The Boston Globe
June 10, 2009 Wednesday
Paren Sanentz; scholar bore witness to Armenian genocide
Paren Sanentz, Armenian history scholar
By Gloria Negri, Globe Staff
At 90, Paren Kazanjian Sanentz was busily working at his Macintosh
computer in his Watertown home to finish his mammoth undertaking: a
1,000-page encyclopedia of the history of his beloved native Armenia,
its people and places.
Author, historian, scholar, linguist, lifelong teacher, musician, and
artist, he was engaged in what was a labor of love for two decades and
almost 98 percent finished at the time of his death on May 23, said
his son, Ara-Baruyr of Amesbury.
Mr. Sanentz, whose sister and brother perished in the Armenian
genocide of 1915, died of cardiac arrest last month at Cambridge
Hospital. He was 90.
His work will live on, friends said. “Paren’s encyclopedia is a
masterpiece, and I believe it is the only one of its kind,” said
Garbis Der-Yeghiayan, founder of Mashdots College in Glendale, Calif.,
and a student of Mr. Sanentz’s when he taught languages and history at
Aleppo College in Syria. “The guy was a passionate teacher and a
walking encyclopedia.”
Mr. Sanentz was fluent in Armenian, Arabic, English, French, and
Turkish. He was also conversant in Kurdish, German, and Russian and
was an expert in the ancient languages of the Hittites, Urartians, and
Hurrians, his son said.
None of this made him stuffy, friends and former students said.
Leon Maksoudian, a former professor at California Polytechnic State
University and a former junior high student of Mr. Sanentz, recalled
that at recess, Mr. Sanentz would go out and play ball with his
pupils.
“Paren was passionate about education, about passing on his personal
experience to future generations,” Vartan Oskanian, Armenia’s former
foreign minister, who attended schools in Boston, said in a phone
interview from Yerevan, Armenia. “He represented a generation which
lived a difficult, traumatic life, as genocide survivors and
immigrants. He helped raise a generation of Armenians, prepared as
aware, committed, world citizens.”
Mr. Sanentz’s book “The Cilician Armenia Ordeal” was published in
1989, based on 42 eyewitness accounts of survivors of the Armenian
genocide of 1915-1923. His historical novel of the genocide, “Next
Year Cilicia,” was published in 2006.
Though he was well on in years, Mr. Sanentz’s writing reflected
someone much younger, said Stephen Kurkjian, a retired Boston Globe
reporter and editor. “Paren’s written word was so alive and so
strong, as if written by a man half his age. What a genius!”
He was also versatile. In 2007, Mr. Sanentz wrote a book to hook
children on arithmetic: “Guys, Santa is Retiring.”
“Paren could relate to all ages of people,” said Der-Yeghiayan.
Mr. Sanentz was, indeed, “an amazing fellow,” according to a tribute
by his 13-year-old grandson, Arman Sanentz of Amesbury. “From playing
dominoes on the living room floor to teaching me the basics of
becoming a good Armenian, my grandfather did a lot for me. He was an
accomplished musician, both violin and mandolin, and would serenade me
a lot.”
Mr. Sanentz was born near Damascus, Syria, during the deportations of
Armenians from Turkey, one of six children of Missak and Arousiag
(Samuelian) Kazanjian of Marash, Cilicia.
“The exigencies of the genocide eventually led the surviving members
of the family to refugee camps on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria,”
Ara said.
He attended Aleppo College, an American institution in the area. In
1949, he married Nazely Partamian. He went on to earn a bachelor’s
degree in Armenology and Hittite history at Haigazian College in
Beirut in 1967. He earned his master’s at the American University of
Beirut in archeology and in the ancient history of the Middle Eastern
peoples and languages, in 1969. He was accepted for his doctoral
program at Oxford University but withdrew because of lack of funds.
For six years, Mr. Sanentz was a department head with the
British-owned Iraq Petroleum Company in Syria. For 25 years he held
faculty and administrative posts at schools in Syria and Lebanon.
The family came to this country in 1971 and settled in Watertown,
where Mr. Sanentz and his wife became “pillars of the Armenian
community,” said Eva Medzorian of Watertown, a longtime friend.
“It was the gentle spirit of the man that impressed me,” she
said. “He had twinkly eyes and a genuine smile and always had the
time for everyone.”
In Massachusetts, Mr. Sanentz will be remembered as a fighter for a
cause, said state Representative Peter Koutoujian., “Paren was an
amazing and vast repository of history of the Armenian people. He
wrote prolifically, not just about issues but about the Armenian
villages and the people who lived in them.”
He added: “What Paren did was to document the genocide for a world in
which some still deny it happened.”
In addition to his wife, his son, and grandson, Mr. Sanentz leaves
another son, Shahe of Bedminster, N.J.; and a daughter, Lena of
Wareham.
Services have been held.
The 40th Day of Requiem Prayers will be offered at St. James Armenian
Church in Watertown on July 5 following the 10 a.m. Divine Liturgy.
Another observance is planned in California at another time.