Silences: My Mother's Will to Survive by Alice Tashjian Table of Contents Acknowledgments Foreword Preface Introduction Appendix Frances' Story-Ch. 1 Four Sons-Ch. 2 ThreeDaughters-Ch. 3 Missionaries-Ch. 4 Deportation-Ch. 5 To America-Ch. 6 Leon's Story-Ch. 7

Foreword This is the story my mother wrote about her mother. Everyone has a mother and every mother has a story. So what makes this reminiscence special? Worth the labor to write? Worth the effort to read? More than a historical retrospective, Silences chronicles the triumph of a human spirit. It is a true story that tells of the victory of an unlikely heroine who not only survived unbearable hardship, humiliation and the loss of family and friends, but in the end prevailed over her tormentors. Penniless, naked and emaciated, she survived when most around her perished. Kept alive by wit and will, she passed her story, and just as importantly, her genes to descendants numbering thirty as of this writing. This book is worth reading because it is a call to action to all of us who live in a troubled world. While we live lives of relative comfort, luxury and security, the world is filled with places where people are persecuted, tortured, and "cleansed" because of their race, religion or ethnicity. Beneath it all is the same story of avarice, indolence and cowardice, the most base and uncivilized part of mankind that uses might instead of right in a misguided attempt to define one's own identity by destroying the identity of another. The Jewish holocaust during WW II is widely known. As of this writing, Bosnians, Somalians, Nicaraguans, and Ethiopians are reliving the hell endured by my grandmother. This is only what is reported. Sadly, this scourge has been with humankind for all of recorded history. Even we Americans are not immune. During the 18th and 19th centuries we virtually eliminated the native Americans using the same logic. And, it is unlikely to change unless we become aware and take compassionate action. My grandmother's story teaches that the will to survive not only keeps us alive, but alert, fully functioning human beings, that hardship need not destroy us, but can rather become a fire which galvanizes the best in us and makes us stronger. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this biography underscores the sovereign and regenerative powers of education. After every material possession had been taken from her, after she endured many debasing and humiliating experiences, the one thing that no one could steal from her was her education. What she knew, and her ability to communicate her knowledge in several languages, made her valuable and saved her life more than once. There is a compelling desire to want to forget about man's inhumanity to man. In the end, though, the well-worn adage, that those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it, is more true today than ever before. Edward Michael Tashjian

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