“Uf! There my mom goes again, lecturing me about going to Armenian school so I won’t forget how to read and write in Armenian. I have heard this speech hundreds of times. Why doesn’t she just record it on a tape and play it when she wants to torture me?
“I don’t have time for Armenian school. What do you think I am? A robot? I have to have some fun! School gives me enough homework!” I would yell back at my mom.
“You will thank me later. You can’t forget your heritage. It is important to know about your culture…..” The rest I cannot recall because I never paid attention beyond this point. But her lectures always ended with, “….the more languages you know, the better person you are.” I finished fourth grade in Armenia so I know how to read and write in Armenian. Maybe I’ve forgotten some words, but I figured I can still get by.
Then I started researching this article on the Armenian genocide. I’ve always known that 1.5 million people died in the genocide in 1915. But I didn’t know that among them were my great-grandfathers and my great aunts. As I listened to my father slowly, painfully describe the torments that our ancestors suffered, I felt ashamed that I had not paid attention. Here is my family’s story, and it is my story also:
My grandfather was born in 1906 in Van (one of the major cities in the Ottoman Empire). On April 24, 1915, the Turks began the genocide by killing 5,000 Armenians, among them 300 Armenian leaders, writers, thinkers and professors. In 1915, my grandfather’s family was forced out of their home. My great-grandfather tried to fight back and was killed. His wife and six children (my grandpa was the oldest) fled the Turkish soldiers, marching thousands of miles to the South, carrying few belongings. They marched under the Syrian desert sun and along the Euphrates River.
Many died in the march
During the march my grandfather lost two younger brothers, his sister and his childhood. The horrifying scenes and gruesome killings he witnessed were imprinted on his mind. Later on, he told my father and my uncle what he had seen. When I asked my father to tell me what his father had told him, his voice softened. He told me that the people who had to walk were the elderly, women and children since all of the young men ranging from ages 17 to 40 were taken into the Turkish army, where they died by being starved, beaten or shot down. Many women carried old Armenian bibles tied to their backs to preserve our language and faith.
When the Turks got closer to the fleeing people, many women threw their babies into the river, and jumped in themselves, preferring that they drown rather than be taken by the Turks. After a while, my father remembers his father saying, the river was full of Armenian bodies. Only one-fourth of the people who entered the desert came out alive.
I asked my father how my great aunt and my great uncles had died. My dad shook his head and said that they either died from hunger and fatigue or they were shot. In the desert, my great-grandfather has told my father, you could see bullets flying over your heads. If one of their kids fell, no one could bend down and pick them up because they didn’t have the energy. They just kept walking without really knowing where they were going. Finally they reached Russian Armenia (present-day Armenia) where they settled down.
My grandmother also survived this march, though she lost her father and her sister. After the march, she lived with her two sisters and mother in an orphanage in Russian Armenia. Life was tough. After World War I ended in 1918, my grandmother was taken by her mother back into Van in the spring of 1918. Unfortunately, when Russian troops left that fall, my relatives found themselves subject to the Turks once again and they fled into the desert. But this time they could not return to the safety of Russian Armenia. So thousands of helpless women and children lived in tents in the deserts of Iraq until 1922. Between 1922 and 1923, with the help of U.S., France and other countries the Armenians were removed from the desert. A few, like my grandmother, went back to Armenia and the rest spread all over the world.
Even today Turkey denies that the Armenian genocide ever took place. They claim that the 2.5 million Armenians who lived in the Ottoman Empire were a threat to the 17 million armed Turks and Kurds, and were collaborating with their enemies. However, the genocide is well documented not only by those who survived it but by neutral observers like American ambassadors and others. After World War I, the Turkish government held war crime trials and several major leaders who were responsible for the genocide were condemned to death.
How can this genocide have happened? Each Armenian has his or her interpretation. My grandfather thought that the genocide occurred because Armenians were becoming high-class citizens of the Ottoman Empire and the Turks didn’t like that. My father thinks that the genocide took place because of the religious difference between the Muslim Turks and the Christian Armenians. For myself, I don’t think anything can explain such an evil thing. How can I forgive the people who have left pieces missing in my family tree, especially when they deny it?
There are still some Armenians living in Turkey. The majority of them live in the Turkish city of Istanboul, because back in 1915, the presence of many foreigners kept the Turks from wiping them out. Even now Armenians’ rights are not respected by the Turks. Restrictions are put on Armenian schools and on Armenian parents deciding on their children’s education. Turkey has been erasing signs of the presence of Armenians in eastern Turkey by destroying historic Armenian architecture or claiming that such structures are products of civilizations other than Armenian. The Armenian presence in eastern Turkey dates back 2,500 years. But the Turk presence in this region dates back only 1,000 years.
Modern Turkey has also shown its hostility towards Armenia in their foreign policy. In 1992 Turkey imposed an illegal blockade on Armenia. During the winter of 1992 people went to bed in sweaters and teenagers had to stand in line during the harsh winter cold for a loaf of bread. I know because I was there. Turkey also illegally sent arms and instructors to help and train the Azerbajiani army which was fighting the Armenians.
I don’t think that Armenian youth know or appreciate the hardship our ancestors have gone through so that there can be an Armenia today, and so that our alphabet, language and culture would be preserved. I admire my ancestors for what they have done—I know I wouldn’t be able to survive as they have.
So now every Saturday morning instead of watching TV or catching up on sleep, I’ll be in Armenian school, learning a language and a culture which I am so proud of. I will go not because my mother makes me, but because I want to. Though I’ve always hated my name and swore I would change it when I turned 18, now I think I’ll keep it forever.
And on April 24, though many Armenians take the day off to commemorate the dead, I also will be in school, because genocides happen because of ignorance. Education can replace that ignorance.”