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.

A lot of people lost their houses, the others lost their relatives and there are some who survived and keep struggling with the earthquake of 1988. A woman who was affected by the earthquake too is 66 years old Katya Pijoyan from Gyumri. She attended Gyumri school # 9 up to the VIII grade. Then she worked at Gyumri’s Stock factory for two years as a trainee, and only in 1970 she became a worker. During her employment years she got married and had 3 children.

Seda Arshakuni was born in Gyumri on January 24, 1927. Her father, craftsman, was from Kars and her mother, housewife, from Gyumri. In 1918 with his entire family Seda’s father fled to Armenia, came to Gyumri, so much resembling Gyumri, and had met her future wife, Seda’s mother.

“It was very painful for my father to leave his native home Kars, his only dream was to return and leave there. He even told me that after his death I take ground from his grave and take it to Kars,” told Seda.