The Gomidas Institute and Garod Books recently announced the release of Vahram Dadrian’s To the Desert: Pages from My Diary, probably one of the most important primary sources published on the Armenian Genocide in recent years. To the Desert is the diary account of a 15-year old’s experiences in of 1915.

Translated by Agop Hacikyan with an introduction by Ara Sarafian, the book has already received positive reviews. "Like no other survivor account...[this book is] an important document, an engaging chronicle and a painful reminder of the human costs of war, mass killing, and lost homelands," read a review in the Sunday Los Angeles Times in January.

Vahram Dadrian (1900-1948) started writing his diaries on May 24, 1915 because of the calamitous events facing Armenians on the horizon. This was the period when the Ottoman government started the persecution of Armenians leading to mass deportations and massacres.

The Armenians of Chorum, where the Dadrians lived, fared no differently than other communities. They were deported to Aleppo, and then on to Jeresh (Jordan), where they remained until the end of World War I.

Surviving members of the family returned to Constantinople in 1919, where Vahram prepared his diary-notes for publication. His account was first printed in 1945 as a book in Armenian in New York.

To the Desert is a somewhat unusual narrative written by a child survivor of the Genocide. Vahram relates the fate of thousands of Armenians who were not sent to Der Zor in 1915, but to the wastelands south of Aleppo, as far as Maan and Es Salt in Jordan.