Armenian genocide sears survivors' memories

NorthJersey.com ^ | 04.13.07 | JOSEPH AX

[Coleus]

At 98, Anahid "Annie" Boghosian of Emerson still recalls details of the day her family was driven out of its village during the Armenian genocide of 1915-1923.

Hagop Bahtiarian was 5 years old when police came to his home near Ankara, Turkey, in 1915 and said the mayor wanted to speak to his father. That would be the last time Bahtiarian saw him.  "My father went and never came back," the 97-year-old said on a recent afternoon at the Armenian Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Emerson. "It's impossible to forget. I [was] 5 years old, but my memory is clear. They were selling his clothes at the market the same day."

Bahtiarian is one of a dwindling number of survivors of what is commonly known as the Armenian genocide. Most academics estimate that 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians died in Turkey during World War I and its aftermath, from 1915 to 1923. Armenians commemorate the killings every year on April 24.   Like Bahtiarian, Anahid "Annie" Boghosian, another resident at the Armenian home, was only a child when soldiers forced members of her family to leave their village home and march for days until they reached a Kurdish area, where they were taken in. Boghosian's father had gone to look for work in Istanbul; he was never heard from again.

Upcoming events

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Today: Screening and debate at St. Leon Armenian Church in Saddle River, featuring a controversial PBS televised debate on the genocide and a discussion afterward.

April 22: Commemoration event at Times Square, 2 p.m. The event is being organized by Samuel Azadian, a Hamburg resident whose four older siblings perished in death marches.

April 24: Commemoration event at the Sts. Vartanantz Armenian Apostolic Church in Ridgefield, 7 p.m.

May 3: Film screening, "The Genocide in Me," at the Englewood Library, 7:30 p.m.

"I saw on the road, in the field, people lying injured," the 98-year-old said, her pink-rimmed glasses framing clear blue eyes that occasionally filled with tears as she tried to remember her experiences.  Both Bahtiarian, a longtime watchmaker who has lived in several Bergen County towns since the 1960s, and Boghosian, who worked for a rubber company and lived in Cliffside Park, say that Turks and Armenians lived side by side in their communities before the Young Turks government began to persecute Armenians.

"We went to school together," Boghosian said. "How can you hate them?"  The nine decades that have passed, coupled with the fact that both were young children, have conspired to dim their memories. Their children, however, heard many stories while growing up.  One of Boghosian's daughters, Thelma Sarajian, said that at one point during the long trek, her grandmother stopped at a pond and decided to drown Annie and her cousin, who was with them, rather than see them come to harm at the hands of the Turkish soldiers.

...continued

[LouD]

Thought you’d find this interesting.

[I still care]

I had Armenian neighbors. They told me often that Armenians were the first Christians.

[Fred Nerks]

http://www.armenian-genocide.org/

http://www.armenian-genocide.org/photo_wegner.html#photo_collection

[Coleus]

actually the Jews were the first Christians, starting with the Jewish apostles. Many ethnic groups claim to be the first. Some say the the Romans were, St. Peter was killed in Rome, others say the Coptics in Egypt were, then you have the Syrians and Lebanese and the Greeks. I don’t know the actual beginnings and where the 12 apostles went after they received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday.

[Coleus]

.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Indeed. I suppose you could call them the first gentile Christians. In any case the Armenian Church is very, very old with a rich heritege.

I grew up in Fresno, California and went to school with many, many children of Armenian descent, as did my mother before me. My mother (age 93) remembers when the first Armenian immigrants settled in the San Joaquin Valley. WHen she was in elementary school, she used to accompany her friends to their church to take lessons in the Armenian language after school.

There were 3 main areas where the Armenian Immigrants settled: the San Joaquin Valley, Boston, and Detroit. There may have been others, but those are the ones I remember. They came to the San Joaquin Valley for the farming, but I do not know what drew them to the other 2 locations.

[afraidfortherepublic]

BTW, I (and everbody else) in the San Joaquin Valley of California have never doubted for one minute that the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians. I had no idea that the US (as a whole) had never recognized this terrible tragedy as a genocidal act.

[I still care]

Found this:

The Armenian Apostolic Church, sometimes called the Armenian Orthodox Church or the Gregorian Church, is the world’s oldest national church and one of the most ancient Christian communities.

The earliest accounts of the introduction of Christianity into Armenia date from the 1st century, when it was first preached by two Apostles of Jesus, St. Bartholomew and St. Thaddeus.

The Armenian Apostolic Church has been in existence since the days of the apostles and therefore has a rightful claim as one of the oldest denominations in Christianity. Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as its official religion, in 301, when St. Gregory the Illuminator converted Tiridates III (the King of Armenia) and members of his court.

St. Gregory is reported to have been imprisoned by the King in an underground pit, called Khor Virab, for 13 years after which he healed the King of an incurable disease, and thereby converted to Christianity. The official name of the church is “Armenian Orthodox Apostolic Church”. This is because it was founded by the Apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew. Therefore, it should be noted that the labeling of “Grigorian church” is wrong and is being used due to a lack of knowledge in the field.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Thanks for the ping. See #7 and #8.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Thanks for the imformative ping. Indeed, I can show you the corner where the “Armenian Orthodox Apostolic Church” stood in my home town.

However, there was another Armenian Church in town too, and a lot of muy friends went there and I frequently attended their youth groups in Jr. High and High School. That was the Pilgram Armenian Church, and it was affiliated with the Congregational Church — at least we all went to the same summer camps and youth conferences in high school. (I was raised a Protestant and converted to Catholicism at my marriage nearly 50 years ago.)

I’m sorry now that I was never invited to a service at the “Armenian Orthodox Apostolic Church”. I would have loved to have witnessed one of those. Perhaps I still will someday. I loved watching the Pope when he was a guest last year.