The war has been raging for over a month: Armenia and Azerbaijan remain in a deadly battle over the territory of Nagorno Karabakh– with Tu...
The war has been raging for over a month: Armenia and Azerbaijan remain in a deadly battle over the territory of Nagorno Karabakh– with Turkey aiding Azerbaijan in the fight.
In Fresno, 102-year-old Knarig Clara Margossian is watching and worrying from her home.
“They’re going to kill us all. And America doesn’t help them. That’s very very bad,” Margossian says.
Margossian’s parents and older brother were genocide survivors, leaving Armenia for Russia in 1915, to escape the deadly aggression by the Ottoman Turks. The Margossian family eventually settled in Fresno in the 1940’s.
“My father has very many friends from the old country and they had settled in Fresno. That’s why,” says Margossian.
For decades, Margossian has found comfort at Saint Paul’s Armenian Church in Fresno, but a piece of her heart has also been somewhere else.
“It’s my mother country. That’s how I can explain it.”
KNARIG CLARA MARGOSSIAN
With no family left, Margossian has made a generous gift: $1 million to the Armenia Fund non-profit, which provides humanitarian relief to Armenians victimized by the recent fighting.
Maria Mehranian, president of the Armenia Fund, says donations are greatly needed.
“There’s 90,000 people that have been fleeing the area – or have been moved around, displaced, homeless and to provide a lot of them – children and women – to provide food, transport, and some shelter,” Mehranian explains.
Margossian says she hopes her gift will be put to good use and has no qualms about the amount.
“I don’t want Armenians wiped from the map,” she says.
A gift of a lifetime that most certainly will impact, if not save, many lives.
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