m4zlum:

Hay Way Zaman – Unburied In The Past

When her family was killed in Dersim, she was 5 years old. Like many children who survived the massacre she was born an Elewî (Alevi) Kurd and she was taken home by a Turkish soldier who transformed her into a Sunni Turk. In the documentary, she goes back to Dersim to search for her roots and meets her cousin who still maintains his life as an Elewî.

Thousands of children were taken away by soldiers or sent to boarding schools in 1938. The first thing they did to all of the children who were forcibly displaced was to shave their hair. They did that to humiliate the children. Shaving the girls’ hair was a way to alienate them from their roots. After the massacre, the surviving children were gathered into concentration camps in the provinces of Elazig and Dersim. Boys and girls were segregated from one another. Girls between the ages of five and 10 and who were beautiful and healthy were given to soldiers. Others were put in black railroad carriages and distributed to the rich people or tradesmen in every station where the trains stopped.

The forcible cutting of someone’s hair is such a weirdly profound act of violence