ONE FAMILY SCARRED BY GENOCIDE
By Peter Reuell, Daily News staff
MetroWest Daily News, MA
Oct 21 2007
ARLINGTON – For Kevork Norian, the question of whether the mass
killing of Armenians after 1915 should be acknowledged as a genocide
isn’t one of righting the historical record, or musty academic debate.
For Norian, the genocide was frighteningly personal.
Norian, 89, and born at the end of World War I, was one of thousands of
Armenians whose families were caught up in what would later be called
the Armenian genocide, in which more than 1.5 million Armenians were
killed and thousands more forced from their homes.
"My name is Kervork Norian and I am a survivor of two genocides,"
the Arlington resident said this week, from a couch in his living room.
"How did I survive? My father was in manufacturing clothing. When
the Turks entered the war (World War I) they drafted two million
soldiers, and they need clothing, so they took my father…and the
families of those draftees were exempt from deportation. So that’s
why we survived."
Though recognized by most scholars and historians as meeting the
traditional definition of genocide, the killings have returned to
the headlines in recent months.
Earlier this year, Watertown officials pulled out of an Anti-Defamation
League program due to the organization’s refusal to recognize the
killings as a genocide. Watertown has a large Armenian population.
The question of whether to recognize the genocide has in recent
weeks erupted into an international controversy, as Democrats push
ahead with a bill to recognize the genocide, while Turkish officials
threaten to withdraw their support for the U.S. military in the region
if the bill passes.
For Norian, though, the killings remain intensely personal.
At the end of World War I, the Turkish government began the forced
deportation of thousands of Armenians to the desert of Syria, where
they lived in what essentially was a refugee camp.
"So we settled in Syria, and lived a refugee life, that was (the)
second genocide," he said of the forced relocation of Armenians to
the Syrian desert.
Norian’s entire family – seven people – was forced to live in a small,
one-room shack, in an area where there was one toilet for every few
hundred people.
The conditions were so bad, he said, his grandmother was killed by
cholera which was spread through the water.
"But somehow we survived," he said. "I was five years old when we
moved to Syria, and we remained there until 1964, and then we came
to the United States.
"We were welcomed in the United States, we were accepted. We were
treated with respect and dignity. I say, ‘Thank You, USA for saving
us from this hell."’
To see the killings again go unrecognized, Norian said, is as if they
are being committed all over again.
"This is another genocide," he said. "They are not recognizing what
happened. Americans say they are for justice and human rights, but
when it comes to recognizing it, they are denying it.
"We suffered so much, and our wounds will not be healed until the
world recognizes it. We are not asking more than that."