ARMENIAN SURVIVORS REMEMBER
Queens Gazette, NY
March 27 2013
BY JASON D. ANTOS
Thousands of Armenians, Jews and other supporters will gather in
Times Square on April 21, to commemorate the first genocide of the
20th century, the Armenian Genocide.
The event, held on what is also Holocaust Remembrance Day, will pay
tribute to the almost two million Armenians who were massacred by the
Young Turk Government of the Ottoman Empire and to the six million
Jews who were annihilated by the Nazi regime during World War II.
In anticipation of the 98th anniversary of the tragedy, which occurred
during World War I, two survivors of the Armenian Genocide, known as
Medz Yeghern, remembered their horrific moments of sorrow, pain and
survival during a special question and answer session at the New York
Armenian Home in Flushing.
Held on March 19, two women residents of the New York Armenian Home,
both a century old or more, representing some of the few remaining
survivors of the genocide, told their stories.
“Each year there are fewer survivors left,” said Armenian Home
Executive Director Aghavni “Aggie” Ellia. “The fact that they still
remember, at their age, the events that happened to them are an
indication of how traumatic the whole experience was.”
The first survivor was
Arsalos Dadir, born Aug. 15, 1913 in Shabin Karahisar, Turkey. Dadir
shared that her father was killed by the Young Turks when he was
only 25, leaving behind herself and her mother who was only 20 when
he was killed. Her uncle, a doctor, was one of 300 martyrs killed on
Apr. 14, 1915 when Armenian leaders, including members of the Turkish
Parliament, were murdered. She remembered how the Young Turks took
10 people from the village, tired them up, and shot them all. She
remembers hundreds of bodies piled on top of each other.
Coming from a wealthy family, her mother, grandmother and
great-grandmother found safety with a wealthy Turkish family. Her
family lost all of their money and land and the family eventually
moved to Constantinople, where Dadir married and raised two children,
before moving to the U.S. later in life.
The next was Charlotte Kechejian, born in Nikhda, Turkey on Oct. 21,
1912.
Kechejian told how she walked with her mother for miles through
the desert to escape persecution by the ruling Turks. She recounted
feeling tired, thirsty and hungry and sleeping in the desert. Her
mother kept promising her that if she would hold on a little while
longer, she would have comfort and happiness and plenty of food to
eat. This, of course, was not so.
“It was awful,” she said. “It was the most awful time of my life.”
The first stage of the Genocide occurred from 1894 until 1896, when
more than 300,000 Armenians were massacred during the reign of Ottoman
Sultan Abdul Hamid II. In 1909, approximately 30,000 Armenians were
massacred in the area of Cilicia. The final stage of the genocide
commenced on Apr. 24, 1915, when more than 200 Armenian religious,
political and intellectual leaders were arrested in Istanbul, then
known as Constantinople, and murdered along with 5,000 of the poorest
Armenians, who were actually butchered in the streets.
The Armenian Genocide was devised and implemented by the Central
Committee of the Young Turk Party, formally known as the Committee
for Union and Progress, which was dominated by Mehmed Talat Pasha,
Ismail Enver Pasha and Ahmed Djemal Pasha of the Ottoman Empire. In
the end, almost two million Armenians would be brutally killed and
more than 500,000 exiled from the Ottoman Empire. The extermination
was systematic, with many steps involved to ensure the annihilation
of the Armenian race. One act involved the removal of Armenian
troops, leaving civilians with no defense. Within several months,
approximately 250,000 Armenians serving in the Ottoman army during
World War I were disarmed and placed in forced labor battalions,
where they were either starved or executed.
The Armenian people were deprived of their leadership and young men.
With all opposition removed, they were then deported from every city,
town and village of Anatolia and Western Armenia. In most instances,
during the death marches the men and older boys were quickly separated
and executed soon after the exile began. The unprotected women and
children were marched for weeks into the Syrian desert and subjected
to rape, torture and mutilation. Thousands were seized and forced into
Turkish and Kurdish harems. Victims on the death marches were denied
food and water, and many were brutalized and killed. Authorities in
Trebizond on the Black Sea coast drowned Armenians in the sea while
Armenians in Eastern Turkey were placed in cattle cars and transported
to concentration camps in the desert. The majority of the deportees
died on the marches from starvation, disease and murder. By the end of
1923, the entire Armenian population of Anatolia and Western Armenia
had been killed, deported or become refugees in other countries.
The genocide served as a lesson for other tyrannical regimes. Adolph
Hitler, when asked by his general staff on the eve of the invasion
of Poland what the world would think and how they would be judged by
history, replied, “It doesn’t matter. After all, who today remembers
the extermination of the Armenians?”
From: A. Papazian
http://www.qgazette.com/news/2013-03-27/Features/Armenian_Survivors_Remember.html