Fact #212, 153 days to go: Intervention and Shades of Altruism During the Armenian Genocide Part 7 of 8 by Richard G. Hovannisian (American historian and professor emeritus at UCLA) HUMANITARIAN MOTIVATION The humanitarian factor shows up in at least three-quarters of all the interventions and is listed as the primary motivation in 120 (51.5 %) of the total of 233 incidents reported. It is in this category that acts of altruism are found. Sometimes it was the Turkish or Kurdish neighbors of Armenians who intervened selflessly. Previous friendship was an important though not overriding factor in humanitarian intervention. Where there was no previous acquaintance, the sheltering of helpless women and children was regarded as both humanitarian and pious, especially as many of the children were converted and adopted. In their own altruism, many converted Armenians tried to help other Armenians. Examples of incidents involving both previous and no previous acquaintance will illustrate the strength of humanitarian sentiment among the small segment of the population that was moved to intervene. Prior acquaintance was instrumental in saving a caravan of 3500 deportees. Missak Parseghian (b.1895) of Aintab explains that when they reached a town between Hama and Homs in Syria, the kaimakan, who was a native of Aintab, recognized them and helped them very much. ‘He was a Turk by the name of Mahmed Agha. There were loads of good Turks who saved the lives of Armenians.’ Intervention took place more often on a personal level. Arsen Magdessian (b. 1903) of Yozgat recalls: My mother fell on her knees before Tahir Agha. Even though he was a Turk, Tahirs eyes brimmed with tears. He said, ‘Get up, my daughter. Whoever has caused this, let both eyes be blinded.’ He turned to his brother and said, ‘Khurshud, you need a son. They are to be pitied. We have eaten much bread from their hands. Take this boy.’ Khurshud said, ‘This boy is clean. I shall take him.’ Nazar Nazarian (b. 1904) of Aintab declares, ‘Mustafa was a good man. My mother sent me to him because my father knew him. He kept me with him until the end of the war and did not tell anyone in the village that I was an Armenian.’ Yeghsapert Terzian (b. 1895) and Tavrez Tatevosian (b. 1903) were working in their villages of Tadem and Bazmashen, Kharpert province, when they were warned by Turkish acquaintances from neighboring villages of impending danger and were able to go into hiding while most of the villages of the province were emptied and the population set out on the death marches. Noemi Minassian (b. 1912) of Kharpert, who was only three years old during those marches, explains that prior friendship could help even along the routes of deportation: One of those officials knew my father from Kharpert. He freed us and took us to his home. There, my mother was a servant for a year and would do needlework for the wife. My mother says he was very good to us. Apparently, there are some good ones among them, and we met up with those good ones.... [After the war], the man decided to send us to our relatives. He knew that there was a large caravan, and we were to be a part of it and go to Aleppo. That Turkish official told the caravan captain, If any harm comes to any one of these people, I will hang you on the gallows. He said that so that the caravan leader would get us safely to our destination. Zabel Apelian (b. 1907) of Diarbekir was rescued by an army officer known to the family. During the deportations, her mother implored the officer to take Zabel and her sister to his family in Mardin. Since the sisters kept crying and asking for their mother, the officer went back looking for the woman and found her near death in a ditch. In her interview, Zabel relates the joy she and her sister felt when their mother was brought to join them. The family of Aram Kilichjian (b. 1903) of Kirshehir and some other fellow townspeople were for unexplained reasons brought back from the deportation route to their homes, already nothing more than heaps of rubble. Yet that night several neighboring Turkish families brought soup so that the children could eat. Arams brother was in the Turkish army and his commander took a special interest in the Kilichjian family. The episode includes humanitarian, religious, and coercive aspects, all at once: My brothers commander, Zia Bey, whose word the Turks respected, came and said, ‘Give this boy to me.’ When the man saw that my mother and sister didnt want to give me up, he summoned a Turk he knew, gave him a donkey, and told my mother, ‘Go with him and see what they are doing to young Armenians.’ My mother went to the place called Giulasar and saw that many Armenians had died there and were being ripped apart by vultures. Finally, my mother was persuaded and delivered me to that man. Zia Bey took me to his village near his family. They were not my mother and father, but the people loved me and looked after me.... The man had a grown daughter, who would take me in her lap and cuddle me. After a month, I saw that there was a commotion in the house and that preparations were being made.... I thought it was something like a wedding. It was a circumcision ceremony for Zia Beys son. They came and found me, too, and tried to circumcise me at the same time. I fled to the garden and hid, but they came and found me and did it to me. Afterwards, Zia Bey’s son lay on one side of the room and I lay on the other - but the man liked me very much. And they gave me the name Said. It was a time of famine ... There was a bread that was called ‘vasika’ bread. One room of this mans house was filled with flour. This mans wife, whom I called abla [auntie], would say, ‘Get up and take these breads to your mother and family.’ In those difficult days our family was well-fed. That woman was very good and liked to help. If I say she was better than my mother, believe me.... The woman and her daughters would get cloth from their store and sew clothes for my mother and sisters, who by that time had been Islamicized at the urgings of the family that had taken me. My sisters had married Turkish boys. Naturally my mother wept and said, ‘Ill die but I wont become a Turk.’ Zia Bey said, ‘Dont cry, no one will take your religion from you, but I want you on the surface to show yourself to be Turkish, so that they wont kill you.’ In one of the few interviews conducted in English, Henry Vartanian (b. 1906) of Zara, province of Sivas or Sepastia, talks about Ali Effendi, who had operated a mill with Henrys father: My father was well recognized in government circles. He had a friend by the name of Ali Effendi.... He is a Turk, but a beautiful man. A man with a soul.... The systematic exile and genocide began. Ali Effendi said that he has to bring us from Zara, because it was too dangerous there. One of his wives was vacationing and her house was empty. So, he said, ‘I will take you to that house.’ We were six children and my mother. Ali Effendi told us specifically not to make our presence in his wifes house detected. ‘I dont want any Turk or anyone in the area to know that you are here.’ He used to lock the door and go to his work. He would bring us food and then lock up and go. He kept us there for three months. Intervention based on friendship had limits. Henry continues by saying that orders came from Istanbul a second time for the Armenians to be deported. Ali Effendi came to Mrs Vartanian: He said, ‘I dont want to hand you over to the government. But,’ he said, ‘there is only one way in order that I dont get hurt. I know,’ he said, ‘that this is not right, but this is a necessity.’ He said, ‘You should change your religion.’ My mother is mad. She says, ‘No! Ali Effendi.’ I tell you he was a wonderful man. He said, ‘Well, I dont blame you. I would have felt the same way. But let me give you a little advice.... Remember that if I hand you over to the government they will exile you immediately and once you cross the bridge at the outskirts of the city they would kill your children in front of your eyes, and a Turk will take you as a wife, because that is permitted by the law. I dont want my best friends family to be killed.’ He said, ‘You in your heart be, remain a Christian, but outwardly you accept the Muslim religion. This way you can survive. One of these days the war will be over, and then you can go back to your religion.’ I guess my mother realized the danger and decided that the best thing to do was to change our religion. Ali EfFendi managed to help us in that. We were given Muslim names, and we became donmes. Mabel Morookian (b. 1908) of Marsovan, Sivas province, also shows that even influential officials could not protect Armenians for long if they retained their identity: My grandfather was a wealthy merchant and a good friend of the kaimakan of the city. That kaimakan for a while, a month or two, kept us. Later he said, ‘I can no longer keep you. You either have to go, or I can save you one other way. You must change your religion, become Turkified, and in that way I can say that all those living with me are Turks’. . . . Then one day what did we see? Armenian people wearing Turkish headgear and having become Muslims. They gave us all Turkish names and Turkish identity papers. Continuing his story, Haroutiun Kevorkian of Charsanjak speaks affectionately of the prominent Kurdish family who harbored him. When the massacres began, his mother took him to the home of the local Kurdish agha, with a bedroll and some lard. She pleaded with the wife, Khadra Khanum, to keep the lard for herself but to allow Haroutiun to stay there and sleep in the bedroll. Khadra Khanum, however, said she had no need of anything: That kind woman did not take a hair of Armenian goods. Three Armenians - I, Baghdasar, and a small girl - stayed in her house, and Khadra Khanum treated us very well. If I say that I didnt feel my mothers separation, believe me. Before my mother left, Khadra Khanum told her, ‘Your son is my son. If you return, he will be yours, and if you do not return, I will take good care of him.’ The Kurdish agha and Khadra Khanum nonetheless converted Haroutiun and renamed him Husein. Three-quarters of the interventions were by individuals previously unknown to the survivors. As in cases based on prior acquaintance, adoption and conversion often accompanied the humanitarian acts. Children were deprived of a sense of person-hood as they were given away, shared, or moved from one home to another. It was extremely traumatic to be picked out of a crowd for adoption and to be separated from parents and siblings. Christine Avakian (b. 1903) of Adana complains: ‘It was like we were a piece of furniture or some object.’ Children were no better than ‘pets or senseless creatures.’ On the deportation route at Killis, Christines father entrusted his two daughters to a Kurd, who kept one and gave the other to his brother. Despite her bitterness, Christine goes on to speak affectionately about her Kurdish ‘mama’ and ‘papa.’ By and large, the survivors intermix their tears over the loss of parents and siblings with praise for their adoptive Muslim parents, this even as they express seething resentment against the Turkish government and even against the Turkish people collectively. Missak Shiroyan (b. 1901) of Erzerum states that by the time his deportation caravan reached Kharpert most of the people in it had already died: Turkish officials came to gather the children. They collected as many of us as there were. They brought us to Mezre and put us into a house, of course one that had belonged to an Armenian. Their purpose was to save our lives and to Islamicize us. They began to take Armenian children and pass them out to Turks and Kurds. They adopted me as their child and named me Fayek, a Turkish name. The family that adopted me was a man and wife, the man at least 60 or 65. I was a cute little boy at the time. They had no children, and I must say that they pampered me like their own child. Also deported from Erzerum, Manoushag Meserlian (b. 1907) reminisces: They cared for us very well, be it food or clothing. Of course, however much, they didnt look after us like their own children. They tried to Islamicize me, and I think they named me Fatum. Aghavni Mazmanian (b. 1895) of Sivas relates that while she was being deported: A Turk came to me and said, ‘I shall find a good place for you. Dont cry.’ He was a Turk from Malatia, but he was a very good man. He had seven Armenian orphans in his home. He went and found another Turk. ‘Khalil,’ he said, ‘this kid is to be pitied. Take her to your home.’ My agha was like a saint, and my khanum [his wife] was very kind. They cared for me like a mother and father. Speaking in English, Virginia Oghigian (b. 1908), also of Sivas, points to the conflict that often arose when, after the war, relatives came to rescue children adopted by Muslim families: I was given away to a Turkish woman who took me to her house. So my younger brother and I were taken to this home to become their children. They changed our names and gave us Turkish names. My name was Shahseda. In this Turkish home, we had to follow Turkish rules. Girls had to cover their faces when speaking or spoken to. There were about five Armenian orphans in the house. Oh well, one day my mother finally came to see me and to take me with her. She told me very bad things about what had happened to Armenians. She took me by the arm and wanted me to pay attention to what she was saying. I didnt listen because I was mad at her, since she had left me alone for so long. I didnt want to talk to her. Arshaluis Setrakian (b. 1912) of Gurun, Sivas province, recalls: They were a large family, and I would help care for the little ones. I think I stayed there two years. I liked that home very much, because they looked after me, food and drink were plentiful. This was the home of a very rich man.... In the evenings they, together with several other wealthy households, would pass out bread to Armenian refugees. When my mother came to retrieve me, it was very difficult. It was with wails and tears that I was separated [from my adopted family]. Among the cases that come closest to altruism, the following may be taken as representative examples. Vartan Melidonian (b. 1899) of Erzinjan, Erzerum province, straggled into Kharpert after weeks of torment: All members of my family had died, and I was the only one left alive, but I was wounded in several places. I set out and entered a village. A Turk told me to follow him. He took me to his home and then brought yogurt, bread, cream. I could not eat it. My stomach had dried up and nothing would go down. All I wanted was to die and join my parents. They took me to the barn and covered me. I stayed with that Turk until 1922. The Turk, Hasan Effendi, was wealthy and gave me a home in his village, Adav. The man had four children, and he looked after me like one of them. Lousvart Tashjian (b. 1909) of Mush, Bitlis province, was orphaned at an early age and was on vacation with her grandmother and sister when the massacres began. A Turk took Lousvart in, while the grandmother and sister were rounded up. When the Russian army invaded the Mush region in 1916, the family fled to Diarbekir and then to Adana and Mersin. After the war, Armenian volunteers in the French army took her away from her Turkish family. She cried for many days because of her grief at being separated from the only family she knew. Mary Ishkhanian (b. 1909) of Malatia, Kharpert province, was taken in by a woman who had eight sons. During the first few days, Mary cried incessantly. Annoyed by the wailing, one of the sons shouted, ‘Shut up, gâvur [infidel], The woman slapped her grown son and warned him never again to address the girl in that debasing way. Mary lived happily in that household for three years. The family of Haig Setrakian (b. 1902) of Konya found shelter in Tarsus for four years: I must say that we encountered good people. In Tarsus we found a house. The landlord was a Turk who worked in the military. Every two days, the town-crier would pass through the streets calling upon anyone harboring Armenians to turn them over to the government. This man, no matter what, did not lay a hand on us. We hid in a place dug into the ground, and until the end this man did not lay a hand on us. In this way we passed very difficult days. Finally, there are many instances of Armenians, albeit converted to Islam and given new Turkish identities, trying to help other Armenians. Sirvart Chadirjian (b. 1899) of Kerasond, for example, was forcibly married to a Turkish soldier. He was kind to her and helped her assist other Armenian women to escape. After Haroutiun Kevorkian of Charsanjak had been converted and renamed Husein, he did not forget his origins: When a caravan of Armenians passed through our village, I was able to save a woman. I took her to my aghas house and there she stayed with us as a servant for a year and a half. On another occasion, I found an Armenian boy. It is shameful to say but the Turks had sodomized him. I got him and brought him to our house and gave him my bed. I was now able to free whomever I could. I was now a dyed-in-the-wool Muslim. I was all of fourteen years old at the time. #ArmenianGenocide #100yearsofdenial #RecognizeGenocide #Turkeyfailed #Obamafailed #Countdown #365facts #Armenian #ReturnChurches #ReturnLands
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 07:30:05 +0000
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