Standard Bulletin
April 18 2015
Armenian Genocide, America’s helping hand remembered in Los
Angeles exhibit
The kids have been just about lost to the desert.
They had left their villages under death threats. They saw their
fathers killed by swords, watched mothers, grandmothers and aunties
die of starvation on the death marches to Syria.
But from thousands of miles away, Americans discovered them.
Through telegrams, news articles and film reels, the story of how
youngsters became orphans of the Armenian Genocide reached
America’s shores in 1915. An organization known as Close to East
Relief was founded and a national movement rose. Silent movie stars
such as Irene Rich and Jackie Coogan held sandwich boards asking for
donations and cans of milk. Churches and community groups raised funds
and sent clothing when President Calvin Coolidge named for Golden Rule
Sunday, when Americans ate modest meals to bear in mind “the
starving Armenians.”
�k then, there was a groundswell of a response,” stated
Ani Boyadjian, research and unique collections manager at the Los
Angeles Public Library. “They had been hearing that persons had
been becoming slaughtered.”
The American reaction to the wants of the orphans and these who
survived the Armenian Genocide is the theme of a traveling exhibit now
on show at the Los Angeles’ Central Library. Named “They
Will Not Perish: The Story of Near East Relief,” the exhibit
contains 26 panels that show photographs of orphans as nicely as
posters utilised at the time to raise funds. But at its heart, the
complete exhibit is meant to show America’s generosity in the
aftermath of the Armenian Genocide, Boyadjian mentioned.
The display is there to say 𠇊merica, we thank you,” she added.
“Many of us are direct descendents of these orphans and
survivors helped by Near East Relief,” Boyadjian mentioned.
“Their response is an untold story of American
philanthropy.”
Now referred to as Close to East Foundation, the nonsectarian, New
York-based non-profit organization is also celebrating its centennial
this year. It was founded following U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry
Morgenthau sent telegrams about what was taking place in the Ottoman
Empire.
𠇊t that time communication had been revolutionized by the
telegram,” mentioned Molly Sullivan, director and curator of the
Close to East Relief Historical Society. “It was the initially
time that communication could move more rapidly than the quickest
runner, quickest ship and quickest horse. It meant that the
perpetrators of the genocide made use of the very same
technology.”
With the enable of President Woodrow Wilson, the smaller-scale relief
operation went on to raise much more than $117 million —
today’s equivalent of about $two billion — to help
Armenians in the aftermath of the genocide. That revenue helped save
132,000 orphans, according to the Near East Foundation.
Any orphan of any religion was welcomed, Sullivan mentioned. And the
organization nonetheless operates now to enable displaced people today
in the Middle East and Africa. With the ranks of the Islamic State
swelling, thousands of Assyrians, Syriacs, Chaldeans and Armenians
whose families fled to Syria and Iraq for safety through the genocide
are now being displaced and killed. Sullivan stated the American
response is various now, again, for the reason that of technologies.
“Technology has produced outstanding adjustments in the last 100
years,” she stated. “We have so a great deal facts about
the news that it’s attainable that persons have come to be
overwhelmed and they don’t know how to support. With particular
aspects of the news, they’re extremely concerned but they are
also fatigued.”
On Friday, Armenians worldwide will observe the 100th anniversary of
the begin of the genocide. They will collect at memorials to don’t
forget the 1.5 million Armenians who were killed by the Ottoman Turks
as part of what scholars and historians say was a systematic cleansing
of their identity. And they will march in cities to protest the
ongoing denial by the Turkish government, which has mentioned the
deaths and deportations of Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks have
been element of wars and unrest in the then-collapsing Ottoman Empire.
Many countries and states have recognized the events of 1914 to 1923
as genocide. Last Sunday, Pope Francis even defined the slaughter of
Armenians as the first genocide of the 20th century. But Armenians
stay disappointed more than President Obama’s silence. Though a
resolution was introduced by 40 congressional members which includes
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, to contact on the president to
stress Turkey to completely acknowledge the genocide, the United
States has so far resisted.
The pope mentioned subsequent atrocities such as the Holocaust, the
Pol Pot massacres and these in Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur could have
been avoided if the Ottoman Turks had been held accountable.
Jen Portillo and Marleni Segovia, regional visitors to the exhibit,
looked over the photographs of orphans and stated they believed they
were photos of Holocaust victims of Globe War II.
“I knew nothing about the Armenian Genocide,” Portillo
stated. “We had the very same wars, the same killings in El
Salvador. It’s like so quite a few cultures have gone by means
of so much.”
“It shows we’re all human, that we all go by way of
struggles,” Segovia added.
Boyadjian mentioned many non-Armenians have been able to relate to the
photographs of the young children.
“Los Angeles is a city of refugees,” she said.
The exhibit, made feasible by the American National Committee of
America, is a personal a single for Boyadjian. Her paternal
grandparents had been two of the orphans who were saved by the perform
of Close to East Relief. Her grandmother’s whole household
except a sister have been killed. Her grandfather lost all of his
loved ones members. The two orphans have been brought to Lebanon where
they ended up in the very same orphanage, and they married as soon as
they came of age, she stated.
“I can nevertheless really feel their story on my skin,” she said.
Boyadjian said she will be a single of those attending a March for
Justice occasion on Friday that starts in Small Armenia, in east
Hollywood. More than 200,000 individuals of Armenian descent call Los
Angeles County dwelling. It is the biggest Armenian diaspora outside
of the Republic of Armenia.
Boyadjian said she knows men and women will be upset that streets will
be closed, and other individuals will say the genocide happened 100
years ago, that it’s time to move on. But she said she will
march to say thank you.
“If it wasn’t for America’s response, my
grandparents would not have survived,” she said. “I would
not have been born.”
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