By Guillaume Perrier (Le Monde)  01/17/2014 at 3:53 p.m.

The little woman never leaves a lot in the streets of Marseilles . It moves on a pole vaulted, pampered, brooding by her daughter and grandchildren. But when reminded him of his childhood, his eyes light up and his memories come back to him intact. Ovsanna Kaloustian, 106 years, is one of the last survivors of the genocide of Arméniens in 1915. A carrier of memory, which is aware of the role his own, on the eve of the centenary of the tragedy. “God left me alive so I said,” she repeats. Video of the story of his exodus across the Europe and the century is presented site-Memorial Camp des Milles, between Marseille and Aix-en-Provence , inaugurated by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, in 2012.

Terror, massacres and deportations of his people in Turkey Ottoman Ovsanna retains a wealth of images and details she says passionately. She was born in 1907 in Adabazar, located a hundred kilometers east of Istanbul, and grew up in a mansion, three floors with garden . The city, then, is a center for major trade and crafts, and the population of Armenia (12 500 people in 1914) there is more than half the population. Ovsanna remembers that “even the Greeks and Turks speak Armenian.” His father owns a bar, which also serves as hairdresser and of his teeth firm. She is drinking tea in the morning before starting school.

ISTANBUL IN MARSEILLE

Ovsanna 8 years old in 1915 when, during the war, the Young Turk government launches the order to deport the Armenians. “It was a Sunday, the mother of Ovsanna home from church. The priest had just announced that the city would be cleared in three days, neighborhood by neighborhood, “said Frederick, the grand-son of the survivor and custodian of the family memory.

On foot, the convoys get under way south and east. Ovsanna, his parents, brother, uncles, aunts and cousins ​​come to Eskisehir, where they were herded into a train. It is in cattle cars that thousands of Armenians will thus sent to the deserts of Syria . But the train that carries the family stops on the way to the station Cay, near Afyon. They are ordered to do draw up a makeshift camp. Marshalling centers further downstream are clogged. They were eventually dispersed, two years later, and go to hide in the surrounding countryside. Ovsanna then a decade.

With the armistice in 1918, the survivors attempt to return . The Ovsanna family finds its calcined home eventually leave , under the pressure of new occupants, Turkey, in the city. The exodus continues, first to Istanbul. In 1924, uncles, aunts and cousins ​​sailed for the United States. Four years later, the young woman riding on a boat to Marseille. “We arrived in December, under the snow , “she said. Like so many others – 10% of the population is composed of Marseille descendants of survivors of the Armenian genocide – she moved, did a little sewing earn a living. She married Zave Kaloustian, sole survivor of a massacred family opened a grocery store, offers a piece of land and it suits her house.

“She taught us Armenian, but the transmission of the story came later,” says his grandson, son. Ovsanna continues today to testify tirelessly to combat Holocaust denial, still alive a hundred years after the massacres.