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A photo of 7-year-old Mushegh is available at the website of Armenian Genocide Museum Institute (AGMI) as part of ‘100 Photo Stories about the Armenian Genocide’ Project.

The photo shows the boy revealing scars on his hands. The marks of the inhuman punishment inflicted on the child were still visible a year after his horrific experience.

Mushegh was born in Diza village of Van province in 1907 or 1908. The boy and his mother, Beyaz Badalyan, were the only survivors of their14-member family   Mushegh’s father and his three uncles were killed after the 1914 military draft on Baskale road.

In the spring of 1915, by order of Khalil Bey, Turkish soldiers would take boys aged between 5 and 10 to a dump near Diza village and mercilessly kill them there. Mushegh’s mother asked a Turkish official who was an old acquaintance to help save her two sons. The Turk said he would intervene on behalf of the boys in return for their agreement to convert to Islam. On hearing the Armenian names of the boys, a Kurd who was standing nearby at that moment nailed Mushegh’s hands to a piece of wood. 

Beyaz Badalyan: “The Turk juzbashi released the children. He removed the nails from my boy’s hands and set him free. He came home, crying and covered in blood…”  

Beyaz and her three kids - Smbat, Mushegh and Aregnaz were among tens of thousands of Armenians displaced from Van province in 1915. Mushegh’s younger brother Smbat died en route. His sister Aregnaz died shortly after they settled in Baku.

The photo is from Armenia’s National Archive
the book “100 Photo Stories about Armenian Genocide”