Author: Jalatian Sonya

AZG Armenian Daily #073, 23/04/2005
Armenian Genocide
90TH ANNIVERSARY OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MARKED IN GERMANY
The Central Board of Germany’s Armenians and the Armenian diocese of Germany
will hold the main commemorative ceremony dedicated to the 90th anniversary
of the Armenian Genocide at Paulskirche in Frankfurt, April 24.
Representatives of Germany’s politics, culture and science are invited to
the ceremony. Writer and publicist Ralf Giordano is the main reporter of the
day. RA ambassador to Berlin, Karine Ghazinian, president of the Central
Board of Germany’s Armenians, Shavarsh Hovasapian, and few others will make
reports as well. The speech of Archbishop Karekin Bekjanian will close the
ceremony. Actress Anita Iseli, violinist Sergey Khachatrian and pianist
Irina Hovhannisian will perform at the ceremony.
The Central Board together with the Armenian clergy of Germany and Armenian
community representatives will keep a vigil at downtown Berlin from 12 a.m.
to 2.40 p.m., April 23. Another commemorative arrangement will be held in
German capital at 6 a.m. Dr Michael Jeismann will deliver a speech at the
sitting’s hall of Berlin Chamber of Deputies, the chairman of the Chamber as
well as Walter Momper from SPD and the representative of the Armenian
community of Berlin, Vardges Aljanaq. At 4 p.m. April 24, Grigor Pehlivan, a
Cologne Armenian, will stage his “Axis of Memories: Flowers and Names”
performance in front of the Cologne Cathedral. He will throw 90 tulips into
the Rhine River.
Wolfgang Huber, president of the Council of Evangelical Church of Germany,
will serve a requiem mass at the Berlin Cathedral at 3 p.m. April 23 and a
Brandenburg deputy Stefan Reische will make a speech at the St. Sahak Mesrop
Armenian church of Cologne.
Turks’ resentment this year is visibly rampant this year. One example: the
April 20 issue of Die Welt informed that the Initiative of Turkish
Organizations made an appeal to compatriots to express their complaint via
emails for the commemoration of the 90th anniversary at the Chamber of
Deputies on April 23. Such provocations breach the peace of the city and
spur polarization, speaker of the Initiative, Jatkin, said and labeled
tragic the readiness of Walter Momper to hold forth at the arrangement of
the Armenians.
By Anahit Hovsepian in Germany
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Voice of America
April 23 2005
Armenians Remember the Death of Their Countrymen
By Ernest Leong
Washington D.C.
For Armenians, April 24 is a significant date. It’s when Armenians
remember the death of 1.5 million of their countrymen who they say
were systematically exterminated by the Turkish Ottoman Empire almost
a century ago. It’s a crime Turkey denies.
Hundreds gathered recently in Sacramento, capital of the U.S. state
of California, to remember their Armenian ancestors who were either
killed or died from starvation between 1915 and 1923. Armenia says
this was the intentional result of forced relocations by Turkey’s
nationalist government.
Turkey says there was no plan to wipe out Armenians, but many Western
historians and politicians believe there was.
California State Senator Jackie Speier says, “Many Armenians were
taken from their homes and were executed. Many others, um, spent
many years marching through the desert.”
Feelings and memories remain strong in the Armenian community.
Father Yeghia Hairabedian of the Armenian Orthodox Church says, “My
Great Aunt was one of them. One of my great aunts, when she was two
years old, she died on the death march, starving and begging for food.”
There are approximately 500,000 Armenian-Americans living in
California. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed
a bill officially recognizing April 24 as a commemoration day for
what some call the “Forgotten Genocide.”
Armenians claim it began on April 24, 1915, with the Turkish
government deporting and massacring the minority population of
Armenian Christians. Turkey denies this, saying any atrocities were
at the hands of rogue groups and individuals, and not sanctioned by
the government.
It’s an issue Turkey would like to put behind it. This coming October,
Turkey begins talks on possible entry to the European Union.
The problem is, some European politicians, especially in France,
agree with Armenia’s views.
Organizers in Armenia expect 1.5 million people, representing the
number they say died in the genocide, to converge on the capital,
Yerevan.

«WE CONDEMN INFRINGEMENTS OF CRIMINAL ELEMENTS»
A1plus
| 21:07:45 | 22-04-2005 | Politics |
Below we present the complete text of the statement adopted by 24
pro-governmental and oppositional parties of the Republic of Armenia
following the meeting in Yerevan hotel and consultations:
“The encroachments upon any party or a citizen of the Republic
of Armenia are aimed at all the parties and citizens, the whole
society. We are deeply concerned with the criminal manifestations
of April 20 in the town of Sevan during the meeting of the leader
and members of “New Times” party with the population of Sevan. This
indicates that infringements of the criminal elements on political
processes still continue.
We can not stay indifferent to such manifestations, improper to a
constitutional state.
We condemn the infringements of the criminal elements on political
forces and representatives of the media and expect that the relevant
authorities undertake immediate corresponding actions».
–Boundary_(ID_vwaptmoBHwywmeXmNXU8yw)–

No genocide should be forgotten
By Max Boudakian
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, NY
April 22 2005
(April 22, 2005) – The citation in the story “Month of Misfortune”
(April 18) – “April is the cruelest month” – from T.S. Eliot’s
poem The Waste Land could be applied to another cruel event that
began April 24, 1915. On that day, nearly 250 Christian Armenian
intellectuals and cultural leaders in Constantinople (now Istanbul)
were arrested, deported or killed by the Ottoman Turks, the dominant
Muslim group in Turkey at that time. The following ensued in 1915-1923:
1.5 million Armenians perished; 500,000 survivors were exiled; and,
a 3,000-year-old Armenian presence was wiped out.
However, the world soon forgot about the Armenians. Twenty years
later, on Aug. 22, 1939, Adolph Hitler cynically remarked at
Obersalzburg: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of
the Armenians?” That is why the Armenian genocide is often referred
to as the “forgotten genocide.” Hitler thought that he could carry
out the Jewish Holocaust with impunity.
The last Armenian genocide survivor in Rochester was my mother,
Gadarine Boudakian, who died in 2000 at age 94. Let me share
some personal experiences about her. In April 1915, the family of
Garabed Topjian, his wife, Haiganoush, and their three children (Leo,
Gadarine and Mariam) were ordered deported. However, before they left
the country, her parents died. At age 9, she buried them. She also
lost her siblings. We also know that Gadarine later paired with two
other orphan girls. To survive, they ate grass and cut their hair
to disguise their gender and avoid being raped. Gadarine’s odyssey
led her to the American orphanage and hospital in Konya, Turkey. My
mother was remarkable. She never expressed bitterness toward those
who had destroyed her family and childhood.
In a precedent-setting statement in early 2005, the U.S. ambassador
to Armenia, John Evans, referred to these atrocities as “the first
genocide of the 20th century.” The Armenian genocide, the Jewish
Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge and the “killing fields” of Cambodia,
and, the Rwandan genocide: What a waste of human life! Now in the
21st century, the Darfur region of the Sudan heads the new list of
genocides. Will this madness ever end?
Boudakian, of Pittsford, is corresponding secretary, Armenian Church
of Rochester.

ARMENIAN PRESIDENT: GENOCIDE HAS NO STATUTE OF LIMITATION AND THOSE GUILTY IN IT WILL BE PUNISHED
YEREVAN, APRIL 20. ARMINFO. Genocide has no statute of limitation
and those guilty in it will be punished. Armenian President Robert
Kocharyan made this statement an a two-day international conference
“Genocide and Human Rights” opened in Yerevan today. The event is
dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman
Turkey in 1915.
In his speech, President Kocharyan notes that marking the 90th
anniversary of the Armenian Genocide “we pay homage to the innocent
victims of that crime.” Armenia does it with pain as the fight for
international recognition of Genocide is still continued. The World
War I with its goals of dividing the world and the hard confrontation
of ideologies it resulted in have become the main obstacles in the
way to recognition of the Armenian people’s rights. These rights were
first to fall victim to the Cold War, although it was not Armenia that
had started it. When the program of extermination of Armenians was
implemented, humanity was not aware of the world “genocide.” There were
no international structures which could become an area for discussions
of how to counteract the genocide. The world has changed since then and
it took long time the international community to regard genocide as a
crime against humanity with all the consequences proceeding. It also
took super powers time not to sacrifice the basic humanitarian values
for their geopolitical interests and morality became a slogan of the
foreign policy of the civilized world. The way passed to understand
the aforementioned was tragic for many peoples. The cost of that way
for Armenians is 1.5 million human lives. Today it is already clear
that the Armenian Cause is released from the position of a hostage of
geopolitical interests step by step. The existence of the Republic
of Armenia is the best guarantee for Armenia’s success in further
protection of its rights, Robert Kocharyan says.
To note, participating in the conference were also Prime Minister
of Armenia Andranik Margaryan, All Armenian Catholicos His Hollines
Karekin II, Defense Minister Serge Sargsyan and Foreign Minister
Vardan Oskanyan, as well as some 50 first-rate native and international
experts for genocide study from 20 countries. Foreign Minister Oskanyan
delivered a welcoming speech to the conference participants.

Tajikistan sees CIS as “very important” factor for regional stability
Avesta web site
20 Apr 05
Dushanbe, 20 April: “The consequences of the spread of terrorism and
extremism in the Eurasian region indicate that all the CIS countries
need to consolidate their efforts closely,” the first Tajik deputy
foreign minister, Sirojiddin Aslov, told a news conference in
Dushanbe today.
He said the measures being taken by the CIS states to boost the
activities of the CIS antiterrorist centre and the CSTO [Collective
Security Treaty Organization; members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Russia] were a very important factor for
maintaining security and stability in the region.
In turn, Deputy Foreign Minister Abdunabi Sattorov said the issue of
reforming and improving the CIS was currently being considered. He
said the issue was to be discussed at a summit of the CIS heads of
state in [Russia’s] Kazan in August this year.
“As an international organization, the CIS needs radical reforms,”
he said.
Asked whether there was still a need in the CIS, Sattorov said that
Tajikistan advocated the idea of preserving the commonwealth.
“No-one has yet abandoned the mechanisms of the CIS. Nevertheless,
everyone is calling for reforming the organization to make its
activities more effective,” Sattorov said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The end of the Exodus from Egypt
By Amiram Barkat
Ha’aretz, Israel
April 21 2005
CAIRO – Outside it looks like a ruin, but after the guard opens the
door to admit visitors, it turns out that there once was a synagogue
here. Behind a small courtyard covered with building debris stands
a Holy Ark. Its doors are broken, and from its top dangles a Star
of David, hanging by a thread. The guard explains that the ceiling
of the building collapsed in 1992, and the pile of debris was never
cleared away.
It looks like just another Cairo synagogue that has come to a sad
end. At least 20 such synagogues have been destroyed since the 1970s,
and most of them were larger and more magnificent than the small
Maimonides synagogue in Harat al-Yahud, the medieval Jewish quarter
of Cairo. But this synagogue is not just any synagogue; it is one of
the most important Jewish sites in Egypt and in the entire world.
Last year, special events were held all over the world to mark the
800th anniversary of the death of Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, the Rambam
(Maimonides). He died in 1204 in Cairo, and according to the accepted
tradition, his bones were transferred to Tiberias for burial. But the
Jews of Egypt believe his bones never left the country. According to
Egyptian tradition, the body of Maimonides was first brought to the
small beit midrash (study hall) where he taught, and afterward was
buried at an unknown Egyptian location; one of the traditions has it
that he is buried today in the small niche in the wall of the ruined
synagogue’s study hall.
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No evidence has been found for any of these traditions, but
even historians say that the synagogue and the yeshiva named for
Maimonides is one of the oldest synagogues in the world, almost 800
years old. That is why the Jewish community in Cairo allows only rare
visits to the place. After many pleas, they agreed to open its gates
to a journalist and a photographer, on the eve of Pesach.
Although not much more remains of the synagogue itself than its
four walls, the other parts of the building are still standing. For
hundreds of years, the Jews of Egypt used to come on pilgrimages to
this place, which is located in the heart of the neighborhood’s maze
of ancient alleyways. People with incurable diseases believed that
they would be cured if they remained to sleep near Maimonides’ grave.
Today the chances are that not only would they not be cured, they
would catch another disease, judging by the stench from the toilets.
Above the entrance to the study hall, in splendid isolation, hangs
the portrait of Maimonides, who, according to a popular saying, was
the greatest Jew since Moses. In a small hall behind the entrance,
benches and other furniture float in what looks like a sewer. The
place is flooded with water, almost to the height of the ceiling. One
can view the niche of Maimonides’ “grave” today only by diving.
“What’s there, in a word, is a cesspool,” says Prof. Michael Lasker
of Bar-Ilan University, an expert on Egyptian Jewry. He says that he
tried in vain to help the president of the Cairo Jewish community,
Carmen Weinstein, find a donor to restore the place. “The large
Jewish organizations said it’s not in their area of responsibility,
and Jews of Egyptian origin have never been very cooperative,” he says.
General emptiness
The great synagogue of the Karaites in Cairo, in the Abbassieh
neighborhood, also is usually closed to visitors. The guard there
agrees to let us in on condition that we don’t take pictures. The
reason becomes clear immediately: The overall appearance of the
synagogue resembles a haunted castle in an (Egyptian) horror film.
The building is reminiscent of a huge altar standing entirely deserted,
only the sound of the wind banging on the remaining unbroken window
panes interrupts the silence. The only visitors are the flock of
pigeons that has come to live in the space, so that on the way to the
prayer hall, visitors’ shoes sink into a thick layer of guano. Two
Art Deco chandeliers made of bronze and crystal are the last vestiges
of the days of glory. Other chains remain dangling, testimony to
additional chandeliers that once hung here.
Up until just a few years ago, this synagogue, named after Moshe
Deri, was full of valuable Judaica that was brought to it in part
from other Karaite synagogues, before they were destroyed. In his
book about Jewish sites in Cairo, written in the mid-1990s, Dr. Yoram
Meital of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, an expert on the Middle
East, mentions that on the floor of the synagogue were rugs and mats
on which the Karaites prayed, that the synagogue building contained
about 2,000 books, and that in the Holy Ark there were still valuable
Torah scrolls, made of parchment. No trace of any of these exists
today. All that remains is one bookcase, a pile of crates sunk in
dust and several empty cabinets for Torah scrolls.
Meital believes local Jews were involved in the looting. Already in the
early 1990s, when he visited the place to gather material for writing a
book, he noticed that around him were “people who were very displeased
about the fact that I was documenting the items. At one stage they
forbade me to continue.” Yosef Dvir, a spokesman for the Karaites in
Israel, says they are well-aware of the fact that “the property in
Cairo was not properly maintained,” but they are unable to help. “We
barely have enough money to maintain the community in Israel,” he says.
Testimony and stories of Israelis who have visited other sites
belonging to the Cairo community paint a similar picture of neglect.
In the city’s only Ashkenazi synagogue, in the center of the city,
old books and documents are strewn on the floor in a layer of dust
and filth. The huge Jewish cemetery in the Bassatine neighborhood
serves as an improvised quarry for removing marble, stone and metals
from the graves, and hardly a single headstone remains undamaged.
In Alexandria, the situation is better. In the compound of the Jewish
community on Nebi Daniel Street stands the Synagogue of Elijah the
Prophet, the community office building where the rabbinical court sits,
and another building that served as the Jewish school and today is
leased to a Muslim educational institution. The beautiful historic
buildings are surrounding by manicured gardens and are well maintained.
The synagogue, which is considered the largest in the Middle East, is
an impressive building; a broad white marble staircase leads to the
entrance, which is surrounded by a decorative stone fence. The huge
space inside, which until the mid-20th century held 1,000 worshipers,
is illuminated by the light of dozens of seven-branched candelabra,
with the addition of sunlight that streams through the stained-glass
windows. The stone arches and pinkish Italian Carrara marble columns,
with white Greek capitals, lend the place the appearance of a
cathedral. The backs of the seats still bear pewter disks with the
names of the owners. But the overall feeling is one of emptiness,
of a bustling place that has become a museum.
The community building in Alexandria contains a huge archive that
preserves the past of the community: birth and death certificates,
addresses, and a melange of old books and documents. In one of
the locked cupboards are the cups won by the Maccabi Alexandria
basketball team, the Egyptian champion in the 1930s. Life is gradually
disappearing from here as well. On an abandoned reception desk in the
corridor the sign “civilian documents” is still posted in Hebrew and
in French, opposite is the deserted hall of the rabbinical court.
“Like lonely shadows, a few short elderly men and women wander in
the empty Jewish complex surrounding the synagogue,” wrote Israeli
author Haim Be’er 16 years ago, in an article about Alexandria, and
nothing seems to have changed except for the number of the elderly,
which has decreased. The president of the Alexandria community, dentist
Dr. Max Salame, recently celebrated his 90th birthday. Lina Mattatia,
the synagogue’s legendary tour guide, is over 80. The head of the
community, Victor Balassiano, who claims the title of “the youngest
Jew in Egypt,” is 65 years old.
The central synagogue of the Cairo community is Sha’ar Shamayim in
the city center, on Adli Street. The magnificent building, which
was completed in 1905, is decorated with symbols of the Pharaonic
lotus and the palm tree, the symbol of the Jewish community in the
city. In the 1980s, the synagogue was renovated with funds provided
by millionaire Nissim Gaon, and became revitalized for several years.
Dr. Meital still remembers hundreds of Israeli tourists who used to
attend the synagogue on festivals. Currently, no regular prayers are
held there. The facade of the building that faces the main street is
guarded by a unit of Egyptian soldiers, armed with rifles, who stand
behind protected shelters. On the other side of the road, permanent
signs condemn Israel. For years, Israel has been trying to persuade
the Egyptian government to remove the signs. The subject even came up
during the most recent talks held by Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan
Shalom last week in Cairo.
The synagogue itself is dark and deserted, with a depressing
atmosphere. In the entrance, next to a large charity box, sits an
elderly Jewish woman who has trouble being pleasant to visitors. She
doesn’t allow visits to the women’s section, and she agreed to allow us
to photograph the synagogue from inside only after we pleaded with her,
“but only one picture.”
The second Exodus
A simple memorial plaque attached to one of the columns of the
synagogue on Adli Street takes the visitor back 60 years, to the golden
age of Egypt’s Jewish community. The sign is in memory of Yusuf Aslan
Qattawi, a former Egyptian government minister and one of the authors
of the 1923 Egyptian constitution, who served as community president
from 1924-1942. The Qattawis were members of the Cairo Jewry’s moneyed
aristocracy. They made their fortune in the sugar industry, and were
among the founders of Bank Misr (the Egyptian national bank). The
bank’s board of directors at the time included other Jewish families
such as de Menasce, Rollo, Suares and Cicurel, owners of one of the
largest department store chain in the country.
In those years, 40,000 Jews lived in Cairo, with a similar number
in Alexandria. Many Jews, from Europe as well as Turkey and the
Arab countries, immigrated to Egypt at the end of the 19th century,
drawn by the economic prosperity that came with the opening of the
Suez Canal in 1896. Only a few thousand had Egyptian citizenship,
but they felt welcome in society. The Jews of Alexandria lived in
a city where one-third of the population were members of various
national minorities, and they felt no special need to learn Arabic.
The situation took a turn for the worse in the late 1930s, as
pan-Arab and Islamic sentiments spread through Egyptian society.
American scholar Joel Beinin of Stanford University mentions in one
of his articles on the subject that not only did the Jews suffer, but
so did other minority groups – the Syrian Christians, the Italians,
the Greeks and the Armenians – all of which had increasing difficulty
maintaining their cosmopolitan-Levantine identity. But the problem
that began in 1948 was unique to the Jews.
The establishment of the State of Israel and the War of Independence
heralded the beginning of the end of Egyptian Jewry. “The second
Exodus” began in 1948, and within two years, one-third of the country’s
Jews had left. The others, who had hoped that the end of the war
would bring them back into favor with the Egyptians, soon discovered
their mistake. The Egyptian government, which had outlawed Zionism,
had promised protection to the Jews who remained loyal Egyptians,
but they didn’t always keep their promise. On January 26, 1952, for
example, the police refrained from intervening in riots in Cairo,
during which dozens of Jews were murdered, and Shepheard’s Hotel,
the Metro cinema and dozens of other Jewish-owned businesses were
burned down.
Two years later, in 1954, Israel provided Egypt with an excellent
excuse for continuing with the same policy, with the exposure of a unit
of Egyptian Jews who had carried out attacks in Alexandria and Cairo
at the instructions of Israeli military intelligence, in what came
to be known in Israel as the “stinking affair.” Even avowed Egyptian
patriots, including the leaders of the Jewish community in Cairo,
began to feel unwanted. The Karaites, the “Arab Jews” of Egypt,
who for hundreds of years had dressed and spoken like Egyptians,
found themselves in the same boat as their Western brothers.
The two final blows to strike the Jews of Egypt – the Sinai Campaign
in 1956 and the Six-Day War in 1967 – left only a few hundred Jews
in the country; from one-third to one-half of Egypt’s Jews immigrated
to Israel, and the others went to Western countries – France, Canada,
Australia and, of course, the United States. The many businesses were
sold to Egyptians or nationalized. The dozens of luxurious villas
built by the wealthy Jews along the banks of the Nile and in the
center of the city today serve as embassies, upscale residences,
museums and libraries.
Torah scrolls at the airport
The communal property of the Egyptian Jews, on the other hand,
remained for the most part in Jewish hands. The synagogues, the
religious objects, the ancient books and the rare Torah scrolls were
a treasure whose value was estimated at tens of millions of dollars.
According to Egyptian law, the sale of items that are over 100 years
old is forbidden, but the underground clearance sale of the community’s
assets did not cease, and reached a peak in the 1980s.
Michael Dana, the son of Youssef Dana, who headed the community in
those years, told Ronen Bergman in this magazine (January 29, 1996)
about Jewish Judaica thieves from the United States who entered the
synagogues as tourists, antique dealers who tried to bribe the guards,
and many Israelis who turned to his father and offered him a great
deal of money for rare items. In some cases, the Egyptian authorities
caught the smugglers and confiscated their loot. Several dozen ancient
scrolls are still being held in the Cairo airport.
The Israeli ambassador to Egypt at the time, Moshe Sasson, told Bergman
that when he arrived in Cairo in 1981, there were 32 synagogues,
and when he left, six years later, only 12 remained. Several of the
community leaders did not withstand the temptation, and began to sell
assets. “They saw that there was no next generation, and that the
property would go to Egypt, so they decided to capitalize on it,”
says an Israeli Middle Eastern scholar. “They said the money would
go to the community, but in effect almost everything went into their
own pockets.”
One of the only bodies that acted to rescue the heritage of Egyptian
Jews was the Israel Academic Center in Cairo, which belongs to the
National Academy of Sciences (under whose sponsorship our visit
to Egypt took place). “We discovered huge quantities of books in
the synagogues,” says the founder of the center, and its director
during those years, Prof. Shimon Shamir. “We discovered that a large
percentage of the books came from private collections that Egyptian
Jews had thrown out for fear that `propaganda material’ in Hebrew
would be seized in their homes.”
In the early 1990s, the books, about 15,000 of them, were stored in
three libraries belonging to the Jewish community, which are located
adjacent to the Sha’ar Hashamayim synagogue on Adli Street, the Ezra
synagogue in the Fostat quarter and the Karaite synagogue. Most of
the books are from recent centuries, but among them are also three
rare religious books from the early 16th century. But the project
for collection and preservation was not completed – for budgetary
reasons, they say at the center. To date, not all the books have been
catalogued, and they are being stored in less than ideal conditions.
The present director of the center, Dr. Sariel Shalev, says that he
tried to raise about $5,000 from one of the large Jewish organizations
for the purpose of completing the catalogue, but he received no
response.
The Ezra synagogue in Fostat, the quarter from which Cairo began to
develop in the seventh century CE, is the only synagogue in Cairo that
has been fortunate. Originally, the synagogue was a Coptic church,
which was sold to the Jews in 882 CE. The synagogue was rebuilt a
number of times, the last time in 1890. During that construction work,
the Cairo Geniza was discovered in the attic, containing hundreds of
thousands of documents written by the Jews of Cairo over a period of
almost 1,000 years.
The Ezra synagogue also suffered from neglect for many years, but in
1980, in the wake of the peace agreement, it was chosen as a project
that would serve as a symbol of historical coexistence among Jews,
Christians and Muslims. The Egyptian foreign minister at the time,
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and the president of the World Jewish Congress,
Edgar Bronfman, agreed to preserve the synagogue. The preservation
work, which was done under the supervision of Bronfman’s sister,
Canadian architect Phyllis Lambert, was concluded in the early 1990s,
and today the synagogue enjoys a large number of visitors, most of
them non-Jewish tourists.
In recent years, the Egyptians have even evacuated the residents from
the entire area, in an attempt to turn it into a tourist compound in
which the visitors can view the oldest synagogues, churches and mosques
in Cairo. Dr. Meital says that with all due respect to the preservation
work, he is disturbed by the fact that the place will never again be
a synagogue, but will remain as “a kind of interreligious monument.”
The leadership of the Weinstein women
It is hard to know how many Jews are living in Egypt today. Prof. Ada
Aharoni of Haifa, a researcher of Egyptian Jewry, who is active in
organizations of former Egyptians, estimates their number at 20: eight
in Alexandria and 12 in Cairo. However, from a legal point of view
at least, the Jewish communities in the two cities are still alive
and active, and they administer quite a few assets. The community
in Alexandria holds the compound of buildings in Nebi Daniel, the
community in Cairo has about 10 synagogues, some of them of great
historical value, as we have mentioned, the huge cemetery in Bassatine
and an office building and a school in the Abbassieh neighborhood.
The president of the community is Carmen Weinstein, a businesswoman of
about 70, who replaced her mother, Esther Weinstein, who died last year
at the age of 93. For years, the Jewish women in Cairo were mentioned
only if they married famous husbands, like the wives of Chaim Herzog
(Aura Ambache), Abba Eban (her sister, Suzy Ambache), Boutros-Ghali
(Leah Nadler) and the French prime minister Pierre Mendes-France
(Lili Cicurel). The expert on Jewish sites in Cairo, Dr. Meital,
still remembers how surprised he was when he read of Esther Weinstein’s
election to the position. “In a community that since about the year 700
has been dominated by men, that was a genuine feminist revolution. I
remember that in Alexandria they didn’t know what to make of it.”
The bulletin board in the entrance to the synagogue in Adli Street
is covered with the pictures of the Weinstein women, mother and
daughter, together with Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, who visited the
community in 1999. Some former Egyptian Jews accuse Carmen Weinstein
of serving the interests of Egypt rather than those of the Jewish
community. Her supporters say that she works tirelessly to protect
the assets that remain in the community’s hands. Prof. Shamir says
that Carmen made “supreme efforts” to prevent the destruction of the
Jewish cemetery in Bassatine, when the Egyptian authorities wanted to
pave an expressway over it. She also built a wall round the cemetery
and managed to remove the squatters who had come to live there.
(Weinstein refused to meet with us. One of her associates explained
that she doesn’t meet with Israeli journalists, and doesn’t conduct
business relations with Israeli groups).
But Weinstein’s efforts on the Egyptian front seem to pale when
compared to her struggles with her fellow Jews. Her acquaintances
say that she is angry at the Israelis living in Cairo, because they
stay away from the community’s synagogues. In recent years, she has
repeatedly turned to wealthy former Egyptians who live in the West,
in attempts to raise money to restore the Jewish sites, but without
success. “It was quite embarrassing,” says Prof. Shamir, who has
helped her on a number of occasions. “They said they didn’t want to
hear about Egypt, that for them it’s a closed file. I have no doubt
that Egyptian Jewry could do much more to preserve its past.”
About 20 organizations of former Egyptian Jews are active today in
the world, and many of them have been at odds with one another for
years. In recent years, after decades of indifference and neglect,
there has been an awakening. Next year, the first World Congress
of Jews from Egypt will be held in Haifa. Prof. Aharoni, one of
the initiators of the congress, says that the idea is to “unite
forces” in an attempt to preserve the Jewish heritage in Egypt. The
initiative that is taking shape, she says, is to transfer the books
and the papers of the Jewish communities to a special wing of the new
library in Alexandria. “We have received very positive responses to
the proposal from the Egyptian authorities,” she says.
However, the idea arouses determined opposition in the Historical
Society of Jews from Egypt, a group that was founded in 1996 in the
United States. Since its establishment, the organization has been
conducting a campaign to remove all the communal property from Egypt,
not only sacred books and religious objects, but the community archives
in Cairo and Alexandria as well. “For us these aren’t archives,
they’re living documents,” explains the organization’s president,
Desire Sakkal. “People want their birth certificates, their ketubot
[Jewish marriage contracts].”
The heads of the organization have already managed to have articles
on the subject appear in the American press, to sign on members
of Congress, and to turn to President George W. Bush. In 2001,
the State Department announced that a comprehensive study on the
subject found no reason to intervene at this stage, since Weinstein,
the community president, is opposed to taking the items out of the
community’s hands. Sakkal refuses to give up. Recently, he says,
he received a letter “from a very high-ranking Israeli official”
expressing his willingness to help.
Prof. Shamir is not enthusiastic about Sakkal’s plans. Underlying
the demands to take the items out of Egypt, he believes, are often
“shady motives.” Prof. Aharoni agrees: “With all due respect to
Sakkal’s activity, many former Egyptians throughout the world think
that he is too extreme, that this activity is damaging and that it
is simply unrealistic.”
Sakkal’s organization has already announced that it will not
participate in the upcoming congress, after his demands to take a
belligerent line against Egypt were rejected. In an interview with
him, Sakal levels sharp criticism at the congress, and calls it
“the best attorney that Egypt could have found. If they want to do
belly dances with the Egyptians and to eat ful and falafel with them,
let them live and be well. We aren’t interested.”

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04/21/2005
TO ACCESS PREVIOUS ASBAREZ ONLINE EDITIONS PLEASE VISIT OUR
WEBSITE AT <;HTTP:// 1) Berlin Urges Turkey to Take Responsibility for Massacres 2) Turkish Army Criticizes US over Kurdish Rebels, Warns about Kirkuk 3) 178 US Representatives Urge President to Properly Characterize the Armenian Genocide 4) Poland's Walesa Condemns 'First Genocide of 20th Century' 1) Berlin Urges Turkey to Take Responsibility for Massacres BERLIN (DPA)--All parties in the German parliament have agreed on key points of a resolution which will tell Turkey to "take historic responsibility" for the 1915 Armenian genocide, a senior member of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats said on Thursday. Gernot Erler, the Social Democratic (SPD) deputy foreign affairs spokesman in the Bundestag, said the resolution due to win final approval in the coming months would have three 'goals.' First, Germany's parliament will recognize a limited German role in the massacre of 1.2 million to 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks during World War One, said Erler in a statement. "Germany was Ottoman Turkey's main ally in document...and partly through approval and through failure to take effective preventive measures there was a German co-responsibility for this genocide." "The (Bundestag) asks the Armenian people for their forgiveness," said Erler's statement. Second, the Berlin parliament will call on Turkey "to halt its up until now overwhelming suppression, to take historic responsibility for the massacre of the Armenians by the Young Turk regime and to ask for forgiveness from the descendants of the victims." Turkey's government has always insisted that there was no Armenian genocide and says a far smaller number of Armenians died during Ottoman deportations which it argues took place under war conditions and were due to an Armenian rebellion. Turkey's ambassador to Germany, Mehmet Ali Irtemcelik, denounced the planned Bundestag resolution as containing "countless factual errors" and being written "in agreement with propaganda efforts of fanatic Armenians." "Its goal is to defame Turkish history...and poison ties between Turkey and the European Union," said the ambassador. Finally, the German parliament's resolution will underline Berlin's efforts to help normalize relations between Turkey and Armenia. Germany, which has about 2.5 million resident Turks, has--up until now-- been wary about addressing the Armenian genocide. A member of the opposition Christian Democratic alliance (CDU/CSU), Erwin Marschewski, said in a statement that the value system of the European Union insisted that countries "shine a spotlight on the dark pages of their history." "Recognition by Turkey of the Armenian genocide of 1915 and 1916 is important," said Marschewski. Turkey is due to start membership negotiations with the EU in October but EU leaders say accession talks--if successful--will take up to 15 years. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is a staunch backer of Turkish EU membership and will visit Ankara and Istanbul for talks with Turkish political and business leaders on May 3 and 4. The draft resolution being debated in Germany's parliament does not use the word 'genocide' but rather refers to the "expulsion and massacres" of Armenians under the Ottoman Turks in 1915 as part of ceremonies marking the 90th anniversary of the killings. "We purposely left out the term genocide," said Christoph Bergner, an opposition Christian Democrat, in a speech to parliament. The declaration says between 1.2 and 1.5 million Christian Armenians died or were killed by the Moslem Turks during "planned" deportations during the First World War. Armenians all over the world will on April 24 mark the 90th anniversary of the start of what most international historians describe as a genocide lasting from 1915 to 1923 which left up to 1.5 million people dead. 2) Turkish Army Criticizes US over Kurdish Rebels, Warns about Kirkuk ISTANBUL (AFP)--The head of the Turkish army criticized the United States Wednesday for failing to curb Turkish Kurdish rebels hiding in northern Iraq and warned that Iraqi Kurdish attempts to take control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk could throw the entire region into turmoil. General Hilmi Ozkok, the chief of general staff, complained in a yearly evaluation speech that Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was gaining influence in northern Iraq and stepping up attacks across the border on Turkey because of US failure to take action against the rebels. "The terror group has been included in the list of terrorist organizations by the United States and the European Union, but that does not carry a meaning in practice," Ozkok said. "It is thought-provoking that no action has been taken yet against the organization. The PKK must at any rate be deprived of foreign support and have its hope of success crushed," he said. Turkey says about 5,000 PKK militants have found refuge in the mountains of neighboring northern Iraq since 1999, when the group declared a unilateral ceasefire with Ankara in its armed campaign for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast. The group called off the truce last year, raising tensions in the region. Ozkok also expressed concern over attempts by Iraqi Kurds to seize the ethnically volatile city of Kirkuk, which, he said, with its large oil resources, should belong to all Iraqis and not just one ethnic group. "That is why it is important for Kirkuk to have a special status," Ozkok said. "We have said several times that Kirkuk is a problem area ready to explode ..and that it would affect the entire region if it explodes." . Turkey suspects Iraqi Kurds of planning to capitalize on their post-war gains to make Kirkuk the capital of an independent Kurdish state. Such a state, Ankara fears, would fuel separatism among the restive Kurds of adjoining southeastern Turkey, sparking regional turmoil. 3) 178 US Representatives Urge President to Properly Characterize the Armenian Genocide --Record Level of Support for Congressional Letter Sends Strong Message to White House WASHINGTON, DC--A record number of US Representatives sent a Congressional letter to President Bush on Wednesday, urging him to reaffirm the US record on the Armenian genocide by properly characterizing the atrocities as "genocide." The letter comes days after a similar Senate initiative, which garnered the support of an unprecedented 32 Senators--a 45% increase over the previous year. The April 20 letter, spearheaded by Congressional Armenian Caucus Co-Chairmen Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), stresses that "by properly recognizing the terrible atrocities committed against the Armenian people as 'genocide' in your statement, you will honor the many Americans who helped launch the unprecedented US diplomatic, political, and humanitarian campaign to end the carnage and protect the survivors." "We were very gratified by the announcement this evening by the Co-Chairman of the Armenian Caucus that a record total of one hundred and seventy-eight US Representatives have joined together in calling on the President to properly recognize the Armenian Genocide in his April 24th remarks," said Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the ANCA, following a special 90th anniversary Armenian genocide observance on Capitol Hill. "Along with the thirty-two Senators who sent a similar letter earlier this week to the White House, this brings to two hundred and ten the total number of US legislators formally calling for the President to speak with historical accuracy and moral clarity about this crime against humanity. We welcome this unprecedented level of Congressional leadership and urge the President to heed their call and honor the pledge he made in February of 2000 to properly recognize the Armenian Genocide." Representatives Pallone and Knollenberg, in a March 3 letter to their House colleagues, encouraged them to lend their voice to the effort noting, that "by properly affirming the Armenian Genocide, we can help ensure the legacy of the Genocide is remembered so this human tragedy will not be repeated." Over the past several weeks, Armenian Americans from across the US have been sending ANCA WebFaxes to their Representatives urging them to co-sign the letter to the President. On April 7, Representative Knollenberg joined with Republican House Members George Radanovich (R-CA), Michael Bilirakis (R-FL), Mark Souder (R-IN) and Mark Foley (R-FL) in urging their party colleagues to encourage Pres. Bush to follow Senator Dole's lead and "simply tell the truth." Members of Congress joining Reps. Pallone and Knollenberg in co-signing the letter included: Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Tom Allen (D-ME), Robert Andrews (D-NJ), Joe Baca (D-CA), Brian Baird (D-WA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Charles Bass (R-NH), Melissa Bean (D-IL), Bob Beauprez (R-CO), Xavier Becerra (D-CA), Shelley Berkley (D-NV), Howard Berman (D-CA), Michael Bilirakis (R-FL), Sanford Bishop (D-GA), Tim Bishop (D-NY), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), Mary Bono (R-CA), Jeb Bradley (R-NH), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Ken Calvert (R-CA), Lois Capps (D-CA), Michael Capuano (D-MA), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), Dennis Cardoza (D-CA), Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), John Conyers (D-MI), Jim Costa (D-CA), Jerry Costello (D-IL), Christopher Cox (R-CA), Joseph Crowley (D-NY), Duke Cunningham (R-CA), Danny Davis (D-IL), Susan Davis (D-CA), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), William Delahunt (D-MA), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL), John Dingell (D-MI), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), John Doolittle (R-CA), Mike Doyle (D-PA), David Dreier (R-CA), Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), Eliot Engel (D-NY), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Lane Evans (D-IL), Sam Farr (D-CA), Chaka Fattah (D-PA), Tom Feeney (R-FL), Mike Ferguson (R-NJ), Bob Filner (D-CA), Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Mark Foley (R-FL), Vito Fossella (R-NY), Barney Frank (D-MA), Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Jim Gerlach (R-PA), Mark Green (R-WI), Gene Green (D-TX), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Tim Holden (D-PA), Rush Holt (D-NJ), Michael Honda (D-CA), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Steve Israel (D-NY), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Jesse Jackson (D-IL), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Nancy Johnson (R-CT), Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Sue Kelly (R-NY), Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), Dale Kildee (D-MI), Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), James Langevin (D-RI), John Larson (D-CT), Steven LaTourette (R-OH), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Sander Levin (D-MI), John Lewis (D-GA), Daniel Lipinski (D-IL), Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Nita Lowey (D-NY), Dan Lungren (R-CA), Stephen Lynch (D-MA), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Edward Markey (D-MA), Jim Matheson (D-UT), Doris Matsui (D-CA), Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), Jim McDermott (D-WA), James McGovern (D-MA), John McHugh (R-NY), Mike McIntyre (D-NC), Buck McKeon (R-CA), Michael McNulty (D-NY), Martin Meehan (D-MA), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Michael Michaud (D-ME), George Miller (D-CA), Candice Miller (R-MI), Gwen Moore (D-WI), James Moran (D-VA), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Grace Napolitano (D-CA), Richard Neal (D-MA), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Devin Nunes (R-CA), John Olver (D-MA), C. L. "Butch" Otter (R-ID), William Pascrell (D-NJ), Donald Payne (D-NJ), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Collin Peterson (D-MN), Richard Pombo (R-CA), Jon Porter (R-NV), George Radanovich (R-CA), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Mike Rogers (R-MI), Mike Ross (D-AR), Steven Rothman (D-NJ), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), Edward Royce (R-CA), Bobby Rush (D-IL), Paul Ryan (R-WI), John Salazar (D-CO), Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), Linda Sanchez (D-CA), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), H. James Saxton (R-NJ), Janice Schakowsky (D-IL), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Allyson Schwartz (D-PA), Joe Schwarz (R-MI), E. Clay Shaw (R-FL), Christopher Shays (R-CT), Brad Sherman (D-CA), John Shimkus (R-IL), Rob Simmons (R-CT), Christopher Smith (R-NJ), Hilda Solis (D-CA), Mark Souder (R-IN), Pete Stark (D-CA), John Sweeney (R-NY), Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), Mike Thompson (D-CA), John Tierney (D-MA), Edolphus Towns (D-NY), Mark Udall (D-CO), Christopher Van Hollen (D-MD), Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), Peter Visclosky (D-IN), James Walsh (R-NY), Maxine Waters (D-CA), Diane Watson (D-CA), Henry Waxman (D-CA), Anthony Weiner (D-NY), Curt Weldon (R-PA), Gerald Weller (R-IL), Joe Wilson (R-SC), Frank Wolf (R-VA), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), David Wu (D-OR), and Albert Wynn (D-MD). 4) Poland's Walesa Condemns 'First Genocide of 20th Century' (RFE/RL)--Lech Walesa, Poland's former president and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, made on Thursday an emotional case for the recognition by Turkey of the 1915 genocide of Armenians, saying it should be a precondition for Ankara's accession to the European Union. Walesa was addressing an international conference devoted the upcoming 90th anniversary of the start of the mass killings and deportations of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. His visit came just two days after Poland became the ninth EU country to officially describe the slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenians as a genocide. "The massacres of Armenians in Turkey were the first genocide of the 20th century," Walesa declared in a speech in Yerevan. "Armenia is justly demanding that the recognition of the Armenian genocide be a precondition for Turkey's membership in the European Union," he said. "Without a universal acceptance of historical justice, we can not meet the challenges of the contemporary world." "The massacres of Armenians were started by the bloodthirsty [Ottoman] Sultan Abdul Hamid II," Walesa said in his speech. "In 1915, the Turkish government ordered the slaughter of Armenian intellectuals and the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians that either starved to death or were brutally killed by Turkish soldiers and Kurdish bandits." "If I or anyone else forget that crime, then let God forget us," he added. All subscription inquiries and changes must be made through the proper carrier and not Asbarez Online. ASBAREZ ONLINE does not transmit address changes and subscription requests. (c) 2005 ASBAREZ ONLINE. All Rights Reserved. ASBAREZ provides this news service to ARMENIAN NEWS NETWORK members for academic research or personal use only and may not be reproduced in or through mass media outlets. From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

OTTOMANS EXECUTED 63 PEOPLE FOR HARMING ARMENIANS
Turkish Press
April 20 2005
Press Scan
YENI SAFAK- The Ottoman government executed 63 people for attacking
and harming Armenians during the relocation days, according to a
research carried out within Turkish Prime Ministry State Archives.
471,000 Ottoman soldiers and a few times more Armenians and Turks
died of epidemics during these years, according to hospital records
in the last years of the Ottoman Empire.

Hard to find
Turkish versions of Armenian cuisine aren’t as widespread as they once were.
By Joan Obra / The Fresno Bee
(Updated Wednesday, April 20, 2005, 6:50 AM)
In a small deli, Richard and Gerry Hagopian cling to a fading cuisine.
Gerry Hagopian stands over a bubbling pot of tomato broth to stir
kufta, meatballs of spiced, ground lamb encased in a crust of bulgur
and beef. She then mixes the toorshi, plunging her hands and arms
into a large vat of cabbage and carrots pickled in vinegar.
And she shows off a package in the dining-room freezer. It’s sou
bourag, a dish with 12 to 15 layers of thin noodles, butter, cheese
and parsley. Making the noodles is so time- consuming that hardly
anyone cooks them from scratch anymore. But Gerry Hagopian still does.
This is Turkish-Armenian cuisine, made from the recipes of those
who survived the Armenian genocide and fled to the United States. A
handful of central San Joaquin Valley shops still offer this type
of food, including Hagopian’s International Deli in Visalia, Uncle
Harry’s restaurant in Reedley and Valley Lahvosh Baking Co. in Fresno.
For these old-timers – direct descendants of genocide survivors
– cooking their parents’ meals defies the Turks’ destruction of
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Though Turks still deny the genocide
ever happened, Armenians say the ruthless campaign started 90 years
ago, on April 24, 1915. These Valley cooks also have another reason
to preserve their versions of Turkish- Armenian food: Their cuisine
is different from the food of genocide survivors who settled in the
Middle East, says Barbara Ghazarian, the Monterey author of “Simply
Armenian: Naturally Healthy Ethnic Cooking Made Easy.”
In the Middle East, foods such as hummus, a chickpea dip, and baba
ghannouj, a spread of roasted eggplant and sesame-seed paste, crept
onto Armenian tables.
The regional cuisines stayed separate until the 1970s, when civil
war erupted in Lebanon. Once again, Armenians escaped to the United
States, bringing the tastes of Middle Eastern-Armenian dishes.
And as this Middle Eastern influence grows in the Valley and elsewhere,
Turkish- Armenian food from the time of the genocide becomes more
rare. The survivors’ children, now in their 60s, 70s and 80s,
are aging.
“We’re really limited in Armenian restaurants with recipes from the
old days, recipes from people at the turn of the century,” says Harry
Horasanian, owner of Uncle Harry’s. “Since the massacres, a lot of
Armenians were living with a large Arabic influence and seasoning
food differently.”
Wars change a cuisine
It’s not the first time a war has transformed the food of
Armenians. Said to be descendants of Noah, Armenians populated the
area between the Black, Caspian and Mediterranean seas – the trade
route between East and West. Conquerors in Europe, Asia and the
Middle East constantly fought over this territory, subjecting Armenian
kingdoms to their rule.
Amid this turmoil, Armenian food changed again and again. In A.D. 301,
Armenians became the first people to adopt Christianity as their
official religion. Decades later, when Armenian church leaders
were centered at Constantinople, the flavors of the Byzantine Empire
colored their cooking.
“The combination of rice, currants, onions and pine nuts is a
legacy from that era, a legacy which, in fact, belongs to those of
the Orthodox faith, be it Armenian, Greek or Eastern,” writes Tess
Mallos in “The Complete Middle East Cookbook.”
In the 13th century, the Mongols invaded India, Afghanistan, Persia,
Armenia and Russia, introducing pasta and noodles, Mallos adds. As a
result, mante – an Armenian dish of small pasta pockets filled with
spiced meat – has Russian and Turkish variations.
By the 16th century, the Ottoman Turks had conquered most of Asia Minor
and Armenia. In the late 1800s, economic and religious differences
between Turks and Armenians led to mass murders, then the genocide.
Valley Armenians share terse stories of this time.
Horasanian talks about the years just before the genocide, when
his paternal grandparents gradually helped their children leave the
Ottoman Empire – before the Turks killed them.
Richard Hagopian’s father was a third-grader when the Turks shot his
father and brother. They pushed the young boy on a death march into
the Syrian desert. Of his family, only three people survived.
Even after years of living in the United States, genocide survivors
didn’t reveal many more details of the murders.
They “didn’t like to talk about it much,” Richard Hagopian says.
Lamb, vegetables and more
Wars aren’t the only factors that shape Armenian cuisine.
For these deeply Christian people, vegetarian dishes are a must. The
Armenian Orthodox Church requires its followers to fast for 180 days
every year.
“When they broke the fast at sundown,” author Ghazarian says, “they
were not allowed to eat any animal product.”
The fast days are one reason Armenians in the Middle East adopted
the vegetarian dishes of their new countries, she adds.
The mountainous, landlocked terrain of Armenian lands also influenced
the food.
“Even today, you can be completely cut off due to blizzards,” Ghazarian
says of rural Armenian towns. Foods that kept well became staples,
including bulgur, the flat cracker bread called lahvosh and spicy
meat jerky called bastirma and soujouk.
“Basically, you’re living off the land,” Ghazarian says. “So the
canning, the pickles, all that stuff â~@¦ that’s about surviving
the winter.”
Lamb, the traditional meat, also figures prominently in the
cuisine. In addition to shish kebab, lamb appears in kheyma, a dish
of finely-ground, raw meat kneaded with spices and bulgur. Ground,
spiced lamb also tops lahmajoon, a thin Armenian pizza. It forms the
filling, and at times the crust, of the stuffed meatball called kufta.
Yet despite tradition, Armenians born in the Middle East are more
likely to eat beef.
“Beef is the meat of preference for most Armenians born in the
Middle East because they say the lamb available there ‘smelled’ odd,”
Ghazarian writes in “Simply Armenian.”
Similar, yet different
These tenets of Armenian cuisine play into the food prepared by the
Valley’s old-time cooks.
Vegetarian dishes such as yalanchi sarma â~@” grape leaves rolled
around a filling of rice, onions and tomato â~@” are popular at
Hagopian’s International Deli.
At Uncle Harry’s, customers clamor for Horasanian’s fried eggplant
slices or his roasted-eggplant spread flavored with liberal amounts
of red-wine vinegar and olive oil. It’s similar to the Middle Eastern
baba ghannouj but doesn’t contain the sesame-seed paste in that dish.
Indeed, many of the Turkish-Armenian dishes from the early 1900s
also appear in other cuisines. The variations lie in flavorings
and spices. And even among different regions of the Ottoman Empire,
foods can taste different.
For example, when Horasanian mixes his version of kheyma, he flavors
it with tomato sauce, black pepper and paprika. But when Ghazarian
makes it, she reaches for cayenne, cumin and cinnamon.
Ghazarian’s family was from the Harpout region, which is now in the
Elazig province in central-eastern Turkey. By contrast, the dominant
culinary influence in Horasanian’s food comes from his father’s
family, who hailed from Tomarza, a city in a mountainous region west
of Harpout.
The differences continue at Hagopian International Deli. There, the
kufta is made by Gerry Hagopian, whose family lived in Chomaklou, a
village in the Kayseri province of central Turkey and known to Turks
as Comaklu. Her kufta filling of spiced, ground lamb is different
from the pomegranates and nuts used in Erzurum, the city in Eastern
Turkey that was home to Richard Hagopian’s family until the genocide.
Over the years, these cooks have introduced other changes. Beef is
widely used now, partly because lamb is expensive and partly because
Americans prefer beef to lamb.
At Uncle Harry’s, the kheyma is made with ground beef, as is the
lahmajoon topping. And at Hagopian’s International Deli, beef forms
the crust of the kufta.
But these differences are slight. For the most part, Valley cooks
stay true to their parents’ food.
“It’s been 90 years since my father came from the old country,”
Horasanian says. “These recipes haven’t been changed in about 100
years.”
The more things change
The food may remain the same, but the rise and fall of Fresno’s
Armenian Town shows how much has changed since the genocide.
The neighborhood started in the early 1900s, with Armenians who
escaped the Ottoman Empire before the genocide. In 1914, these new
Fresno immigrants built the existing Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic
Church at M Street and Ventura Avenue. And in 1922, Gazair Saghatelian
opened the California Baking Co. at M and Santa Clara streets.
“You had the church and the bakery,” says Janet Saghatelian, Gazair’s
daughter. “Those were the two most sacred things in Armenian culture.”
The neighborhood grew, eventually filling the area between Inyo,
O and Los Angeles streets and Broadway. From the late 1920s to the
early 1940s, this neighborhood was the hub of Armenian life in Fresno,
Janet Saghatelian says.
“Then all the boys went to war,” she adds, “and families started
moving out.”
The bakery lived on. Janet Saghatelian took it over, and now her
daughter, Agnes Saghatelian, handles day-to-day operations.
Time brought other changes. The bakery expanded to become the Valley
Lahvosh Baking Co. The Saghatelians now sell their lahvosh throughout
the United States and Canada. Also, the lahvosh no longer is made by
hand. Machines shape and bake it into a variety of sizes and shapes.
But some things didn’t change. Older Armenians still prefer the
traditional 15-inch-wide lahvosh to the smaller rounds of cracker
bread.
“Her generation doesn’t want to mess with these small crackers,”
Agnes Saghatelian says, pointing to her mother.
It’s these large rounds of lahvosh that inspired the term “breaking
bread together,” Janet Saghatelian says. At dinner, Armenian families
would pass around the large lahvosh, and everyone would break off
a piece.
These old-time Armenians also soften cracker bread the traditional
way: They place water-soaked lahvosh between two damp kitchen towels
for 45 minutes or until the cracker bread is pliable enough to roll.
There always was a supply of this softened lahvosh on Armenian
tables, called dahnhatz, or “bread of the house,” Janet Saghatelian
says. Family and friends would tear off a piece and eat it with
parsley, basil and homemade Armenian cheese.
Another of the company’s traditional products is peda, a soft bread
with a milk wash and sesame seeds sprinkled on top. It’s still made
from Gazair Saghatelian’s recipe, which came from Moush, his hometown
in Eastern Turkey that is called Mus by the Turks.
For Janet Saghatelian, one of the best ways to enjoy peda is with
shish kebab, skewered lamb roasted over burning grape vines.
“A wedge of fresh peda would be used to pull the meat off the skewers,”
she says, “and that wonderful juice-laden piece of bread would be
handed to our honored guest or fought over by children in the family.”
It’s a complex bread that takes eight hours to make, from mixing
to hand-shaping to baking. And it’s available only at the company’s
original bakery.
“You don’t rush that peda,” Janet Saghatelian says. “It’s pretty
complex.”
She admits that she loses money on the bread, but she doesn’t care.
Like other cooks of her generation, she has only one reason to continue
making her father’s dishes: “We do it because it’s my heritage.”
The reporter can be reached at [email protected] or (559) 441-6365.
–Boundary_(ID_ljo38oDkBn4RdZZKZt22wg)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress