Author: Kalantarian Kevo

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day is on April 24, which this year fell on a Sunday.

Four Armenian churches in the southeast Wisconsin area — including Racine’s two Armenian churches and two from Milwaukee — gathered at St. Hagop Armenian Church, 4100 Newman Road, to commemorate with a full Divine Liturgy.

Deacon Levon Saryan said to commemorate the occasion, the Holy Communion was prepared with the Armash Chalice, which dates to 1820 and was named for the Holy Mother of God Monastery at Armash (located outside of Istanbul) where it came from.

The chalice is in a private collection in Milwaukee. Saryan said the owner was gracious and allowed the chalice to be used for the service.

“It was a very moving service,” Saryan said. He added that church members gathered together afterward for fellowship.

He added there was a lot of good feeling among the attendees, who seemed relieved the pandemic was behind them, so they were able to meet again in fellowship.

Historians generally date the start of the Armenian genocide to April 24, 1915, the day around 250 Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople (now Istanbul) were seized and taken to holding camps. Few of those who were seized survived long.

Ottoman Empire leaders seized the intellectuals believing, that if the Armenian people were deprived of leadership, it would be more difficult for them to organize and resist religious oppression.

Outside of Constantinople sat the Armenian community of Armash, where there was a monastery and seminary to train priests for the church, an important center for Armenian religious life.

During the genocide, the community of Armash was seized and sent on a death march across the Syrian Desert. The monastery and seminary were looted, destroyed and the location was used for a new mosque.

The exact figures are not known, but historians estimate 1-1.5 million died as a result of the forced marches across the Syrian Desert. Those left behind, primarily women and children, were forced to adopt Islamic religion and culture.

One belonged to Saryan and the other to Chuck Hajinian, a member of St. John the Baptist Armenian Church in Greenfield, who has family ties to Racine.

Both men are collectors of Armenian artifacts and together they purchased the chalices as part of a collection of historic items from an estate sale.

Saryan and Hajinian researched the chalices and discovered both dated from the 1800s and were donated to the Armenian seminary of Armash, located outside of Istanbul, in the 19th century.

While they aren’t certain of what happened to the chalices following the genocide, initially the collectors theorize the chalices eventually reached the antiques market in Europe, Saryan said.

However, with further research, Saryan said it was also likely that a priest was able to procure them and they stayed in his family. “It’s hard to know.”

He and Hajinian purchased them from the estate of another Armenian collector.

Both Saryan and Hajinian said from an emotional standpoint, that they feel the chalices belong to the monastery and the Armenian people.

For that reason, Saryan donated his chalice to the Armenian Church in New York City, the headquarters for the local churches. From there, the archbishop took the chalice to Beirut, Lebanon, and donated it to the Armenian Museum.

Few elected officials addressed Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day this year. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, was one of them. His statement, issued Sunday, is as follows:

“Today, April 24, is the day to remember the 1.5 million Armenians murdered by Turkey before during and after World War I.

The Armenian Genocide was the Ottoman government’s systematic extermination of 1.5 million Armenians, mostly citizens within the Ottoman Empire. The starting date is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested, and deported from Constantinople (now Istanbul) to the region of Ankara, 235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, the majority of whom were eventually murdered. The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases—the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labor, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly, and the infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian Desert.

Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre.

Millions murdered.

Turkey says it never happened.

The Armenian genocide occurred during the twilight of the Ottoman Empire, which allied itself with Germany during World War I. After their ill-fated invasion of Russia, Turkish leaders became suspicious of the empire’s Armenian Christian minority and began a years-long persecution.

Armenian leaders in Istanbul were detained, deported and killed on April 24, 1915 — widely considered to be the beginning of the genocide — and the campaign spread from there. Hundreds of thousands were killed, and others were forced from their homes on long marches into the Syrian desert, where many more died.

Never Forget…”

President Joe Biden last year became the first U.S. president to actually refer to the genocide as a “genocide.” On Sunday, he issued another statement in memory of the 1.5 million Armenians “who were deported, massacred or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination” by Ottoman Empire forces.

Turkey responded by claiming Biden’s declaration was ”incompatible with historical facts and international law.”

LOS ANGELES – According to historians, before Glendale and Hollywood, the original communities Armenians settled in were Fresno, Boyle Heights and Montebello. 

In 2020, the city of Montebello marked its 100-year history. Originally, it was an agricultural community with humble beginnings, before its successes in commerce and in the oil industry. Not long after Montebello was established in 1920, it became the first suburb most Armenians settled in back in the 1930s, which is just part of a piece of Southern California history.

“It was Fresno and Montebello. And the reason that those two communities were as heavily populated, densely populated as early as they were, is both complicated and really easy.  The Fresno Armenians were those who came from the Ottoman Empire escaping genocide, looking for foreign lands, and established themselves in the agricultural economy of the Central Valley,” Salpi Ghazarian, Director of Armenian Studies at the University of Southern California’s Dornsife Institute. “Those who came to Montebello were those who during World War ll escaped the Soviet Union, escaped many of them from Ukraine, from the various cities that are being bombed today.”

The USC program is committed to documenting, preserving, and most importantly, giving a voice to the people who lived during those historic years. Not only do their stories make up the history of Southern California, but these are the stories that are an essential part of the Armenian experience.

Data from the USC archives says 20 million Soviet citizens died in WWII. Of those, 200,000 of those were Armenians. Some were captured by the Germans, historic Armenian communities in Eastern Europe and Crimea were relocated as slave labor, others retreated with the German army seeking an escape from Stalin’s regime. This is how some 4,000 Armenians found themselves in Stuttgart, Germany when the war ended.

Montebello resident Jack Hadjinian’s grandparents were part of that group.

“My grandfather Senekerim “Sam” Arakelian was a genocide survivor who eventually was taken to Germany by Nazis as forced labor. Along with another 2,000 to 3,000 Armenians that lived in labor camps, my family ended up in Stuttgart in the labor camp. My mom is one of 185 Armenians that were born in those camps,” Hadjinian said. 

“They bonded during a really difficult time. Those bonds have continued through today, through the various generations,” said Ghazarian.

By 1952 most of the 4,000 Armenians were allowed to land in the U.S. as a result of a special act of Congress called the Displaced Person’s Act of 1948 that enabled their immigration.

USC studies reveal some settled in Detriot, Michigan or Niagara Falls, New York as they remembered the families they had left behind and began new lives as factory workers, while many came to Montebello and sustained bonds of friendship that were based on the relationship and interdependence from their years in Stuttgart.

Jack Hadjinian’s family went through Ellis Island, to Worcester, Massachusetts, to Detroit. “There were a lot of jobs there. My uncles worked on the Ford F-150 assembly line and some of my uncles worked for Cadillac. My grandfather was a janitor at Ford,” he said. 

Eventually, many like Hadjinian’s family headed west.

“They came to Boyle Heights, which is such an important core for Los Angeles. [There are] so many communities- the Jewish community, the Latino communities and the Armenian community started out there,” said Ghazarian.

“As they moved, they looked for businesses to make a living that did not require language skills or education. Many of them started in the trash business and actually hauling trash. And then it was Armenians who transformed the trash business from just residential trash pickup to commercial trash pickup, which is such a huge industry in Southern California. Other Armenians went into the food business, and started with lunch trucks, which then later became hot lunch trucks,” said Ghazarian.  

They had that entrepreneurial spirit. As they thrived they gave back to the community, they established churches, schools, dance groups and community centers. Montebello is home to the first Armenian Genocide Memorials in the country.

“It is the first Armenian Genocide monument on public property in the world. It is world-famous and everybody knows about it. It stands 75 feet tall,” Hadjinian explained.

The Holy Cross Cathedral is another place that brings thousands of people through its doors. This church has great significance in Hadjinian’s life.

“I was baptized here in this church and I was married in this church. My family contributed to the building of this church. This is a one of the larger church properties Armenian church properties,” said Hadjinian.

Right next door is Bagramian Hall, an enormous banquet hall, where large-scale events take place. Next to Bagramian Hall is the smaller Tumanjan Hall, which was the youth center.

Hadjinian said Montebello is a wonderful place where everyone seems to really understand and respect each other’s cultures.

One Armenian-owned business that perfectly illustrates the diversity of the community is a local favorite – Z’s Diner. “It is an interesting place that’s very colorful. Not just physically, but when you look at the menu you will find that they serve Mexican food, Armenian food, and American cuisine,” he added. 

“I think the common denominator in Montebello is that everyone feels very connected to this community. There are people or families like mine that have been here three, or four generations. Not many Armenian communities go that far back,” said Hadjinian.

“This is a place where four generations get together willingly…it’s really quite phenomenal. It continues this whole concept of community and neighborhood that in many places in the U.S. we’ve lost, but this community sustains it,” said Ghazarian.

“The city has been devastated countless times, its children scattered and orphaned, its walls and streets torn down, its gardens made fallow, only to rise through its ashes, like the legendary phoenix, more enchanting than ever. It never ceases to amaze and delight throughout the centuries; it has been courted and celebrated by people of all faiths in song and dance, prose and poetry.”

When Arthur Hagopian returned to Jerusalem about 10 years ago as a consultant for a film about the city, it had been 15 long years since his last visit to his birthplace. A journalist living in Sydney, Australia, Hagopian had not been back for years, yet as he reveals in his book The Cobblestones of Jerusalem, his memories of his childhood home remained vibrant and detailed. Hagopian, an Armenian Christian, grew up in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.

The Cobblestones of Jerusalem is a collage of colorful stories, part memoir and part history. As the author returns to the Armenian Quarter after 15 years, he describes walking through his childhood neighborhood, and his prose weaves vignettes from his reunions with people and places into the memories of his childhood. Throughout his stories, Hagopian shares his extensive knowledge of the Armenian people who make Jerusalem their home. 

“I was born in the heart of a labyrinth of quaint, serpentine streets and alleys, where one of the most dynamic people of the Middle East, the Armenians, make their home. Claiming their descent from the conquering armies of Dickran (Tigranes) II, King of Kings, Armenians have been living in Jerusalem for over 2,000 years.”

The Old City of Jerusalem has four quarters – Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian. If you are like me, you may have visited Jerusalem countless times but never learned very much about the Armenians who make their home in the Old City. The Cobblestones of Jerusalem will fill in some of the gaps in your knowledge.

THE ARMENIAN monastery compound in the Armenian Quarter. (credit: AMMAR AWAD/REUTERS)

In the first chapter “The Religious Tapestry,” the author writes:

“Jews form a majority in the Holy Land but the wide range of minority communities, principally Muslim, Christian and Druze, provides a rich diversity that is without parallel anywhere else in the world.”

The majority of Armenians are Orthodox Christians, although there are small numbers belonging to other churches such as the Catholic or non-Chalcedonian churches.

During the Armenians’ long history in the Old City, they were caught in the middle of the continuing conflict between Arabs and Jews many times. Some of them even lost their lives. During the 1948 war, Hagopian was a child living in the Armenian Quarter, and he remembers taking refuge in the St. James Cathedral. He remembers the sights and sounds of the bombs, and the feelings of terror, while at the same time, being a child, he and his friends continued to play their games close to their parents.

“Thousands of souls, the young and the old, were cramped together in the vast bosom of the cathedral while consternation reigned outside, with Arabs and Jews lobbying their horrent armaments across the Old City walls, the Jews on the outside wistfully looking in, the Arabs manning the higher ground of the walls, the war claiming countless innocent Armenian casualties, among them my grandfather’s brother, Vahan Hovsepitan.”

Living in Australia, Hagopian decided he wanted to share his extensive knowledge of the Armenian community in Jerusalem. “In 2007, I started an online project called ‘Armenian Jerusalem’ aimed at preserving the community’s heritage, incorporating a comprehensive family tree that would encompass the ‘kaghakatsi’ (after ‘kaghak,’ town) clans and families in the Armenian Quarter.” It was through Hagopian’s website that Daniel Ferguson, the Canadian director of a unique IMAX 3-D film about Jerusalem, contacted Hagopian and hired him as a consultant.

The kaghakatsi community in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City claims that they are the descendants of the Armenians who came to the Holy Land in the early years of Christianity, more than 2,000 years ago. The first Armenians who came to the Land of Israel were idol worshipers or mercenaries who came with the army of Tigranes. In the fourth century CE, Armenia adopted Christianity and pilgrims began to make their way to Jerusalem, where they built monasteries and shrines. Among them were Arthur Hagopian’s ancestors. The other main body of Armenians who came to the Holy Land is known as the “vanketsi” (the word “vank” means convent) and they are the survivors of the Armenian Genocide, which took place in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

As a Jew who had a traditional Jewish education, I learned about the special place Jerusalem has in the history and traditions of the Jewish people. The Cobblestones of Jerusalem reminds the reader that Jews are not the only ones who have this type of historical and spiritual connection to Jerusalem. Other groups feel the same way and no matter where you stand on the political or religious spectrum, this is a reality of Jerusalem. The four quarters of the Old City reflect this truth, and the challenge for all of us, of course, is how to live side by side with respect and without conflict. 

Hagopian explains Jerusalem from the unique standpoint of a person who is not an Arab and not a Jew. He is determined to stay apolitical and not side with either group in the ongoing conflict, so, for example in his description of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, he explains that while the Jews called it the “War of Independence,” the Arabs called it the “Nakba” (catastrophe). Growing up, he and his family had friendly relationships with both Jews and Arabs, always remaining a distinct religious and ethnic group, while sometimes picking up various cultural nuances from both, which is what often happens in a multicultural society.

I noticed this in the following paragraph:

“In the shtetl that was the Armenian Quarter, where everybody knew everybody else no one bothered about the notions or niceties of privacy.” This amused me, as shtetl is a Yiddish term for the small towns in Eastern Europe that had large Jewish populations before the Holocaust. On another page, the author writes, “Who can doubt that of the portions of beauty God bestowed on the world, He reserved nine for Jerusalem.” This line comes from the Babylonian Talmud (he also adds “and of the 10 portions of sorrow, Jerusalem’s gift numbered nine?”).

The Cobblestones of Jerusalem is overflowing with stories and information and has many tangents and side stories. The author writes about his journalism career, the years he spent as a journalist in Kuwait and the time he spent as an English teacher, in addition to discussing Armenian and Israeli history, life in Jerusalem in different periods, and much more. All of these different themes can make the book confusing at times and somewhat challenging to read. 

For example, the author writes about a visit to a man he remembered from the Armenian Quarter, and in describing the visit, he delves into his memories of the man, and then suddenly takes a tangent, describing something indirectly related to the man and his visit with him. When he returns to the story of his visit later in the chapter, or suddenly mentions his work on the Jerusalem film, it is disorienting. I think that with more organization and better editing, The Cobblestones of Jerusalem would flow better and be a more pleasurable read.

Amazon Publishing published the book and (in my humble opinion) this is not the first book published through Amazon that needs more editing. Despite this flaw, the book has a lot to teach us and I recommend it to anyone interested in learning about Jerusalem from a perspective that is not often heard, written by a man who knows it well.

“It is said that you can never go back home. But when Jerusalem is your home, you never leave it, because you carry it in your heart.” 

The Cobblestones of Jerusalem By Arthur Hagopian 349 pages; $20.84