FLUSHING WOMEN HONORED AT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE EVENT
By Philip Newman
YourNabe.com
les/2010/04/29/queens/qns_armenian_genocide_201004 29.txt
April 29 2010
NY
Four Flushing women, who as children survived the Turkish massacre of
Armenians nearly a century ago, were honored last week at a ceremony
of gratitude to former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau,
whose grandfather exposed to the world the Turks’ campaign of "race
extermination."
"It was due to the heroic efforts of U.S. Ambassador [to the Ottoman
Empire] Robert M. Morgenthau that the Armenian genocide became known
worldwide and its victims received humanitarian assistance from the
United States government and American people," said Dr. Mary Papazian,
provost and senior vice president for academic affairs of Lehman
College. "We, the progeny of the saved, express our gratitude. Blessed
is the memory of the righteous."
Morgenthau, 90, was presented a plaque of praise from the Armenian
people for the "humanitarian efforts of his illustrious grandfather,
Henry Morgenthau Sr., U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire."
"Ambassador Morgenthau drew the attention of the American government
and the world to the attempt at ‘race extermination’ of the Armenian
people being perpetrated by what has been termed the Young Turk
dictatorship; and the ambassador’s attempts to intercede for the
innocent victims," the citation read.
In his published memoirs, Ambassador Morgenthau related how he told
the Turkish prime minister "the world will never forget this horror.
You are making a mistake and will regret it. I appeal to you, not as
an American or even as a Jew. I appeal to you in the name of humanity."
Papazian introduced four survivors, who traveled from the New York
Armenian Home in Flushing to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Downtown
Manhattan for the ceremony April 21. Papazian read of the horrific
acts the Flushing women saw as children during the mass executions
in 1915-16 when perhaps as many as 1.5 million Armenians were slain.
The survivors present were Charlotte Kechejian, 97; Oronik Eminian,
97; Arsalo Dadir, 97; and Perouz Kalousdiau, 100.
Papazian said Dadir remembered the day Turks shot and killed 100
people in her village, leaving piles of bodies.
The Lehman provost said Turks came to Eminian’s home in Smyrna,
now Izmir in Turkey, and took away her father, whose bloody clothes
were later returned to her home. Turks shot and killed her mother
and grandmother and smashed her 2-month-old brother against a wall,
killing him.
"When Eminian cried out, a soldier struck her in the face with the
butt of his rifle," Papazian said.
ADVERTISEMENTThe longtime Manhattan district attorney who accepted
the plaque is the son of Henry Morgenthau Jr., who was U.S. treasury
secretary under former President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The ceremony was conducted in a section of the museum devoted to
the Turkish massacre, including a photo of Turkish soldiers herding
hundreds of Armenian men en route to an execution site.
The present Turkish government generally denies wholesale executions
were carried out throughout the country, saying there were deportations
only in one area to put down a revolution.
One million of the 7 million Armenians worldwide live in the United
States, with 50,000 in the New York metropolitan area.
Armenia, a former Soviet country, became independent in 1991. The
country is 11,620 square miles in area, slightly larger than Maryland,
with a population of 3.3 million and an additional 400,000 Armenian
refugees from Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh.