VIDEO: ARMENIAN SISTERS ACADEMY REMEMBERS HISTORIC TRAGEDY
John Beeler
Main Line
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April 28 2010
Many Armenians around the world observe April 24 as marking the start
of their people’s genocide by the Turks during World War I. On that
day in Constantinople (now Istanbul) the government rounded up and
killed 250 intellectuals and Christian clergy, starting a round of
killings and deportations.
The army uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march
for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert
of what is now Syria. Armenians claim 1.5 million died. This event
has never been acknowledged by the Turkish government, which has long
sought to erase the area’s Christian (Greek, Armenian and Assyrian)
history including its people. The term "genocide" was invented to
describe the atrocity against the Armenians in 1915.
On April 23 Armenian Sisters Academy of Radnor had a planting ceremony
and special school assembly to commemorate the 95th anniversary of
the genocide.
The young children sang the Armenian national anthem (shown here)
and other songs.
Other students put on a short historical play about the ethnic
cleansing, all in Armenian. In this scene a starving mother gives
her son the last piece of bread, then passes on Armenian culture by
teaching him to read.
At the end priests and a minister from all five local Armenian
churches (from left, the Rev. L. Nishan Bakalian of Armenian Martyrs
Congregational Church in Havertown and Fathers Nerses Manoogian of St.
Gregory the Illuminator Armenian Apostolic Church in Philadelphia,
Armenag Bedrossian of St. Mark’s Armenian Catholic Church in Wynnewood,
Oshagian Gulgulian of St. Sahag and St. Mesrob Armenian Apostolic
Church also in Wynnewood and Hakob Gevorgyan of Holy Trinity Armenian
Apostolic Church in Cheltenham) sang a requiem service for the souls
of those who died in the massacre.
The next day there was an Armenian Genocide Walk at the steps of the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, and on Sunday evening there was another
commemoration, this time at St. Sahag and St. Mesrob, in the former
Clothier mansion off Wynnewood Road.
Armenia (Hayastan) is the world’s oldest Christian country, since 301.
The Armenian Apostolic Church belongs to the Oriental Orthodox
communion of churches; the Armenian Catholic Church under the Pope
(part of the Roman Catholic Church) is an 1742 offshoot to which
Radnor’s Armenian Sisters of the Immaculate Conception belong.
The pre-K-8 Montessori school serves the entire Armenian community
(non-Armenians are welcome) and has many Armenian Apostolic families.