Armenian News Network /
Groong
CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION
FOR ARMENIAN ORPHANS IN Mezreh (KHARPERT) JANUARY 8TH, 1920: FROM
LETTERS AND PHOTOGRAPHS1
(Superscripts refer to Endnotes which will be
found at the end of our text. Two Appendices, one on dates for
Christmas and another on Kharpert follow the Endnotes.)
Armenian
News Network / Groong
January 6, 2014
Special to Groong
by Abraham D. Krikorian and Eugene L. Taylor
Long Island, NY
Kristos dznav yev haydnetzav
Orhnyal e haydnutyunn Krisdosi
Dzezi, mezi medz avedis
Քրիստոս ծնաւ եւ յայտնեցաւ
Օրհնեալ է յայտնութիւնն Քրիստոսի
Ձեզի, մեզի մեծ աւետիս
Christ is Born and Revealed Amongst Us!
Blessed is the Revelation of Christ!
Good tidings to you and to us!
ABSTRACT
AND COMMENTARY
The Armistice of
Mudros was signed on the Greek Island of Lemnos on October 30,
1918. With this signing the Turks agreed to bring to an end on
November 1 the hostilities between the Ottoman Empire and the
Allies. The Armistice of November 11, 1918 between Germany and the
Allies ended World War I in Europe. Well before all this and
certainly afterwards, a tattered, pathetic remnant of the Armenian population
who had avoided or survived attempts by the Turks to annihilate and exterminate
them showed their faces in earnest and flocked to a few places like the
Kharpert (Harpoot) region. They were for the most part young, indeed
most were children − and most were full orphans. There were
even some oldsters− mainly women but very occasionally, a feeble old man. The
chapter concerning what comprises their stories has yet to be dealt with in
full detail. Quite a few accounts do, of course, exist in the form
of written and oral history memoirs by survivors (usually in Armenian). But
it is all too often assumed that most know about organizations like the Near
East Relief In fact, this organization came into being largely to
help these orphan survivors. It is part of American history that is
poorly known − even unknown. The Story of Near
East Relief written by Rev. Dr. James Levi Barton, the man who was a major
factor in its founding and operation is relatively well known. He
guided its activities for nearly all of the 15 years it
existed. Many consider Bartons book to be the definitive
history of that organization. We agree that this is appropriate and
justifiable. It also happens to be the only substantial story
written. Even so, Rev. Barton titled his book Story of Near East
Relief, An Interpretation (our emphasis). He did not
say, as some have erroneously claimed, The History. We
believe that a considerably more humanized and personalized story of Near East
Relief can be and needs to be written. The Christmas celebration at
Mezreh/Harpoot on January 8 [no, not the 6th] 1920 for Armenian orphans that will
be described here is but one event that goes far to put a more personal face on
the story of the recovery and rehabilitation of the Armenians from near total
destruction. True, the full story of the Armenians of Kharpert and
elsewhere is, of course, one of much sadness and disappointment, but the fact
that this celebration took place in a very significant region of historic
western Armenia, the name of which is well-known to many Armenians in todays
Diaspora, and at a time when one was not at all not sure as to who had managed
somehow or other to live or to become free or liberated as some of the
survivors would say in Armenian inchbess azadetsak deserves to be
told. We are happy to be able to do this in a very small way based
on archival materials, and even to illustrate the festivities with a few
period photographs. Readers all know and all those relief workers on
site knew that January 6th is Armenian Christmas – but
as it turned out it was on January 8 that this particular celebration took
place.
INTRODUCTION
Contemporary
accounts, especially those written by non-Armenians, of what happened in
Post-World War I Turkey and elsewhere repeatedly emphasize that no other nation
suffered to the same extent as the Armenian nation. The Mudros
Armistice which ended hostilities between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies was
signed on 30 October 1918. Paragraph 24 included the following proviso making
clear that In case of disorder in the six Armenian Vilayets the Allies reserve
the right to occupy any of them.
News spread
quickly that Turkey had lost the war, and deportees such as those who could
and wanted to return would end up being allowed to go back to their ancestral
homes. Some survivors of the horrors of the deportations made
attempts to seek safety among those who could protect them, and even attempted
to return to their home villages (naively thinking they might still be like the
one they knew when they were forced to leave, or that they could locate family
members or friends back home.) They came not only from
very close-by places or relatively close-by areas, but even from far-away
regions like the deserts of Der Zor and south of Mosul etc. In the
words of some survivors known to us who recounted the events of the period said
I went back to find my Mother. What else could I do? − Yehd
gatzee
The main purpose
of this paper is to provide some details of a Christmas celebration
arranged for Armenian orphans by the American relief workers at
Mezreh right after the war. (Incidentally, the word orphan is used
in the broadest sense of the word. This will become clear as we
proceed.) It is surely a miracle that any Christmas could be
celebrated, much less one in this remote region so soon after the
genocidal events had taken place.
The celebration
seems deliberately not to have focused on the religious aspects of the holiday
even though many of those who planned and carried out the celebrations were
deeply religious individuals. Some had even served as missionaries
as recently as a couple of years earlier. This Christmas celebration
was tailor-made so to say for the Armenian youngsters and their immediate care
givers−their Mairigs and Kuirigs (the
mothers and sisters who supervised and looked after these
orphans on a daily basis). Clearly, the Christmas events were
possible only because a group of American relief workers were on the
scene. These dedicated volunteers made certain that at least some
relief resources, scarce as they were, would be used in trying to do something
on Christmas for all those in their care who had suffered so
greatly. The relief workers had been allowed into the Kharpert area
only by mid-June 1919, around 6 months after the armistices had gone into effect. They
had hoped to be able to pitch in much earlier and help those in need that they
had been told about back home but it had been deemed unsafe by those in charge
to travel into the remote interior of Turkey until then.
The
Kharpert (Harpoot) Region2
The early
American Protestant missionaries to the Kharpert region knew that the
pronunciation of the place-name started with a guttural H (for Kh) Har-poot and
said so in print more than once.3 The spelling in English
with an H was, of course retained thereafter but the early reminder in print
that it was to be pronounced with the guttural seems to have been
lost. Many do find it a challenge to make guttural
sounds. (Appendix 2 devotes a fair amount of space to the region.)
Mise
en Scne
Before we delve
into the main body of our presentation on the Christmas for Armenian orphans,
it will be useful to present what is often called a mise en scne,
or a description of the physical setting of the action.
Many
readers of Groong will know that Kharpert was not only where their ancestors
and relatives came from in the Old Country, but also that it was the center of
a busy field of American Protestant missionary activity – carried on
largely by Congregationalists. The parish field was huge by the
standards of the day, and even today one marvels at the territory they chose to
cover. It took two weeks journey to traverse by horse from north to
south, and a full week east to west.
For a
succinct perspective of Harpoot in the late 1800s one can do no better than to
quote an early account by Rev. Dr. Herman N. Barnum from his Sketch of the
Harpoot Station, Eastern Turkey published in The Missionary
Herald vol. 88, April 1892 pgs. 144-147).
The
city of Harpoot has a population of perhaps 20,000, and it is located a few
miles east of the river Euphrates, near latitude thirty-nine, and east from
Greenwich about thirty-nine degrees. It is on a mountain facing
south, with a populous plain 1,200 feet below it. The Taurus
Mountains lie beyond the plain, twelve miles away. The Anti-Taurus
range lies some forty miles to the north in full view from the ridge just back
of the city. The surrounding population are mostly farmers, and they
all live in villages. No city in Turkey is the center of so many
Armenian villages, and the most of them are large. Nearly thirty can
be counted from different parts of the city. This makes Harpoot a
most favorable missionary center. Fifteen out-stations lie within
ten miles of the city. The Arabkir field, on the west, was joined to
Harpoot in 1865, and the following yearthe larger part of the Diarbekir field
on the south; so that now the limits of the Harpoot station embrace a district
nearly one third as large as new England.4
Map
of the Region
There are a fair
number of contemporary maps of the Kharpert-Mezreh area but very few that we
are aware of which are detailed enough to give the names of very many of the
smaller, or even larger villages in the region. These are names that
one often hears about through accounts of Armenian immigrants who ultimately
made new lives for themselves in America, initially in New England, and then
later in California and elsewhere. The line-drawing map we have
selected (Fig. 1a and an enlarged area in Fig. 1b) is by no means perfect or even
complete but it does give a good idea of the immediate area that we are
concerned with for our Christmas for Armenian orphans.
Figs.1a and Fig.
1b. Map reproduced from Ten Years on the Euphrates; or primitive
missionary policy illustrated by Rev. C.H. Wheeler, American Tract Society,
Boston, 1868). Original foldout map facing pg. 38. The
precise location and relative positions of the places named is imperfect but
the map serves our purpose here very well.
The great British
statesman Winston S. Churchill described what happened to the Armenians in the
course of World War I and the virtual emptying out of their ancestral homeland
of their presence in the following way. In 1915 the Turkish
government began and ruthlessly carried out the infamous general massacre and
deportation of the Armenians in Asia Minorthe clearance of the race from Asia
Minor was as complete as such an act, on a scale so great, could well beThere
is no reasonable doubt that this crime was planned and executed for political
reasons5
In the final
report dated February 9, 1918, United States Consul Leslie A. Davis presented
to the State Departments Consular Service a 132 page document in which he
described in considerable detail the events associated with the massacres and
the deportations as they unfolded and happened in his Harput Consular
district. He described not only what happened in Harput and Mezreh
during those fateful years but told of what he encountered in a number of
nearby villages as well.
The Mohammedans
in their fanaticism seemed determined not only to exterminate the Christian
population but to remove all traces of their religion and even to destroy the
products of civilization. It was a sad sight to see all this ruin
and destruction as I rode through these deserted villages during the following
year and a half and saw empty homes, from so many of which husbands and sons
had gone to America where they were now ignorant of the fate of their
families. Among the villages I visited were Huseinik, Morenik,
Harput Serai, Upper Mezereh, Kesserik, Yegheki, Sursury, Sursury Monastery,
Tadem, Hooyloo, Shentelle, Garmeri, Keghvenk, Kayloo, Vartatil, Perchendj,
Yertmenik, Morey, Komk, Hoghe, Haboosi, Hintzzor, Dzaroug, Harsek and
Pertag. It would be tedious to describe each one in detail, for the
scenes in all of them were similar. I visited most of them many
times and received inquiries about thousands of their inhabitants through the
Department and the Embassy6
Where
Did the Armenian Orphans Come From? How Did they Get There?
In view of what
we have written above, and to allow us to proceed with a proper understanding
of the situation, we need to address a couple of very important points.
Where did these
orphans and genocide survivors come from? How was it possible to
celebrate Christmas in January 1920 in a region that had been for all practical
purposes emptied of people through mass murder and massacre, violent uprooting,
deportation – by genocide to use the word devised by Raphael Lemkin, a word
which he freely used to describe the Armenian experience?7
We should start
by stating that the murders, deportations and forced exiles during the summer
of 1915 onwards from all the regions inhabited by Armenians were by no means
always complete or necessarily thorough. Kharpert was one of those
areas in which initially at least, the heinous job was not complete despite
the many atrocities and crimes against humanity that were generally executed
with a studied cruelty that had not been seen in centuries.8
Some of those who
seek to deny the reality of the genocide of the Armenians by the Young Turk
government have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that Armenians could be
found in the region when the Armistice with the Allies was signed at
Mudros. In other words, Armenians could not have been killed through
any genocide or massacre or any other kind of criminal action (hence
the expressions so-called massacres or so-called genocide). This
patently wrong view that virtually all Armenians had to have been eliminated
reflects the level of ignorance of those who have very little understanding of
what the legal, not to say moral parameters of the crime of genocide is all
about. Perhaps deniers and those who seek to misrepresent the events
of 1915 and onwards clutch at any and all straws to defend their ill-guided
position?
In the same vein
it is worthwhile emphasizing that nowadays there are too many people who seem
to view genocide from the highly distorted perspective that this crime of
crimes should be derived from − imagined and pictured if
you will − the fastidiously organized genocidal operations of Nazi
Germany against Jews and other undesirables like gypsies, Slavs, Jehovahs
Witnesses, homosexuals etc. ̶ (one does not even
have to read about the Holocaust. One can very easily and
conveniently see events associated with it on T.V., at
the movies, on YouTube and so on. Some have even sarcastically
opined that a virtual Holocaust industry has emerged.)
But the outback
regions of the Ottoman Empire from which the Armenian orphans that we are
concerned with here, and who attended the Christmas celebrations of late
1919-1920 cannot be compared in any general way with Europe. The
regions of historic western Armenia were certainly not continental Europe, be
it Germany, Austria, Poland or elsewhere. Succinctly stated, Turks
did not have the organizational skills of Nazi Germans. Certainly
Turkey as a whole was not Europe. Even so, it has been noted by more
than a few of those who believed that they understood the Turks and knew
their usual modus operandi that the Turks seemed surprisingly
organized when it came to dealing with the Armenians in the course of the
genocide.9
A considerably
more accurate rendition as it relates to Kharpert City, Mezreh and the villages
in the environs is that the deportations were done by what some have referred
to as la Turque, that is in stages, fits and spurts,
inconsistently and erratically. [Accounts of the emptying of the
villages − inchbess aksorvetsak, in Armenian how we were
exiled – those villages and hamlets whose inhabitants were exclusively
Armenian show that forced ejection was done much more readily than those that
had greater or lesser populations intermixed with Muslims − all of that
is another story but the reader will get the idea].10
According to Dr.
Ruth A. Parmelee11 who was on site in Harpoot some Armenians
simply escaped from the exile or deportation columns, usually because they
were able to bribe their guards. But those who had not been able to
save any of their money were obliged to stay with their company later to be
pushed on, probably to some slaughtering ground, there to be disposed of.12
We will present
here some excerpts from notes that Dr. Parmelee used for a talk she gave in Virginia
in September 1917. This was of course after getting back to America
after she and other Americans left Turkey with Consul Leslie A. Davis when the
Turks and the United States severed relations on April 23, 1917. Dr. Parmelee
wrote:-Although our province was a slaughter-house for thousands of exiles
brought from different regions to the north of us, a number of people from
these convoys escaped and remained in or near the city
[Harpoot]. Then, although thousands were deported from our province
to suffer unspeakable things in their wanderings towards the south, yet several
thousands in the villages round about, succeeded in hiding when the deportation
was decreed. After the immediate danger of being exiled seemed past,
many of these refugees flocked to the city of Harpoot without food, clothing,
or household utensils. Immediate relief was needed. For a
year and a half before we left, our circle was occupied in providing bread,
clothing and work, if possible, for these women and children; fighting the
diseases resulting from filth and lack of nourishment; running a primary school
for several hundred orphans and a boarding-school for nearly a hundred homeless
girls; and using all these forms of work as a means of spiritual influence.
What we have just
said, of course, applies in the main to females who had by one means or other
avoided full deportation so to speak. So far as grown men (martikuh)
or adolescent males (dughakneruh) were concerned, occasionally special
reprieve, usually temporary, was given to a few of those who were in what might
be called critical industries or at least critical for some at a specific
time or other. Some bakers (again known to us through personal
stories) who, for instance, could bake bread for the Turkish military were
allowed to stay and work their ovens. Tailors who owned and could
use sewing machines were sometimes retained to sew military uniforms, and even
garments for the wives and families of Turkish officers etc. The
same applied to shoe makers who could make boots for the military
etc. Makers of kerosene and oil lamps and lanterns (labders in
Kharpertsi Armenian) were exempted for a while, and on and on and on, so forth
and so on. We will not include stories of the odd Armenian males or
youths who feigned death, or those who were taken for dead as they lay hidden,
covered in piles of those slaughtered, or even women left for dead who crawled
out of wells over dead bodies, eventually to escape (yet again known to us from
survivors). Some of the men and youth who survived massacre were
sometimes dressed as women, and were spirited as quickly as possible out of the
region by Kizilbash Kurds through the Dersim and eventually towards
Russia.
When all is said
and done, each of these groups of Armenians, totaled a relatively small number,
and then again, many were eventually deported and/or killed, even those who had
nominally gone through the motions of converting to Islam. It often
took more than circumcision and taking a Turkish name to convince the Turks of
the sincerity of the conversion of any Armenian man. These converts
were usually used for whatever purposes and eventually usually dispensed
with. Surely not all though, because we are starting to learn of
many converted Armenians (albeit mainly women) who had married Turks, had
offspring and whose descendants are now surfacing in a nominally more
liberalized Turkey. Turks who have oftentimes fantasized about the
purity of their blood will have a lot of contemplating and reckoning to do
when they finally acknowledge that they frequently have more than a
small dose of Armenian genes in them.
Dr. Parmelee
wrote quite frequently in her correspondence back to America about the
situation that relief workers had to confront when they reached Harpoot in
mid-June 1919 and we thus have a fair amount of detailed information
available. She was very familiar with the area and knew the Armenian
language as a result of having been born of missionary parents in Trebizond. She
had served at the Harpoot station at the Annie Tracy Riggs Hospital, known
commonly as the American Hospital from 1913 until 1917 when the Americans had
to leave Turkey. She wrote in 1919:-As soon as Armenian women
and children serving in Turkish homes heard that the Americans were receiving
orphans, many of them ran away from their masters and flocked to
us. On admission, these newcomers were housed in a detention home
until they had their first bath and their medical examination. From
the start, the medical department had its hands full, what with the eye
diseases, the different kinds of sores, all the cases of
malnutrition. In fact, some of the children had been put out by
their masters, because they were in such bad physical condition as to be of no
more use to them. One such girl
was dropped in the hospital corridor one day, her fractured leg of a weeks
standing incapacitating her for further service to her Turkish
master. After recovery, little Loosig [little Lucy] became one of
our faithful hospital maids. I remember overhearing one little
fellow with thin body and grayish complexion say on the street to an urchin a
shade worse than himself, You must go to the hospital, you will die if you
dont.12 (See Figs. 2 a and b for photos of a few of these new
inmates outside side the scrub station.)
Fig. 2a and Fig. 2b. Scene outside the scrub station for Armenian orphans. (See excerpt from Dr. Parmelees letter above.) In Fig. 2a Margaret H. Niles is on the far right. The condition of the orphans was deplorable of course but one somehow can detect a bit of relief in some of their faces knowing that they would be taken in, and thus be saved. Many others waited for long periods patiently hoping to get in but could not be admitted because there was insufficient room and money to cover costs for the support and maintenance of all who needed it. The upper panel (Fig. 2a) is from the collection of Frances and Laurence H. MacDaniels Near East Relief Album at Oberlin College Archives. The lower shot (Fig. 2b) is from a private collection.
Readers will not
be surprised to hear that there are extensive archival materials in the U.S.A.
and elsewhere associated with the relief given by various organizations. Most
of these have barely had their surfaces scratched. The Near East
Relief materials comprise one of the most significant of these
archives. It came into being largely because the Red Cross had its
hands full. The Red Cross people (other than Clara Bartons mission
to Turkey after the Hamidian massacres) had little familiarity with the region
unlike the many American missionaries who had served in the region before the
war (more below). But there were others of course.
Many have heard
of the Near East Foundation Archives housed at the Rockefeller Archives at
Sleepy Hollow, New York but having suffered loss through fire and de-accession
they seem to us to have fewer items dealing with the earliest relief efforts,
in contrast to a richer collection of the later ones (Personal knowledge).
Volunteers,
mostly Americans but some other nationalities as well, especially the Danes at
Mezreh, attempted to save and extend some friendship to the remnants of the
Armenian people surviving the slaughters and hardships, especially the orphans
both in Turkish Armenia and in Russian Armenia. At Harpoot, and
everywhere else, the bedraggled Armenian remnants were all inevitably exhausted
and infected with every sort of disease imaginable –many were described
as half-dying.
Mary W. Riggs,
the sister of Rev. Henry Harrison Riggs, who like Ruth Parmelee was from an old
missionary family and spoke Armenian, had returned to Harpoot with the first
returning American relief workers in June 1919 summarized it this way:-After
the terrible days of open massacre and deportation were over there came a time
when by tens, and then by hundreds, the groups of ragged homeless refugees
began to appear in Harpoot – exiles from the north or natives from the
place returning after months of wandering to ruined homes. All in
utter want and deadly fear – two-thirds of them children – the rest
women – few men survived. For years an American mission,
centering about Euphrates College, had worked in old Harpoot. It
proved a very friend in need and relief sent from America saved thousands
alive [in contrast to saving departed souls]. Even after
the Americans were forced to leave work went on in the hands of one faithful
woman [really two who were Danish subjects] – Miss [Maria] Jacobsen [and
Miss Karen Marie Petersen] struggling to keep alive the little children who had
been rescued and placed with destitute Armenian women. The Harpoot
Unit now includes thirty-four American workers, of these, seventeen are now
located in the City of Harpoot, eleven in Mezereh, three in Arabkir and three
in Malatia. We keep taking in new orphans, mostly little boys
who have run away from their Turkish masters. We average forty new
children a week. At the same time we are giving back to their mothers
and other relatives those who were taken in during the summer or last winter
[1919] when their relatives were not able to keep them. An allowance
of money is made, when necessary, so that they may not suffer too
much. It is a sad business at best, putting the children out, for in
most cases they are better off with us than with their
relatives. There are many tears shed, and my heart aches as I send
them out. But our funds do not permit us to take care of them longer
in the orphanage. (From a report entitled Harpoot by Mary W.
Riggs in the New Near East May, 1920.) See Figs 3 a
and 3b for photographs of some of the considerably older survivors.
Figs. 3a and
3b. Pictures of some of the adults who survived in
Harpoot and were helped by the Americans. The Armenian woman on the
far right still remains unidentified but she is what may today be termed a
caregiver. Fig. 3a derives from the MacDaniels collection at
Oberlin College Archives. Fig. 3b derives from Smith College
Archives. We have seen still another photograph of this group,
slightly different shot, in a private collection. Again, multiple
exact prints or near-exact prints serve to underscore that photos were often
shared and exchanged between and among relief workers. The negative
for Fig. 3a exists and was taken by Dr. L.H. MacDaniels (more later).
American
Committee for Relief in the Near East – the A.C.R.N.E.
We have not made,
nor will we make, any special distinction in this paper of what came to be
incorporated as the Near East Relief [N.E.R.], and its predecessor
organizations such as Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, American
Committee for Relief in the Near East [A.C.R.N.E.], and ultimately Near East
Relief. It will be understood that the various names of Near East
Relief over time merely reflects the ever-evolving emergency that confronted
those who took on the unprecedented challenge of saving lives, offering relief
and rebuilding lives for hundreds of thousands of victims. One
cannot overstate the role played by Near East Relief in saving the Armenians
of the Near East. The Armenian nation was at the very lowest point
in its long and oftentimes sad history as a result of the Genocide.13
Photographs
from the period relating to Harpoot
Photographs associated
with orphans, and even seniors who survived the genocide against the Armenians
by the Young Turks from 1915 to 1923 understandably deal largely with their
sufferings. Virtually all these pictures focus on the great need for
help, both financial and otherwise, from donors. They fall into the
category of Publicity Photographs. Many, indeed most, images
provided to the public in magazines and in newspapers may justifiably be
described as pathetic (see Fig. 4 for a picture from the cover of New
Near East May 1920, the very issue in which the report by Mary W.
Riggs written from Harpoot and quoted above is to be found). One has
to look very hard to find anything that even remotely approaches what might be
regarded as cheerful. A considerably less investigated, and hence
underexploited source of photographs come from albums and collections assembled
to greater or lesser extent by relief workers and relief workers who had served
earlier in a missionary capacity – we might add mainly, but by no means
exclusively.
And, it needs to
be underscored as well that the vast majority of photographs, publicity and
otherwise, derive from those more formal photographs by professional
photographers and snapshots by amateurs taken on site or during service in
Armenia, specifically from the Erivan, Etchmiadzin and Alexandropol
regions. There indeed was immense suffering and hence great need in
these places, but such locations were where the relief workers and care givers
would be able to remain considerably longer than those workers who would be allowed
to remain in Turkey. Many will be familiar with photographs taken in
connection with the huge orphanages –some accommodating 17,000 or so
orphans and one said to be the largest orphanage for anyone,
anywhere in the world.
For all these and
other reasons relatively few photographs derive from the regions of historic
western Armenia (the six Vilayets) where Armenians had been concentrated in
Asiatic Turkey. (It is all the more ironic that there are relatively
few photographs since Armenians were the prime photographers of the
Empire.) The explanation for this state of affairs is simple of
course −the region had been emptied and devastated through the genocide
ordered by the leaders of the Central Committee of the Young
Turks. Some Armenians sought refuge in Russia, especially those who
came from Vilayets that were relatively close to the Caucasus. The
fact that there are a substantial number of people in Armenia today who have
roots in Van is yet another matter – many followed the Russians in
retreat.14
Fig.
4. Cover from the May 1920 issue of The New Near East (volume
5, number 9) seeking to elicit pity and sympathy from potential donors to aid
in relief work. The upper portion of the colorized image shows
youngsters in America plucking daisies in springtime. By way of
contrast, starving Armenian children lie in squalor and dire
need. The lower part of the cover has been enlarged to allow a
closer look. The colorized cover derived from a black and white
photograph which will be recognized by some.
Christmas for Harpoot Orphans
On very rare
occasion one comes across stories of situations which seem to have offered a
bit of a break, if only a seemingly insignificant or temporary one, from the
normally difficult daily tribulations that most Armenians
endured. Some of these sporadic events can even be regarded as
heart-warming. This is why we have chosen to focus on one of the
very few happy occasions known to us. It deals with a Christmas
for Armenian orphans at Mezreh, January 8, 1920. January 6th is, of
course the exact date for Armenian Christmas but the 8th was
selected for convenience. Missionaries serving among Armenians often
wrote home gleefully that they had three opportunities to celebrate Christmas
− December 25th, January 6th and January 19th! (See
Appendix 1 for some details.)
The
Christmas Celebrations
Our plan for this
paper is first to present a published account deriving from a report that was
written by Rev. Dr. Henry H. Riggs (called Harry by family and close friends)
and sent to the English-language publication named The Orient in
Constantinople. The Orient was widely read by
missionaries and others and was put out by Bible House (printed incidentally
weekly by Armenian printers) but Riggs communication did not appear in print
until late March 1920! (Publication of The Orient had
ceased at the end of 1915 when the vast majority of missionaries had already
left Turkey.) We have retyped the notice which appeared in the March
24th 1920 issue [volume VII no. 17 pg.
163]. H.H. Riggs account will then be built upon to provide some
greater detail by using excerpts from contemporary letters and
accounts. We believe that this approach will reveal some more of the
human element in it all. Clearly Dr. Riggs was uplifted by the
occasion. We hope that all this will also show how a relatively
short report can be, with a little bit of luck, made more complete, and take on
an additional human face.15
NEAR
EAST RELIEF SECTION
Christmas for the Harpoot Orphans
(A delayed letter
dated January 13th gives such a vivid picture of the happiness
of the orphan children celebrating Christmas, that we reproduce a part of it
despite the fact that Christmas seems a long way back.)
I
wish you might all have seen the wonderful sight that I saw last Thursday [8
January], when we got all our orphanages together for a Christmas
celebration. It thrilled me through and through and gave me
inspiration for the work of the new year.
It
was a glorious day with bright sunshine and no snow on the ground, the last of
quite a succession of such days, and everyone was happy and
excited. At noon they started towards the hospital yard where they
were to meet, each orphanage sending out its 75 to 100 children with two or
three workers, and from our house on the hill we could watch these little
groups winding down towards the plain. It is a distance of three
miles, and as there were many little tots to go, their progress was slow. The
tiniest ones rode on the backs of the older boys and girls.
The
hospital yard was ready for them. In the center was the pretty tree,
and all about were signposts bearing the numbers of the orphanages, −1 to
30, omitting only three numbers, because the Old ladies Home, the Scabies
hospital and the Infirmary on the hill could not be represented. As
each orphanage reached the gate, the children formed in line and marched to the
post bearing its number and grouped around the post. Many sat on the
dry ground, some had blankets under them, and many stood up. At last
our 2,500 orphans and several hundred others, − workers, hospital
patients and friends, − were all placed and I had the privilege of
standing on the hospital steps to call off the numbers of the
program. From that spot I could see every one and enjoy their joy.
While
people were still getting arranged, Mr. [Gardiner] Means went about from group
to group and gave them lots of fun. He had them shout out the
numbers of their orphanages, counting from 1 up in unison. It helped
to keep them warm and happy and roused quite a spirit of
enthusiasm. The program began with songs by different
groups. In the midst of it we found that the children were getting
cold, so we had an intermission during which they had some vigorous gymnastic
exercises. During the singing of the last song on the program Santa Claus
appeared, riding up to the front entrance in his sleigh and eight dashing
reindeer; only the sleigh was a gaily decorated ox-cart drawn by four yoke of oxen
which were driven by eight big boys all dressed up in white
sheets. Santa was well gotten up in red and white, and made a fine
appearance. The orphans very soon recognized him and were delighted
that the Hairig (Little father) [Rev. Henry H. Riggs] was giving them this
joy. He rode around the yard once or twice and then stopped beside the
tree where he had distributed to the various orphanages great bags bulging with
presents. There was an American in charge of each group, and we
opened the bags and distributed the contents to the children and their
Mairigs (Matrons). Each Mairig received soap, and each child nuts
and raisins done up in a square of unbleached muslin to be used later as a
handkerchief. We knew of nothing that we could give all around that
would be more appreciated than handkerchiefs, for there had been none given out
before. If a child was able to get hold of a little piece of cloth
to use, he was fortunate. And they were all delighted. We
were able to put into each package three pieces of American candy, a very
special treat. It was quite a job to prepare all these packages
beforehand, but when we all worked together, twelve or more of us, we could
fill about 1, 200 in an evening.
It
was a most inspiring sight to see all our orphans together and to see their
happy faces and hear their expressions of gratitude and pleasure. We
all love the little ones, and they love us. We often see a thousand
of them together, but not 2,500, as they are scattered in different towns, and
we have no building that would hold them all. We are very happy that
we could have the gathering that day, for ever since the weather has been very
bad, and snowy.
While
we were all at the celebration at the Hospital one of our nurses, Miss Stively
[Florence M. Stively], had a happy time with the children and the old ladies
who were not able to go down the hill. Later in the week I put on
the Santa costume and made the rounds, to the delight of the children in the
neighborhood. I was most touched when I visited the Scabies children
for they have so very little to brighten their lives. I had in the
pack on my back a few little dolls that I had left in the girls ward as
permanent equipment, and some pictures for the boys. What a joy
it is to be able to give joy especially to the little ones who have suffered so
much during their short lives as these little ones have done.
We now add here
some additional perspective on both Harpoot and the Christmas celebration
planning and the actual celebration from letters written by Dr. Parmelee.
Harpoot, Oct.
26, 1919
Dear Ones, we
are none too many for all the work there is to be done. We have more
orphans here, than any in any one center this side of the
Caucasus. And we cannot now give as much personal attention as is
being given in some of the units where they have proportionately more American
workers for their number of orphans. We are trying to examine the
orphans and get their eyes, teeth, skin lesions etc. attended to. We
try to do a lot of physical examinations on Saturdays – last time it was
more than a hundred. With four thousand in all, as we expect soon to
have, when we have taken in several hundred more in November, it seems like an
appalling job. This number includes those in Malatia, Arabkir (a few
hundred) , and what we call outside orphans – supported with their
relatives. So we here may not have all of the four thousand to
examine, but we shall have the large proportion of them. Miss
Stively [Florence M. Stively, R.N.] has been doing splendid work, getting after
the childrens teeth, eyes, intestinal parasites etc. Just now we
have the dentist of the A.C.R.N.E. here for a few weeks. He did not
seem anxious to work on the teeth of the orphans, but we did not believe in his
limiting his work to a handful of American workers, who are many of them going
home in the spring anyway, so we have produced the cases from day to day, and
then, the work Miss Stively had already accomplished with the bad gums also
encouraged him to fall to, somewhat.
Harpoot, Turkey,
Dec. 28, 1919
Dear Friends,
At this season of
the year, our hearts turn very naturally to our dear friends in the home-land
– longing to see you all, and yet happy to be able to cheer up those who
in such great need and darkness. In America I should have been
tempted to spend a more selfish Christmas, while here I must take some of the
many opportunities to do for others.
Our celebration
is being spread over some days, even our own festivities, because of the
absence of some of our circle. We gave each other some remembrances
on Christmas morning, but are reserving our turkey dinner till we are all
together again. Then, as the Armenian New Years and Christmas
come later than ours, we are planning our entertainment for the
orphans about ten days from now, if we can catch some fine day. It
is to be in the hospital compound, this being the most central
location. We hope to have some other gifts for our sick children and
the hospital workers, but for the orphans in general, the gift will be a square
of unbleached muslin (to be used as a handkerchief later) with some raisins,
roasted peas (a special kind, which is liked very much), and three pieces of
American hard candy. We have begun preparing these, doing eight
hundred of them the other evening. There will have to be several
evenings more of work to get it all done!
With the many
nice cards given me by many friends, I was able to give fresh ones, not only to
native helpers, but also but also to the American personnel, and had pasted
ones with a Christmas verse written on each one, for the patients. I
also went to the Cripple Home and gave them cards and a little
treat. You see what service the cards give to the people whose lives
are so dreary. Every bit of brightness is appreciated.You would
see a great change in many of our orphans now, from last
summer. Their faces are fatter, freer from sores, and their clothes
are warm and neatly made. I love to see some of our little boys on
the street in their fine woolen suits. I hope many of you may have
the privilege of adopting a bright little boy or girl.We have had some snow
this month, but on the whole the winter is holding off very well. We
had lovely mild weather on into late November, so we must expect now to shiver
somewhat. And we have enough clothes, and some
heat! What of the people in rags who frequent our
clinics? It is no wonder that they camp on the porch and declare
that they are going to stay in the hospital, but we cannot shelter them
all. Lately we have been combatting a young typhus epidemic, but we
went at it so vigorously, that we hope it will go no farther. It is
a joy to treat typhus patients in clean hospital beds, compared to dark hovels
and piles of rags, as I was wont to visit them in 1915 to 1917.
The following,
while written considerably later in the summer of 1920 is included since it
gives the names of a few of the orphanages that the orphans traveled from to
attend the Christmas celebrations in January of that year.
Harpoot, Turkey,
August 25, 1920
Dear Friends,
Yesterday I had a
sightseeing tour of some of our orphanages scattered about the plaininspecting
gardens, house, and children – health, cleanliness etc. Morenik was the
first place we visited. Here we were greeted by the kiddies at the
edge of the village, dressed according to summer rule...in their unbleached
under-garments...we turned to Keserik where are stationed four orphanages this
summer. Three of them spent the winter [of 1919] out there, also, for
which I feel we should give great credit to the mothers and sisters of the
orphans.16
Here follow some
of Dr. Parmelees comments on Mairigs in one of her
letters.
tour to the
orphanage institutions. Some of the families of about a hundred orphans
each we find living in flat-roofed mud houses built for single families, either
in the town or in villages from three to ten miles out on the surrounding
plain. A hearty welcome is forthcoming from the hard-working
house-mothers or Mairigs, who are wonderfully brave to care for their many
children in such crowded quarters with less than minimum supplies and equipment
of all kinds. Perhaps the youngsters are seated on the earth floor,
eating their soup out of earthenware bowls. Or if our visit takes
place during school hours, the sleeping quarters of the orphanage would be
turned into a schoolroom by putting the bedding away in piles, and we would
find the pupils sitting on the floor in front of their teacher.I should not
enjoy living in a wretched little village, either winter or summer. But
it relieves the housing problem considerably, and enables us to get the
benefit of some of the gardens now in our control. Here in one of
the orphanages we found some looms with unfinished mats on them. I
understand that this work is only hampered by the lack of rags from the
tailor-shop. I might explain that our school-teachers were asked to
spend about five weeks of their vacation in these orphanage schools. Then
for our longest trip – to Hoolavank [Khoolehvank],
one of our monastery farms right out in the country. Theirs is
really close-to-nature life, and what an enthusiastic farmer is the husky
village woman at the head of the permanent orphanage. She and her
assistants and the whole group welcomed us cordially, fed us on delicious
melon, and begged us to stay longer. The children told us happily
that the chapel was being repaired − a relic of better days
for the Armenian community. We called the nurses helper (we have
stationed one in almost every orphanage) and gave her the suggestions and
help she needed, and then accepted the hospitality offered us,
glanced at some of the vines in the garden, and turned back to the rough
country road over which we had come. One other village and orphanage [not specified
regrettably] finished our day. My special joy was seeing old
friends. Among the children, there were many old patients, grown fat
and rosy now. Little Victor last year was suffering from marasmus
[severe malnutrition] and could not stand up on her weak legs, when we took her
under our care. Makrid had lung trouble and just escaped
having to go to the sanitarium – a sweet, helpful child she
is. I saw little Bedros who had a broken leg and meningitis, both at
the same time – his mischievous smile could not escape ones
notice. Our cross-eyed pet, Marsoob, who was in the hospital for
spinal trouble, seemed as straight and strong as could be. To see a
few results of this sort, is certainly encouraging. It is due not
only to the hospital, but the food and clothing and better care of this whole
regime, brought about by the Near East Relief and its supporters!
________________________________________
The following
account by Dr. Parmelee was written on the latter part of the day
after the Christmas celebrations were over.
The Orphans
Christmas Tree, Harpoot, Turkey, Jan. 8, 1920
By nine oclock
in the morning the first orphanage had arrived and was waiting patiently
outside the hospital gate. They had gotten up early in the morning,
in order to come their eight or ten miles from Hulavank, their village
orphanage. It was worth it, for could they not watch the
preparations going on in the yard? The boys had been out and swept,
and had then installed the wonderful tree, a combination of two small
ones. Then came the paper chains and strings of tinsel, and even
dyed spools, and American flags, and then to top it all, some wiring and
electric bulbs. Who would have dreamed to see an electric lighted tree
in this out-of-the- way place!
After a time, all
was ready and the posts put up, which indicated where each group was to be
stationed. There must be careful planning, for as someone expressed
it, the world was to be our guests on this eventful day. We
wondered whether the yard would be crowned with the 2500 children and adults
whom we were expecting. But, arranged in groups, as they were,
everything went off very quietly and in an orderly manner.
As the different
orphanages were marching in, those already there on the ground began counting
the number of their orphanage, like real football yells. Then came
the program, which consisted mostly of songs from different
groups. The children sang very well, marching up on the front porch
to performs and then, in some cases, joining in the clapping
afterwards! I might say that the weather man was anxious that we
give the youngsters a good time, and furnished a beautiful day, the sunshine
warm enough in the middle of the day to make an outdoor entertainment
possible. When the songs had been sung, a little gymnastics indulged
in, in order to get warm enough, and the kindergarten children had played their
snow-ball game, the whole gathering were asked to sing together. And
then - the gate opened to allow the queerest Santa Claus outfit that you could
ever imagine, to drive in. First, there came seven orphan boys
draped in white, leading four pair of oxen decorated with carpets, behind which
came the cart festooned with red calico and evergreens, and standing up in it was
the trimmest Santa Claus you ever saw, dressed in the regulation red suit and
white beard. The children, delighted, exclaimed that it was the
Hairig (Father), who had come to give them gifts. After driving
around the circle several times, Santa Claus stopped and began to distribute
the handkerchiefs containing raisins, a kind of roasted peas, and three pieces
of American candy. Each orphanage
had its bag containing the right number, and these bags had been stacked around
the foot of the tree. As each group had been assigned to an
American, it took but a few moments for the assistants of Santa Claus to get a
gift into the hands of each child. The mothers of the orphanages
received a cake of laundry soap and one of Ivory soap as their present. And
all too soon, the groups had to turn their faces homeward, many of them having
come down the hill, all of the three miles. Unfortunately they could
not stay until dark, to really enjoy the electric lights, but we here at the
hospital could! It was interesting to see the long lines of children
as they wended their way towards the foot of the hill. We were able
to furnish a little motor transportation to some of the feeble and little
ones. What a bit of enjoyment, compared to all that we have received
in our full lives, and yet, I suppose we cannot imagine how much real pleasure
came into the lives of our little ones, this Christmas. Lets do it
again!
(Parenthetically,
Dr. Parmelee had been present when Dr. Herbert Atkinson had died from typhus on
Christmas Day, December 25, 1915. Her memories of earlier
Christmases in Harpoot must indeed have been in the back of her mind.)
We present now a
few excerpts written by Dr. Parmelee on January 26, 1920 but first we present
the following excerpt from a letter written by one of the younger A.C.R.N.E.
workers at Harput (she was born in 1891), Frances MacDaniels.
A letter about
the Christmas Celebration from Mrs. Frances C. MacDaniels
The following
letter written by Mrs. Frances Cochran MacDaniels to her family back in
Cincinnati describes the Christmas celebrations as well and allows us to fill
in some more details. She and her husband (they married June 1916)
had left the United States on February 17, 1919 on the board the Leviathan,
the first major relief ship of the A.C.R.N.E. The MacDaniels and Dr.
Parmelee and others were on the Leviathan. They ended
up staying at Derindje on the Marmora coast. Derindje was a deep
water port facility built by the Germans complete with a spur of the railroad. They
were obliged to stay there for a long
time doing duty on all sorts of essential things related to the relief and
reconstruction efforts. The MacDaniels and Dr. Parmelee et al. were
part of the last relief group to leave Derindje. They were
assigned to Harput in the interior but did not leave to go out until in
mid-May. Laurence H. MacDaniels, who had earned a Ph.D. at Cornell
University in the Field of Botany and was later to have a very distinguished
career in applied botanical science at Cornell, had the job of being Assistant
Director at Harput and was in charge of the business end of the relief work,
the housing etc. And be it said that the et cetera was
very extensive and crucial. Mrs. MacDaniels, who had had some experience
in orphanage and poor house work in Cincinnati served as book keeper (assisting
her husband), housekeeper for the portion of the Relief Unit who resided on the
hill etc. Again the et cetera entailed many tasks
and chores. Both did their undergraduate studies at Oberlin College
and it is there that their papers concerning their service to A.C.R.N.E. are
deposited in the Archives (http://www.oberlin.edu/archive/NearEast.html)
January 11, 1920
[a Sunday]
Dear
Folks:- I wish you could have seen our Santa Claus and his
reindeer! We had the Christmas celebration for the children last
Thursday [January 8]. It was a bright day, no snow for a couple of
weeks, so the ground was dry. We had all our 2800 kids come to the
hospital yard. The performance was to come at two, but in the middle
of the morning they began to arrive. As we rode down the hill after
lunch we passed orphanage after orphanage, rather suggestive of the
deportations. They each had a place in the yard and an
American to welcome and stay with them. We had a Juniper
tree made of several put together, decorated with dyed spools, the
ordinary chains, and little baskets and lanterns made of canned food labels,
together with some real trimmings left by the missionaries. They had
Christmas songs by the various orphanages, and a snowball fight by the
kindergarten kids. To warm them up before the feature
of the afternoon Mr. Means [Gardiner C. Means] got up on the hospital porch and
led off in some exercises; these made a great hit, literally as well as
figuratively, for they didnt spread out enough to miss each others noses.
Just as they got
settled down again the gates swung open and Santa (Mr. Riggs in a regular Santa
costume) dashed(?) in in a two wheeled ox cart drawn by four yoke of
oxen. The cart was gaily decorated with bright red cloth and
evergreens, the oxen each wearing red and white striped kilim. The
boys driving the oxen were swathed in sheets. They circled around
the drive a couple of times amidst the cheers of the children and stopped
beside the tree. Santa, after a speech, got out and pulled out a
large bag for each orphanage, from under the tree. Each bag
contained for each child an unbleached muslin handkerchief full of leblebs,17 raisins
and three pieces of candy. For each mairig [little mother] and
quirig [little sister] two cakes of soap. It was fun to watch the
different children. Some tucked theirs away untouched, others opened
and dove in, going away with only the empty handkerchief. They
searched out the candies, and some started swapping red for green, etc., like
regular children. I suppose some swapped licks off of them too.
We certainly
enjoyed it all even more than the children. We had lots of fun
filling these handkerchiefs too. Mac [her husband Laurence] was away
so not only missed seeing it, but could not get a good picture and we hope to
find some good ones among them, tho with all these others photography is a matter
of luck.18
We had our
Christmas dinner on New Years day. Thirty one at the
table. The two girls who were hurt coming in, one with her head
bound up, the other with her arm in a splint, were there, two men who were
bringing them in and two who got snowed in here, Schwester Merena,18 the
only relic of the German mission personal and all. The dinner was a
huge success.
The following
several photos (Figs. 5 through Fig. 9) show some highlights of the
celebrations. We thank Oberlin College Archives for permission to
present these.
Fig.
5. Armenian orphans in the courtyard at what was earlier called the
Annie Tracy Riggs Hospital compound. (It came to be called Near East
Relief American Hospital, Kharput after the A.C.R.N.E. relief efforts took
hold). The Christmas tree, complete with electric lights, is
directly in front of the Hospital. Note the American
flag. From the MacDaniels Near East Relief Album,
Oberlin College Archives.
Figs.6a
and 6b. Closer views of the orphans in attendance at the Christmas
celebration.
Fig. 7 and Fig. 8. Santa Claus in his
sleigh (ox cart) drawn by stand-ins a.k.a. oxen for reindeer who had
apparently been previously engaged elsewhere. The drivers are older
Armenian lads clad in white sheets. Oberlin College Archives.
Fig.
9. Rev. Henry H. Riggs in his Santa Claus costume. The
porch of the Hospital may be seen in the background. Note some of
the orphans on the ground wrapped in blankets (see letter describing this
above). From the MacDaniels Near East Relief Album,
Oberlin College Archives.
Fig. 10a and Fig.
10b. Enlargement of Dr. Riggs from the photograph of him in costume
(Fig. 9) and juxtaposed with an image from a photograph taken slightly later in
America. Santa was clearly a bit thinner in Harpoot.
Letter
from Dr. Parmelee on More Christmas Celebrations
On January 26,
1920 she wrote of her additional Christmas activities.
Dear Folks, On
January 13th I attended the Christmas tree in Miss [Karen
Marie] Petersens [Danish] orphanage where Miss [Jean M.]Turnbull is at present
rooming; on the 14th one at the girls boarding
school. On the 17th we had our celebration here at
the hospital, inviting the children from the Cripple Home. The tree
was set up in the hall just outside my door, and we tried to get the place
warmed a bit with mangals [braziers, the finest of which were
made of brass]. The electric lights gave a swell appearance to the
tree. We had some Christmas music. Dr. Ward [Mark H.
Ward, M.D.] dressed up as Santa Claus and distributed gifts. We had
oranges for refreshment, cards, and a gift for more than sixty-five workers
connected with the medical department – not including American personnel
of course. On Armenian Christmas, the 19th, I did some
calling, and attended one more orphanage entertainment. Those who
know the language, have to go it strong.
POSTSCRIPT
We
have gone the extra mile so to speak to present the Christmas for the Orphans
in a context that hopefully makes clear the very bittersweet nature of the day
and indeed the times for Armenians in general. It was of some
interest to us that we could find no mention anywhere of Gaghant Baba (Armenian
for Father Christmas) or the common Kharpertsi greetings of the
season – Shunahvor Nor Daree yev Paree Gaghant, signifying Happy New
Year and Merry Christmas.
The
natural question that arises after having read all these accounts is What
happened to them –the orphans, the adults? Some readers may
be able, we hope, to delve in the family archival memory bank and retrieve a
few answers. The fact is, however, that things got so bad in the
early Kemalist period that it became clear that any orphans in the care of Near
East Relief would best be brought out of Turkey. This is a story
unto itself of course, and a fair amount has been written about this.19
It
is the story of the adults that is far more varied and many blanks remain to be
fitted into the whole. Hopefully some Groong readers will consider
this all food for thought.
ENDNOTES
1. 1. We have made no attempt
to reference this paper every step of the way but we have felt obliged to
include some citations to the literature. These are provided in
these fairly extensive Endnotes. We have also included two
Appendices because we feel strongly that certain information needs to be
included. Their substantial length emphasizes that we know some of
the younger generation have an incomplete understanding of the region and the
times. This is, of course, understandable since with the passage of
time we all become more remote from what we were told while growing up about
the erkir (or ergir – the Land, the Old
Country) in those days of long ago. Our first Appendix attempts to
deal in some detail with the dating of the celebration of Christmas especially
by the Armenians. Appendix 2 is concerned with the place names
Kharpert and Mezreh or Mezereh. Needless to say, placing these at
the very end indicates that one need not be distracted in his or her reading of
the paper by referring to any of this. They have only been added to
achieve some measure of completeness.
2. Harpoot and its
pronunciation. Harpoot is but one spelling in romanized
transliteration of the Armenian Kharpert. Harput is
generally retained in the Turkish spelling. For details on Armenian
Kharpert in English one can refer to Richard G. Hovannisian, ed. Armenian
Tsopk/Kharpert, (Costa Mesa, California: Mazda Publishers,
2002). For a general but good account of the events at Harpoot
during and immediately after the Hamidian massacres and the relief work with
orphans of that period etc. one can refer to William Ellsworth Strongs The
Story of the American Board; an Account of the First Hundred Years of the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Boston, New York, The
Pilgrim Press; American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1910)
– for a digitized version refer to https://archive.org/details/storyofamericanb1910stro. A
more modern perspective on the broad range of activities undertaken by the
American missionaries is provided by Barbara J. Merguerian in her Missions in
Eden: Shaping an Educational and Social Program for the Armenians of Eastern
Turkey in New Faith in Ancient Lands. Western Missions in the Middle East in
the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, ed. Heleen Murre-van den Berg
(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007). Reference should also be made to
Jonathan Conant Pages Ringing the Gotchnag: Two American Missionary Families in
Turkey, 1855-1922 (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society,
2009). It is a very readable, yet scholarly account of the
long-serving missionary families of Wheeler, Barnum and Allen and their work at
Harpoot.
2. 3. See for
example The Missionary Herald vol. 72 January (1876) pg. 5.
3. Herman Norton
Barnum, D.D., was born in rural upstate New York near Auburn on December 5,
1826. He graduated from Amherst College, Class of 1852 and from
Andover Theological Seminary in 1855. In July 1860 he married Mary
E. Goodell, daughter of Rev. William Goodell who served as a missionary in
Constantinople for a good many years. Rev. Barnum joined the Harpoot
Station of the American Board in 1857, and his wife came one year
later. The Station had been occupied since 1855 and permanently
since 1860. The Barnums were one of the three families (Wheeler,
Allen, Barnum) who continued to serve in Harpoot until 1896. Rev.
Barnum died in Harpoot 19 May 1910 and his wife Mary died nearly exactly 5 years
later also in Harpoot. They had nine children, six of whom died in
childhood. All were buried in Harpoot.
4. 4. Winston S.
Churchill (1929 and other editions) The World Crisis: the Aftermath (C.
Scribners Sons, New York pg. 405.
5. 5. See pg. 79 of
The Slaughterhouse Province. An American Diplomats Report on the
Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917 (ed. By Susan K. Blair, Aristide D. Caratzas,
Publisher, New Rochelle, New York, 1989). While spelling of these
Village names is by no means uniform, it will be possible in many cases to
locate them on the map in Figure 1.
7. 6. See
for instance Taylor, E.L. and A.D. Krikorian (2011) Educating
the Public and mustering support for the ratification of the Genocide
Convention: Transcript of United Nations Casebook Chapter XXI: Genocide, a
13 February 1949 Television Broadcast Hosted by Quincy Howe with Raphael
Lemkin, Emanuel Celler and Ivan Kerno. War Crimes,
Genocide & Crimes against Humanity Vol. 5: 91‐124.
8. 7. Susan
K. Blairs edited version of Consul Leslie A. Davis final report that she
framed in the context of the title Slaughterhouse Province provides much
evidence that supports this viewpoint. Vahakn Dadrian has drawn
attention with reference to the Military Tribunal Trials to the key indictment
of Dr. Behaettin Sakir, one of the most influential and ruthless of the
Ittihadist leaders. A telegram was sent to his subordinate in
Mamuret ul Aziz (Harput) Vilayet on 21 June 1915 demanding to know whether the
Armenian leaders there, referred to cryptically as harmful people were being
promptly liquidated or merely deported – see pg. 84 of V. Dadrian
(1993) The secret Young-Turk Ittihadist Conference and the decision for the
World War I genocide of the Armenians Holocaust and Genocide Studies vol.
7, no. 2 pgs. 173-204.) It is noteworthy that Dr. Mark H. Ward who
served at Harpoot describes in his The Deportations of Asia Minor, 1921-1922
(London, 1922 published by the Anglo-Hellenic League and the British Armenia
Committee) wherein he speaks mostly of the deportation of the Greeks (and any
residual Armenians) from the Pontus area mentions that about 5,000 out of some
30,000 deportees escaped from the convoys. One doesnt know what
eventually happened to these escapees but the death toll out of the whole was
huge. What had happened to the Armenians was now being carried out
on the Greeks. His writings give a fairly good idea of numbers involved. Parenthetically,
this state of affairs provides one of the several reasons we believe that there
are many more descendants of Kharpertsis in the Diaspora. Far fewer
Diasporan Armenian descendants are to be encountered whose roots lie in other
places of Turkish Armenia like Sassoon, Bitlis, Moosh, Erzerum, Angora,
Shabin-KaraHissar, Kars etc. Attempts at the extermination of the
Armenians through genocide would appear to have been somewhat more fanatical
and efficient, relatively speaking of course, in these areas. This
perverted diligence due to regional peculiarities or even specific Turkish
regional administrators perhaps accounts for the fact that there seem to have
been fewer opportunities for survival of Armenians in/from these places.
9. 8. Another
perspective that might be mentioned for a fuller equation is that in a
male-dominated society such as that of Ottoman Turkey the act of decapitating
the nation (literally and figuratively) by getting rid of men and youths, and
uprooting the remnants by deportation (predominantly women and children) the
task of destruction was for all practical purposes complete. By
analogy, ripping a plant out of the soil and allowing it to wither and die, was
an adequate solution to any Armenian problem.
10. 9. Those
relatively few Armenians who were able to be taken into Turkish homes as
servants, usually in absolute slavery, could keep relatively low profiles and
ended up remaining and not deported. Some Armenians made the painful
decision to leave their children with Turkish neighbors who were willing to
take them (some Armenians, and even some Turks, actually thought the Armenians
would be deported temporarily and would one day return – others left
children knowing full well that they themselves would probably end up dead but
that there was at least a possibility that their children might survive in a
Turkish household – probably not as Armenians but absorbed as Turks, but
at least still alive! Some women married Muslims to save themselves
and their children, they themselves in the process becoming Turkified (turkatsad
or turkuvadz in the colloquial Kharpetsi Armenian dialect of the
period). Others were taken in, having been stolen from their family
unit – sometimes literally yanked away from a hysterical mother, or
kidnapped by stealth, sold by the kidnapper(s), and used once they were
deposited and settled, perhaps as concubines (a word we dislike immensely
but admit that it reflects their role maybe as a secondary or tertiary wife
etc.) Some Armenians were allowed to stay because a particularly
influential Turkish or Kurdish Agha needed the wheat in his fields or whatever
to be harvested. (Wheat fields generally went to ruin since the
wheat harvests were not in when the villages of the Kharpert Plain were
forcibly emptied.) Again, this kind of respite was usually temporary
but could offer subsequent opportunities for escaping, fleeing and
hiding. The mentally handicapped, or those feigning insanity or who
were even really insane (some were driven mad by the events of the period
– stories heard from survivors) were not deported because they were
feared by Muslims and tended to be avoided at any cost. And,
certainly there were other categories that we have not mentioned. We
will not make any serious attempt here to analyze the specifics of any seeming
altruism in the context of the Armenian genocide on the part of those Turks and
Kurds who were willing to take the risk to shelter Armenians or help them
escape. Such activity was supposedly against the law but the law was
repeatedly ignored because the ruling was very arbitrarily applied and enforced
by local authorities. Bribery and extortion were
rampant. More than a little money passed hands – the
proverbial greedy blind eye and deaf ear for financial or material gain
reigned supreme. Our deep familiarity with the stories of Kharpert
survivors has convinced us that little was done to help most adults (all women)
at least until caravans reached northern Syria
[Suriya]. Still further south, Orthodox Jews sometimes engaged
Armenian women to light their Sabbath fires and thus enabled them to earn
a para or two. Children were another
matter. One admittedly Turcophobe writer put it this way:- Turks
sought to refresh their worn-out blood – for the Turks are a worn-out
and decadent race – by infusing the blood of a younger and more vigorous
nation by this hideous policy. We have no compunction in throwing
in for some additional measure of completeness that one can find nowadays more
than a few attempts to soften, even rehabilitate, the image of the terrible
Turk by arguing that there indeed were many righteous Turks who saved
Armenians. (Note the use of the equivalent expression righteous
adopted by the Government of Israel to describe those gentiles who acted to
save Jews in the Nazi period.)
Truly unselfish
acts of kindness on the part of Turks were in our opinion very rare
indeed. The subject of Turkish altruism has been brought up from
time to time even by writers of Armenian heritage, but by and large we remain
unconvinced based on what we know and have heard from those who were taken in
by Turks. Turkihn askuh korna [may the eyes of the Turk be
blinded—note the use of the word korna for blinded is
Turkish] was quite often heard by one of us (ADK) growing up amongst genocide
survivors from the villages. This curse and malediction stands out
in stark contrast to the well-wisher who sought to offer good wishes or
congratulations with Ashkid luys or light to thine eyes. Kurds
and Arabs, on the other hand, seem to have been motivated by more humanitarian
reasons. Robert Fisk, journalist for The Independent (London)
and an author who we generally admire and respect, has on occasion attempted to
draw attention to righteous Turks and he has suggested that this could serve
as a potential avenue or gesture to reach out for reconciliation
(see his The Great War for Civilization (2005) Chapter 10 The First
Holocaust pgs. 316-350.) But, we will soon gain some insights in
this orphan Christmas presentation gained on the spot on this topic as we
proceed in this paper since it will be obvious that many Turks seem to have
heard of Cast your bread upon the water for after many days you will find it
again, Ecclesiastes 11: 1-6.) [We have heard the same framed
sarcastically as Cast your bread on the water when the tide is coming in! It
wont do you any harm to do some good – quite the opposite!]
11. 10. Ruth Azniv Parmelee is a person who many have heard of in
reference to Armenians – see for instance our contribution with some
photographs at http://groong.usc.edu/orig/ak-20110627.html − and later
in connection with the Greeks. She was no stranger to relief work
for Armenians. Her parents offered assistance to Armenians in
Trebizond after the Hamidian massacres when she and her slightly older brother
Julius were children of about 12 and 10 years old respectively – but old
enough to know what had gone on. Considerably later, after she had
gone to America for her education and her eventual medical training and earning
her M.D., she returned with her widowed mother to Harpoot in 1914 and began to
carry out medical, especially obstetric and pediatric, work. After
her return to America in 1917, having left Harpoot with Consul Davis and other
missionaries on May 17, she wrote at the request of Rev. Dr. James L. Barton,
Foreign Secretary of the American Board for Foreign Missions in Boston, a
statement under the telling rubric of massacre conditions at Harpoot,
Turkey. Highlighted in her deposition was her Visit to the Exile
Camp in Mezereh. In reminiscing a number of years later about her
work in an article entitled Twenty Years in the Near East [Women in
Medicine 51, January, 1936 pgs. 20-23] she said of the summer of 1915
when all of this wretchedness began we entered a phase of definite relief
work for Armenian refugees, who had escaped from the deportations carried on in
so unwholesome a manner, throughout those warm monthsmost of my attention was
required by the poor wretches, lying on piles of rags under leaking roofs, sick
of typhus fever and other diseases due to lack of nourishment and proper
sanitation. Obliged as I was to squat on the ground when paying
visits to these poor patients, it was impossible to avoid the infection
carrying insect, so that an attack of typhus was added to my list of war
experiences. Dr. Parmelee died 15 December, 1973 and was interred
January 8, 1974 in the Lot owned by the American Board of Foreign Missions
– Section I/South, range P, Lot 25, Newton Cemetery, Newton, Massachusetts. She
is one of the many friends of Armenians, including missionaries and physicians,
whose graves we have visited and where we have even attempted to undertake
graveside interviews. One thing that is abundantly clear about Dr.
Parmelee is that she was experienced and determined and had few illusions as to
what was going on during the genocide and afterwards. In one of her
many talks given once back in America she summarized it all simply and
directly:- During my three years work at Harpoot, Turkey, it was my lot to
learn at first hand something of what has been called The blackest page of
modern history – the definite effort of a government to exterminate one
of its subject races. Enver Pasha, Minister of War, told our
Ambassador before the deportations took place, that it was the plan of the
leaders of Turkey to get rid of the Armenians, then the Greeks, then the
foreigners, and then have Turkey for the Turks. The system and
efficiency with which they went about the extermination of the Armenian race,
made one suspicious that Germany did more than just to close her eyes to what
was going on in Turkey in 1915. Having succeeded so well in the
first part of their program (leaving only a weakened remnant of Armenian women
and children in a destitute and starving condition) the Turkish government is
now carrying out the same measures with the Greeks who are subjects of its
Empire. Dr. Parmelee returned to Turkey with the first contingent
of A.C.R.N.E. volunteers and was assigned to Harpoot presumably because of her
familiarity with the place and languages. Dr. Parmelee became
acting director of the Harpoot Unit of Near East Relief when Rev. Henry H.
Riggs was deported in November 1920 – nominally on order of Angora (there
was no written order or reason given for the deportation). She
served in that capacity until January 10, 1921 when she served under Dr. Mark
H. Ward who became Unit Director until April 1, 1921. Dr. Parmelee
was given her marching orders along with Miss Isabelle Harley (from Rhode Island)
by a very unscrupulous Turk (Hamdi Effendi) who nominally had been appointed as
a Commissaire [commissioner] to cooperate with the Near East
Relief in Harpoot. But all this, while interesting, is a bit off our
immediate mark for this paper on Christmas for the orphans.
12. 11. Certainly
the phrase save any money is an understatement, robbery of deportees was
inevitable, routine and more often than not carried out with
brutality. We have never heard any personal account of a deportee
who managed to keep very much of the money they left home with – whether
sewn into clothing to hide it, or even swallowed with some difficulty as gold
pieces (for instance, a one hundred kurus gold piece from the
period of Sultan Abdul Hamid II was a bit larger than an American nickel and
not thin. It took some doing to swallow such
coins. Personal communication to one of us, A.D.K.)
13. 12. We
feel obliged to mention the following in the interest of giving just a small
bit of history about relief efforts. The first organization and
the timeframe of its emergence in America, and those names of those who
participated in plans for bringing the relief efforts to fruition was the
Committee on Armenian Atrocities. Since the very first meeting did
not have any Armenian in attendance we must draw attention to the
second. The second meeting of the Committee on Armenian Atrocities
was convened at 11 oclock September 30, 1915 at the office of Cleveland Dodge,
99 John Street, in lower Manhattan. There were present: Messrs.
Barton, Dodge, Lynch, Wise, Smith, Bennayan (sic), North, Christie, White,
Crane, Hapgood, Robinson, Haven and Dutton. Bennayan was Rev.
Hachadoor Benneyan (also found spelled on occasion Benneian, who had been
active in fund raising for Armenian relief since the start of the Armenian
Relief Fund after the Adana/Cilician massacres of 1909 (see e.g. New-York
Herald Tribune 9 May 1909, pg. 4.) Hachadoor Benneyan came to
America in 1896 and began service to the small Armenian Protestant community of
Worcester, Massachusetts. He became the driving force in the
building (and the naming) of the Armenian Congregational Church of the Martyrs,
the first Armenian Protestant Church in the western hemisphere, having had its
beginnings at a prayer meeting in 1881. The name of the church at
the very outset was Armenian Congregational Church. On 1 December
1901 the ordination of Rev. Hachadoor Benneyan and the dedication of the church
as Armenian Church of the Martyrs occurred on Pink Street (later re-named Ormond
Street) in Worcester. Badveli Benneyan left for New York in
1904. He was for many years the editor of the Armenian language
newspaper Gotchnag, published first out of Boston and then New York
City. He died in 1944 at the age of 79 in White Plains, New York. The
Armenian Church of Our Saviour in Worcester, the first Armenian Apostolic
Church in the New World, was consecrated Armenian Christmas Day 18 January 1891
as the first Armenian Apostolic Church in America. Hachadoor
Benneyan was born in Kharpert and had studied at Euphrates College and had
taught there. Dr. Barton knew Hachadoor as far back as when he was a
young student at Euphrates. (Barton taught in the Mission
Theological Seminary at Harpoot from 1888 to 1892, and was appointed the second
President of the College as successor to Crosby Wheeler, the founder and first
President, originally named Armenia College.) It should also be
stated that eleven of the survivor testimony reports in the Bryce Report Blue
Book were first published in Gotchnag. Rev. Benneyan was a
perfect representative to be at the meeting. In closing this all too
long Endnote, it should be said that the intention has not been to give here a
mini-biography of Hachadoor Benneyan but to clarify and correct a misconception
that no Armenian (or Greek) representatives were at early meetings of the
Committee.
14. 13. We
have never appreciated use of the word refugee by some writers in the context
of the Armenian Genocide. The Webster-Roget Dictionary and Treasury
of Words from 1922 defines refugee as one who flees for protection,
especially from political or religious persecution. No mention is
made of war. To the contrary, todays Oxford Dictionary of the
English Language apparently thinks fleeing from the ravages of war is very
important, even paramount? And defines refugee as A person who has been
forced to leave his or her home and seek refuge elsewhere, esp. in a foreign
country, from war, religious persecution, political troubles, the
effects of a natural disaster, etc.; a displaced person. Words and
connotations may change with time of course, but Armenians in the vast majority
of places in Turkey in Asia certainly did not flee from war zones – and
neither did they flee from civil war activities in which they were antagonists
or protagonists as some Turk revisionists claim. Armenian civilians
were driven out on a specific plan and for a sole purpose –
annihilation. The to us, at least, laughable notion of social
engineering as a major objective in connection with the deportations
emphasizes the utter intellectual bankruptcy of some self-appointed scholars
seeking to come up with something clever-sounding and original. The
closest bit of equivalent nonsense is a statement we read not so long ago about
existential genocide! Exactly what does either of these phrases
mean?
15. 14. We
learned recently that pdf files of the issue of The Orient, and
many other issues and volumes is accessible online – http://www.dlir.org/archive/orc-exhibit/items/show/collection/9/id/12368
16. 15. Here
are some of Dr. Parmelees comments on Mairigs in one of her
letters. tour to the orphanage institutions. Some
of the families of about a hundred orphans each we find living in flat-roofed
mud houses built for single families, either in the town or in villages from
three to ten miles out on the surrounding plain. A hearty welcome is
forthcoming from the hard-working house-mothers or Mairigs, who are
wonderfully brave to care for their many children in such crowded quarters with
less than minimum supplies and equipment of all kinds. Perhaps the
youngsters are seated on the earth floor, eating their soup out of earthenware
bowls. Or if our visit takes place during school hours, the sleeping
quarters of the orphanage would be turned into a schoolroom by putting the
bedding away in piles, and we would find the pupils sitting on the floor in
front of their teacher.I should not enjoy living in a wretched little
village, either winter or summer. But it relieves the housing
problem considerably, and enable us to get the benefit of some of the gardens
now in our control. Here in one of the orphanages we found some
looms with unfinished mats on them. I understand that this work is
only hampered by the lack of rags from the tailor-shop. I might
explain that our school-teachers were asked to spend about five weeks of their
vacation in these orphanage schools. Then for our longest trip
– to Hoolavank [Khoolehvank], one of our monastery farms right out in the
country. Theirs is really close-to-nature life, and what an
enthusiastic farmer is the husky village woman at the head of the permanent
orphanage. She and her assistants and the whole group welcomed us
cordially, fed us on delicious melon, and begged us to stay
longer. The children told us happily that the chapel was being
repaired − a relic of better days for the Armenian
community. We called the nurses helper (we have stationed one in almost
every orphanage) and gave her the suggestions and help she needed,
and then accepted the hospitality offered us, glanced at some of the vines in
the garden, and turned back to the rough country road over which we had come.
One other village and orphanage [not specified regrettably] finished our
day. My special joy was seeing old friends. Among the
children, there were many old patients, grown fat and rosy
now. Little Victor last year was suffering from marasmus [severe
malnutrition] and could not stand up on her weak legs, when we took her under
our care. Makrid had lung trouble and just escaped having
to go to the sanitarium – a sweet, helpful child she is. I saw
little Bedros who had a broken leg and meningitis, both at the same time
– his mischievous smile could not escape ones notice. Our
cross-eyed pet, Marsoob, who was in the hospital for spinal trouble, seemed as
straight and strong as could be. To see a few results of this sort,
is certainly encouraging. It is due not only to the hospital, but
the food and clothing and better care of this whole regime, brought about by
the Near East Relief and its supporters!
17. 16. Kilim
refers to a flatweave woolen fabric. Roasting chickpeas is rather
intricate process and may take as long as a week to carry out. There
are several grades and degrees of roasting –done at intervals of a day or
so. The chickpeas are moistened (definitely not soaked or boiled) by
subjecting them to variously moistened toweling for a required period prior to
subjecting them to the roasting. This is done by constant stirring
and turning in hot sand or carbonized wheat hulls to get the desired degree of
roast. Normally referred to as lablaboo in Armenian
it would be fascinating to know how or where the relief workers obtained
the lablab. From what we have written and know about the
process someone who knew what he/she was doing had to be involved. A
few relief worker accounts describe the making of bulghour by boiling and
drying but none that we know of ever discussed the preparation of cicer (chickpeas
pronounced siss-errh) into lablaboo.
18. 17. This
seems to be an error. We have but little doubt that the person being
referred to was Maria Jacobsen, a Danish missionary nurse, who had remained on
site during those horrible years ministering unto Armenian orphans
etc. Her story is one of heroism, bravery and long service to the
Armenians, and is well-known. Undoubtedly the MacDaniels got to know
her better in the next few months and in fact occupied her quarters when Miss
Jacobsen left Harpoot in the late summer of 1919 The error probably
derives from transcribing Frances handwritten letters to typewriter back home
for circulation among family and friends as so-called circular
letters. Alternatively, but less likely Frances heard Marias name
imperfectly when they were introduced and assumed she was German because of her
accent. Curiously, Cincinnati had a substantial population of German
origin, undoubtedly many with accents. In any case, we thank those
who have attempted unsuccessfully to help us identify any real Schwester
Merena. Finally, reference must be made here to Matthias
Bjrnlunds Recording death and survival: Karen Marie Petersen, a missionary
witness to Genocide in Haigazian Armenological Review (Beirut)
vol. 32 pgs. 321-340, 2012 for some detailed descriptions of the genocide as
witnessed by the Danes in Harput/Mezreh, as well as the general work of the
Scandinavian missionaries there since 1909. While Maria Jacobsen is
the best known of them, and gave the longest service, there were in fact four
workers at Harput/Mezreh. See also by Matthias Bjrnlund
Scandinavia and the Armenian Genocide in The Armenian Weekly April
26 2008 pgs. 19-21 and yet another paper by Bjrnlund entitled Karen Jeppe,
Aage Meyer Benedictsen, and the Ottoman Armenians: national survival in
imperial and colonial settings Haigazian Armenological Review (Beirut)
vol. 28 pgs. 9-43, 2008.
19. 18. Reference
may be made in the first instance to Jakob Knzlers Im Lande des
Blutes und der Trnen: Erlebnisse in Mesopotamien whrend des Weltkrieges
(1914-1918) (English trans. By Ara Ghazareans, Hans-Lukas
Kieser as In the Land of Blood and Tears: experiences in
Mesopotamia during the World War (Armenian Cultural Foundation,
Arlington, MA.,2007). We too have provided some details on this
subject of the orphan exodus and especially the photographs associated with
it in our Achieving Ever-Greater Precision in attestation and attribution of
genocide photographs in The Genocide of the Ottoman
Greeks. Studies on the State-sponsored campaign of extermination of
the Christians of Asia Minor, 1912-1922 and its aftermath history, law, memory (Tessa
Hofmann, Matthias Bjrnlund, Vasileios Mechanetsides, eds.) published by
Aristide D. Caratzas, New York and Athens, 2011) pgs. 389-434.
________________________________________
APPENDICES
Appendix 1.
There is little
doubt that things concerning calendars, liturgical and ceremonial certainly are
confusing to most of us, and many scholars have written immense amounts on
calendars and the ancient traditions of Christianity. Years ago one
of us (ADK) started keeping a file on calendars as they relate to things
Armenian. Today, many years since it is over 6 inches
high! One is forced to admit that things are hardly more clear to us
today than they were thirty years ago (despite trying to study such works as
Frederick Cornwallis Conybeares The Armenian Church: heritage and
history, compiled, with an Introduction, by the Revd Nerses Vrej
Nersessian, published by St. Vartan Press, New York 2001) but at least we
believe we are closer today to being on the mark concerning the celebration of
Christmas in the Armenian Church. What follows is an attempt to make
a prcis of those things found in our stack that just might shed at least some
light on it all. In the very least, it should give some insights
into why it is possible to celebrate Christmas three times in the Armenian
tradition. We learn that in the first few centuries A.D. (Anno Domini, nowadays
reduced to the secular common era, C.E.) Christmas, Christs Mass or the feast
of the birth of Christ, did not exist as such. The Christian Church
only celebrated the festival of the Resurrection (Easter). But, apparently
according to a Roman almanac, Christmas was in fact being celebrated in Rome by
336 A.D. In 354 A.D. Pope Liberius is said to have instituted the
celebration of the Nativity on 25 December as part of the churchs Christian
calendar. (Some say that among other things this date was selected
because it expunged to some extent the pagan festival of Saturnalia, or the
return of the sun and the winter solstice.) In the Armenian
Church, 25 December as the date of the birth of Christ [Dznount in
transliterated Armenian] was never accepted. Instead, following the
decisions of the Bishops of the churches convened through the agency of the
Roman Empires first Christian Emperor Constantine (the Great), the first
ecumenical council was convened at Nicaea in Bythinia (now Iznik, Turkey) in
325 A.D. That Council, probably best known to laymen for giving its
name to the Nicene Creed, fundamental to much of Christianity, ordained that
the baptism of Christ be celebrated on January 6. [Equally or
perhaps more importantly, the means to set the date for Easter was also set for
at that Council]. Aristakes, the Armenian Bishop and son of
Catholicos Krikor Lousavorich, attended the Council because his father was too
old to do so.
Thus, in Armenia
January 6 based on the baptism of Christ was adopted as the date for the
celebration of a collective feast of all the mysteries that were manifest
before Jesus Christ revealed what well call a public life. The
Nativity, that is to say what was referred to in older western theological
writings and literature as the Fleshly or carnal birth, and the Baptism
were celebrated as a double feast in a single festival on the same
day. In short, among the Armenians the manifestation of Christ or
appearance of God to man as reflected in the appearances of our Saviour, His
revelation to the eyes of men, or as is sometimes expressed the Revelation of
our Lord Jesus Christ to the Gentiles which is generally taken as being first
embodied in the tradition of the Adoration of the Magi [the three, twelve whatever
number for that even is undecided Kings of the Orient] assumed a
prime place early on. Christs baptism was paramount. It
seems that for all these reasons, the fixed date (as opposed to a moveable one)
of 6 January continues to be simultaneously celebrated as the Feast of
Christmas (the Nativity, also viewed as a time of being reborn, regenerated,
and sanctified in the waters [of the Jordan]) and the Revelation of Christ as
God or Son of God (Epiphany [literally the showing forth] The Armenian
Church when using English to describe this celebration has preferred to use the
Greek-based word Theophany, a word etymologically based on
Manifestation of God [Asduadzahaydnoutiun in transliterated
romanized Armenian].
For the Armenian
Church then, using the date of the Baptism of Christ based on the Old style
or Rumi calendar [revised Roman or Julian, introduced by
Julius Caesar and which was solar based], that is January 6, is when the Holy
Theophany is celebrated. (One will immediately recognize that one of
the peculiarities of the date is that today in countries such as the United
States and Europe and elsewhere celebrate Christmas on January 6 going by the
Gregorian calendar! That is certainly one cause for
confusion. Apparently the celebration is more tied, as it were, to
the date than the specifics of calendardom. On the other hand, the
use of the Julian Calendar is still retained, we are told, in the Armenian
Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and thus the date of 6 January for Theophany on the
Old style calendar and Gregorian as followed today translates to 19 January,
thirteen days later on the Gregorian calendar. (The Gregorian
calendar which Pope Gregory XIII introduced in 1582 was apparently developed
and apparently for a very practical reason. The main motive seems to
have been to keep the accumulated errors in the Julian [solar] calendar from
allowing Easter to drift away from springtime.
A discussion of
the Armenian Christmas published in 1904 in Armenia (Boston)
volume 1 no. 3 December pgs. 38-44 by Kevork G. Tourian throws in some
additional interesting dimensions. Just how accurate what he has to
say is another matter but to us being pragmatists it is
believable. He relates that in the primitive Eastern church Epiphany
was celebrated at the River Jordan whereas the Nativity of Christ was
celebrated in Bethlehem on the same day, a distance of some eighteen
hours. The Bishops of Jerusalem complained about the difficulties
arising from this double celebration. Tourian goes on to say that
Bishop Cyril...was determined to solve the difficultyand consulted Pope Julius
in Rome and separated the festivals of the Nativity so as to celebrate this on
December 25 and the Epiphany on January 6. The Armenians, however,
Tourian goes on to say, not being so realistic, solved the same difficulty by
previously providing themselves with the necessary from the River Jordan, in
this way saving the trouble of going to the River, and consequently shortening
by about twelve hours the duration of the double celebration. They
considered it much wiser to give up the habit of going to the Jordan, which was
nothing but a local custom, than to change the order of the established
Christian date. To the present day this custom of bringing water
from the Jordan is the Armenian usage in Jerusalem.
(It is of some
interest that the Old Style calendar was used in Armenia until the end of
1923. On 1 January 1924 the New Style [Gregorian] calendar was
adopted on order of Catholicos Kevork V. It was of special interest to us in the course of reading an
account by a senior American Near East Relief worker to Erivan who wrote in
1922 in a letter back to America that he arrived in Erivan on 19 January only
to find things closed because of the Christmas holiday. That was
news to us, but then again lots of things continue to be news to
us! Frdric Macler, the French scholar of all matters Armenian,
wrote in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (Chas.
Scribners Sons 1955 vol. 3, pgs. 70-73) that The Theophany was originally
always celebrated on a Sunday; it was only in later times that it was fixed for
the 6th of January. On Christmas Eve, that is the eve of the
Nativity and Theophany of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a candlelight service [Djerakaluys
Badarak] is celebrated. And, so on and so forth. Would it
not be nice to have a short and sweet account?
Appendix
2.
In deference to
American officialdom and reflecting the time with which we are here concerned,
the spelling Mezreh is used in the this paper and derives from the fact that
when the first United States Consul to the area, Dr. Thomas H. Norton,
requested in a letter via the U.S. Consulate General, Constantinople dated
January 10, 1901 from Harput that the Department of State, U.S.A. address
correspondence to him Consul of the United States (Harput) Mezreh, Mamouret
ul Aziz, Turkey in Asia (via London and Constantinople.) The
spellings Mezireh and Mezereh, based, of course,
on transliteration from the Armenian, are also widely encountered in period
writings, and some might say the latter transliterations are more
accurate. They are right of course. Maps using Armenian
spellings reflect the proper pronunciation. We include here one
taken from Vahe Haigs massive 1500 page book Kharpert and her Golden
Plain (Kharberd ew anor oskeghen dashte: hushamatean azgayin, patmakan, mshakutayin ew azgagrakan /
Ashkhatasirets ew kazmets (prepared and published in New York by the Kharpert
Armenian Patriotic Union in 1957). This volume, written in Armenian
includes very brief prcis in English and French. The town and the
Vilayet both bore the name Mamouret ul Aziz.
Some explanation
is in order of where Harput is, or more precisely what a reader should
understand by Harput. For the Turkish government, Harput was and
still is the name of a city in eastern Turkey. The spelling Harput
used here, even Harpoot, Harpout, or Harpouth(e) became commonplace through the
writings of those like the American missionaries who entered the region in the
early to mid-1800s to 1917 when their presence became much curtailed and for
all practical purposes eliminated. Harput was the preferred
designation by the United States government. There is little doubt
that the name of the town, variously spelled Kharput,
Kharpert, Kharpothe or Kharpet etc., situated on the top of a small
mountain, was of Armenian origin. Those unfamiliar with the sound
suggested by the spelling kh might, pardonably, attempt a simulation of clearing
ones throat prior to spitting! Few seem to agree exactly on what
Khar means in Armenian, at least in this instance, possibly rock; the second
element clearly means castle or town. Because the pronunciation
was perhaps initially not easy for most of the missionaries (many, some say
most did, however, become fluent in both Armenian and Turkish), the spelling
Harput etc. seems to have evolved. For Armenians, Harput meant not
only a city, but a much wider area, almost a Province unto itself, a nahank.
The city of
Harput, not surprisingly, and like all ancient cities has had a rather
checkered and difficult-to-unravel history. The town was located
about 4350 feet above sea level, and was supposedly best described as being
built on a hill or small mountain terrace. About a thousand feet
lower in altitude than Kharput mountain, and about three miles to the
southwest, was a small, very old town called Mezreh. Mezreh lay at
the foot of the plateau overlooking a vast and fertile plain where there were
many Armenian villages. (The Armenians refer to this plain as the Golden Plain
of Kharpert.) The potential for Mezreh being a capital district was
apparently suggested by some official or other who was inspecting the area
during the reign of Sultan Abdul-Mejid I (1839-1861). This led to
the building of some military barracks. During the reign of Sultan
Abdul-Azz (1861-1876) the twin cities of Kharput-Mezreh took on the official
name of Mamuret-ul-Aziz, meaning Mehmets beloved, aziz means beloved in
Turkish.
The name Mamuret-ul-Aziz
is said to have been extended to the entire sanjak (a subdivision of a Vilayet,
essentially a county by our standards; from Eyalet meaning Province or State in
Turkish) in 1879, and in the same year it extended to the newly constituted Vilayet. Over
the years, provincial borders were changed more than once for purposes of
bureaucratic shuffling and nominal streamlining, but more, we believe, with an
intent to gerrymander–inevitably to the advantage of the Muslim
population and to the marked disadvantage of the Armenian Christian
population.
Twin Cities
Kharput [Harput]-Mezreh became the official seat of the Ottoman
government. But by the early 20th century, various
Valis (Governors General of the Vilayet) moved their headquarters from Kharpert
to Mezreh. Even through Mezreh was considerably smaller, about half
the size of Harput, it was more the business center. It was also the
seat of the 11th Army Corps of the Turkish
Army. Apparently Mezreh was not an attractive town by any stretch of
the imagination but it was better situated for commerce and had much better
accessibility from the dozens of villages on the surrounding plain.
Armenians
referred to both the city of Kharput [Harput] and the Province as
Kharpert. Anyone Armenian or with Armenian roots or connections at
any level originally from the region referred to himself or herself, first and
foremost as a Kharpertsi, i.e. someone from Kharpert
[Province]. And, if they specifically came from Kharpert City, they
referred to themselves as Kaghakatsis, i.e. of the City, much like New Yorkers
refer to the City, as if there were no other. Those from the
villages referred to themselves as kiughatsis [keghatsis]-villagers.
Fortunately for
us, Vahe Haigs massive coverage of Kharpert, some 1500 pages, was written and
compiled when many of Old Country Armenians and Armenian genocide survivors
were still alive. It is interesting to note that the Armenian page
is dated 1957 but the added title page in English is dated 1959 It
would appear that the book took that long to edit before it went to final
press. The map below and an enlargement will emphasize that the
spelling in English of Mezreh really should be Mezireh? We
even know someone who immigrated to America with the surname of Mezirelian.
The name
provincial name, Mamuret-ul-Aziz, synonymous in the eyes of Armenians with
Kharput [Harput] is, of course, no longer used; certainly Kharpert is
not. Elazig (pronounced EHL-lah-zuh), became the new provincial
capital of the same name. It is but a contracted form of
Mamuret-ul-Aziz, and represents the place that has gradually re-grown and
developed post WWI from the old small city/town of Mezreh. Old
Mezreh is no more. Elazig (estimated population over 287,500 in 2003) is the
main city of the region now. In Consul Leslie A. Davis time, Harput
had roughly some 30,000 people; Mezreh had about half that. After
the birth of the so-called Turkish Republic in 1923 the borders of the old
Province of Mamuret-ul-Aziz were changed again and any surrounding Armenian
village names were changed to make them sound more Turkish. Even
so, one can still find in print that the city of Elazig is also called Elaziz,
Elazid, Elazýýð, Alaziz, Mamuret el-Aziz, Mamuret-ul-Aziz and
Mamurelulaziz but that is sure to die out with time and Elazig will come to
dominate, if indeed it has anything of the sort to do.
Old
Kharpert City on the citadel high on a hill/mountain is but a ruin now, said to
be used as a place for local Kurds and Turks for picnicking under the walls and
ruins of the old castle. The Armenian parts (the taghs,
meaning precincts- somewhat comparable to wards or parishes in America) of
Kharpert City were deliberately gutted and destroyed during World War I
period. Earthquakes have likewise taken their toll. A
small town called Harput has grown up around it but not on the exact same
site. The citadel and its ruined castle is still a bit of a tourist
attraction but Harput-Elazig region is considered even today a bit of a
backwater. Firat [Euphrates] University was founded in Elazig in
1975. From what we have ascertained, it is no great center of
learning. This is ironic in the context that the Americans wanted to
expand and relocate Yeprad Colej to the lower city because they needed space to
develop and grow. This never happened of course.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California for access to the Ruth A. Parmelee Papers, and the Oberlin College Archives for access to the MacDaniels Near East Photo Album and letters. We thank Smith College Archives in Northampton, Massachusetts and the University of California Archives Berkeley. Last but by no means least, we thank Mrs. Ellen M. Speers for generous help throughout all our studies on the work done by her parents when they served in the A.C.R.N.E., and by making copies of various letters and photographs available for study.
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