Leaving Kayseri - Gregory Ketabgian M.D.

Gregory Ketabgian is a retired physician born in Aleppo, Syria to Armenian Genocide survivors. He received his initial education in Aleppo College and later a B.A. at UCLA and medical education and specialty training at the University of Southern California. He had a private practice in Pasadena, California for 35 years where he cared for waves of Armenian immigrants escaping the catastrophes in Soviet Armenia, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Presently he has become fascinated by the stories that we all have that deserve to be told and preserved. He has written and lectured on “Thomas Christie of Tarsus College”, “The Adana Massacres: A Psychosocial Study” and “Armenian Survivors on the Titanic”.

In this publication he has documented his father’s experience during the onset of the Armenian Genocide while living in Kayseri, Turkey. It takes us along the route of deportation and their survival through the Syrian Desert to Deir el Zor; their effort to exist in Aleppo, as well as his own childhood experiences growing up in a Muslim country and eventual immigration to the United States. All of these are an aftermath of Leaving Kayseri; it is a Journey of One Hundred Years.