EXCLUSIVE: KEEPING UP WITH THE KARDASHIANS CIRCA 1900! HOW KIM’S ANCESTORS HEEDED PROPHET’S WARNING OF LOOMING SLAUGHTER TO ESCAPE RURAL ARMENIA FOR A NEW LIFE IN THE U.S
The Daily Mail, UK
Feb 6 2015
Kim Kardashian’s ancestors escaped before Armenian Genocide of
1915 A prophet warned them ‘terrible times’ and war was coming –
and both did More than one million people eventually died in the
invasion that followed But Kim’s great, great grandfather Saghatel
Kardashian heeded prophecy So did Hovhannes Miroyan on the other side
of her incredible family tree A hundred years after the atrocity,
their distant relatives became TV stars after ancestor left for the
U.S. and became a garbage truck driver Kim now planning to visit
Armenia on the tragedy’s hundredth anniversary MailOnline discovered
a treasure trove of pictures of the Kardashian family
By Will Stewart for MailOnline
The extraordinary escape from the ‘Armenian Genocide’ of Kim
Kardashian’s ancestors – thanks to a ‘prophet’ who urged them to
uproot to America – can be revealed today for the first time.
MailOnline has unearthed a treasure trove of images showing the reality
TV star’s ethnic Armenian forebears who fled the tsarist Russian empire
in the early 20th century, many of whom obeyed the advice of the sage.
Known at the time as the Kardaschoffs, in Russian style, the family
made their way from their home village of Karakale in the late 19th
Century to German ports. From there, they travelled to a new life in
America on the passenger vessels SS Brandenberg and SS Koln.
By doing so, they escaped the triple horror of the First World War
from 1914-18, the ‘Armenian Genocide’ starting in 1915 – exactly a
century ago this year – and the Russian Revolution in 1917.
One hundred years after the deadly holocaust decimated their ancestral
home, the Kardashians have become one of the most influential families
in America.
The most famous of which is Kim who has chosen this year, on the
hundredth anniversary of the atrocity, to visit Armenia for the
first time.
But her lavish lifestyle, the expensive houses, an army of followers
who hang on her every tweet, the marriage to a musical superstar
would not exist if her ancestors had ignored the warning of a child
‘prophet’.
Among those fleeing Erzurum – then in Armenia, and ruled by last
Russian Tsar Nicholas II was family patriarch Hovhannes Miroyan and
Kim’s great great grandfather, born in 1844. He married the doughty
Luciag Chorbajian, born in 1853.
The couple wed in Erzurum, which is now in Turkey, in 1867 but escaped
along with their daughter Vartanoosh Mironyan, born in 1886, in the
early 20th century.
Vartanoosh’s distinctly blonde daughter Haigoohi Arakelian – known
as Helen, born in America in 1917, the year the Bolshevik Revolution
rocked the Russian Empire – was Kim’s grandmother, who later married
into the Kardashian clan.
The glamorous and ‘dynamic’ Helen wed Arthur who ran the largest
meat-packing business in southern California.
Helen’s son Robert, a celebrity lawyer who died of oesophageal cancer
in 2003, married Kris Houghton and fathered the 21st Century’s biggest
reality TV stars Kourtney, Khloe, Robert Jr and most famous of all
– Kim.
Their mother Kris eventually married Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner
and together they raised two more TV personalities, Kendall and Kylie.
The flight to freedom of Arthur’s parents and grandparents from
the village of Karakale – today a snow-covered and entirely Muslim
outpost in eastern Turkey where the stone ruins of the old Armenian
homes still stand – came later than many in this community.
It was as if they had sought to cling on against the rising ethnic
violence and persecution.
The Kardashians – or Kardaschoffs – like other branches of Kim’s
paternal kith and kin were ethnic Armenian, but they were also
religious rebels, at odds with the orthodox faith in their homeland.
They had already fled persecution once before, from another location
deeper in Armenia.
‘The village bullies harassed and insulted them, dug into their tombs
and (violated) the corpses of the deceased – hanging them on trees,’
explained Joyce Keosababian-Bivin, whose ancestors also came from
Karalala, and whose family is linked by marriage to the Kardashians.
‘Because of that they wrote a letter of complaint to Nicholas II.’
The tsar decreed that they could move to Karakale, close to the
Russian military settlement, where initially they were safe in what
was ‘a modern village, with beautiful buildings and wide streets’.
Here, they became close to incoming Russian protestants against the
Russian Orthodox Church.
They were a sect called the Molokans, literally translated as
‘milk-lovers’, so-called because they drank milk, and other banned
foods, on fast days.
Some were known as Jumpers, who leapt in the air, raising their hands
high, during church services. They were pacifists and, crucially,
adhered to the power of prophecy.
The legend has it that in the 1850s, an 11-year-old Efil Klubnikin
penned an apocalyptic forecast despite being apparently illiterate.
‘Those who believe in this will go on a journey to a far land, while
the unbelievers will remain in place,’ the boy prophesied. ‘Our people
will go on a long journey over the great and deep waters…people
from all countries will go there.
‘There will be a great war. All kings will shed blood like great
rivers. Two steamships will leave to cross the impassable ocean.’
In the first years of the 20th century, Efim renewed the warning
that he made to stunned believers in Karakale as a child, saying his
premonition was now coming to pass.
‘Efim called a meeting, he invited the elders from all the Molokan
villages including the two elders of the Armenian Molokan church. He
prophesied this was the time for them to leave Russia as there
were terrible times coming, especially for the Armenians,’ said Ms
Keosababian-Bivin.
Images he scrawled led locals to believe they should cross the
Atlantic to the United States, but this young diviner also indicated
they should not stop there, but trek to the west coast. He pointed
them towards Los Angeles.
America was, he said, ‘a land of the living’ while mass slaughter
would engulf their homeland.
Presciently, he urged them to go quickly – as he himself would do –
and cautioned: ‘The doors will close, and leaving Russia will be
impossible.’
Many families sold up their homes and land at knockdown prices,
or simply fled, to escape the coming horrors.
It is substantially due to the prophecy that many of Kim’s forebears
came to Los Angeles, a city where the clan thrived and made their name.
But many were jeered as they left Karakale, now known as Merkez
Karakale, and mocked for their belief in the prophesy of coming doom.
Poignantly, the village is almost in the shadow of the magnificent
volcanic Mount Ararat, supposedly the resting place of Noah’s Ark
when the world faced an earlier catastrophe, a fact which led some
of the Armenians to believe they would be safe here.
Yet all those who stayed in Karakale would pay with their lives.
Records show that Arthur Kardashian’s father and Kim’s great
grandfather, Tatos, was born in Karakale and later became known as Tom.
Tatos heeded the warning and in September 1913, at the age of 17,
found himself boarding the SS Koln from Bremen, Germany to Boston.
He opened a rubbish collection business in Los Angeles and wed another
Karakale Jumper immigrant, Hamas Shakarian, who travelled with him
on the cramped passenger steamer from Germany.
A few weeks earlier, Tatos’ parents Saghatel ‘Sam’ Kardashian, then
49, and Hrepsema ‘Horom’ Yuzbashian, then 43, had travelled on the
SS Brandenburg from Bremen to Philadelphia, arriving on 2 August 1913.
‘Steerage passengers were jammed together much like cargo down below,’
said researcher Margaret Odrowaz-Sypniewska.
Their escape would undoubtedly save their lives. With the world
engulfed in war, and Russia beset by revolution, the forces of the
Ottoman empire moved in on the region.
It became embroiled in what is variously known as the Armenia Genocide,
the Armenian Massacres, and the Armenian Holocaust.
Estimates vary but it is claimed around one million to 1.5m people
perished in mass killings between 1915 and 1923.
Significantly, perhaps, Kim has chosen this year to travel to Armenia,
the land of her forefathers, for the first time.
The Turkish government refuses to accept the label ‘genocide’, though
many historians, international organisations and almost two dozen
countries recognise it as such.
Britain and the US have not done so, arguably to avoid upsetting key
NATO ally Turkey.
‘When the Turkish army marched through the area in 1917, they committed
unspeakable atrocities against the Armenian people in all the villages,
including Karakale’, said Ms Keosababian-Bivin.
‘The Armenia Genocide began and every inhabitant of Karakala perished,’
wrote Matthew W Tallman, citing another Kim relative, Demos Shakarian,
whose grandfather of the same name became a prominent Pentecostalist
preacher in Los Angeles and was also Kim’s great great grandfather.
‘Efim’s prophetic words saved many lives in Karakale.’
Another account recorded: ‘The great World War One broke out, and in
the terrible onslaught, when Turkey overran Armenia, every soul in
Karakala was wiped out.’
Kim went on the record in 2012 to call for a wider understanding of
the tragedy that befell the Armenian people.
‘It’s time to recognise the Armenian Genocide,’ she said. ‘Until
this crime is resolved, the Armenian people will live with the pain
of what happened to their families.’
In midwinter, the tiny village is deserted. It retains a 19th century
feel, with horses still used by local farmers, as in the time of old
Sam Kardashian’s time.
The scars of the past run deep, and now even professing links to Kim
seems a matter of controversy here.
A diplomatic source said: ‘You must understand that with centenary
of the genocide coming in April, and the Turks are deeply sensitive
about anything that can act as a focus to the slaughter of the past.’
There is also deep tension between the Turks and Kurds in the east
of the country.
One resident of Karakala, Muhammer Copur, 30, claimed two years
ago that he was distantly related to Kim, because their great great
grandmothers were sisters.
Then a village shopkeeper, he found the linked after scouring the
web on the village’s only computer, it was claimed.
‘It’s amazing – everyone is jealous,’ he said at the time, though
the name of the ancestor was not disclosed. ‘All the villagers now
want to know if they are related to famous sexy millionaires too. I’m
hoping Kim will invite me to the US’.
He added that his dream was: ‘All I want is a cup of tea with her.’
Two years on, and he pours cold water on the story, now denying there
is any truth in it.
‘I don’t want to speak about Kim Kardashian because she is so famous,’
he said. ‘If I say something, I can have problems.’
Now working at a university in the nearby city of Kars, he said:
‘I don’t want to speak about those topics because I’m under pressure
from other villagers, and from the Turkish press.’
He said that his family only moved to the village ‘some time between
maybe 1920 and 1930’ – long after Kim’s ancestors had left.
His family are Terekeme, also known as Qarapapaq, he said, a Muslim
group traditionally speaking a dialect of Azerbaijani.
If – somehow – there is truth that one of Kim’s former ancestors in
Karakale remained behind, survived the ‘genocide’, and wed into the
Copur clan – which would have required her converting to Islam – it
would mean dozens of the settlement’s present residents would also
be related.
Almost half the homes in the village today are occupied by his extended
family members.
His cousin Atilla Copur, head of the village administration, went on
local TV to discount the links to Kim, however.
‘They said that Kim Kardashian’s family was living in the village. But
we don’t know if it’s true,’ he said.
There are no documents which prove a family connection between the
Kardashians and the Copur’s, he insisted, saying that archive searches
had been conducted in Turkey.
Yet there is no doubt the family did live here in his village, before
being forced away by the real threat of barbarism.
And existing Armenian gravestones in the local cemetery – though not
visibly connected to the Kardashians – are evidence of this link.
For old family photos of Kim’s ancestors and videos go to
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2939622/Keeping-Kardashians-circa-1900-Kim-s-ancestors-heeded-prophet-s-warning-looming-slaughter-escape-rural-Armenia-new-life-U-S.html