92nd Armenian Genocide Anniversary Commemorated

April 18, 2007
The Queens Gazette

April 24, 2007 marks the 92nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. On Sunday, April 22 from 2 to 4 p.m. the public is invited to join Armenian Americans from Queens and throughout the tri-state area and their supporters at Times Square to commemorate the 92nd anniversary of the first mass extermination of a particular ethnic group to occur during the 20th century and to pay tribute to Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was recently assassinated in Turkey because he wrote about the Armenian Genocide. "We Cannot Forget, We Will Not Forget" is the theme of the Commemoration.

Distinguished speakers will include John Marshall Evans, United States Ambassador to Armenia (2004-06), Congressmember Frank Pallone Jr. (D-New Jersey), co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues, and Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, grandson of Henry Morgenthau Sr., United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I. (On April 29, 1915, Henry Morgenthau Sr. stated, "I am confident that the whole history of [the] human race contains no such terrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915." In 1915, 33 years before the United Nations Genocide Convention was adopted, the Armenian Genocide was condemned by the international community as a crime against humanity.)


Annie Karakaian, 95, weeps after hearing Adriyan Bagciyan's story.

During World War I, the Young Turk political faction of the Ottoman Empire sought the creation of a new Turkish state, extending into Central Asia. Those promoting the ideology called "Pan Turkism" (creating a homogenous Turkish state) saw Turkey's Armenian population as an obstacle to the realization of that goal. During the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923), the Young Turk Government systematically forced 1.5 million Armenians out of their ancestral homeland in present-day Turkey and annihilated them.

April 24, 1915 marked the beginning of the Armenian Genocide in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) with the arrest, torture and execution of 300 Armenian intellectuals, writers, poets, political and civic leaders by the Young Turk Government of the Ottoman Empire. Also on that day, 5,000 of the poorest Armenians were butchered in the streets and in their homes.


Aghavni "Aggie" Ellian, executive director of the New York Home for the Armenian Aged in Flushing (r.), speaks with Adriyan Bagciyan, 98, about her survival during the Armenian Genocide.

In May 1915, after mass deportations had already begun, Turkish Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha ordered the Armenian population's deportation into the Syrian desert. Adult and teenage males were separated from the deportation caravans and killed under the direction of Young Turk functionaries. Women and children were driven for months over mountains and desert, often raped, tortured, and mutilated. Deprived of food and water and often stripped of clothing, they fell by the hundreds and thousands along the routes to the desert. Ultimately, more than half the Armenian population, 1,500,000 people, was annihilated. In this manner the Armenian people were eliminated from their homeland of several millennia.

Sam Azadian, who lost four siblings during the Armenian Genocide, founded the first Times Square Commemoration in 1985. Azadian stated, "It is important to increase public awareness of the Armenian Genocide. Two out of three Armenians perished as a result of forced deportation and mass murder by the Ottoman Turks."

Armenian Genocide survivors living at the New York Armenian Home for the Aged on 45th Avenue in Flushing have not forgotten the atrocities committed against them, their families and neighbors by the Young Turk government.

Mini Arabian, daughter-inlaw and translator for Israel Arabian, 102, said that Israel Arabian still has panic attacks when he remembers the Armenian Genocide. He fled the Turks and ended up living in an orphanage in Greece after his mother and father were killed. He doesn't remember his parents and lost contact with a sister, who was forced to marry a Turk and live in Turkey. Eventually through the Red Cross, he was able to reconnect with his sister through letters, but he never saw her again. Mini said that her grandmother, Hagi Synanian, a mother of five, fled on foot. During her long journey, four of her five children died of starvation and she had to dig their graves and bury them. The only child who survived was Mini's father.

Adriyan Bagciyan, 99, blurted, "Everyone knows our story. What did the Turks do? They killed my entire family! What story can I tell you? I remember fleeing to Syria to escape the Turks." Kristine Naldjian, 100, recalled, "I remember running and hiding in the mountains. The Turks beat, raped and killed young girls. I saw the Turks take our school teachers away from our classrooms. Our teachers never returned."

Annie Karakaian is 95. Her eyes welled up with tears after hearing Adriyan Bagciyan's story. Karakaian added, "We were all afraid of the Turks. My father was a carpenter and helped save Armenians by building a secret hiding space under our stairs. My father was eventually forced into the Turkish army. We were finally reunited with my father and in 1920 he made us wooden suitcases and my whole family traveled by boat to Ellis Island." Karakaian, an artist and sculptor, proudly revealed that she "obtained the American Dream" and graduated with a fine arts degree from Queens College, cum laude, at the age of 61.

Dennis Papazian, PhD, founding director of the Armenian Research Center at the University of Michigan, noted, "The Turkish government to this day continues to deny the reality of the Armenian Genocide which opened the door to all the genocides of the 20th and 21st centuries including the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. In fact, when Hitler sent his Death Head troops into Poland at the beginning of World War II, he said 'Go. Kill without mercy. Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?'"

On January 30, 2007, Congressmembers Adam Schiff (D-California), George Radanovich (R-California), Armenian Caucus Co-Chairs Pallone and Joe Knollenberg (RMichigan), Brad Sherman (DCalifornia) and Thaddeus McCotter (R-Michigan) introduced the Armenian Genocide Resolution (House Resolution 106) to reaffirm the Armenian Genocide. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) have also championed U.S. efforts at reaffirmation of the Armenian Genocide. The resolution "Call[s] upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes."

On March 14, 2007, the Armenian Genocide Resolution (Senate Resolution 106), mirroring House Resolution 106, was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Assistant Majority Leader Senator Richard J. Durbin (DIllinois) and Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada).

The 92nd Commemoration is organized by Mid-Atlantic Knights and Daughters of Vartan (www.knightsofvartan.org), a U.S. fraternal organization of Armenian-Americans, and cosponsored by the Armenian General Benevolent Union (www.agbu.org), the Armenian Assembly of America (www.aaainc.org), the Armenian National Committee of America (www.anca.org) and ARMENPAC, the Armenian-American Political Action Committee (www.armenpac.org).

For more information about participating in the 92nd anniversary commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, call Knights and Daughters of Vartan Chair Hirant Gulian, 212-764- 8730 or Sam Azadian at 973- 827-2487.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.