The News Herald

Retired editor writes memoir for new generation

Published: Wednesday, April 14, 2010

By Paula Evans Neuman

A few months ago, Mitch Kehetian, 79, of Allen Park sent a letter to
President Obama.

He urged the president to `honor the memory of the 1.5 million
massacred Armenians’ by officially acknowledging what happened in
`Turkish-held Armenia’ in 1915.

Kehetian’s grandparents and many other family members perished in that
` ethnic cleansing,’ the first genocide of the 20th century.

A few decades later, Adolph Hitler justified the coming Holocaust of
World War II to his commanders, saying, `After all, who remembers
today the extermination of the Armenians?’

Kehetian remembers, and thousands of other descendants of those who
died in the 1915 massacre remember, too. And they want others to honor
the memory.

He wants the president to repeat the words he used during his
campaign, when Obama promised to `speak truthfully about the Armenian
genocide.’

He wants those words to be spoken by a president, not just by a
candidate.

The newspaper editor hasn’t heard back from Obama yet, but he’s
hopeful. He sent the president a copy of his new self-published book,
`Giants of the Earth,’ as well.

The official recognition – and use of the word `genocide’ – matter
today, nearly 100 years later, because Turkey, an American ally, still
refuses to admit that it happened, Kehetian said.

`By denial of the truth, justice remains denied,’ he said.

He wants Turkey to be pressured by the United States to issue a
statement of condemnation over the genocide, much as Yugoslavia has
done for the people of Kosovo, and he wants two of the former Armenian
provinces in present-day Turkey to be returned.

`Those lands are desolate,’ Kehetian said, adding that they’re also
virtually depopulated, so the return of the land isn’t as far-fetched
as it might seem at first blush.

He wrote his book, a memoir of his 1969 visit to the land where his
parents were born, those parts of Turkey that once were Armenia,
originally as a family story.

His cousin, the late Rev. Vartan Kassaibian, convinced him to turn it
into book form,

`Your grandchildren aren’t going to read any looseleaf notebook,’ the
priest told Kehetian.

He includes in the book the story of how his 1969 trip was inspired by
` the hand of God.’

Kehetian, before the journey was planned, was in Moscow in 1968, with
his wife, Rose, on the way to visit her few surviving relatives now
living in Soviet Armenia.

Amazingly, he ran into an old Armenian family friend in the elevator
of Moscow’s Metropole Hotel. With that friend was an old woman.

The woman was from the same village where Kehetian’s father had
lived. She told him his Aunt Parancim, his father’s sister, had been
alive in 1947.

The family had believed until then that she was killed with other
relatives in the genocide.

Hoping against hope, Kehetian decided to travel to his ancestral lands
in Turkish-held Armenia to find out if his aunt was still alive, 22
years after she was seen.

His book, written frankly and with undisguised anger at the government
of Turkey, describes his journey and his discovery of his aunt’s grave
site. She had died seven years before he found it.

At the turn of the last century, despite hundreds of years of
persecution of the Christian Armenians, who lived `surrounded by a sea
of Islam,’ nearly 3 million Armenians lived in the lands he visited.

When he made his trip, there were no more than 50,000 left there,
Kehetian said.

Woven into the story of his trip is a well-documented history of the
Armenian people.

He also talks about growing up in southwest Detroit as an Armenian.

`When it was vacation time, all my friends said they were going to see
their grandparents, their aunts and uncles,’ Kehetian said.

`I would ask my parents, `Where are mine?’ The answer was the same,
over and over, `The Turks killed them.’ You grow up with a sense of
despair.’

His goal now is to reach `the third generation’ – his grandchildren
included – of those killed in the genocide.

Kehetian says there can be no forgiveness, no closure, until the
present-day Turkish government acknowledges what happened.

`Whenever two Armenians meet, we reach out to each other,’ he
said. `We do because we are the children of genocide survivors.’

His book, `Giants of the Earth,’ is available online through Publish
America or by phone at
1-301-695-1707.