Peabody ceremony memorializes Armenian Genocide victims
By Brad Harrison /
The Daily Item of Lynn, MA
April 22 2005
PEABODY — More than 100 people filled the Wiggin Auditorium at City
Hall Thursday to observe the 90th anniversary of the Armenian genocide,
which began in 1915.
The annual event was started in the mid-1980s by then-mayor Peter
Torigian, who was the son of two survivors of the decimation of the
Armenians by the Turks.This year’s event was the first that included
a Requiem service to memorialize the victims, and also to remember
the late Mayor Torigian.
The event is usually held the Thursday prior to April 24, which is the
actual date in 1915 that the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians began.
Speaking for the Torigian family, Mary Torigian Foley described her
parents’ experiences.
Mary recounted the story of how her mother, Sara, had last seen
her father chained to a cell wall. At that time, he told her to
never visit him again and to find the money he had buried behind
their house and go to live with a Turkish neighbor, who had agreed
to care for the children. Sara stayed with her brother, Megurdich,
at the neighbor’s house, and Lucia, her younger sister, was sent to
live with another family.
The three were then sent on to an orphanage and spent the next seven
years being shipped from city to city, country to country, starving
and watching those around them die. She finally reached an orphanage
in Greece, which received help from actor Jackie Coogan’s Armenian
Relief Society.
“My mother would sing ‘We welcome you Jackie Coogan’ to us often,”
Foley recalled. Andon Torigian, Sara’s husband, had suffered in another
way.Already a family man, he traveled to America to save money and
bring his family to the United States.Working in the tanneries, he
was not able to save money fast enough, and his family – parents,
his wife and his young son, and his brother, Bedros, for whom the
late mayor was named. “My father never spoke about his family. Now,
I regret not asking more questions about it,” Foley said. “We’re
down to two survivors in this area. This has become more and more
important to me the older I get.”
The purpose of the event, in addition to honoring the families of
Peabody residents who died during that time, is to remind the world
that it happened – the Armenian genocide is not often remembered,
nor has it been acknowledged by the government of Turkey.
In fact, in 1939, a week before the German invasion of Poland, and
the start of World War II in Europe, Adolph Hitler justified his
orders “to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children
of Polish race or language,” by saying: “Who still talks nowadays of
the extermination of the Armenians?”
Jeanne Burbridge and Sara Runnals, daughters of the late mayor,
read the proclamation signed by Mayor Michael Bonfanti, declaring
April 21, 2005 a Day of Remembrance of the 90th anniversary of the
Armenian Genocide, 1915-1923.
Absent from the commemoration was U.S. rep John Tierney and his wife,
Patrice, who are ardent supporters of the efforts to get the Armenian
genocide recognized.
Tierney has introduced a resolution to Congress formally recognizing
the Armenian genocide, which has yet to be assigned a House Resolution
number.
This week, Tierney signed a letter to President George W. Bush asking
that he acknowledge the genocide in his next speech this month.