Remembering

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.  If you are like many people, you probably have no idea what this means.

According to History.com this is the explanation of this tragic historical event:

“In 1915, leaders of the Turkish government set in motion a plan to expel and massacre Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Though reports vary, most sources agree that there were about 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the massacre. By the early 1920s, when the massacres and deportations finally ended, some 1.5 million of Turkey’s Armenians were dead, with many more forcibly removed from the country. Today, most historians call this event a genocide–a premeditated and systematic campaign to exterminate an entire people. However, the Turkish government does not acknowledge the enormity or scope of these events. Despite pressure from Armenians and social justice advocates throughout the world, it is still illegal in Turkey to talk about what happened to Armenians during this era.

Armenia was an independent entity–at the beginning of the 4th century AD,  it became the first nation in the world to make Christianity its official religion–but for the most part, control of the region shifted from one empire to another. During the 15th century, Armenia was absorbed into the mighty Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman rulers, like most of their subjects, were Muslim. They permitted religious minorities like the Armenians to maintain some autonomy, but they also subjected Armenians, who they viewed as “infidels,” to unequal and unjust treatment. Christians had to pay higher taxes than Muslims, for example, and they had very few political and legal rights.

In 1908, a new government came to power in Turkey. A group of reformers who called themselves the “Young Turks” overthrew Sultan Abdul Hamid and established a more modern constitutional government. At first, the Armenians were hopeful that they would have an equal place in this new state, but they soon learned that what the nationalistic Young Turks wanted most of all was to “Turkify” the empire. According to this way of thinking, non-Turks–and especially Christian non-Turks–were a grave threat to the new state.

On April 24, 1915, the Armenian genocide began. That day, the Turkish government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals. After that, ordinary Armenians were turned out of their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water. Frequently, the marchers were stripped naked and forced to walk under the scorching sun until they dropped dead. People who stopped to rest were shot.

At the same time, the Young Turks created a “Special Organization,” which in turn organized “killing squads” or “butcher battalions” to carry out, as one officer put it, “the liquidation of the Christian elements.” These killing squads were often made up of murderers and other ex-convicts. They drowned people in rivers, threw them off cliffs, crucified them and burned them alive. In short order, the Turkish countryside was littered with Armenian corpses.

Records show that during this “Turkification”campaign government squads also kidnapped children, converted them to Islam and gave them to Turkish families. In some places, they raped women and forced them to join Turkish “harems” or serve as slaves. Muslim families moved into the homes of deported Armenians and seized their property.

In 1922, when the genocide was over, there were just 388,000 Armenians remaining in the Ottoman Empire.”

Outside of Armenia, the greater Los Angeles area is home to the largest Armenian population in the world. How did that happen?  America played an important role in caring for the survivors and in particular those orphaned in the genocide.  The then U.S. President, Calvin Coolidge, called for Americans to eat modestly at their Sunday dinner and send the money they saved to an organization called Near East Relief, designed to aid those survivors of the genocide who were in great need.  They were very successful, raising today’s equivalent of about $2 billion. Consequently, when they were able to flee, many Armenians came to America and found their way to Southern California and settled here.

As a young child I remember my grandmother saying often at meals that we should be grateful for all we had to eat and remember “the starving Armenians”.  I had no idea what this actually meant or who the “Armenians” were.  Later, as an adult living in the Pasadena area, some of our dearest friends and those of our children were the Armenian family members of the survivors of the genocide.

One such friend is a remarkable man, Steve Lazarian.  Steve is a successful businessman.  He and his wife Iris, have devoted their lives to helping those less fortunate.  Now in his nineties, Steve has continued to make trips to Armenia to help children in the orphanages there.  He and Iris have tirelessly raised support for those orphans and for the Armenian people who are still struggling to get by.

The children of genocide survivors, Steve and Iris could be angry and bitter about what their family was forced to endure.  But that is not the legacy they were given.  They are not hostile and angry about the treatment of those they loved.  They were taught instead to pray for their enemies.

What a remarkable testimony this is.  What a different world we would have if this is how we all lived.

Today there will be a commemorative march beginning in an area of Los Angeles known as Little Armenia.  But according to Ani Boyadjian, research and special collections manager at the Los Angeles Public Library, it is not meant to be an angry protest of a horrible event that most know little, if anything, about.

Boyadjian said she knows people will be upset that streets will be closed, and others will say the genocide happened 100 years ago, that it’s time to move on. But she said she will march to say “thank you”.

“If it wasn’t for America’s response, my grandparents would not have survived,” she said. “I would not have been born.”

So today we want to say to all our Armenian friends, “we remember with you and we are grateful for you”, especially Steve and Iris Lazarian and their family.  Your generous and forgiving spirit teaches us all more about love, joy and the best kind of abundant living.