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Daniel Varuzhan was a major Armenian poet of the early 20th century. At the age of 31, when he was reaching international stature, he was deported and murdered by the Young Turk government, as part of the Armenian Genocide.

Varuzhan was born Daniel Tchiboukkearian in the Prknig village of Sivas, Turkey. After attending the local school, he was sent in 1896, the year of the Hamidian massacres, to Istanbul, where he attended the Mkhitarian school. He then continued his education at Mourad-Rafaelian school of Venice, and in 1905 entered Ghent University in Belgium, where he followed courses in literature, sociology and economics. In 1909 he returned to his village where he taught for three years. After his marriage with Araksi Varuzhan in 1912, he became the principal of St. Gregory The Illuminator School in Istanbul.

The Armenian writer and doctor Roupen Sevag and three other eyewitnesses described the torture and death of Varuzhan. After being arrested and jailed, they were told that they were being taken to a village. On the way, a Turkish official and his assistant, accompanied by five heavily armed "policemen", stopped the convoy. After robbing the five prisoners, the first two who were in charge left and ordered the other five to take them away. After taking them to the woods, they attacked the prisoners, took off their clothes until all of them were left naked. Then they tied them one by one to the trees and started cutting them slowly with knives. Their screams could be heard by witnesses in hiding from a long distance.