Fresno Bee, CA
March 28 2015
Armenian genocide: 100 years later, history not forgotten
By Andrea Castillo
In 1958, the years-long massacre of Armenians by Turks well finished,
Fresnans were still being reunited with family members lost during the
struggle.
That November, Mrs. Persape Yegavian, who was kidnapped by the Turks
in 1914, stepped off a plane at the Fresno Air Terminal and into the
arms of two sisters she had not seen in nearly 45 years.
“My god,” she said in Armenian,” My god, I’m free.”
San Joaquin Valley Armenians next month will mark the 100th
anniversary of the beginning of the genocide: April 24, 1915, the day
several hundred intellectuals were arrested and later executed. By its
end in 1923, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians — two-thirds of the
population — were dead, many children left orphans.
Nearly 100 years since it started, Fresno Armenians, rejoicing in the
same freedom Mrs. Yegavian first tasted in 1958, are ensuring their
history is not forgotten.
Longtime history
The Valley’s Armenian history began decades before the genocide. The
first Armenian settler came in 1881: Hagop Seropian moved from
Massachusetts for his health. Later immigrants were attracted to the
area’s farmland and climate.
In 1894, there were 360 Armenians living in Fresno County, according
to Wilson Wallis’ 1965 book, “Fresno Armenians.” By 1918, the
population was estimated at 10,100.
Those who made it to Fresno alive did so after arduous journeys. From
a 1922 story in The Bee: “After four years of struggle in the
wilderness, through famine-infested Russia, and with the Soviet at its
best and worst, and then through immigration offices at Ellis Island
with a hairbreadth escape from deportation, the Agajanian family,
consisting of 11 members, arrived in Fresno yesterday.”
Their pain didn’t stop simply by stepping foot on American soil. The
early Armenian-American story would sound familiar to many other
immigrants.
Barlow Der Mugrdechian, coordinator of Armenian studies at Fresno
State, said housing and employment discrimination were widespread in
the early days. He said Armenians were restricted from living in
places like Fig Garden or Sunnyside for a long time, and it was years
before the first Armenian was hired as a teacher or policeman in
Fresno.
In 1923, naturalization officers questioned in court whether Armenians
might be of the Mongolian race and therefore ineligible for
citizenship. “The stake at issue is tremendous, for in the San Joaquin
Valley an adverse decision against the Armenians would create a chaos
as concerns property, which they could no longer legally hold, and
uproot families established for decades,” a Bee story said.
And when the Fidelity Bank building (now the Pacific Southwest
Building) opened in 1927, Armenian businessmen were refused office
spaces.
Over time, Armenians in Fresno went from poor laborers to successful
merchants and farmers — pioneers of the fig and raisin industries.
Once one of the nation’s largest Armenian colonies, many left Fresno
for Los Angeles and San Francisco when the Great Depression hit in
1930.
Armenians continued immigrating to the Valley following the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the Republic of Armenia. The
community of an estimated 50,000 people boasts local educational
institutions, religious organizations and a yearly cultural festival.
“The attempt to eliminate the Armenians was unsuccessful,” said Der
Mugrdechian. “That’s a mark of pride, in a sense. They did not only
survive, but did well.
“I think that’s the best you can say, that an immigrant came with very
little and was able within two or three generations to achieve
success.”
Genocide’s toll
Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, coined the term “genocide” in
1943, meaning the deliberate killing of a racial, ethnic, religious or
national group. Lemkin applied his investigation to the Nazi massacres
of Jews as well as the Turk massacres of Armenians.
Indeed, Adolf Hitler reportedly concluded a speech in 1939 by saying,
“Who, after all, speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?”
Turks reject the conclusions of historians and the term genocide. It
remains a crime to insult the Turkish nation by disagreeing with the
country’s stance on what happened to Armenians.
In 1985, Turkish officials told The Washington Post, “It was a great
tragedy, but it was not a genocide.”
It started with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, whose ruler was
also the leader of the Islamic community. Ottoman Turks historically
discriminated against the Christian Armenians.
With that power decline, plus later military losses experienced early
in World War I, the Ottoman government used Armenians as scapegoats
for their problems, blaming all Armenians for the guerrilla
nationalists who cooperated with the Russians. Armenians were seen as
a threat to the state.
Thus, the genocide began.
The accounts are tragic: Armenians massacred by Turkish soldiers in
their villages; driven on long “death marches” to concentration camps
in the scorching Syrian desert; beaten, starved, burned alive. As
exiles grew more desperate, children were abandoned on the road or
drowned.
Local survivor Sarkis Boghossian told his story in Bee articles in
1995 and 1997, recalling how Armenians ate from garbage cans to
survive. He also recounted how his siblings, weak from hunger, were
picked up by a carriage driver who mistook them for dead.
“I lost all my family, my sister, my brother,” said the 90-year-old
Boghossian, who was 10 at the time of the slaughter. His siblings were
7 and 5. “They picked up all the children and took them to a dump. How
can I forget my live brother and sister who gave their last breath in
the dump where I saw from far away?”
Seeking justice
Armenians now permeate every local industry. William Saroyan, the
Pulitzer prize-winning author and playwright, and Leon S. Peters, a
leading businessman and philanthropist, both were Valley natives.
George Deukmejian, though not from Fresno, became the pride of
California’s Armenian community when he was elected governor in 1979.
Visalia native Monte Melkonian is a different kind of celebrity.
Melkonian was lauded as a martyr for going to Armenia, organizing much
of the army in Nagorno-Karabakh, leading them to victory over
Azerbaijan, then dying in battle in 1993. Nagorno-Karabakh was
historically ruled by Armenia, but the breakup of the Soviet Union
left the area officially under the rule of Azerbaijan. The two states
have wrestled over control of the province, where many Armenians live.
Other acts committed in the name of Armenian justice were not regarded
with pride.
In the 1970s and 1980s, several high-profile instances of violence
were committed against Turkish people by Armenian underground groups
seeking retribution. In 1973, an ex-Fresnan shot and killed two
Turkish diplomats in Southern California.
The efforts to seek justice continue. Earlier this month, 40 lawmakers
from the House of Representatives relaunched the latest effort to
officially recognize the Armenian genocide, which has always faced
political and diplomatic opposition. Valley representatives have long
headed the resolution attempt, at least since 1979 when Fresno-area
Republican Rep. Charles “Chip” Pashayan introduced a version that,
like those following, went nowhere.
Other commemoration efforts, large and small, have taken place through
the years. Several documentaries about the genocide were filmed in
Fresno. Books on the topic cover the Valley’s Armenian colony. For 40
years beginning in 1969, UCLA professor Richard Hovannisian’s students
interviewed more than 800 survivors, many in Fresno, for an oral
history project.
Allan Y. Jendian, a member of the Armenian Genocide Centennial —
Fresno Committee, said recognition of the Armenian genocide could
serve to ensure future massacres do not take place. He has been
involved for most of his life with various commemoration committees,
working above all for acknowledgment.
Jendian is a child of survivors — his father walked the desert during
the death marches of 1915 and watched his own mother die of
starvation.
“The scars are on our bodies yet the Turkish government, to this day,
has not acknowledged it,” he said.
But Jendian said Armenians will never forget what happened, with or
without recognition.
http://www.fresnobee.com/2015/03/28/4450099_armenian-genocide-100-years-later.html?rh=1