From Istanbul to Marseille, “my mother forbade us to speak Armenian in the street”

“My mother is from the first generation of genocide survivors. His father was born in the mountains, during the mass deportations that Armenians suffered in Anatolia between 1914 and 1923. He migrated to Istanbul in 1935, at the age of 18, to find work. He became a tailor, got married and had two daughters, including my mother, Rita. At that time, the Great War was over, but the tolerance of the Turks was “relative” towards the Armenians. In Istanbul, the Armenians had their quarters, their churches, their schools. But they did not mix with the Turks.