiences with The Armenian Genocide and still can't accept the fact that she didn't know this until her family had told her and until she was listening to a Holocaust survivor speak at her school.

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