Horomsima Davtyan was born in 1929 in a family of a musician. She has born and raised in Ghukasyan village, attending the local school. Her father Stepan Davtyan was a musician and her mother was a housekeeper.

In 1944 after many years of living in the village, the family decided to move to Gyumri. Mrs. Horomsima began to work at Gyumri’s Textile factory. For about 5 months she was a trainee and then up to 1951 she worked there as a weaver.

Lena Habetnagyan was born in a family of workers, in Leninakan on April 15, 1930.

She has lost her parents in an early age. Being the eldest, Lena had two sisters and three brothers. Upon their parents’ death, Lena began to take care of her brothers and sisters. It was very difficult for Lena to attend school and take care for brothers and sisters at the same time. So the fourth grade was the last one for Lena.

In Harutyunyan’s large family from Karnut village a daughter Sofik Harutyunyan was born on August 31 of 1948: in the severe post-war years of Stalinism, in the same year when a well-known English novelist and journalist George Orwell wrote his “1984” novel where he mocks Stalinism and presents the process of oppression of an individual under totalitarism. Who could have thought that 1988, so close to 1984 would change Sofik’s life so drastically.

Sofik had two sisters and one brother.