Armenian genocide sears survivors' memories

Friday, April 13, 2007
NorthJersey.com
By JOSEPH AX
STAFF WRITER

Both Bahtiarian, a longtime watchmaker who has lived in several Bergen County towns since the 1960s, and Boghosian, who worked for a rubber company and lived in Cliffside Park, say that Turks and Armenians lived side by side in their communities before the Young Turks government began to persecute Armenians.

"We went to school together," Boghosian said. "How can you hate them?"

At 98, Anahid "Annie" Boghosian of Emerson still recalls details of the day her family was driven out of its village during the Armenian genocide of 1915-1923.

Hagop Bahtiarian was 5 years old when police came to his home near Ankara, Turkey, in 1915 and said the mayor wanted to speak to his father. That would be the last time Bahtiarian saw him.

"My father went and never came back," the 97-year-old said on a recent afternoon at the Armenian Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Emerson. "It's impossible to forget. I [was] 5 years old, but my memory is clear. They were selling his clothes at the market the same day."

Bahtiarian is one of a dwindling number of survivors of what is commonly known as the Armenian genocide. Most academics estimate that 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians died in Turkey during World War I and its aftermath, from 1915 to 1923. Armenians commemorate the killings every year on April 24.

Like Bahtiarian, Anahid "Annie" Boghosian, another resident at the Armenian home, was only a child when soldiers forced members of her family to leave their village home and march for days until they reached a Kurdish area, where they were taken in. Boghosian's father had gone to look for work in Istanbul; he was never heard from again.

"I saw on the road, in the field, people lying injured," the 98-year-old said, her pink-rimmed glasses framing clear blue eyes that occasionally filled with tears as she tried to remember her experiences.

Both Bahtiarian, a longtime watchmaker who has lived in several Bergen County towns since the 1960s, and Boghosian, who worked for a rubber company and lived in Cliffside Park, say that Turks and Armenians lived side by side in their communities before the Young Turks government began to persecute Armenians.

"We went to school together," Boghosian said. "How can you hate them?"

The nine decades that have passed, coupled with the fact that both were young children, have conspired to dim their memories. Their children, however, heard many stories while growing up.

One of Boghosian's daughters, Thelma Sarajian, said that at one point during the long trek, her grandmother stopped at a pond and decided to drown Annie and her cousin, who was with them, rather than see them come to harm at the hands of the Turkish soldiers.

"She saw their reflection and decided not to do it – that it was a sign from God," Sarajian said.

Bahtiarian and Boghosian and their families are not alone; thousands of Armenians descended from survivors of the killings live in North Jersey. Emerson, in fact, has one of the heaviest concentrations of residents of Armenian heritage among American municipalities.

The exact nature of the killings has remained a political hot-button issue for decades. While most Western countries have recognized the killings as genocide sponsored by the Young Turks government that ruled during those years, Turkey has maintained that the deaths were a result of ethnic conflict, not deliberate extermination.

The United States has never recognized the Armenian genocide, although 47 states, including New Jersey, have done so.

Woodcliff Lake resident Dennis Papazian, a retired University of Michigan-Dearborn history professor who founded the Armenian Research Center there, said the American Armenian population is acutely aware of the United States' reluctance to recognize the genocide because it was the genocide that prompted so many Armenians to flee to America after World War I.

"There was no significant immigration to the U.S. before the killings," he said. "It's something quite personal here."

U.S. presidents and other officials note the day of remembrance every year and express sympathy without using the term "genocide." The issue is politically perilous for relations between the U.S. and Turkey, a key strategic partner.

The House of Representatives passed a resolution in 1984 establishing April 24 as a day of remembrance for Armenians who were "victims of the genocide" in Turkey. The House is currently considering a stronger resolution; a similar one also has been introduced in the Senate.

Armenia became an independent nation in 1991, after decades as a Soviet republic beginning in the aftermath of World War I. It is one of the world's oldest population centers, dating to the origins of human civilization.


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.