NEW ARCHIVES ENHANCE ARMENIAN JERUSALEM HISTORY PROJECT
by Arthur Hagopian
Published: Wednesday January 15, 2014
Archival photo of a Jerusalem Armenian family.
The Armenian Jerusalem website project, which has been set up with
the objective of chronicling and preserving the culture, history and
traditions of the Armenians of Jerusalem, is being enhanced in the
wake of new archival material contributed by friends around the world.
The new material casts an intriguing light on the vicissitudes of
members of this Jerusalem clan, and comes as a timely update to the
existing records.
Catching up with modern social networking trends in its quest to reach
a wider audience, the project has now created a Facebook page located
at () and is on Twitter at
().
Although the project is primarily of interest to Armenians, it welcomes
non-Armenians – whether scholars, researchers or mere visitors –
who are eager to learn more about the contribution of this clan of
hardy survivors who have helped make Jerusalem the centre of the world.
Acutely sensitive to Jerusalem’s unique character and the various
conflicts raging around it, the project’s Facebook administrators
unequivocally stress that its basic tenet is research and scholarship,
with absolutely no divergence into political or other controversy.
“Our whole aim is to portray the glory of Jerusalem and the vital
role Armenians have played in the evolution of its history,” they say.
Among the latest archival revelations, from a source in the United
States, is the story of the Armenian mason, Kevork Nercessian, who
arrived in Palestine, then under Ottoman rule, probably in the 1850’s,
from the town of Marash in Armenia (it is currently in Turkish hands),
seeking business opportunities in the land of milk and honey. He
owned a large tract of land in Safad in the Galilee, and eventually
became mayor of the city. He later sold his property to the British
who converted it into a hospital.
One of his descendants is the renowned Emeritus Professor of Philosophy
at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Haig Khatchadourian, a very
close relative of the composer/conductor Ohan Dourian.
Information from a source in Brazil reveals that another member of
the Khatchadourian clan, named Eli or Elias, who is said to have
spoken 15 languages, became an Ambassador in Palestine.
Armenians are scattered all over the world, the greater part refugees
or descendants of refugees fleeing Turkish pogroms which culminated
in the 1915 genocide, and spawned a mass exodus.
Thousands of children were orphaned, hundreds dying along the way from
disease or malnutrition. One and a half million Armenians had perished.
Among the survivors was a 4-year-old girl who was sent to a Christian
Approach Mission for schooling after her parents died. The mother
had tried to save her 11-year-old son by changing the date of his
birth so he could enter the priesthood but he ended up in an unknown
destination, perhaps Lebanon.
Another rootless family, the father drowned in the Mediterranean,
trekked to Jordan in a stumbling caravan of bedraggled refugees. In
Amman, the two little grand-daughters were forced to stack street tiles
in order to earn a living, while the grandmother, who had become so
exhausted along the road, she had wanted to just lie down and go to
sleep, suckled the babies of strangers for a pittance.
The paucity of documented chronicles has made the task of trying to
unearth the variegated story of the Armenians of Jerusalem extremely
difficult.
“Our major source of information, apart from official ‘domar’s
[records of births, marriages and deaths] maintained by the
Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, remains anecdotal,” the project
administrators concede.
“The ‘domar’s we have accessed go back to only 1840,” they note,
adding more ancient documents exist in the Armenian Patriarchate,
but access to those is problematic at the moment.
“At the moment, we have neither the manpower nor the means to unearth
those archives and delve into them. It’s a mammoth undertaking and
would require years of work. Look how long it took one researcher,
Haig Krikorian, to complete his omnibus tracking back the “Lives and
Times” of the Armenian patriarchs of Jerusalem: eight years. We will
just have to wait for more opportune times.”
“Another factor complicating access and preservation of anecdotal data
is the that the major repositories of such information, the elders of
the community who are best equipped to regale us with their tales,
are passing away at an alarming rate, one after another, taking a
large, irreplaceable chunk of our story with them.”
Among the most recent Armenian losses is Araksi Kaplanian, who had
been living in Australia. Her husband, Kevork, a community leader, was
instrumental in founding the leading Armenian youth club in Jerusalem,
the Jerusalem Armenian Benevolent Club (JABU).
Earlier, Arshalooys Zakarian, a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge
about her compatriots, and a lifelong teacher and educator with a
son who became editor of a major US publication, had passed away.
Haig Khatchadourian’s brother Khatcho and his cousin Ohan Dourian
were other irreplaceable losses.
Perhaps, future researchers will fare better, now that the Armenian
Patriarchate has begun computerizing its records, an initiative taken
by the late Patriarch Torkom Manoogian, who wanted to unequivocally
reinforce the place of Armenian Jerusalem on the map of the world.
Jerusalem has always been a battlefield for the nations, and seems
likely to remain so until those nations beat their swords into
plowshares and their weapons into pruning forks, and not learn war
any more.
The relentless battles over Jerusalem have taken a heavy toll on the
city’s population, but in recent times, it is the year 1948 when the
first major confrontation between the Semitic cousins, the Arabs and
the Jews, took place, that stands out as seminal for the Armenians.
Even before the hounds of war were let loose, the Armenian community
had seen its numbers shrink drastically in the wake of an unprecedented
return of large numbers, back to their homeland in Armenia.
Death and devastation followed soon after as Arab and Jew lobbed
missiles at each other across the Walls of the hallowed city, several
landing in the lap of the Armenians, and claiming dire casualties.
But although the numbers may never again reach the magical figure of
25,000 just before the epochal year 1948, Armenian Jerusalem is here
to stay.
For even if only two Armenians remain to hobble among the cobblestones
of its alleys, “see if they will not create a new Armenia.”
Wherever they meet anywhere in the world. But particularly in
Jerusalem, “zahrat ul mada’en,” “yerushalaym shel zahav.”
Visit
From: Baghdasarian
https://www.facebook.com/armenian.jerusalem
https://twitter.com/HagopianArthur
http://www.armenian-jerusalem.com.
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