AZG Armenian Daily #084, 03/05/2008

Genocide

ARMENIA’S ‘CHRISTIAN HOLOCAUST’

In late August 1939, the day before his invasion of
Poland, Adolf Hitler gathered his commanders at his
home and informed them he had placed "death’s head"
military formations in the east with orders "to send
to death mercilessly and without compassion men, women
and children of Polish derivation and language."

He assured his commanders the world would not long
condemn them, justifying his brutality by asking
rhetorically, "Who, after all, speaks today of the
annihilation of the Armenians?" Hitler was referring
to the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman
Turkish forces beginning in April 1915. Until today,
the Turkish government denies the authenticity of both
Hitler’s statement and the genocide itself.

Tel Aviv University professor Israel Charny, chief
editor of the Encyclopedia of Genocide, insists the
statement was recorded by "an indisputably serious"
Associated Press correspondent, and that other remarks
were made by Hitler that "confirm that the Armenian
genocide was an active guiding concept in the
monster’s mind."Kevork Kahvedjian, son of Jerusalem
photographer and Armenian genocide survivor Elia
Kahvedjian, explains his father was personal testimony
to the genocide and its savagery. "When it started, he
was only five years old, but he remembered it very
clearly. Especially the last year of his life he
remembered it…" Kevork continually slipped into the
first person while recounting his father’s story, as
if it had happened to him: "I used to see lots of dead
people, piles of them. Some had been burned. Until
today I remember the smell of burned flesh," he
narrated, detailing the death march through the
desert.

He remembered the sound of the German cannons pounding
the city, then a lull of about a month before the
Turkish soldiers entered his home and took Elia, his
mother, a sister and two brothers – one brother was
just a few months old. Two older brothers had already
been hanged.

"Soldiers came and started pushing my mother. She
tried to go back to the house but the soldiers hit her
with rifle butts and she had to take the children and
start walking." The Armenians were allowed only what
they could carry. They walked for weeks through the
desert of Deir Zor with soldiers on both sides. The
soldiers offered neither food nor water, but the
prisoners ate some plants and drank brackish water on
the way.

After weeks of carrying her six-month-old baby, Elia’s
mother, exhausted, set the infant in the shade of a
tree and abandoned him, hoping some kind person would
find him. The older sister, about 12 years old during
the march, was abducted. Elia found her 18 years later
and discovered she had been forced to serve in a
harem.

In a wadi, near the end of the trek, "I heard my
mother say, ‘Today, I think they’re going to kill
us.’" It happened that that a Kurd was passing by. She
called the Kurd and told him, "Take this boy and go."
The Kurd took Elia and the boy remembered, "At the top
of the hill we turned around and saw the soldiers
killing everyone." The Kurd took Elia, burned his
clothes, gave him medicine for dysentery, and sold him
to a blacksmith, who eventually sent him away. Elia
sought refuge in a Syrian convent. In 1918, when the
war was over, the American Near East Relief Foundation
began to gather Armenian orphans and distribute them
in its orphanages throughout the Middle East.

Elia was transferred to Lebanon, then to Nazareth in
1920. There, one of the teachers was a photographer
and Elia worked for him. Elia learned the photography
trade and became a prominent photographer. Many
beloved pictures of early 20th-century Jerusalem were
taken by Elia; the album, Through My Father’s Eyes,
celebrates his work. Turkish authorities strive to
discredit accounts such as Elia’s, although his
testimony is confirmed by an abundance of contemporary
journalism, eyewitness accounts by statesmen such as
American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry
Morgenthau, as well as German and Austrian
documentation.

Charny claims there was "most certainly" a religious
element in the persecution of the Armenians, the first
empire to embrace the faith. (Armenia officially
adopted Christianity as the state religion in 301 CE,
about 25 years before the Roman Empire did so.) "There
are even some who want to refer to this period overall
as ‘The Christian Genocide,’ because the victims of
the Turks’ genocide were not only Armenians but also
Assyrians and Greeks," he explains. Still, he is
reticent to use that term as it "could seem to remove
from the Armenian community their hard-won gains for
recognition of the genocide of their people."

According to Charney, "What stands out about the
denials of the Armenian genocide is that for many
years, the full power of the Turkish government has
been devoted to denials of the genocide. Turkey
literally spends millions on advertising agencies and
on publicity efforts. It also throws the considerable
weight of its government behind coercing denials from
other countries, with threats to the United States of
not allowing American military planes to use Turkish
air space or threatening to pull out of joint NATO
military exercises, as well as with threats of major
economic retaliation should or when a country, such as
France, confirms recognition of the Armenian genocide.

"Israel is regularly the object of threats by the
Turks and, regrettably to say the least, for many
years has kowtowed to these threats. But then too so
has the stronger United States".MK Haim Oron (Meretz)
proposed in March that the Knesset appoint a committee
to consider recognizing the Armenian genocide, adding,
"It is unacceptable that the Jewish people is not
making itself heard." Although the measure passed, MK
Shalom Simhon (Likud) responded, "this has become a
politically charged issue between Armenians and Turks,
and Israel is not interested in taking sides."

Many Israelis are eager for their country to recognize
the genocide. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem will
hold an event titled "A Symposium in Commemoration of
the Armenian Genocide" at its Givat Ram campus on
April 29 at 6:30 p.m. Both Kevork Kahvedjian and
Charney will speak.

Israel will eventually recognize the genocide, insists
Kevork, who manages his father’s business, Elia Photo
Service, in Jerusalem’s Old City. Kevork, named for
the baby left under a tree in the desert, believes,
"One day they are going to say, ‘Yes, it happened.’ If
not now, then in 50 years!"

Otherwise, Armenians worry, states that refuse to
recognize the genocide risk rendering Hitler’s
rhetorical question a reality.