Ruslan KD

And then that led to this mass ethnic cleansing of all the Armenians from the city of Baku in the late eighties called the pogroms of Baku.

So half a million Armenians are displaced and ethnically cleansed from the capital.

about 500 of them brutally murdered and we as a family end up applying for refugee status we applied for australia we applied for israel and we applied for armenia excuse me america we applied for america america were the first people that accepted us now my dad and everyone had to already leave because they appear more ethnically armenian me and my mom were more fair-skinned so we stayed kind of handling the affairs and it ended up uh taking a little bit longer and then we ended up transitioning coming to the united states

in 1991 may of 1991 a few months before the fall of communism wow how old were you i was six six years old yeah so i remember i remember food rations lining up to get a box of food i remember no kidding yeah yeah lining up i remember i remember there was looking into our bathroom as a kid and there was a tub of water and i asked what is that about and they were like that we get water rationed for the family to bathe with so you get water and that's your water for the week to bathe with

Yeah, so very different.

My first memory in America was coming from the airport and then pulling up to this beautiful, shiny, amazing store.

And I thought to myself, oh, how kind.

My parents took me to replenish my toys.

I don't have any toys.

they took me here to buy toys right i've never seen anything like it looked like a toy store it was a lucky's grocery store off of el cajon avenue and the 805 freeway the grocery store in america looked like like an imaginary toy store that's how colorful and beautiful it was wow and it was like they weren't coming to give me toys they were just going to grocery shopping because we didn't have any food and so come to the united states um

Mom and dad see a lot of stuff.

I don't have a lot of crazy memories.

There's a memory that my mom tells me.

This might be a bit graphic, but I'll share the story with you anyway.

I've only shared it once or twice.

So RZs are ethnically Muslim.

Muslims get circumcised.

Armenians don't get circumcised because we are like, hey, Galatians says you don't got to get circumcised.

So culturally not part of the world, no circumcision.

So