Antoine's Bakery - Another Story of Survival

Antoine shows Marash Girl a photo of his grandson which he keeps on his shelves.

There she was at Antoine's Bakery down the Lake (in Nonantum) to buy her friend some pasta chorte.  Antoine was there.  Marash Girl had heard he was Armenian, so she started up a conversation with him . . .  in French, in Armenian, in English.  Yes, he was from Marseille, France, but where were his parents from?  Kharpert?  His father was already in this country when the Armenian Genocide began, but his mother was there.  How did she survive?  She fainted.  She fainted?  The Turkish gendarmes came to her village to root out all the Armenians including his mother, then a girl of twelve.  After the Turkish gendarmes had rounded up all the Armenians in the village, the began shooting them down, all of them, except for his mother, who went into a dead faint when it all began, dead bodies  falling over her, covering her, saving her life.  A Turkish family found the little Armenian girl, still alive, pulled her from under the mass of dead Armenians, and brought her into their home, and the rest, as they say, is history.