ARMENIANS WON’T FORGET 20TH-CENTURY ATROCITY
by John Krafchek
Waterloo Region Record
April 5, 2010 Monday
Canada
Nearly 300,000 Armenian soldiers conscripted into the Turkish army were
killed in March 1915. The following April, 254 Armenian political,
religious and intellectual leaders were arrested in Constantinople,
then executed.
These martyrs are among the 1.5 million Armenians killed from 1915-23
in the 20th century’s first genocide.
On April 24, Armenians, including Canada’s 80,000, will commemorate the
victims of Turkey’s ultranationalistic government. Headed by the Young
Turks, it intended to exterminate the Ottoman Empire’s 2.5 million
Armenians in order to form an exclusively Turkish state. It implemented
the genocide with little interference during the First World War.
A total of 500,000 Armenians fled to different countries to avoid
relocation marches into the deserts of Syria, Arabia and Mesopotamia
where starvation, dehydration and exhaustion killed adults and
children. Victims were also bayoneted, drowned, raped and abducted
into harems.
In the 1930s and ’40s, my mother attended events at the Armenian hall
in Galt with my great-grandma, Marig Manasian. Mom remembers two women
scarred with reminders of when 250,000 Armenian women were forced to
work as slaves in Turkish harems. One bore her purple tattoo on her
face while the prettier one, Melina, bore hers on her arm.
The late Rev. Varant Bedrossian of the Armenian Apostolic Church,
who served as pastor to Armenians in Cambridge and other southwestern
Ontario cities, learned of the genocide while living in Aleppo, Syria.
When he griped about being poor, his parents recalled the death
and plundering.
"People lost family, identity and property," said Bedrossian. "All
the suffering makes Armenians emotional people."
His grandfather, a wealthy farmer in Sasson, Turkey, owned villages
and farms. The Turks took everything, including the lives of his
grandfather and 60 other relatives. Like hundreds of thousands of other
Armenian children, the genocide left his father, age 6, an orphan.
The Turks also tried eradicating the Armenians’ language and Christian
religion. To avoid death, some converted to Islam and others, like
Bedrossian’s mother’s family, spoke Turkish.
A few Armenians retaliated. My great-uncle, Mark Chichchian, fought
the Turks at Van until Russian soldiers arrived. Dressed as a Turkish
officer, he sailed across Lake Van in Armenia and battled beside the
Russians. Afterwards, he journeyed to France, then settled in Detroit.
Armenians were murdered before 1915. To stop revolts over high taxes
and meagre civil rights for non-Muslims, 200,000 were slaughtered
from 1894-96 under Sultan Abdul Hamid II. He also tried quashing
the notion of Armenian self-rule being promoted by Russia. Turkish
soldiers barged into Armenian homes to kill the men.
When one such soldier arrived at my great-grandparents’ house, my
great-grandma greeted him with a rifle as my great-grandpa, Bedros,
hid in a closet. Shortly after, he immigrated to Canada to work at
Galt Malleable Iron with other Armenians. Marig and their children
joined him months later.
During the Armenian genocide, the British, Russian, Austrian and
American governments condemned it.
However, after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, it received little
outside attention.
Although the succeeding Turkish government attempted to bring some of
its perpetrators to trial, Turkey now denies its occurrence. It labels
the genocide a domestic dispute where 300,000 Armenians and Turks died.
To the Turkish denial, Bedrossian said, "They can’t hide the truth."
Despite Turkey’s denial of the Armenian genocide, Armenians will
gather in Cambridge, Detroit, Paris and other world communities on
April 24 to remember its 1.5 million victims.