Quatre-vingt-dix ans apres les faits, un rescape refugie a Paris

Quatre-vingt-dix ans après les faits, un rescapé réfugié à
Paris raconte
Grégoire Ghazarian, l’un des derniers survivants

Laure Marchand
[23 avril 2005]

«Une voiture tirée par des boeufs s’est arrêtée devant la porte
de la maison. On nous a dit de nous préparer. J’avais neuf ans.
«Grégoire Ghazarian en a désormais 99. «Mais je n’ai rien
oublié. Il faut tout dire», lance-t-il en s’agrippant à sa canne
blanche. C’est l’un des derniers survivants du génocide arménien de
1915. Ses parents, ses deux soeurs et son frère, ses oncles et
grands-parents… Il a vu mourir toute sa famille, jusqu’à son père
dévoré par des chiens.

Aujourd’hui, Grégoire Ghazarian, dit Garbis, ne sort plus guère de
son appartement parisien. Les exemplaires du quotidien arménien
Haratch s’empilent sur sa commode car il ne peut plus les lire. Bien
calé dans son grand fauteuil, le vieillard remplit une fois de plus
son devoir de rescapé : raconter. Après lui, seules des archives
craquelées et des photos floues témoigneront des massacres
ordonnés par le gouvernement Jeunes-Turcs de l’Empire ottoman. Près
d’un million d’Ar méniens (entre 800 000 et 1 200 000) ont péri lors
du premier génocide du XXe siècle. «N’hésitez pas, posez-moi
toutes les questions que vous voulez», insiste-t-il.

C’était le mois d’août 1915. La Première Guerre mondiale avait
transformé l’Empire ottoman en poudrière. Les Arméniens d’Ana
tolie orientale avaient déjà été déportés. Mais, à
Tchalgara, village peuplé uniquement d’Arméniens dans le villayet
région de Bursa (à l’ouest de l’actuelle Turquie), Garbis menait
encore une vie insouciante. Ses parents possédaient de vastes terres,
les récoltes débordaient des greniers, la culture du ver à soie
prospérait.

«Je jouais dans la cour avec un copain lorsqu’ils (les policiers
locaux) sont arrivés, se souvient-il clairement. Nous avons juste eu
le temps d’emporter du pain et il a fallu partir.» En route, les
réserves de galettes sans levain s’épuisèrent rapidement. Au bout
de quelques jours, le décompte macabre commença : «Mon grand
frère Ohan est mort le premier.» Sa famille eut le temps de faire sa
toilette, pas de l’enterrer. Il fallut également abandonner la tante
infirme sur le bas-côté de la route. Trop lourde à porter. Les
gendarmes qui encadraient les déportés fusillaient les traînards.
«Puis, ma mère m’a serré contre elle, je ne l’ai plus jamais
revue», raconte-t-il en tremblant. Avec sa soeur Lucie, elles furent
sans doute tuées sur-le-champ ou enfermées dans un harem. «Mais je
n’avais encore rien vu des atrocités à venir», prévient Garbis
à la fin de son énumération.

Pour le prix d’un billet de deuxième classe, les Arméniens furent
entassés dans des wagons à moutons à deux étages. C’était sans
doute à Afyon, une ville située sur l’axe ferroviaire
Istanbul-Bagdad. Destination finale de la déportation : les déserts
de Mésopotamie et de Syrie, mille cinq cents kilomètres à l’est.
«A ce moment-là, nous ignorions où on nous emmenait, mais nous
savions que c’était vers la mort. Beaucoup mouraient étouffés et
leurs cadavres étaient jetés au bord de la voie. Papa ne m’a jamais
lché la main.» Les larmes roulent sur ses joues plissées par le
siècle. Quatre-vingt-dix ans après, Garbis est toujours ce petit
garçon arménien accroché à son père.

Dans son salon, il progresse à ttons, la vue fatiguée. Mais dans
sa mémoire, la mort apparaît toujours aussi nettement. «Des
cadavres, il y en avait partout, on marchait dessus, revoit-il. Le
matin, la moitié ne se relevait pas.» A la descente du train, ils
ont en effet franchi les sommets du Taurus (à proximité de
l’actuelle frontière avec la Syrie) à pied. Des colonnes de milliers
de déportés ont cheminé dans les montagnes. On fusillait les plus
faibles, on éventrait les femmes enceintes, on décapitait… Le
typhus et le choléra faisaient le reste. Avec une pièce d’or, son
père put acheter en route de l’eau pour les deux enfants qui lui
restaient. Garbis but le premier. Il ne laissa qu’une goutte à sa
soeur. Il s’en veut encore.

Son instinct de survie lui permit également de réchapper à
l’épreuve la plus terrible : le désert de Deir Zor, dans le nord de
la Syrie, le long de l’Euphrate. Les Ottomans l’avaient transformé en
cimetière à ciel ouvert, en camp sans barbelés. Le désert à
perte de vue était plus dissuasif que des miradors. L’administration
ottomane y entassait les Arméniens dans le sable et sous le soleil.
Seuls les plus fortunés purent acheter du pain aux tribus des
environs. Pour les Arméniens, Deir Zor est le symbole du génocide. A
partir de l’été 1916, le gouvernement Jeunes-Turcs ordonna
l’extermination de tous les Arméniens rassemblés dans la région.
192 750 y furent massacrés à l’arme blanche. Garbis, lui, y
échappa. Il avait été envoyé plus à l’est, à Mossoul, aux
travaux forcés dans les fermes des paysans turkmènes.

La culpabilité du survivant ne l’a jamais quitté. «Une nuit, j’ai
secoué ma soeur, j’ai senti qu’elle était froide. J’ai pris sa
couverture et me suis rendormi, bien au chaud.» Lorsque son père
comprit qu’il allait mourir à son tour, il réclama un plat de
lentilles. «En rentrant le soir, j’ai vu qu’il ne bougeait plus,
tient-il à raconter. J’ai pris l’assiette, j’ai tout mangé.» Le
corps de son père fut transporté à l’extérieur du village et
recouvert d’un peu de terre. Des hoquets de sanglots dans la voix,
Garbis saisit sa jambe en mimant des crocs : «Les chiens l’ont
mangé.» Depuis, il déteste les chiens.

Enfin, l’armée britannique s’installa dans la région en 1918. Garbis
était orphelin. Les Anglais le placèrent dans le camp de
réfugiés numéro 34 réservé aux enfants arméniens. Puis
l’adolescent vécut de petits boulots, monta un pressing à
Téhéran, commença à militer au Dachnak, le parti nationaliste
révolutionnaire arménien qu’il ne quittera plus. En 1929, il partit
avec sa jeune épouse, arménienne d’origine russe, pour la France.
«Une vie heureuse commençait.» Mais une vie de rescapé hantée
par le passé.

Sa fille aînée, Lucie, raconte la réaction de son père lorsque
sa femme est morte : «Nous avons acheté une concession au
cimetière de Montparnasse. Papa s’est mis à sangloter d’émotion :
«Enfin, la famille a un lieu pour ses morts.» Par la pensée,
Garbis peut aussi y ensevelir ceux qui ont disparu dans l’anabad (1) de
Deir Zor.

(1) Désert en arménien.

L’Armenie marque le 90e anniversaire du genocide

Edicom, Suisse
April 24 2005

L’Arménie marque le 90e anniversaire du génocide
par Avet Demourian

EREVAN, Arménie (AP) – L’Arménie marque ce dimanche le 90e
anniversaire du début des massacres perpétrés par l’Empire ottoman
avec une cérémonie au mémorial du génocide à Dzidzernagapert, près
d’Erevan.
La Turquie refuse toujours de reconnaître le génocide qui a coûté la
vie à 1,5 million d’Arméniens entre 1915 et 1917. Elle affirme que
les victimes sont moins nombreuses et qu’elles ont été tuées ou
déplacées dans un contexte de guerre civile qui a accompagné la chute
de l’Empire ottoman.
Samedi, à la veille de la commémoration, des milliers d’étudiants
arméniens se sont réunis dans le centre d’Erevan et ont gravi la
colline en haut de laquelle s’élève le monument aux morts du
génocide. Des couronnes de fleurs y ont été déposées.
Des messes commémoratives sont célébrées ce dimanche dans toute
l’Arménie et dans une centaine de pays où vit aujourd’hui la diaspora
arménienne.
A 19h00 (14h00 GMT), une minute de silence doit être observée à
travers toute l’Arménie. Les habitants d’Erevan sont invités, à la
tombée de la nuit, à placer des bougies à leurs fenêtres en mémoire
des victimes du génocide.
La France et la Russie ont reconnu le génocide arménien de 1915-1917,
le Parlement polonais fait de même mardi, ce qu’Ankara a condamné dès
le lendemain. La communauté arménienne fait pression sur le Congrès
américain pour que les Etats-Unis reconnaissent eux aussi le
génocide.
La Turquie, qui n’entretient pas de relations diplomatiques avec
l’Arménie, a proposé ce mois-ci une enquête conjointe des deux pays
sur les massacres de 1915-1917. Mais le ministre arménien des
Affaires étrangères Vardan Oskanyan a déclaré en février qu’Erevan
n’avait nullement l’intention de conduire de nouvelles recherches sur
un événement qui est, à ses yeux, un fait historique avéré.
L’année dernière, le président français Jacques Chirac a averti que
la Turquie devait reconnaître le génocide arménien pour pouvoir
adhérer à l’Union européenne comme elle le souhaite. AP

Commemoration of 90th year of the genocide in Stockholm

PRESS RELEASE
ARMENIAN NATIONAL COMMITTE-SCANDINAVIA
PRYLV. 7
12637 HÄGERSTEN
SWEDEN
CONTACT: SUZANNE K. HOLMQUIST
AGOP KHATCHERIAN
TEL: +46 708 809316
FAX: +46 8 645 65 92
E-MAIL. [email protected]

Sweden’s Armenians pay tribute to the memory of the victims of Genocide

Stockholm.- Almost one fifth of the tiny Amenian community, 800
Swedish Armenians from all over Sweden were gathered on the 24th of
April, at ABF HUSET in centeral Stockholm in order to commemorate the
memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide.

Two-thirds of the Armenian population perished between 1915 and
1923. As a minority, living in the Ottoman Empire in their historical
homeland, their call for the application of the lofty principles of
liberty, equality and fraternity, as well as safeguarding of human
rights, fundamental freedoms and rule of law, led to their death
sentence.

Today, survivors and their successors, living within and outside the
Armenia expect that the world¹s recognition of the universality of
those same noble principles will lead to recognition that Genocide was
committed against Armenians.

The key speaker of the day was Dr. Ashot Alexanian , Minister
Counsiller at the Armenian Embassy in Vienna who made his speach both
in English and Armenian. Addressing the entusiastic audience of young
and old, he said in his message :

“On behalf of all principles and values of human rights, human dignity
and fundamental freedoms, for the defense of which Armenians have paid
their own life, even more – losing their historical homeland -, like a
biting irony of history, nowadays Turkey wants to become a member of
western community, proclaiming and safeguarding the same values.

Armenia and Armenians worldwide cannot drop, forget or deny the
Genocide of 1915, perpetrated in the Ottoman Empire, against the,
residing in its historical homeland. All Armenians – in Armenia and
Diaspora – more or less are engaged in the matter of Genocide
recognition by the world community”.

Talking about the relations of Armenia and Turkey the Guest speaker
counsiller Dr. Ashod Alexanian affirmed in his speach that “Regardless
of historical realities, difficulties, even animosities, the two
peoples are destined to live next door to each other. The
establishment of relations will make it possible by freely,
democratically, discuss even those difficult issues that have been
inherited from the past. There are hardly any two neighboring
countries in the world, which don’t have difficult historical issues
between them. Yet, none of these has resulted in closed borders.”
Furthermore he demanded “Turkish recognition of Armenian Genocide has
to be involved in the basic document of the EU-New Neighborhood
comprehensive program, as an indispensable precondition of
implementation of regional security, aiming at boosting cooperation
among the involved countries. The best example for this is the
creation of European Union and the historical experience of
establishment of after-war Europe.”

The second guest speaker was Prof. David Gaunt, a british scholar
working at the Södertorns University in Stockholm. Dr. David Gaunt
exposed in details the circomstances under which the Genocide became
possible to execute. He concluded his words with the absolute
necessity of preesure applied by the international public opinion on
the turkish society in order to achieve recognition.

On the programm was scheduled a performance by ARMCHOROUS, the Moscow
Armenian chamber chorus of the State Philharmonic Society of Armenia
lead by composer and conductor Arshag Kadjian.

On this occasion both the Assyrian and Kurdish communities had sent a
greeting letter which was read to the public. The letters expressed
words of sympathy and solidarity with the Armenian People in their
struggle for Justice. Sweden hosts a 60 000 strong community of
Assyrians, while the Kurdish community counts as much as 50 000.

Novikau wins gold at European weightlifting championships

Novikau wins gold at European weightlifting championships

AP Worldstream
Apr 23, 2005

Ruslan Novikau of Belarus won the gold medal Saturday in the men’s
85-kilogram category at the European Weightlifting Championships.

Novikau took the title with a combined result of 375 kg, lifting 170
kg in the snatch and 205 kg in the clean and jerk.

Valeriu Calancea of Romania won the silver medal with a total 367.5 kg
(162.5-205), while Armenia’s Arsen Melikyan took bronze with a
combined lift of 362.5 kg (165-197.5).

BAKU: Russia to be guarantor if Karabakh solution found,senate chief

Russia to be guarantor if Karabakh solution found, senate chief says

ANS TV, Baku
21 Apr 05

[Presenter] The chairman of the Russian Federation Council, Sergey
Mironov, is paying a working visit to Azerbaijan. The aim of Mr
Mironov’s visit is to expand parliamentary ties between the countries
and boost cooperation in a multilateral format within the framework
of the Caucasus four and the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly.

The Russian visitor spoke about the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict today.

[Mironov, in Russian with Azeri voice-over] Unfortunately, Nagornyy
Karabakh remains an open wound. The sooner it is resolved and an
agreement satisfying both sides is reached, the better it is for both
Russia and the entire region. Russia has a position of principle –
we believe that a solution to the conflict should be found with the
agreement of both sides. If such a solution is found, Russia can be
a guarantor.

ANKARA: Turkish minister “profoundly disappointed” by Polish decisio

Turkish minister “profoundly disappointed” by Polish decision

Anatolia news agency, Ankara
21 Apr 05

Vilnius, 21 April: Turkish Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister
Abdullah Gul met on Thursday [21 April] Foreign Minister Adam Daniel
Rotfeld of Poland, and conveyed Turkey’s regret over approval of a
resolution recognizing the so-called Armenian genocide by the Polish
parliament.

Gul, who is currently in Lithuania to attend the informal meeting of
NATO foreign ministers, said that Turkey was profoundly disappointed
with the decision of the Polish lawmakers.

In response, Rotfeld informed Gul on process of the making [of] that
decision by the Polish parliament, adding that they would never forget
Turkey’s assistance to the Polish people for centuries.

Yesterday, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the
decision of the Polish parliament, stressing that national parliaments
should avoid initiatives that could provoke vengeance and hatred
between peoples.

Armenian Immigrants Recall a 90-Year-Old Tragedy

Armenian Immigrants Recall a 90-Year-Old Tragedy
By COREY KILGANNON

New York Times
April 23 2005

A cheery sign in the New York Armenian Home in Flushing, Queens,
yesterday informed its elderly residents in colorful letters of the
current date, season and weather.

And of an anniversary: “Remember April 24, the Armenian Genocide.”

A framed proclamation by Gov. George E. Pataki hung nearby, declaring
April 24 as Armenian Remembrance Day to commemorate the Turkish
massacres of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians beginning in 1915. It
called the killings “the 20th century’s first such calculated effort
to destroy people on a massive scale” and added that “the Armenian
Genocide led academics to coin and utilize the very term genocide.”

It is doubtful that even with failing memories, any residents at the
home needed a reminder.

“This time of year, they all get disturbed and remember,” said Jenny
Akopyan, assistant director of the home.

Tomorrow, thousands of Armenian-Americans from across the Northeast
are expected to gather in Times Square to mark the 90th anniversary of
the murders of their relatives and forebears by Ottoman Turks during
World War I.

On April 24, 1915, Turkish soldiers arrested hundreds of Armenian
leaders in Constantinople, then tortured and executed them. The mass
slaughter of Armenians over the next several years is often called
the first genocide of that century and a precursor to the Holocaust.

The Armenian Home, on 45th Avenue in Flushing, opened in 1948 and
has long housed many genocide survivors who escaped by playing dead,
fleeing or other means. Most of the residents are from families
decimated by the genocide, but only a half dozen – all in their 90’s –
actually escaped it as children.

The most recent death of a survivor was in August: Lucy Derderian,
age 103, who “only survived the genocide because her mother was
smart enough to hide her under the dead bodies during a massacre,”
said Aghavni Ellian, the home’s executive director.

Ms. Ellian walked into the home’s day room, where about two dozen
elderly Armenian immigrants sat watching “The Price Is Right” on a
large television next to an ornate Christian shrine bedecked in crimson
and gold. She carried a lamb dish that had been delivered for later:
madal, a roast blessed by a priest and traditionally eaten on April 24.

The residents had just finished small cups of thick, strong Armenian
coffee. Few survivors could offer completely lucid recollections,
but each had some snippet of horror seared into memory.

Gulumya Erberber, 93, said that Turkish soldiers had beheaded her
father, a wealthy academic, and seized his riches and several houses.
She was 3 years old then, and her mother fled with the five children
to a mountain village where the townspeople did not speak Armenian
but did help the family.

Israel Arabian, 99, leaned on his cane and related how he was forced
to work for a Turkish officer who took Mr. Arabian’s teenage sister
“as a wife.” He ran away and grew up in a Greek orphanage before
eventually coming to New York and settling in Queens.

Many Armenians bitterly denounce the Turkish government for denying
that the killings constituted genocide. In an interview yesterday,
Tuluy Tanc, minister counselor for the Turkish Embassy in Washington,
said the accusation of genocide was “unfair and untrue,” a legal ploy
to gain reparations.

“We don’t see what happened as genocide, quote-unquote,” Mr. Tanc
said. “Unfortunate and tragic events took place during World War I
and bad things happened to Armenians, and Muslims and Turks also.”

“The number killed is much less than they say – it’s more like
300,000 Armenians who lost their lives,” he said, adding that Turkish
leaders had recently asked Armenia to set up a commission to study
the killings.

Onorik Eminian, 93, said she was a young child living in the city of
Izmir when the Turks killed her parents and other relatives. She said
she has never stopped having nightmares about it, especially in April.

“I saw plenty, sir, plenty,” she said. “I saw them go in and they
broke our churches. They took old ladies, old like me now, and shot
them one by one. This I saw in front of my eyes. They chopped the arms
off our schoolteachers and hung them from the trees in the street
to teach us a lesson. We watched our priest come delivering food,
and they killed him and threw the food into the street.”

“Are you sure you want to hear my sad story?” she asked. “I was playing
in front of our house when they came on horses. My grandmother pulled
me in. The Turks grabbed my father – he was hiding Armenians in his
coffee shop – and I cried, ‘Daddy, Daddy, don’t go’ and I held onto
his leg. Then one soldier told me to shut up and hit me right here
with a rifle. Look, I still got the mark.”

Weeping, she pointed to a bump on her forehead between her eyebrows
and dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

“I said, ‘Where’s my father?’ and they said, ‘Here’s your father,’
and they held up his jacket and pants.”

She grew up in an orphanage, and eventually came to New York, lived
in Astoria and had two daughters who never saw any mention of Armenian
genocide in their history books.

“If you write this in the newspaper,” she said, “will the Turks come
here and kill me? I’m still afraid of them.”

Ancient Armenian books tell a story not written in their pages

Ancient Armenian books tell a story not written in their pages

Agence France Presse
April 22 2005

22/04/2005 AFP

YEREVAN, April 22 (AFP) – 4h34 – Over a meter (yard) wide when opened
and weighing 32 kilograms (15 pounds), the Homilies of Mush is the
largest ancient Armenian book to be rescued from eastern Anatolia
during anti-Armenian massacres in Ottoman Turkey almost a century ago.

Archivists say the story of how the manuscript and many others like it
were saved could be more telling of the plight of the Armenian people
then what the intricate Armenian lettering describes within the pages.

Armenia marks the 90th anniversary Sunday of mass killings by the
Ottoman Turks, a slaughter that is among the most painful episodes
of Armenia’s history, the costs of which Armenians measure not only
in lost lives but also a destroyed cultural heritage.

Some 9,000 rare manuscripts are estimated to have been destroyed
as Armenians were driven from their homeland in World War I, but
about 30 books currently on display in Armenia’s Archive of Ancient
Manuscripts are believed to have been rescued by fleeing peasants.

One of these texts are the Mush Homilies. In 1915 when Ottoman forces
attacked Mush, an illiterate peasant woman is said to have found the
massive book in the courtyard of a church.

Too heavy to carry whole, she cut the 800-year-old book in half
and took one half, according to the director of the Archive, Sem
Arevshatyan.

The unnamed woman initially brought the text to the seat of Armenia’s
Gregorian Apostolic church in Echmitzin where it was later to be
joined by the other half, discovered by a retreating Russian colonel
named Nikolai de Roberti.

“Many of these books were brought by illiterate, unread people, who
nevertheless understood that these texts were immensely important,”
Areshatyan said.

“Instead of taking their personal belongings they carried these books.”

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen perished in
orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire
executed a genocidal plan to wipe Armenians and their culture off of
the map.

Ankara counters that 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks were
killed in “civil strife” during World War I when the Armenians rose
against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops.

Either way, little today is left of the numerous Armenian settlements
that once characterized Eastern Anatolia, known as Western Armenia
to Armenians.

Many churches have since been converted to mosques or taken apart
so their stones could be used to build homes, and the some 40,000
Armenians that remain in Turkey rarely speak the language outdoors.

According to Arevshatyan not all of the attacking Turks were willing
to follow through completely on the alleged plan.

“Many books were destroyed but some were sold to collectors in
Europe by Turkish officers who understood that they had value,”
Arevshatyan said.

A slow trickle of antique texts continues to fill the archive’s shelves
to this day as more Armenian works pillaged in Anatolia are discovered
by collectors around the world and donated to the repository.

Earlier this week a Diaspora Armenian from Paris was able to convince
the sister of a collector who recently passed away to donate a page
from a lost tenth century bible to the archive.

“Hopefully when she sees that it is good hands she will be willing
to donate more works from the collection,” said Claude Mutafrian,
a 62-year-old historian on medieval Armenia who carried the sheepskin
sheet to Yerevan from Paris.

Armenia Not Russia’s Vassal, But Partner

ARMENIA NOT RUSSIA’S VASSAL, BUT PARTNER

Pan Armenian News
19.04.2005 06:36

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Secretary of the National Security Council at the
President of Armenia, Defense Minister Serge Sargsian does not agree
with statements that Armenia’s relations with Russia are those of a
vassal. Serge Sargsian stated it in the course of a press conference
today. In his words, he had never noted anyone representing the Russian
party making claims against Armenia, which could have infringed upon
his dignity as an Armenian. “We have partner relations with Russia,”
Serge Sargsian noted. Answering the question whether information
that Russian bases will be withdrawn from Tbilisi to Armenia is true,
the Defense Minister noted that he did not possess such information.

Historic Armenian Monastery has been turned into cafeteria

Historic Armenian Monastery has been turned into cafeteria

Cyprus Press and Information Office, Occupied Northern Cyprus
April 18 2005

Local daily YENIDUZEN newspaper (17.04.05) reports that the historic
Armenian monastery Magara Vank in the occupied area, has been turned
into a cafeteria. The historic Monastery in the Kyrenia mountain
range, was leased by Dervis Sonmezler, who wanted to turn the place
into a hotel.

Sonmezler´s objective is to turn the place into a camping site.

–Boundary_(ID_hL9rI1tvoD8V/abF8SFNQQ)–