Armenian News
Network / Groong
A Family Photograph from Korpeh,
Kharpert, Old Armenia Bears Forceful Witness to the Genocide
Armenian News Network / Groong
July 10, 2015
Special to Groong by Abraham D.
Krikorian and Eugene L. Taylor
Long Island, NY
“Photography
discovers, recovers, reclaims, and at unsuspecting moments, collaborates with
the creation of what we call history.”[1, Endnotes]
Most have heard or read somewhere along the line that the Armenian
Genocide is “hotly debated.” We have
often wondered why those who supposedly debate this fact so hotly are oftentimes
unidentified – ‘the Turks and a handful of their lackeys’ for sure –
who else debates it other than those who have an agenda, hidden or otherwise?[2]
Dr.
Levon Marashlian, Professor of History at Glendale CC put it very aptly some
years ago: “The Ottoman government slaughtered and starved the Armenian people
to death. Today’s Turkish government
seeks to stall and “study” the genocide’s history to death.” Or, as Professor Gerard Libaridian put it several
years earlier, well before his becoming a Professor at the University of
Michigan: “The Armenian Genocide is not a historiographic problem, it is a
political one.”
We personally have many reasons not to worry too seriously about all this.
And like virtually all readers of Groong,
we know what Drs. Marashlian and Libaridian have stated so succinctly is the
truth. No amount of propaganda can
change that sad reality. One particularly
annoying aspect is that its seems that the Turkish government grudgingly at
best admits that many lives were lost, but on both sides. There was no
genocide. Does this not smack of what
amounts to a perverted plea bargaining
mentality?
A nephew recently drew our attention to a
‘Korpehtsi’ Old Armenia photograph that he saw posted on the Western Armenia Facebook
site.[3] When we examined the photograph, we
recognized it and even suspected where it came from and indeed its origin, but
felt that the photograph certainly deserved a more detailed and accurate commentary. In fact, as will become clear below, one of
us (ADK) was intimately connected with its preservation.
Perhaps the proverbial “silver lining” will turn out to be that
the Facebook posting has prompted us to undertake the task of elaborating on
the photograph. It was certainly not a
major priority since it has always been seen as a family matter. But now attempting to do justice to the photo,
we hope that we can show by example that individuals who profess
great interest in such matters will take it upon themselves to become a bit more
serious and engaged at a higher level - perhaps even be encouraged to take on
the chore of trying to learn something in the process. It may well be that collecting and performing
superficial siftings of sorts via surfing the Internet has its value. Intuitively this seems not, however, to be a
very helpful activity. Indeed, the old
time Armenian villagers, especially the older ones, many of them unlettered, especially
the women, and even the younger survivors who had their elementary schooling
interrupted by the horrendous Genocide period would urge, “Shidag, shidag ereh,”
that is to say, “Do it correctly!”[4]
In
short, we try here to demonstrate by means of this article how individuals or
families who might have access to Old Country photographs can try to elaborate
on them both for themselves and posterity.
But such an attempt at elaboration should be initiated and carried out
starting at a reasonable level of sophistication. It may be a slow process, but the outcome inevitably
will be a far more rewarding and valuable one.
By
so doing, you will have preserved memory and cultural heritage and thereby have
shown harkank or respect at an
appropriate level. Do what you can, but
please try to do it properly and honestly. If it is incomplete, say so, and perhaps
someone ‘out there’ can fill in the gaps.
There is a wonderful saying among the Armenians of that era that goes
something like this: “If you scratch the skin of an Armenian, a relative
through marriage will emerge!” [Hayots
mahrminuh guh kerress, khunamee geh ellah!][5] All well and good, but please
also recognize the simple fact that one has to set some sort of stage for
learning. Merely circulating photos, barely
examinable or even of much better quality, is not, we argue, enough. In a word, none of this exposition is meant
to be an invective or destructively negative criticism. We mean it to be heuristic.
When
Djemal Pasha’s book entitled in English translation Memories of a Turkish Statesman - 1913-1919 was published in 1922,
he started off his last chapter, entitled “The Armenian Question” with the
statement that “We Young Turks unquestionably prefer the Armenians, and
particularly the Armenian revolutionaries, to the Greeks and Bulgarians. They
are a finer and braver race than the two other nations, open and candid,
constant in their friendships, constant in their hatred” (Djemal Pasha, 1922
pg. 241 English language edition)[6].
Whether Djemal Pasha meant it or not
(for he was a very disingenuous man to say the least) it should perhaps be appreciated
that it is in this spirit of boldness and honesty that we take on the challenge
of bringing a broader context to this photograph.[7] And, while we deal with
this specific photograph, the approach is equally applicable in principle to
similar photographs, both those which are old and those which are considerably
more recent. It is a matter of
preserving one’s heritage and keeping alive whatever remaining legacy there may
be.
But before we get into the substance of this article, we shall make an effort to locate Korpeh[8] for the reader using a few old maps. Considerably more detailed maps, some more modern, are provided in the Appendix. Suffice it for now to say that Korpeh was a purely Armenian village in Kharpert province or Vilayet.[9] There were no Turks or other Muslims living in the village; neither were there any Protestants or Catholics.
The
first map provided immediately below outlines in a very broad perspective, the
immediate area of Kharpert (it is spelled Kharput on this map). The drawing derives from just after the end
of WW I, and was made around 1919 when matters concerning boundaries and/or
spheres of influence or areas of the onset of Turkish nationalism had not been
resolved. Everything was really in a
state of absolute turmoil. The Kharpert
area has been marked with a red arrow and one can readily understand why some today
prefer to refer to the region as “Western Armenia” or “Western Historic
Armenia.”
The above map was first
published in Current History (NY) vol.
9 (1919) p. 415.
Kharpert (spelled
Kharput) has been marked with a red arrow to facilitate location.
To
help further ‘zero in’ on Kharpert, especially on some of the villages of the
Kharpert plain, including Korpeh, which strictly speaking was not on the plain
but rather on a very hilly ‘mountainous’ area, we provide another map. It is a scan of a rather old one and dates
from 1868 (see Crosby Wheeler’s Letters
from Eden; or Reminiscences of missionary life in the East, Boston:
American Tract Society, following pg.118.)
Although the village locations are rough approximations, it is one of
the few maps that we know of that situates and locates clearly the various
major villages of the Kharpert region surrounding the twin small cities of
Kharpert/Mezireh. The names will be
recognizable to the descendants of those who came from or were connected with a
specific village. (We have added an Appendix
to this article which includes several additional maps that provide greater detail as well as some recent place
names in Turkish.[10])
Map of the
Mission Field of Harpoot Outlined by the American Board in Boston (ca. 1868)
Now
that we have a fair idea of the location of Korpeh, relative to the small
cities of Kharpert and its lower neighboring town Mezireh, we may return to
some of the specifics relating to the family photograph shown below.
Korpeh:
One of the Many Villages of Old Armenia Near Mezireh, Kharpert
The
villages were the heart of Old Armenia. And it was the villagers, easily described as the
“salt of the earth” as a result of their closeness to the land and their
traditions and values, who largely survived the Genocide, possibly as some have
posited, because they were tough and had become accustomed to hardships under
the Turkish yoke.
The
undated photograph shows seated in a central position Donabed Mechigian and
members of his patriarchal household a few years before the Genocide.[11]
Donabed was the Khoja-bashi or the Head-man, of Korpeh [see 12 for some details on the position of
Khoja-bashi.]
To
make a long and rather disturbing story moderately brief, only a few pictured here
in the photograph survived the Genocide. The one true Genocide survivor was Altoon[13] Mechigian DerKrikorian. She is standing, back row 2nd from
the right with an X marked above her
head. She survived the Genocide but a
young son named Kirkor [note the irk
spelling], not present in this photograph, died in a tragic drowning episode
early on during the exile ̶ often referred to in Armenian as the Aksor. The two others who did not experience the
Genocide were already in America and hence out of the reach of the Genocidists
(more below).
Altoon’s is a story that
we will go into here only very superficially but emphatically state that her
experiences, like those of so many other survivors, should be heard by would-be
Genocide-deniers or -revisionists before they open their mouths, or use their pens
or keyboards.[14]
Altoon’s
husband Bedros, the slightly older brother of Abraham [Aprahm] DerKrikorian, the
father of one of the writers of this commentary (ADK), had emigrated to America,
as had Abraham a few years later. Sarkis
Kazarian, the young fellow seated on a stool front row right, also went to
America before the Genocide (1912), so he escaped the massacres as well.[15] (Sarkis,
a first cousin to Altoon, had been orphaned early on and had been taken into Donabed’s
household. Sarkis later served in the
U.S. Army and was gassed at Verdun during WW I but survived. He died in 1960 in Worcester, Mass.) As already stated above, family Patriarch Donabed
Mechigian is seated in the center of the photograph. He seems portly, and sports a wide, colorful,
patterned waist band. We will not
comment here on his headgear which is a story unto itself.
As
was the usual modus operandi during
the early stages of the Genocide, the two grown men and one of the youths in
this photograph living in the extended household in Korpeh at the time (Donabed,
and his son Minas, standing at the left, and younger son Khoren, standing at
the right) were taken away and murdered, charte´tsihn
— i.e. they massacred them.) The
rest of the family members were ‘deported,’ and as was the usual case, most lost
their lives in the process. That
actually was the purpose of the nominal ‘deportations’ ̶
to get rid of the Armenians.
Back
row, left to right. Minas Mechigian
(pronounced Meen – ahss, more on him below), son of the Khoja-bashi
Donabed. The woman standing next to Minas is his wife Nazeli; the name of the
child on whose left shoulder she has her arm is Mik´hael. Next in the back row, standing, is Gul´tana [gul
meaning rose in Turkish, thereby something like Roseanne]. (Gultana is Altoon’s oldest sister. We do not know her married surname. She died on the road during the ruthless and
forced ‘expulsion’, and Altoon was with her when she expired.) The
next, shorter, veiled woman, is Khatchkhatoun [Princess of the Cross] –
she is Altoon’s father’s younger sister, therefore she is Altoon’s Aunt. She is a widow. Then comes Tourvanda (affectionately known as
Touro - she is Altoon’s youngest sister and is as yet unmarried. Standing far right, back row is Yeghisapet
[shortened form -Yeghsa, Elizabeth].
Yeghsa has her arm on her seated husband Sarkis’ shoulder. (Sarkis is a nephew of Khoja-bashi Donabed; he
will soon go to America.) To the right
of Altoon, (on left in the photo) is a still-unidentified-as to name, unveiled
woman who is an Aunt to Altoon (more on veiling below). [ADK knew her name at one time but this has
somehow fallen through the cracks. The
sad fact is that she too did not survive.]
Front
row seated, the older woman more or less in front of Khatchkhatoun is Badaskhan
Mechigian [this Armenian name means ‘Response’- suggesting that a child was
sent as the result of prayer]. She is next
to her husband Donabed, i.e. to his right. (She is Donabed’s second wife. His first wife, named Kouvar [Jewel or Precious
Stone, sometimes rendered as Pearl], had died some years earlier. The boy seated on a stool and on whose
shoulder she has her left hand is Ohannes, a son from her first marriage.) Next, to the left of Donabed, also seated is Sarkis
Mechigian, a nephew to Donabed. He is just
a year or so older than his cousin Minas, Donabed’s eldest son, and will soon
go to America, eventually to settle in Selma in the San Joaquin Valley of
California. [He died of botulism poisoning from eating badly ‘canned’ ‘per-per’ (Portulaca olearacea var. sativa, a garden weed which parboiled makes
a nice addition to a salad, or even pickled as tourshi for use as an appetizer etc.) at a 1939 New Year’s family gathering. His age was given at time of death as 49. A cousin named Ohan [John] Mechigian (not in
the photo) ended up dying from botulism a day later.[16] The young lad with the
bandoliers is Khoren, one of Donabed’s sons from his first marriage. Not in the photograph is yet another son
Avedis. He was about a dozen years
younger than Altoon’s brother Minas. He
was never heard from after the Genocide and was presumed to be a victim of it
as well.
Let
us therefore now pick up on Minas Mechigian and try to provide a few additional
details. He is the fellow in western
dress standing at the far left. He is Altoon’s
oldest brother and had gone to the United States hoping to earn enough money to
enable him to bring his wife and son Mikhael to America. Unfortunately, that was not to happen. But, fortunately there ends up being some
sort of memorial to him in the form of the photograph under consideration,
because following a widespread custom, those men upon leaving the Erghirr [the Land] would, whenever
possible, take a family group photograph with them, and later have themselves
incorporated into the photograph. This
was done by having a professionally taken photograph inserted into the group ̶ usually at a margin ̶ and re-photographing the whole. Minas had come back to his village in Turkey from
America for a visit, but got caught up in the fury of the Genocide. He was murdered after being ‘arrested’ and ‘taken
away’ with his younger brothers as had happened with his father a very short
time earlier.
It
is perhaps worth commenting here that had Minas not taken the photograph to
America, and had he not left this copy in America, this family photograph with
him in the picture more than likely would not exist. Some years later the photograph was given to
Altoon by a friend with whom the photograph had been entrusted, when she finally
reached Worcester, Massachusetts, She
had survived the Genocide in all its horrors, including time in the Hama encampment
(for all practical purposes a concentration camp, or as some foreigners called
it a “refugee corral”) in the Vilayet of Suria [Syria], all the while
apprehensive for fear that they would be moved out to Der Zor to be killed. The name of the person who kept the family
photograph has unfortunately been lost. Perhaps
it will surface one day, but it was a fellow ‘keghatsi’ [pronounced as kegh-ah-tsee,
or fellow villager] who had emigrated to America earlier, prior to the Genocide.
To
give yet another dimension to this photograph from Korpeh, it would not exist
even today were it not for the actions of ADK, called “Apa” by Altoon. She was known to him as his “NaNa. (NaNa is pronounced with equal emphasis Na-Na.
Kooirig is what she was called by ADK’s mother - the affectionate
term for sister, more accurately in this case, sister-in-law).
As
an aside, but we feel an important aside, we venture to interject that there
must be very few photographs of families from which one or two family members survived
the Genocide, and who actually have photos that they brought directly from the
Old Country. We know of only one (that
of a brother-in-law’s mother) from another Kharpert village who survived the
death marches and massacres. She had
secreted a family photograph in her waistband sash or ghodhi [kodi]. Understandably, the medium-sized mounted
photograph looks like the ‘survivor’ it truly represents. Fortunately it has now been preserved, scars
and all, through high resolution scanning, and those in it have been identified.
We suspect that not many photographs from
the Old Country would fill the criterion of being an actual Genocide-survivor
photo.
Getting
back to the Korpeh Mechigants Household photograph, on one occasion, when home on
break from Cornell University, while visiting his “NaNa” ADK got into a
conversation about her experiences in the Old Country. He asked about existing photos from the Ergihrr [the Land] and she brought out
the family photograph under discussion. As
a doctoral student learning some advanced studio-type photography as part of
training for scientific observation, record-keeping, note-taking and
documentation, the importance of the photo was immediately recognized. ADK borrowed the photograph and copied it in
Ithaca with the help of one of the campus professional photographers, a friend,
who had access to a very high quality large format 4 X 5 inch negative camera.[17] Many glossy prints 8.5 X 11 inch were made, sent back to
Worcester and distributed by NaNa to family members. That was over 55 years ago. She died in Worcester in May 1974.
So
as to emphasize that this little aside is not the product of a failing memory or
presented for dramatic effect, below is a photograph of the negative, hand-held
by ADK and photographed by ELT a few days ago in the summer light of Long
Island as background. The red is tape that
was used back then for masking unwanted edges of photographs. Most of the red masking
has been cropped off in this Photoshop adjusted image.
Had
an original mounted print of the photograph brought to America not been copied,
it would have been truly lost. Inquiries
over the years have not turned up the original mounted photograph which was
copied by ADK. There surely is a lesson
in all this.[18]
The composite above is a
photograph that was commissioned by Bedros DerKrikorian.
It
shows him in a western suit. Alongside
is his wife, Altoon Mechigian DerKrikorian [much later Simonian]. Her image will be recognized immediately as having
been copied from the picture derived from the one from Korpeh. It seems that Bedros [Peter] had access to an ‘original’
photograph in America, had her photographed from that, and inserted her alongside
himself in a large-size matte print. It could
be that Bedros had a photograph in America and so did Minas but he left it in
the care of someone back home when he traveled back to Korpeh. ADK only knows about one that came from
Altoon’s brother Minas via a third party.
The
copy of the photograph below shows an oval crop of Altoon Mechigian
DerKrikorian from a full-length photograph taken in Marseille, France just
before her emigration to America on the SS. Niagara in February 1921. One can see straightaway that she had shed
all appearances of a ‘veiled’ Oriental woman.
Some who have seen various photographs or published pictures of some married
Armenian village women from the Erghirr
may have wondered why any Armenian
woman, a Christian, should have had her face covered?
The
situation or practice among married Armenian village women in Kharpert at least
(so far as we know but probably elsewhere as well) was referred to as being in
a state of na-mahram (information
from ADK’s mother) and goes something like this. This elaborate linguistic breakdown derives
from information provided years ago by a language scholar and wonderful personal
friend and University teacher, now deceased. Apparently “mahram comes from the Arabic root
HRM meaning forbidden, but also “protected” thus applying for instance to the
holy site at Mekka, the Haram al-Sharif.
In the family, it applies to
intimates, usually the descendants of one’s parents and the parent’s siblings,
or one’s wife, or of one’s wife’s brother. These cannot be considered as prospective
marriage partners, so free social contact with them is permitted to a
woman. Na-mahram is the opposite: those
who can be considered as marriage partners, and with whom social contact must
therefor be circumspect. It can involve
various forms of avoidance, including veiling, but these are secondary.”
It
would be pure speculation on our part to say this practice was adopted largely as
a result of the extreme intensity of what might be termed acculturation of some
Armenian village peasants in some superficial aspects such as dress etc. within
the surrounding general and dominant Turkish Muslim environment. We say “Turkish” since married Kurdish women,
also Muslims, or Bedouin women did not cover their faces. Turkish women of the villages covered their
noses up to the bridge normally as well with the ‘no see-through yashmak’ [final k pronounced with guttural, thus –makh, again fide
ADK’s mother], whereas married Armenian women normally covered below the nose, that is mainly covering
the mouth.
One
aspect of using the yashmak may have
been purely self-protective. Muslim riff-raff
who might have been inclined to try to harass or molest an Armenian woman should
she happen to be alone might think twice if he saw that she was wearing a
veil. Or, he might have thought that she
was one of “them”; that is, Muslim and
thus off-limits. A more delicate
interpretation might be that the Armenians did not want to antagonize any
conservative Muslim element. All this is
pure speculation, of course, but none seems unreasonable.
But
there has always been a troubling aspect to all this from the perspective of some
of us who were in a position to ask about such matters but never knew enough to
do so. Or, who regrettably never thought
to pose more questions about veiling from those who immigrated from the
villages to America as Genocide survivors. For instance, was there any truth to the
assertion, admittedly read in later years in a few non-Armenian publications but
also supposedly in a few Armenian publications, that Korpeh village had accepted
Islam, if only more or less briefly, upon coercion during the Hamidian period,
and had reconverted to Christianity at first opportunity? The first and only opportunity to ask this sort
of ‘taboo’ question was when ADK asked his
Godmother Oghda Boghosian of Fowler, California. But she had been only 7 years old or so at
the time of the ‘deportations.’ When
asked the question, she was in her nineties but still very alert. Her
answer: “I never heard of it.” Be
that as it may, the fact remains that married Korpeh women covered their faces,
a few female names were decidedly purely Turkish, e.g. Gul´tana [ADK’s maternal
Great Grandmother’s first name], Altoon, rather than Voski- and even Sooltan,
sometimes used instead of Takouhi meaning Queen in Armenian. Even a few masculine first names were used like
Gul´khass (True Rose, nowadays taking form or encountered in family surnames like
Goolkhasian etc.)
The
reality of that possibility of apostasy to Islam for self-preservation may well
never be known of course. But to round
out the picture a bit, the deeply engrained conduct or social behavior concept
of ‘Amot’ (shameful) was especially dominant
in the Old Country Armenian culture, and one would have been more than likely encouraged
in the direction of non-disclosure, or hiding such a shameful [amot] act, even if it had been known, or
certainly had it derived from an unverified rumor. But, one point that should be taken into
consideration is that two senior Armenian men from Korpeh who made it to
America before the Genocide and who were young lads at the time of the Hamidian
massacres [“charteroon aden´neruh” - the
time of the massacres] and who had fled and taken refuge in the remote hilly
area near the village during the worst of it, described to ADK how they hid [baivetsak] but never made mention of any
subsequent conversion, or anything close to it.
Again, truth be emphasized, few Korpehtsis in America were religious
zealots. It was difficult for many of
them to reconcile what happened during the massacres and Genocide with a loving
God. That does not mean they lost their
religion completely but it does mean that they ended up being the ardent realists,
cynics or perhaps even pessimists encountered when and after they came America.
To close on this sad aspect of village life
in Old Armenia ̶ what should really be described as a life of subjugation
under a dominant Muslim culture ̶
ADK never believed the reports of conversion when he first read of them. He had too many experiences in very close
proximity and close exposure to survivors, and never picked up a hint of
it. Unlike apparently some who never
spoke of their ‘deportation’ experiences, women survivors from Korpeh never
hesitated to tell it like it was.[19] Ordinarily this sort of issue might not even
be mentioned, but the fact is that non-trivial questions remain
unanswered. Perhaps some enterprising
scholars might chance upon this aspect of temporary conversion of some Kharpert
villages en masse during the Hamidian
period in the future and be able to fill in the gaps.
Korpeh in
the Armenian Compatriotic Union Literature
Below
we provide the title page in Armenian of one of the two large works dealing
with Kharpert on a grandiose scale. This
particular work, which we feel is the more complete and thus the more important
one, reads:- Kharbert ew anor
oskeghen dashte…
English title page given as Kharpert and
her Golden Plain, [Memorial] book of the history, culture, industry and
ethnology industry of the Armenians Therein.” The Armenian title page gives the date as
1957 whereas the English language one gives 1959. The later date reflects the
actual date of publication of this heavy volume.[20] Note at the page top the illustration reflecting
the ramparts of the Fortress or Pert, and the sheaves of wheat lower down
representing the Golden Plain and its prolific grain crops.
The
first map that follows below was taken from this Vahe Haig volume and shows the
surrounding villages. The second map
shows an enlargement of the same. These
two are in Armenian and can be studied by those who can read them. We have taken pains to add a few words in
English in red for non-readers. Note
Lake Göljuk (today Hazar Gölu) notorious as the location of some of the mass
murders, supposedly not of Kharpert people but mostly those from Erzerum etc.
The
pages of text etc. pertaining to Korpeh village presented after the Kharpert and her Golden Plain maps derive
from the Vahe Haig volume as well. It
will be of some interest to note that the oval photo of Khodja-bashi Donabed
Mechigian has been cropped from the Old Country family photo and inserted. No mention is made as to its source, or the
person(s) who made it available for publishing.
This would seem to strengthen the view that more than one photograph
exists, that is in addition to the one ADK and George Lavris copied.
No
effort has been made here to translate the original Armenian. (Ohr mi
as the oldsters used to say “Perhaps, one day!”) It is of some interest that the ‘chapter’
heading transliterates as Keorpeh
Kiughuh. The designation for ‘the village’
pronounced kiughuh is in so-called makur hayeren [proper (clean or
pristine) Armenian]. The Kharpert dialect
form would inevitably state kegh´uh. And therefrom, the term for a villager becomes kegh´atsi- not kiughatsi. The caption
beneath Donabed Mechigian’s photo and name states that he was the nahabed of Keorpeh. He was always referred to as the Khoja-bashi,
including by his daughter and other kegh´atsis
(ADK personal knowledge) and this fact should not be lost sight
of. Nahabed may well sound better in proper
Armenian but facts are facts. And
nuances do matter in establishing accurate identities of villages and the
inhabitants thereof.
We
shall save our comments on the other images selected for use in the Korpeh
entry of Vahe Haig’s book for another occasion.
The caption under the photograph on page 944 (lower right) is of particular
interest however since it not only gives the pronunciation/spelling as Keorpeh but adds “gam Keropeh” (“or Keropeh”).
Good examples of the fluidity
mentioned.
The Story of Keorpeh Village by Harootune
Shabouian
We
must now draw the reader’s attention to a seminal work on Keropeh written by Harootune
Shabouian (1894-1973) of Korpeh and Lowell, Massachusetts. It was not formally published but was hand written
and eventually printed by off-set. The 192
page long work was finished in the late 1950s but had been started a lot
earlier of course. Mr. Shabouian was a
barber and this work was clearly done as a labor of love. An especially useful part of this very
interesting softbound, illustrated volume is that it includes what we refer to
as a numerical “Household Listing” with arbitrary House Number and Family name,
first name of the head of the household, the first names of those in the
household, estimated ages and annotations such as emigration to America, or
wherever, whether a person survived the Genocide or, whether as a few did ‘turned
Turk.’ Such an accounting of a village
population is very unusual, perhaps even unique.[21]
A couple of pages from the book, one of which includes
a photograph of the author as a young man, are provided below.
Among
the several quite interesting photographs included in the Shabouian volume are
a few drawings of the village. We were
told that the black and whites used, had originally been drawn in color but the
whereabouts of the colored ‘originals’ are not known. (They were apparently never in Harootune
Shabouian’s possession). Another
interesting feature of the Shabouian book village drawing(s) is that it is
entitled with the village name in Armenian as Keropeh, thereby retaining the original Armenian form. The photo of the drawing we present below does
not, however, derive from the Shabouian volume.
Instead, we copied it from a better quality published photograph with a
more visible but still unreadable ‘key’ found in Manoog Djizmedjian’s book Kharpert and its Children pg. 94.[see
Endnote 9 for details on that book. Let it also be mentioned that the image in
its various forms has appeared elsewhere, e.g. the late Asdghig Avakian’s Stranger Among Friends, an Armenian Nurse from Lebanon tells her
story, Beirut 1960 pg. 33 and “Stranger”
No More, an Armenian Nurse from Lebanon tells her story, Antelias, Lebanon
1969 pg. 37. She was an infant survivor
who was told she was born in Korpeh.]
One
can see from the drawing that Keropeh was a mountainside village. [Refer to
Endnote 8 for precise details.] The village church seen in the lower center bore
the name Sourp Asdvadzadzin [Holy Mother of
God]. According to Harootune Shabouian,
the village schools, one for boys and one for girls, were next to the Church. In 1908 thanks to the financial assistance
provided by the Keorpeh Educational Union, founded by emigrants from the
village living in the USA, a new boy’s school was constructed, and the old one
was assigned to the educational needs of girls.
The caption simply says
“Korpeh” [not Keorpeh]
We
do not want to allocate a lot of additional space to saying much more about the
village here but attention might well be drawn with profit to a few other
relevant points. These will serve to underscore a few of the generalities already
stated with reference to the Khoja-bashi Mechigian’s family photograph.
Below we give a copy of
a photograph of a family from Korpeh. On
the right hand side is Garabed Sarkisian who emigrated to Lowell, Massachusetts
as a married man. (He arrived at Ellis
Island on November 11, 1912, age 20.) Again, Garabed has been added ex post facto to the photograph but it
is a poor job. He looks too small and
disproportionate to fit in well with the others. Next to him is his wife Serpouhi.[22]
She, like Altoon Mechigian DerKrikorian is in namahrem with a yashmak
or face covering. She wears a necklace
with many coins strung on it. They seem to be silver Mejidiehs rather than golds
or altuns since gold pieces were
usually much smaller.[23]
Her shoes are quite
stylish and typical. They have upturned
pointy tips. These are the well-known pabushes [pabuç] that were normally
worn. On the left hand side of the
photograph in the rear is Garabed’s younger sister Makrouhi. Her head is covered with a letchak (headscarf). When first examined by us it appeared that both
Garabed and Sirpouhie had been added to the photograph. Today, we do not believe that to be the case. (We will not go into detail on the others in
the photograph except to say that they all lost their lives in the Genocide.)
Below we see portions of
a work that remains today in the hands of the Sarkisian family. The original is a badly damaged and poorly
aged color painting of Garabed and his wife Serpouhie (and Garabed’s sister as
well although we have not included her here) that was clearly based on the
faces in the full family photograph above.
It was painted by somebody or other in either Worcester or Lowell. We scanned it for preservation purposes and ovals
were cropped out. Unfortunately, Diggin
Serpouhie (Mrs. Serpouhie) is half-missing, ‘chopped off’ as it were due to
disintegration of the paper, but it was repaired a bit by us using Photoshop. All this emphasizes that Garabed missed his
family very much and also had an aesthetic, artistic sense. Serpouhie entered
the United States at Ellis Island in the autumn of 1920. Garabed had not seen his wife for 8 years! He died in 1962; she in 1973.
Finally,
a word might be in order about some of those who were among the very first
victims of the Genocide at Korpeh. The
village priest, Der Boghos (Father
Paul) or Boghos Kahana [married priest] Bedrossian, is shown below left. This image was copied from a reproduced photograph
in Vahe Haig’s book pg. 611. On the
right is a photograph now in the hands of a relative descended from a son of
Der Boghos named Sahag. Sahag emigrated
to America before the Genocide. The framed
photograph derives from an ‘original’ or at least better print of the same
image that we find in Vahe Haig’s book.
Although there is a “hot spot” on the photograph on the right, it will
be appreciated that it is considerably clearer.
Harootune Shabouian gives his age as around 43 when he was taken away
and murdered. Thus, Khoja-bashi Donabed
and Der Boghos, that is the Village Headman and Village Priest, were the first to
be done away with (fide family).
On
that sad note we shall end this tale of Genocide and witness through family photographs.
The
last of the Korpehtsis, that is the last person born in Korpeh, Kharpert was
Oghda Tuschonts Boghosian. Her exact age
was not absolutely certain but she was over 100 when she died in 2009 in
Fowler, California.[24] Her passing indeed signaled to all Korpetsi
descendants that one had come to the end of an era.
APPENDIX
The
following copy derives from a British Ministry of Defence map prepared around
1915.
Korpeh
(here spelled Korpe) is shown with a red arrow. Note that the notorious Lake Goeljuk or
Göljuk, today Hazar Gölu is spelled Geuljik.
The altitude lines give an idea as to how hilly the region was. Many missionaries and other Americans who had
been to Colorado in the old days said it generally reminded them of Colorado.
Below
is a road map published in 1998 that gives the modern name of Elȃzig [area
shown in yellow], instead of the former place name of Mezireh. (Elazig is
strictly speaking, not on the exact as old Mezireh. Harput [also in yellow] is a considerably
smaller place these days than the early upper Kharpert City that the Armenians
knew. Körpeköy (Korpeh village) is
indicated by a red arrow.
The
next two maps are from the Fr. Fritz’ Codex
Kultur-Atlas Türkiye, Türkei, Turkey Teil 9, 38/35-44 (1965-1966,
Codex-Verlag, Gundholzen - 1:300,000).
Körpeköy (Korpeh village) is indicated by a red arrow. Lake Göljuk re-named Hazar Gölu will be
readily located.
Acknowledgments
We
have quite a few people to thank for their help and encouragement over the
years. They are so many that we will not
mention them by name. Sadly, many have
now passed on. Others who are still
alive will know who they are. None of
this would have been possible without them. Our sincere and heartfelt thanks.
ENDNOTES
[1] Wright Morris (1981) The camera Eye.
Critical Inquiry vol. 8, no. 1 (Autumn)
pp. 1-14 p. 4.
[2] We will perhaps be forgiven for not being adherents
or admirers of the prevalent culture referred to in abbreviated form as “PC”
– “political correctness” or “politically correct.” Frankly, we tire of self-serving myths and
selective renderings of factoids by deniers of the Armenian Genocide.
[3]
The older Korpehtsis, the natives of Korpeh, knew, of course, that the original
name of their hilly village was Keropeh in Armenian, alluding to the cherubim
since it was a ‘mountainous’ village. (Incidentally the word korpe in Turkish is said to mean “the
littlest child.” (On that basis alone
one would reject any Turkish origin for Keropeh village’s name. It is curious though that efforts to erase
Armenian village names and to replace them with Turkish ones was overlooked by
those responsible in this effort. Our
conjecture is that this ‘oversight’ was not in fact an oversight but more
likely an unawareness of the full Armenian heritage of the village. It was in short not changed out of
ignorance.) In any case, survivors who
knew that Keropeh was the Armenian name, would inevitably refer to themselves
as Korpehtsis—articulated as Korr-peh-tsees (equal emphasis on all
syllables; therefore our preference for the transliteration as Korpeh, not
Korpe. Village names could be a bit
fluid according to the specific time-frame under discussion. As another example of this sort, some of the
villagers from Ashodavan referred to themselves as Ashodavantsis but most
referred to their village as Ahsh-vunn, thus becoming Ashvuntsis. The original village, spelled Aşvan more
recently in Turkish. as they once knew it has now long since become inundated
as part of the dam projects. Ashvuntsis
and Korpehtis were especially close friends in Worcester, Massachusetts.
[4] Back in February 2010 we were
stimulated to write an essay on a faked photograph that was causing some
consternation and clamor. Initially we
thought it was the usual Turkish genocide-denial tempest in a teapot. It was
indeed, but since we knew the photograph well, we felt it demanded an
explanation. We were told by a Greek
friend in England, born in Turkey, that the discussion essentially came to an
end after our Groong posting was circulated (see http://groong.usc.edu/orig/ak-20100222.html). It was entitled THE SAGA SURROUNDING A
FORGED PHOTOGRAPH FROM THE ERA OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DEMONIZING AND
VILIFYING A "CRUEL TURKISH OFFICIAL": A PART OF "THE REST
OF THE STORY." We
showed that the forged photograph was published at least as early as 1919 in a
book in Armenian printed in Cairo. A
publication trail back to its source was presented for the forged (‘faked’) reconstructed
image. We concluded that the `silver lining' in all this was that it would hopefully
stimulate work on the study of attestation and attribution of photographs
relevant to the Armenian Genocide and atrocities in the broadest context. Photographs and their captions ought to `say
exactly what they mean' and `mean what they say.' We wrote then, and repeat now that the
Armenian Genocide needs no validation by photographs but we owe it to those who
lost their lives and those who survived to do as good a job as possible.
[5] The Armenians, especially in the villages followed
the rule that noone should marry a person who was not at least 7 times removed
as to any potential relationship [so-called askagan
of yohtuh bodh.] It is an interesting point that peasants
seemed to have understood a fair amount about what we now call genetic
counseling? They seemed to be able to
figure out details of relatedness every bit as effectively as the computer
program “Family Tree Maker”! After the
genocide, when there were far fewer options open to survivors, some of the traditional
rules were broken on rare occasion but a priest that we knew admitted that if
there was any sin in performing marriages of individuals who might have been a
bit closer in relatedness than might otherwise have been sanctioned, then ‘Let
the sin be on me [merkh´uh unzi]!’ Back in 1980 Dr. Sarkis Karayan published an
article in The Armenian Review vol.
33, pgs. 89-96 entitled “Histories of the Armenian Communities in Turkey.” Somewhere along the line this listing was
placed on the Internet. We draw attention to this valuable paper again for it
is in such sources that this level of information about traditions and
practices will emerge now that the survivors who were sources of information
have now passed on.
[6] In the German original also
published in 1922 as Erinnerungen Eines
Türkischen Staatmannes von Ahmed Djemal Pascha, we can read on pg. 313 “Die
armenischen Frage” that “Wir Jungtürken sicherlich die Armenier und
insonderheit ihre Revolutionäre den Griechen und Bulgaren vor. Sie sind mutiger, tapferer, als die der
beiden anderen Nationen, ohne Flasch, zuverlässig in ihrer Freundschaft und
beharrlich im Hass.”
[7] In a review of Djemal’s book Memories by the distinguished political
scientist and historian Baron Sergei Alexandrovich Korff (1876-1924) we read:
“The last chapter of the book deals with the Armenian question and contains an
extremely weak apology for the misdeeds of the Turkish government. Djemal cannot deny the terrible massacres,
but his arguments of justification and explanation seem utterly inadequate;
they only help to prove how absolutely impossible the Turkish rule over
Christian and non-Mussulman minorities always was and always will be, whatever
party should come into power or whatever its intentions may be” (see American Historical Review vol. 28, no.
4 July 1923, pp. 748-750). For another
cool contemporary review see Bernadotte E. Schmitt in Political Science Quarterly vol. 38, no. 3, Sept. 1923 pp.
500-503. She says that “He insists that
he “had nothing to do with the deportations and Armenian massacres” and he
endeavored to assist the refugees.” It
is, understandably, beyond the intent of this essay to deal with Djemals
claims.
[8]
Spellings of Armenian place names as reflected in local pronunciations
vary. Keropeh was the usual Armenian
name. Keorpeh was also used by
Armenians. (We won’t go into how sounds and letters as consonant and vowel
shifts came to be switched according to local usage and dialects — just
think of those who used different pronunciations for bugh´lur versus bul´ghur for
parboiled cracked wheat). The Turks
referred to the village as Körpe and it
is still referred to as Körpeköy, or Körpe village. The “Korpehtsis” were,
first of all, “Kharpertsis.” That is,
they designated themselves as people who came from the Province of Kharpert. Kharpert Province was located in eastern Asia
Minor. (We prefer not to use the
designation ‘Anatolia’ as some have elected to do because use of the term
Anatolia, deriving from Greek meaning ‘the east,’ was originally restricted
geographically to the westernmost part of the Western Asiatic peninsula.) When spoken of in the context of the borders
of the old Ottoman Empire, Kharpert Province or Mamuret ul Aziz Vilayet as it
was referred to in English etc. [from the old style Eyalet, meaning Province or
State in Turkish] were changed several times for various purposes such as
facilitating better administration but also including such reasons like what we
now call ‘gerrymandering’– to the advantage of the Muslim population and
to the disadvantage of the Armenian Christian population. In late Ottoman times the Vilayet was known by
the Muslim name of “Mamuret ul Aziz” and
in fact, Elazig (pronounced EHL-lah-zuh), the name used nowadays for the ‘new’ ‘state’
capital is nothing more than an abbreviated form derived from the old name of
Mamuret- ul-Aziz — meaning in Turkish — Mehmet’s beloved — Mehmet
was one of the Ottoman Sultans; aziz means the ‘dear or beloved’. The town/small city of Mamuret ul Aziz was
known as Mezireh (or Mezre etc.) to the Armenians and more often than not,
referred to simply by close-by villagers as ‘Kaghakuh’—“the” City. Villagers hardly had cause to spend much time
in Kharpert city, whereas shopping and business matters were routinely done in
the lower town of Mezireh. After the
birth of the so-called Turkish Republic in 1923 the borders of the old
Vilayet/Province were changed again and Armenian town names were changed to
make them ‘sound’ “more Turkish.” As
recently as twenty-five years ago one could encounter spellings of Elazig as
Elaziz, Elazid, Elazýýð, Alaziz, Mamuret el-Aziz, Mamuret-ul-Aziz and
Mamurelulaziz but we venture to say that those are sure to have died out.
For
additional perspectives see the extensive Endnotes in our “Christmas
Celebration for Armenian Orphans in Mezreh (Kharpert) January 8, 1920: From
letters and photographs” dating from January 6, 2014 on Groong, Armenian News
Network http://www.groong.com/orig/ak-20140106.html
Again,
Elazig/Harput now represents but a small part of the old Kharpert region. Indeed, the name Kharpert is no more. We should also emphasize here that Kharpert
was used to designate not only the Province, but one of the two key ‘cities’ of
the Province. Kharpert
Khaghahk—meaning Kharpert City in Armenian; the other being Mezireh, in
Armenian. Kharpert or Harput was
situated on the top of a small mountain and was in name only the ‘official’
seat of the Ottoman Turkish Provincial Government. Mezireh was more the business center but it
was also the seat of the 11th Army Corps of the Ottoman Army. The Vali, or Governor-General of the Vilayet
also lived in the official residence or Konak in Mezireh/Mamuret-ul-Aziz. An English friend
working in Germany at the University of Cologne years ago and specialist in
Turkish anthropology communicated to me that today’s Körpeköy, i.e. today’s Körpeh
village, is in the extreme SW corner of what is now the Harput district,
placed, as so many Anatolian villages are, on the skirts of hills which rise to
its east. It is NW of Elazig on the road
between Şahinkaya (that is S with cedilla) and Üctepe (U with umlaut):
from Elazig one takes the Keban road, and it is the first road to the
right. The location is 38.46 degrees N. and
39.08, degrees E. (We have also seen the geo-positioning listed as
38°45´10´´and 39°7´55´´ DMS, degrees, minutes, seconds. A very large hydrological project (GAP) has
been realized in the region, and the largest dam is in fact the Keban Dam. This must have altered the whole subsistence
of the area. Körpeh is well away from
the water! In short, the Village still
exists.
[9] A word is in order about place name Kharpert or Harput, its pronunciation
and transliteration or romanized spelling, and although we are being a bit more
repetitious it matters little. We have
learned that it helps to put things in various ways and contexts. The spelling in Armenian of Kharpert begins
with the 13th letter of the alphabet Խ – pronounced khe
– խե.
The early American Protestant missionaries to
the region understood very well that Kharpert was pronounced by Armenians starting
with a guttural H, or ch as in Johann Sebastian Bach
(for Kh.)
How it was meant to be pronounced
in America and the west was stated in print more than once (e.g. Herman Norton
Barnum in The Missionary Herald vol. 72 January (1876) pg. 5. The choice to transliterate the place name by
English speakers into Harpoot ̶ Har- poot, with the H advisedly guttural rather than the equivalent Kh seems to have been quite deliberate
in view of the need for accurate pronunciation. But the fact was that many westerners subsequently
found it a challenge to make guttural sounds and Harpoot often simply ended up being pronounced with an ‘H’ – just
like it was spelled, as in the word house
which started with an aitch! The early reminders in print that it was to be
pronounced with the guttural seems to have been lost fairly early on. Harpoot is nearly always the spelling in
romanized transliteration of the Armenian Kharpert
in the old literature. Today, Harput is generally retained in the Turkish
spelling (and pronunciation). What took
place with the transliterated Turkish place name starting with H (originally pronounced as with
guttural Kh although spelled by
westerners with an H) also happened across the board and in many other cases. The much-touted reform edict of 1856
Hatt-i-Humayun was actually initially pronounced (and spelled by westerners) Khatt.
Germans usually spelled it Charput, the
French usually as Kharpouthe. The Danish missionaries usually used Harpoot (and
Mezre, rather than our preference for Mezireh).
For those who can read
western Armenian, the reference of choice is Vahe Haig’s [original Armenian name
Haig Dindjian]
Kharberd ew anor oskeghen dashte:
hushamatean azgayin, patmakan, mshakut̀ayin ew azgagrakan (New York: Kharpert Armenian Patriotic Union) 1959.
This big (1500
pgs. long) heavy, illustrated tome was "Prepared and published under the
auspices of the Kharpert Armenian Patriotic Union." (ADK recalls it had a
prepublication subscription price of around $45
a fairly hefty price at that time.)
Note the inconsistency of
cataloger’s Kharberd and the Patriotic Union’s Kharpert. ADK never heard Kharberd used by Kharpertsis. It seems that spelling should be relegated to academic
obscurity. All this reflects the weakness
of rules of transliteration that mercifully few follow. Some will know that an X now supposedly replaces kh. Another work that never achieved the
popularity of Vahe Haig’s book is that put out in 1955 by Manoog Djizmedjian entitled Kharpert yev ir Zavagnere [Kharpert and its Children], Fresno, 1955. It was 749 pages long and illustrated but
does not as does the Vahe Haig volume cover the 65 or so individual villages in
the Kharpert Plain. We cannot resist
drawing attention to the spelling of the author’s surname in WorldCat, an
authoritative device used by professional librarians for locating works in
participating libraries throughout the world.
There the spelling is Chizmechean,
Manuk G. Just who might think of
tracking down a volume under that spelling? So much for transliterations and Romanizing.
For English readers one should refer to Richard G. Hovannisian, ed. Armenian
Tsopk/Kharpert, (Costa Mesa, California: Mazda Publishers, 2002) for many details on Kharpert. For a general but good account of the events
at Kharpert/Harpoot during and immediately after the Hamidian massacres and the
relief work with orphans of that period etc. one can refer to William Ellsworth Strong's 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; Boston, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1910)
− for a digitized version
go to https://archive.org/details/storyofamericanb1910stro. A more modern perspective on the 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) pgs. 241-261. Reference should
also be made to Jonathan Conant Page's, Ringing the
Gotchnag : Two American Missionary Families in Turkey, 1855-1922 (Boston:
New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2009) for a very readable, yet scholarly account of the
long-serving missionary families of Wheeler and Allen and their work at
Harpoot.
Finally, although it may seem that we have
undertaken to write a dissertation on Kharpert, we would be remiss to not make
it clear that Kharpert, as the Armenians knew it is no more.
The province referred to as Kharpert is no more. The lower city of Mezireh, the provincial
capital is really no more. Years ago we
asked a linguist friend to dissect the name.
Here goes. “Ma´muret (with an
´ain or glottal stop: Arabic) means a prosperous and cultivated place, or 2.
(Simply) An inhabited place or town.
´Aziz (glottal stop again: Arabic) means dear or beloved, or 2. Even
sacred, holy (´aziz also meaning saint), or 3. Rare, highly esteemed. Although 3 is a learned usage, it seems most
likely to be the one appropriate here, with no. 3 as a secondary and
complimentary connotation. In short, Ma´muretul´aziz (with two dots over the u)
was the former term (now obsolete) for Elazig.”
The provincial boundaries are quite different now. It must also be remembered that the Vilayets
or provinces came into being in 1864.
Prior to that there were Pashaliks, for example the Pashalik of Harput!
[10]
Capabilities available today to locate things and places on maps by satellites
and the various tools of social media and the like have never been
greater. Few older researchers like us would
never have imaged things like the multi-faceted Falling Rain Global Gazeteer http://www.fallingrain.com/world/
or Google Earth https://www.google.com/earth/
etc. Not surprisingly, these aids
provides disadvantages as well as advantages.
There are numerous recent reports on disadvantages in connection with an
emerging “surveillance economy.” Some
of these are archived on The Intercept, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/
and also at https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/28/orwells-triumph-novels-tell-truth-surveillance/ What is most significant in all this
nominally innocent activity is that “We give our data to Google and Facebook
freely, in exchange for ever-better information; the hidden cost is that we
become complicit in our own surveillance.”
[11] It may be of some interest for
those interested in Armenian names, to note that family referred to itself at the time as ‘Mechigants.’ Mechigian per
se crept in somewhat later. Complications
engendered by seeming inconsistency in surnames to non-Armenians especially
among the villagers caused considerable problems for the foreign Consuls who
had to try to navigate in the areas populated by Armenians for three millennia.
The patronymic -ian ending [yan etc.] widely
associated nowadays with Armenian surnames became regularized at a
substantially later date - in America frequently only upon immigration.
[12] The position of Khoja-bashi was an
important one since he was the delegate of the Christian community at the local
ruling district council, which was controlled by Muslim overlords or Aghas.
If there had been a Protestant community, a so-called Vekil would hold an equivalent post as
well. In the case of Korpeh, where there
were neither Protestants, Catholics, or Turks (it was an entirely Armenian
village) it essentially meant that he was the main point of contact with
Turkish officialdom. The Khoja-bashi was
also responsible for seeing that taxes were paid in a timely and orderly
fashion and so on. (For many otherwise
hard to dig up and understand aspects of “Civic Administration” in Ottoman
Turkey at that time reference may be made to William Wheelock Peet pgs. 87-120
in Constantinople To-day, or the
pathfinder survey of Constantinople edited by Clarence Richard Johnson
(1922, Macmillan, New York.) Fortunately,
this important volume is available on the Internet https://archive.org/details/constantinopleto1922john)
[13] Her Armenian Christian name was
Voskitel [Golden Thread] but Altoon stuck. Altoon was the word for Gold in Turkish. Thus
the name would be akin to Goldie as in Goldie Hawn the actress, or Golda Meir,
the one-time Premier of Israel.
[14] One of the totally shameless
tactics employed by deniers and revisionists is that these histories which
Genocide-deniers often disrespectfully refer to as ‘Grandmother stories’ are,
according to them, to be discounted as hearsay and the like. They have no validity. The seemingly ever-growing long list of what
may legitimately be called “Deceitful Talking Points” have been conjured up by
some ‘bosses’ and the masses are expected to parrot these. After all, that is what an obedient,
uninformed mass of faithful deniers is expected to do. From our perspective, all that really matters
are
the stories by the survivors. On this
upside down scheme of things, the historians
now present and shore themselves up as the ‘expert witnesses,’ and the accounts
of actual witnesses and those who personally experienced the horrors are to be relegated
to the dust bins of anecdotal trivia at best.
Pure nonsense. Of course, it is
not politically correct apparently to point out that self-appointed experts,
pundits, politicians, or even ‘historians’ are too often self-serving, and have
made an industry of it all unto themselves. It is to the discredit of those who blindly swallow
this garbage. Example, when someone does
something to us that we do like, it is called “terrorism.” When we do the same or similar act, it is
said to be the “defense of democracy.”
[15] We cannot here go into the matter
of Armenian men preferring to leave the Ottoman Empire rather than stay and
suffer the consequences. This was especially
so when it seemed clear that universal conscription would be instituted
according to the second Constitutional regime. From what we know, it depended – some
did, but others simply ‘read the writing on the wall’ and decided to try to get
to America, even under the most difficult conditions. This even included cases of bribing under the
guise of feigning pilgrimage to Jerusalem for religious celebrations and as
pilgrims, only to again, by dint of bribery, further make one’s way from a port like Beirut on a ship going to Alexandria,
and then further outbound. These men
even had the traditional small tattoo memento [a Cross] near the base of their
thumb, between the forefinger. This
indicated that they had been hadjis,
a term used for both Muslims and Armenians (ADK, personal knowledge of a
relative through marriage.) Some
Armenian men did make it out of the Turkish Empire before the Genocide, earned
enough to try to get relatives out, but the outbreak of the War precluded
that. One in particular (ADK’s mother
paternal [and maternal] Uncle) lost their families in the Genocide. One took up drink and eventually drowned as a
result of too much drink. The other became a Gamavor or Volunteer in the French
Légion d’Orient, but never remarried. One of ADK’s father’s cousins was taken into
the Ottoman army. His is yet another
story. These personal details are
mentioned merely to show how various stories of experience and survival can be
elaborated upon ad infinitum.
[16]
The first to die of this botulism poisoning was Sarkis Mechigian on
January 3, 1939 (see Fresno Bee
January 4, 1939 pg.1. His age was given
as 48). His younger cousin Ohannes Mechigian,
age 40, died of botulism poisoning on January 4, Fresno Bee, again pg. 1.) Ohannes’ wife Margaret was also stricken but
she survived after she was administered serum rushed from UC Berkeley that did
not get there in time for the two cousins (Fresno
Bee January 9). The story of pickled
or bottled per-per (a green from Portulaca olerace used in salads etc.) as the source of the botulism
(circulated back East after their deaths) has not been verified by us. Another story going around was that the
home-made sausage (basturma?) may
have been the origin of the bacterium. Margaret
Mechigian, 1939 survivor of botulism
died in Selma at the age of 57 on July 1, 1962 (see Fresno Bee July 3, 1962.)
She left two daughters and a son, and a granddaughter. We thank Ms. Melissa Scroggins of the Heritage Center, Fresno County Public Library for her kind
help.
[17] George A. Lavris, of Greek
ancestry, helped ADK save this important photo.
[18] Ruth Thomasian, who founded Armenian Project Save back in 1975, has been a pioneer in trying to save the
photographic heritage of the Armenians in America. Sadly, all too often the identity of all the
individuals in photographs is missing or incomplete. Another lesson, label photographs when and
while you can and to the fullest extent you are able!
[19] One hears and knows of
“support groups” for this that and everything else these days. Those survivors from Korpeh, some 37 women,
an odd grown male or two who escaped from military service and made it back to
America through a ‘back door’ like Asiatic Russia, and a couple of male children
separated from parents and fellow villagers, out of the entire village of some
127 households and a population of some 700 or so sought support and
consolation by talking about it with those had experienced similar or nearly exactly
the same thing. One young boy, a little cousin
to ADK’s mother, was encountered by her in an Aleppo orphanage, came to America
and ended up in a state mental hospital.
Another young lad survivor, ended up in Beirut unbeknownst to most
Korpetsis. One of his sons showed up
quite a few years later in America announcing his Korpehtsi connections! One can do the arithmetic and see that most of
the villagers – more than 80% ̶ lost their lives in the Genocide.
[20] Actually catalogued in World Cat as Kharberd ew anor
oskeghen dashte : hushamatean azgayin, patmakan, mshakut‘‘ayin ew azgagrakan /
Ashkhatasirets‘‘ ew kazmets‘‘ by Vahe Hayk. Niu
York: Kharpert Armenian Patriotic Union, 1959. Vahe Hayk. 1500 p. :
ill. (some col.) ; 28 cm. "Prepared and published under the auspices of
the Kharpert Armenian Patriotic Union."
[21]
Some years ago we reduced the information to searchable format spread
sheets that used columns to segregate specific information.
[22]
Garabed means the Forerunner, as
in John the Baptist. Very often, albeit
incorrectly, as was the case with Garabed Sarkisian, Garabed was made into Charles
in English. He died in November 1962. Serpouhie, means ‘holy’ woman [in
appearance; Angel[ica]” would be a very close equivalent in English. As it turns out, she was Sophie on her
Americanized death papers. She died in
April 1982.
[23] A
mejidie equaled 20 piastres (grush pronounced khurush) nominally, but
the actual number varied according to locality.
It was roughly about the size of an old-fashioned American silver dollar.
[24] Happily, we made a DVD of some of
our more recent visits with Gunkamayr [Godmother] Oghda and integrated them
into a broader picture for ‘family only’ private archives and viewing. It will perhaps not be very evident from the
photograph that we used on the DVD cover but some scars where tattoos inflicted
on her by her Turk ‘guardians’ were removed from her chin and corners of her
mouth by an Armenian physician in Adana, named Krikorian (no relative), may be
discerned on close examination. She was
a lovely lady, and the youngest of the survivors of Korpeh. The background
photos show what she looked like on her passport photo. She was about 12. Oghda immigrated into America with the
Simonians of Korpeh under the pretense that she was Yeghazar Simonian’s
daughter, a child from his first marriage, from which he became a widower. The Simonians are pictured on the Front cover
of The Armenians of Worcester by Simonian
granddaughter Pamela E. Apkarian-Russell (Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, S.C.,
2000). The photograph derives from a
so-called yard long photograph by Worcester photographer K.S. Melikian, a
native of Yegheki village, on the Kharpert Plain very near to the twin
cities. The photo was taken on 16 August
1931 at a gathering of Korpetsis and friends who were recovering after the
Genocide, building families, trying to regain some status in the New World etc.
On the back cover there is a partial
view of Altoon Mechigian DerKrikorian and three of her four children. The identification of the individuals in the
yard-long photo has also been one of our projects. Numbers in red were put on individuals for
identification, spread sheets circulated and as complete as possible identities,
names in Armenian and nicknames and relationships achieved or at least
attempted. All in all, the Korpehtsis
have fared perhaps better at a personal identity level in terms of preserving
their Old Armenia heritage than the people from many other villages. We have played a role in that and this makes
us feel better. We know our roots.
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