William Saroyan

August 30, 2013 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

Prepared by the Armenian National Education Committee (ANEC)

 

Birth of William Saroyan (August 31, 1908)

William Saroyan was, without discussion, the most important name of Armenian origin in American literature and, in the 1930s and 1940s, one of its dominant names. For this reason, he became an indisputable name of iconic stature among Armenians in America and throughout theWilliamSaroyan world.

His parents, Armenag and Takoohi Saroyan, had come to New York in 1905 and after a short stint in Paterson, New Jersey, they settled in Fresno, California, where William was born. His father died in 1911, and Saroyan, along with his brother and sister, was placed in an orphanage in Oakland. In 1916 the family reunited in Fresno, where his mother Takoohi had already secured work at a cannery. He continued his education on his own, supporting himself with various odd jobs.

Saroyan’s first stories appeared in the 1930s, in the English page of Hairenik Daily and then in the Hairenik Weekly (today The Armenian Weekly). He made his breakthrough with the story “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze” in Story magazine (1934), which lent its title to his first book in 1935. Several collections followed; by 1939 he had published seven books and the optimist strain of his “Saroyanesque” prose, among the tribulations and trials of the Depression age, had established himself as a leading writer. Many of Saroyan’s stories were based on his childhood experiences among the Armenian American fruit growers of the San Joaquin Valley. My Name is Aram (1940) became an international bestseller and was translated into many languages. His play “The Time of His Life” won him the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award, which he accepted, and the Pulitzer Prize, which he rejected on the grounds that commerce should not judge the arts. It was adapted into a movie in 1948, starring James Cagney.

He had worked on the screenplay for the film “The Human Comedy,” but he was dismissed from the project. He then turned the script into a novel, which he published before the movie’s release, in 1943. The movie won him an Academy Award for Best Story in the same year. It turns out, then, that the movie was the source for the novel and not vice versa. The novel was the source for the homonymous musical of 1983.

Saroyan served in the Army during World War II and was posted to London in 1942. He narrowly avoided a court martial when his novel, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson, was seen as advocating pacifism.

Saroyan worked rapidly, hardly editing his text, and drinking and gambling away much of his earnings. This took a toll on his marriage with actress Carol Marcus (1924–2003), whom he married twice, from 1943-1949 and 1951-1952. They had two children, writer Aram Saroyan (1943) and actress Lucy Saroyan (1946-2003). After their divorce, Carol Marcus married actor Walter Matthau.

Interest in Saroyan’s novels declined after the war; their sentimentalism was harshly criticized. From 1958 onwards, Saroyan mainly resided in Paris. Since the 1950s he mainly published several volumes of memoirs and continued writing plays.

He visited Soviet Armenia for the first time in 1934. His interest for his roots never ceased, as evidenced in his writing. He visited Armenia two more times, in 1960 and 1978, and even visited the birthplace of his parents, Bitlis, in Western Armenia (1964).

Saroyan died in Fresno, of cancer, on May 18, 1981. Half of his ashes were buried in California and the other half was taken to Armenia, according to his will, and buried at Gomidas Pantheon in Yerevan. To celebrate his 100th anniversary, a statue of Saroyan was placed in downtown Yerevan.

 

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“Who, After All, Speaks Today . . .”

August 22, 2013 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY
Prepared by

the Armenian National Education Committee (ANEC)

 

 

Adolf Hitler’s Armenian Phrase:
“Who, After All, Speaks Today . . .”

(August 22, 1939)

Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had an early awareness of the Armenian Genocide. One of his closest friends and advisors had been Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter (1884-1923), who was German consul in Erzerum in 1915 and had documented the annihilation in several diplomatic reports. He would be killed literally at Hitler’s side during the Beer Hall putsch in Munich (October 1923).

Hitler’s first documented reference to Armenians as a people that had “degenerated” came a year before the ill-fated coup, in November 1922, in a secret meeting with Eduard Scharrer, a former consul-general from Stuttgart and publisher of the newspaper Münchner Neuest Nachrichten. According to Scharrer’s notes, Hitler said:

“A solution for the Jewish question must come. If it is solved reasonably, it will be best for both sides. But if it is not solved reasonably, there are only two possibilities: either the German Volk will degenerate to the level of the Armenians or the Levantines, or a bloody struggle will break out.”

Nine years later, Hitler gave two confidential interviews to Richard Breiting, editor of the Leipziger Neuester Nachrichten, a conservative newspaper, in May and June 1931. (Breiting, who was allowed to take short-hand notes, died in unclear circumstances, probably by the hand of the Gestapo, in 1937.) In the second interview, Hitler announced:

“We intend to introduce a great resettlement policy; we do not wish to go on treading on each other’s toes in Germany. In 1923 little Greece could resettle a million men. Think of the Biblical deportations and the massacres of the Middle Ages (Rosenberg refers to them) and remember the extermination of the Armenians. One eventually reaches the conclusion that masses of men are mere biological plasticine."

The third and most famous reference came on August 22, 1939, one week before the invasion in Poland and the beginning of World War II. Hitler gave two speeches to the supreme commanders and commanding generals at Obersalzberg, which lasted several hours. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the German Abwehr (military intelligence), surreptitiously took notes. The paragraph, included in the second speech, said (Lochner’s translation):

“Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter—with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It’s a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command—and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad—that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness—for the present only in the East—with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space [Lebensraum] which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

A copy of the speech was transmitted to American journalist Louis P. Lochner, who published the English version in his book What About Germany? (1942), while the German original was published for the first time in an émigré German newspaper in Santiago de Chile, Deutsche Blätter, in 1944.

Doubts about the authenticity of this copy (two other sets of notes surfaced, which were introduced by the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials, but did not contain the Armenian reference) have been frequently raised. The consistency of Hitler’s thinking between 1931 and 1939 and the logical deduction that there was no particular reason to manufacture the Armenian reference (Hitler’s thought and intent were clear, even if he had not used it) are enough evidence that the phrase was authentic. It remains a testament to the impunity of the Armenian Genocide in World War I that led to the Jewish Genocide in World War II.

 

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Megerdich Beshigtashlian

August 16, 2013 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY
Prepared by

the Armenian National Education Committee (ANEC)

Megerdich Beshigtashlian

(August 18, 1828)

Megerdich Beshigtashlian was a pioneering writer and public figure of Western Armenian society, considered the founder of modern lyric poetry among Armenians. He was born in Constantinople, and received his primary education at the school of the Mekhitarist Congregation in the suburb of Pera (today Beyoglu) from 1834-1839. He continued his studies at the Samuel-Moorat school of Padua, in Italy, until 1845. The atmosphere of the Italian liberation movement would greatly impact over his intellectual formation.

He returned to Constantinople and became a widely-sought teacher. He taught Armenian language and literature, as well as French in the Tarkmanchats, Loosavorchian, and Hripsimiants Schools. He was particularly successful in teaching the language to Armenian children who spoke foreign languages. For instance, since the late 1850s he was the Armenian teacher of Serpouhi Vahanian (1842-1901), who at first disdained the language, as she had grown speaking French. However, Beshigtashlian’s patient work engaged her student, who later would become a pioneering feminist writer in Armenian literature, Serpouhi Dussape (after marrying her French music teacher, Paul Dussape, in 1870).

Beshigtashlian is considered the founder of Western Armenian theater on a permanent basis. He organized a theater group in 1856, which started to stage plays in ashkharhapar (Modern Armenian). This was an important advance, as plays were performed in krapar (Classical Armenian), becoming an obstacle for popular success. He wrote various plays with historical subjects, seeking to awaken national feelings among the public. He also translated various pieces from French and Italian with similar subjects. He also wrote musical comedies.

Beshigtashlian was particularly active in the public sphere in the 1860s, with an important role in the preparation and approval of the National Constitution (1863). The writer also participated in the foundation of the Abnegated Society (Antznever Engerootioon), which functioned from 1860-1863 and was devoted to education, but also helped financially and morally the rebels of Zeytoon in 1862. He was also the driving force behind the Alumni Association of the Moorat-Raphaelian school between 1858 and 1868.

However, Beshigtashlian’s main contribution to Armenian literature was his poetry. His output was not very big, some 60 poems, but it was quite varied. His poetry, in Classical and Modern Armenian, touched subjects such as love, nature, and homeland. He wrote children’s poems, elegies, etcetera. He published his first poem in 1849. His two most famous poems, “We Are Brothers” and “Spring,” were later set to music. The first was a call of unity to Western Armenians, while the second was a romantic love song to the homeland. He wrote several poems dedicated to the rebellion of Zeytoon.

Beshigtashlian passed away at the age of 40, on November 29, 1868. He inaugurated a list of famous Armenian poets who died from the “romantic disease”: tuberculosis.

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Treaty of Sèvres

August 10, 2013 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

 

Prepared by
 the Armenian National Education Committee (ANEC)

Signature of the Treaty of Sèvres
 (August 10, 1920)

 

The victory of the Allies in World War I imposed the signature of a series of treaties to end the war and legalize the defeat of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria). The Peace Conference of Paris, which opened in January 1919, prepared a package of treaties. Four treaties were signed with Germany (Versailles, June 1919), Austria (Saint-Germain, September 1919), Bulgaria (Neuilly, November 1919), and Hungary (Trianon, June 1920). The fifth and last was with the Ottoman Empire.

Negotiations about the terms of the treaty with Turkey dragged on until mid-1920. They started at the Peace Conference, continued at the Conference of London (February 1920), and took definite shape only after the Prime Minister’s meeting at the San Remo Conference (April 1920). The delay was the result of the inability of the triumphant powers to come to an agreement, and in turn, this allowed the beginning and development of the Turkish national movement, which by the time of the signature of the Treaty of Sevres was seriously challenging the authority of the Ottoman government.

The treaty was signed in an exhibition room at the famous porcelain factory in Sèvres, outside Paris. It was signed by Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Belgium, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Armenia, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Hejaz, on one side, and the Ottoman Empire on the other. Avetis Aharonian, as President of the Delegation of the Republic, signed on behalf of Armenia.

The treaty liquidated the Ottoman Empire. In Asia, Turkey renounced sovereignty over Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine (including Jordan), which became British mandates; Syria (including Lebanon), which became a French mandate; and the kingdom of Hejaz (now Saudi Arabia). Turkey retained Anatolia but was to grant autonomy to Kurdistan. Armenia became a separate republic, and Smyrna (modern Izmir) and its environs were placed under Greek administration pending a plebiscite to determine its permanent status.

In Europe, Turkey ceded parts of Eastern Thrace and certain Aegean islands to Greece, and the Dodecanese and Rhodes to Italy, retaining only Constantinople (modern Istanbul) and its environs, including the Zone of the Straits (Dardanelles and Bosphorus), which was neutralized and internationalized.

Armenia was recognized de jure as an independent republic by Turkey. Both countries agreed to leave the delimitation of the borders in the provinces of Erzerum, Trabizond, Van, and Bitlis to the arbitral award of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, including his proposals for an outlet to the Black Sea for Armenia and the demilitarization of the border. (The award was presented to the Allied powers on November 22, 1920, and left to Armenia a territory of 90,000 square kilometers, which, including the actual territory of the independent republic, would become a total of 161,730 square kilometers.) The Armenian borders with Azerbaijan and Georgia would be resolved through direct negotiations among the sides. The Ottoman law of 1915 on abandoned property was declared illegal, while the Ottoman government ensured its cooperation to deliver war criminals, including people responsible for massacres, to military courts and to find and rescue people who had disappeared or been deprived of their liberty after November 1914.

The treaty was accepted by the government of Sultan Mehmed VI at Istanbul but was rejected by the rival nationalist government of Kemal Atatürk at Ankara. Atatürk’s separate treaty with the USSR and his subsequent victory over Greece during the “war of independence” forced the Allies to negotiate a new treaty in 1923 (Treaty of Lausanne), where the Treaty of Sevres was superseded. Nevertheless, Wilson’s award became law of the land, while the U.S. Congress never ratified the Treaty of Lausanne.

The Treaty of Sevres, despite having never been put into practice, remains grounds for Armenian territorial reclamations.

Posted in History, the Armenian National Education Committee (ANEC) | Tagged |

Birth of Kourken Mahari

August 2, 2013 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

 Prepared by the Armenian National Education Committee
(ANEC)

 Birth of Kourken Mahari

 (August 1, 1903)

 Modern Armenian literature had three major enemies: tuberculosis, Turkish genocide, and Stalinist repression. The so-called “second April 24” harvested the lives of many remarkable Armenian intellectuals and public figures between 1936 and 1938, who were shot, died in prison, or in exile. Many others suffered short or long years in prison, labor camps, internal exile, and were fortunate enough to survive until the death of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin when they returned.

 Poet and novelist Kourken Mahari (Ajemian) was born in Van. His father, Krikor Ajemian, was an important member of the Armenagan Party (the first Armenian political party, founded in Van in 1885). Mahari became an orphan in 1907, when his father was shot by his brother-in-law, an A.R.F. member, in a confusing incident. In 1915, after the heroic self-defense of Van during the genocide, the future writer migrated to Eastern Armenia with his family. They lost each other on the road of exile, and Mahari lived in orphanages in Dilijan and Yerevan until he found his family again.

 He published his first poems in the press during the first republic, and later, in the Soviet period, he studied at Yerevan State University. He published five collections of poetry and short stories between 1924 and 1931, but his fame in the 1930s was cemented by the first two books of his biographical trilogy, “Childhood” and “Adolescence” (1930). Meanwhile, he had married and had a son. He became a member of the Writers Union of Armenia in 1934.

 The wave of repression unleashed in Armenia after the assassination of Aghasi Khanjian in 1936 reached Mahari too. Trumped-up charges were brought against him and he was condemned to a ten-year exile from 1936-1946 in Siberia. After returning to Yerevan, in 1948 he was condemned, through new trumped-up charges, to life exile. In Siberia, he met Lithuanian student Antonina Povilaitite, who had also been condemned to life exile. They married and lived with the hope of change. Stalin died in 1953, and Mahari and his wife, together with their newly-born daughter, managed to return to Yerevan in 1954. Their daughter would die shortly thereafter, and they would later have a son.

 After seventeen years of exile, the writer returned to his homeland in bad health, but with the inner strength to continue his writing. He became one of the leading voices in the literary life of Armenia during the 1950s and 1960s. He published the third part of his trilogy, “On the Eve of Youth” (1956), a volume of poetry in 1959 and a collection of short stories, “The Voice of Silence” (1962), where he reflected the Siberian years.  Another Siberian memoir, “Barbed Wire in Flower,” was first published posthumously in the weekly “Nayiri” of Beirut (1971); it was published in Yerevan only in 1988. He received the title of Emeritus Cultural Activist of Armenia in 1965.

 Mahari published his most important book, the novel “Burning Orchards,” in 1966 (there is a translation in English), an account of Armenian life in Van before World War I, during the self-defense of the city, and afterwards. It created a lively controversy because of some of his views, and he was forced to rewrite it; the second version was published in 1979 in a curtailed form. The final edition was only published in 2004, edited by Grigor Achemyan, Mahari’s eldest son, who has published several unpublished volumes and has prepared an edition of unpublished works in thirteen volumes.

 Kourken Mahari passed away in Palanga (Lithuania), on June 17, 1969, and was buried in Yerevan. He concluded one of his autobiographical works with a characteristic paragraph: “[If] the terrible and omnipotent Jehovah entered this moment, sat in front of me, lit a cigarette and said: ‘I’m giving you a second life; trace the path of your second life from cradle to tomb, as you wish, and your wish will be accomplished . . . How would you like to live?,’ I would answer him, without hesitation: ‘Exactly as I lived it.’

 

 

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Treaty of Lausanne

July 18, 2013 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

Prepared by the Armenian National Education Committee
(ANEC)

July 24, 1923: Signature of the Treaty of Lausanne

 

It has been frequently said that the Treaty of Lausanne marked the burial of the Armenian Cause, even though neither Armenia nor Armenians were mentioned there.

This peace treaty signed in the Swiss city officially ended the state of war that had existed between Turkey and Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, Romania, and Serbia (which had become the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after 1918) since the onset of World War I. It replaced the Treaty of Sèvres (August 10, 1920), which had been signed between all those parties and the Ottoman Empire but had been rejected by the Turkish national movement led by Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), as a reaction to the defeat of Turkey and the significant loss of territories. After defeating the Republic of Armenia in the September-November 1920 war and provoking the loss of its independence under a Soviet regime, crushing Greece in the so-called “war of independence,” achieving the ethnic cleansing of Greeks and Armenians from Asia Minor and Cilicia, and abolishing the sultanate in November 1922, the forthcoming Republic of Turkey—proclaimed in October 1923—was able to dictate favorable terms to the Allies.

The Treaty of Lausanne was signed as an outcome to the Conference of Lausanne (November 1922-February 1923, April-July 1923). It ended the conflict and defined the borders of the modern Turkish state except for its border with Iraq. Turkey gave up all claims to the remainder of the Ottoman Empire and in return the Allies recognized Turkish sovereignty within its new borders. The treaty came into force in August 1924. Interestingly, the U.S. Senate refused to ratify it in 1927.

The treaty, composed of 143 articles, led to the international recognition of the sovereignty of the new Republic of Turkey as the successor state of the defunct Ottoman Empire. From a legal standpoint, it only partially replaced the Treaty of Sevres with new clauses regarding Eastern Tracia (the area of European Turkey) and the Greek-Turkish frontiers. The lobby of both the Delegation of the Republic of Armenia, chaired by Avetis Aharonian, and the Armenian National Delegation, presided by Boghos Nubar pasha, was unable to maintain the clauses of the Treaty of Sevres relative to Armenia. However, the Treaty of Lausanne stayed silent about the section on Armenia of the Treaty of Sèvres, which was regulated by the arbitral award of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in November 1920. Article 16 of the Treaty of Lausanne established:

“Turkey hereby renounces all rights and title whatsoever over or respecting the territories situated outside the frontiers laid down in the present Treaty and the islands other than those over which her sovereignty is recognised by the said Treaty, the future of these territories and islands being settled or to be settled by the parties concerned.

“The provisions of the present Article do not prejudice any special arrangements arising from neighbourly relations which have been or may be concluded between Turkey and any limitrophe countries.”

The Treaty of Lausanne also contained a section (articles 37 to 45) about the protection of the rights of minorities (Moslem and non-Moslem) in the Republic of Turkey. Their continuous and documented violation over the decades became a highlight of modern Turkey and led to the migration of most remaining members of those minorities, particularly Greeks and Armenians among others.

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‘We are third-class citizens,’

June 29, 2013 by admin

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By Lauren Gelfond Feldinger | 09:23 29.06.13 |


‘We are third-class citizens,’

says Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem

 

‘If Israel recognizes the Armenian genocide it won’t be the end of the world,’ says the new head of the Armenian Church in Jerusalem, which dates back to the 4th century. It might even help making the community feel less cut off from the rest of the city and country.

On a recent afternoon in Jerusalem’s Old City, the Armenian Patriarchate’s new leader was treated as royalty. Black-robed priests and pilgrims young and old, visiting from Armenia, snapped photos and grinned excitedly, as they waited in line to kiss Archbishop Nayrhan Manougian’s hand during a reception.

Elected the 97th Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem in January, Manougian is now one of the top Armenian Christian leaders worldwide, in a community scattered over the globe. In Jerusalem, where the Armenian Christian presence dates back almost 1,700 years, he is also one of the most powerful Christian clerics. The Armenian patriarch shares oversight at the ancient Christian holy sites with the Greek Orthodox and Latin ‏(Roman Catholic‏) patriarchs.

But despite the historical presence, the tiny Old City Armenian community often feels sidelined, Manougian told Haaretz. As the number of community members relentlessly shrinks, and is now only a few hundred, he worries if there will be future generations. Day-to-day life, he says, is also a balancing act, finding a place between the powerful Jewish Israeli and Muslim Palestinian communities. Israeli scholars echo the same concerns.

At the core of Armenian insecurities are successive Israeli governments that have ruled over them since 1967 but never officially acknowledged the 1915 Armenian genocide or its estimated 1.5 million deaths by Ottoman Turkish forces.

Many of Jerusalem’s Armenians, including Manougian, are the children and grandchildren of the survivors of the genocide. His father fled Armenia through the desert that became known as the “death fields,” as he headed to the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. Born in Aleppo in 1948 and orphaned by age 5, Manougian grew up in that city, with poor relatives and the stories of the survivors around him. After seminary and ordination, serving Armenian Christians took him from Lebanon, across Europe and the United States, and to Haifa, Jaffa and finally in 1998, to Jerusalem.

Here, Armenians believe that Israel’s silence on the events of 1915 is based on maintaining favor with Turkey. “If you ask me, [recognizing the genocide] is what they have to do,” said Manougian of Israel. “What if they accept it? It won’t be the end of the world.”

Manougian also felt marginalized by Israel, while waiting five months for the state to officially recognize his title. Manougian was elected after the 2012 death of Patriarch Torkom Manoogian. Palestinian and Jordanian leaders recognized him days after the January election. Israel did not do so until June 23.

Initially, the patriarchate postponed Manougian’s inauguration, waiting for Israel to reorganize the government following its January 22 elections. But as months passed and the recognition application continued to be ignored, the patriarchate on June 4 held the inauguration anyway.

There is no law requiring it, but sending a formal letter of recognition is a Holy Land tradition dating to the Ottoman era, Manougian said. “The first [Israeli] letter was signed by Ben-Gurion.”

The Prime Minister’s spokesperson did not give a reason for the delay. But Dr. Amnon Ramon, a Hebrew University and Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies expert on local Christians, said that his impression was that the delay was caused by bureaucracy and lack of priority. In researching his 2012 book, “Christians and Christianity in the Jewish State” ‏(in Hebrew, published by the JIIS‏), he found that Israel’s relations with Christians and church institutions are among the lowest priorities in policy and practice of the local and national government bodies, he said.

While Ramon works on improving government relations with Christians, he also encourages Christians, including Armenians, not to allow caution to stop them from lobbying for their own needs. Christians “have to look at the Israeli side, the Palestinian side, be very cautious, and sometimes this leads them to inaction.”

Old City Armenians live more closely with the Palestinians and say their relations with them are better than with official Israel or some of their Jewish neighbors. Bishop Aris Shirvanian says that “they don’t spit on us,” referring to a phenomenon sometimes encountered by Christian clergy in the Old City.

“We have no legal problems with them,” said Bishop Aris Shirvanian. But the Palestinians have also not recognized the Armenian genocide. “The whole of the Islamic countries do not recognize the genocide because Turks are Muslims,” he said.

Being Christian in Jerusalem is complicated, he added. “When you are dealing with two sides [Israelis and Palestinians], you have to not take one side against the other.”

 

First to adopt Christianity

Armenians have a long, continuous presence in the city, from at least the fourth century, after Armenia was the first nation in 301 C.E. to adopt Christianity as its official faith, said Yoav Loeff, a Hebrew University teacher of Armenian language and history.

Until World War I, most of the Armenians here were monks or other church people. After the war, the numbers in Jerusalem grew, as Armenians fled the genocide and developed a vibrant lay community here. There were also artisans who came to the city in 1919 under the patronage of the British Mandate to renovate the vividly decorated ceramic tiles on the Dome of the Rock. Their craft of hand-painting tiles and ceramics deeply influenced Jerusalem’s artistic heritage. This can be seen still today on signs and architectural facades, and in the pottery in Israeli and Palestinian homes. ‏The patriarchate also opened a photography studio here in the 1850s, and the period portraits done by some of its photographers are still renowned.‏

Until the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, local Armenians lived mostly in Jerusalem, with some in Haifa, Jaffa, Lod, Ramle and Ramallah too, numbering about 25,000 in total, Manougian says. While the majority fled the war to surrounding areas − Ramallah, Jordan, Lebanon − a few thousand ended up in the Old City’s Armenian Quarter. But with growing economic and political tensions and lack of opportunities, most left over the years.

There are no official statistics, but historians estimate that there are some 3,000 people of Armenian descent in Israel, but most do not identify with the community, coming from the former Soviet Union and having married Jews.

The community’s center of life today is in the Armenian Quarter, which has an elementary school, middle school, high school, a seminary, the 12th-century St. James Cathedral, the Church of the Holy Archangels, and the Armenian manuscript library. But barely 400 Armenians live there now, down from around 1,500 in 1967, said Manougian.

“I’m afraid that if things go on like this, there won’t be any Christians left in this country,” he said, alluding to the wider phenomenon of an ongoing exodus of Christians of all denominations from the Holy Land. The city and state are not helping Armenians to flourish, he added. “Nobody knows anything about Armenia or Armenians … It’s not even on the list of their [concerns]. We don’t belong to the community − they don’t [accept] us as members. We are third-class citizens.”

Fueling this feeling are occasional spitting incidents. On June 19, for example, an Orthodox Jewish man spat at the feet of patriarch Manougian, during a procession of senior church clergy as they walked toward the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Bishop Shirvanian, who was present, said that such spitting incidents have declined during the past year, but “you never know when it will happen while walking down the street …. Most Jews are respectful, but some of the ultra-Orthodox are obstinately spitting.”

A spokesperson for the Jerusalem police spokesperson said that it received two spitting complaints from the Armenians this year. A 16-year-old and an adult were both arrested and held for several hours. “We only know about it if a complaint is filed;” added the spokesperson. “We always offer [church] processions a police escort, because of this problem.”

Freedom of movement in and out of the Old City is also unpredictable. Nestled inside Jerusalem’s Old City walls, the Armenian Quarter relies on the Jaffa Gate for access to the rest of the city.

But the city closes the gate to vehicular traffic for several hours at a time on more than 40 days a year, during large events like the recent light festival and car races, church officials say. On June 16, the Latin Patriarchate issued a statement on behalf of Old City residents, pilgrims, churches and patriarchates, which said that Jaffa Gate provides “the only access to our patriarchates, churches and convents. Instead of finding solutions to these interruptions that cause great inconvenience and disruption, the situation has gone from bad to worse.”
In recent weeks, Manougian said he had to get a police permit to travel through Jaffa Gate on the Feast of Ascension, cancel plans to attend an event at a Tel Aviv embassy, and console pilgrims denied access to the Old City holy sites, because of closures. The municipality, he said, “should have called the heads of the communities and asked them, ‘What do you think?’ Instead, they just announce and do it.”

A municipal spokesperson said that access is closed to residential vehicles only during certain hours announced in advance, during certain city festivals − such as the two days of the Formula One events and the nine days of the recent light festival. Additionally, there are sometimes temporary closures of Old City Gates on holy days of the city’s various religious groups. At those times, he said, residents with cars can use different gates.

In dealing with the Israel’s Interior Ministry, too, a frustrated patriarchate has to wait “months, or years,” says Manougian, to get visas to bring Armenians to study or teach at the quarter’s schools and seminary. Priests ordained for life to serve the Jerusalem patriarchate who do get visas find themselves having to return yearly to the Interior Ministry to renew them. Father Pakrad Derjekian, a patriarchate priest for 32 years, says that when he applied for Jerusalem residency, he was told that he had been living in the city for so many years on visas with no problem, so he should continue. Clerics are “most of the time refused for Jerusalem residency,” he said. “So we stopped applying.”

Christians of all denominations have problems getting visas to study and teach here, and those who have long-term assignments have trouble getting Jerusalem residency, confirmed Christianity researcher Yisca Harani.

There are even “Christian hospital directors and staff who dedicate their entire life to charity in state-recognized health institutions [who] are no more than temporary visa holders,” she said.

 

Improving dialogue

Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Naomi Tsur, who attended Manougian’s June 4 inauguration, said that she doesn’t think non-resident visa procedures for the capital are stricter than in other countries. Tsur says she considers improving dialogue between Jerusalem’s communities an important part of her job. A policeman was appointed liaison between Old City Christians and Muslims and the force, and there is also a liaison in the mayor’s office for minority communities, she said.

Tsur denied that City Hall sidelines the community. The mayor’s office meets often with Armenians, includes them in events, such as the recent “Green Pilgrimage Symposium,” and assists them with projects, she said.

However, she says, when it comes to closing certain thoroughfares during festivals that tens of thousands of people will enjoy, “you can’t please everyone all the time.”

“Of all the Christian communities in Jerusalem, the relationship of the municipality with the Armenian one is extremely positive,” Tsur says. “Their contributions to the city are immense.”

The Hebrew University’s Amnon Ramon says that while Israel does have many bodies dealing with Christians − police, Interior Ministry, Foreign Ministry, municipality − he doesn’t think the authorities show sufficient understanding in the way they serve the Christian communities. Israel, he says, ends up sidelining them for complex reasons: ignorance and lack of information, a memory of poor Jewish-Christian relations historically, ultra-Orthodox influence, the absence of a single body to coordinate Christian concerns, and especially a national agenda already overburdened with security, social and economic problems.

To help improve the situation, Ramon and other researchers and organizations like the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations, an NGO, bring members of Israeli state and city factions to meet Christians; he sees the benefits as being mutual.

Reflecting on Israel’s relationship with Christians in general and Armenians in particular, Manougian shrugs.

“I don’t know what [Israel] thinks. I feel that they could care less about minorities. Maybe in the back of their minds they are trying to diminish our numbers so there won’t be Armenians. Maybe? I don’t know.”

Asked to sum up in one word how Armenians here feel, Manougian replies, “unimportant.”

The Hebrew University’s Yoav Loeff, who is close to the Armenian community, speculated that, for starters, “If Israel would recognize the genocide, Armenians would feel better, because it’s the right thing to do from the moral point of view.”

 

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Hovhannes Abelian

June 29, 2013 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

Prepared by the Armenian National Education Committee (ANEC)

 

Death of Hovhannes Abelian (July 1, 1936)

The three Abelian brothers, originally from Shamakha (current Azerbaijan), became noteworthy personalities in different aspects of Armenian culture and history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The elder brother, Nerses (1855-1933), an engineer by trade, was among the students who founded the Union of Patriots (1882) in Moscow, one of the first Armenian political groups in the Russian Empire. The middle brother, Alexander (1858-1940), was a prolific playwright, and the younger one, Hovhannes, turned to be one of the stars of Armenian theater for more than fifty years.

Hovhannes Abelian was born in 1865 in Shamakha. After the violent earthquake of 1872, most of the Armenian population of the city started to move to Baku, which was coincidental to the development of this city as a world-known oil center.  The young Hovhannes gave his first steps on the stage in 1882, in a Russian group. He moved to Tiflis (Tbilisi), the main Armenian cultural center of the Caucasus, in 1886 and entered the playgroup of the Armenian DramaHovhannes Abeliantic Club. He lived and played between Tiflis and Baku for the next two decades, and became an unsurpassed interpreter of the works of famous playwright Shirvazante (Alexander Movsisian, 1858-1935), who incidentally was his cousin. He played some 300 roles in his long career, including plays by Gabriel Sundukian, Levon Shant, and Hagop Baronian, but also works by Russian and European playwrights, from Nikolai Gogol to William Shakespeare.

In 1908 Abelian joined forces with another famous Armenian actor, Armen Armenian (1871-1965), brother of theater director and playwright Kaspar Ipekian (the founder of the Hamazkayin theater group in Lebanon, 1883-1952). The Abelian-Armenian Theater Group, with several very important names in the cast, started a three-year long tour of Armenian cities and communities in Eastern Armenia, the Caucasus, Western Armenia, Iran, and Turkey. In 1909 it went to Constantinople and another famous actor, Hovhannes Zarifian (1879-1936), joined them.  After several performances in the Ottoman capital, following the cultural revival brought by the restoration of the Ottoman Constitution in 1908, the Abelian-Armenian-Zarifian Theater Group divided into three branches, which performed in Smyrna (Izmir), Anatolia, and the third one, led by Abelian and Zarifian, in Izmit, Bardizag, Adapazar, Eskishehir, and Rodosto (Tekirdag). They ended their run in 1911, with performances in Baku, Nor Nakhichevan, and Moscow.

During the 1910s, Abelian—who was equally qualified to play in Armenian and Russian productions—continued his professional activities and performed in the Caucasus, but also in Moscow and Petersburg, as well as Iran and Central Asia. He left the Caucasus in September 1920 and moved abroad with his family. For the next three years, he performed in Constantinople, Smyrna, Cairo, Alexandria, Berlin, (where he played “Othello” with a German group, performing his signature role of Othello in Armenian), Paris, Brussels, and London. He arrived in the United States in 1923 and performed in many communities on the East Coast and the Midwest (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Chicago) for the next two years.

However, Abelian’s aim was not to stay abroad. In 1925 he accepted an invitation of the government of Soviet Armenia and settled in Yerevan. He was conferred with the title of Popular Artist of the Republic in 1925 and entered the First Theater (now the Sundukian Theater). He would continue to play with the same enthusiasm and talent of his younger years until his death on the stage, in Yerevan, at the age of 71. The dramatic theater of Vanadzor, the third city of Armenia, bears his name.

 

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ARTEM ALIKHANIAN

June 20, 2013 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

Prepared by the Armenian National Education Committee (ANEC)

 

BIRTH OF ARTEM ALIKHANIAN (June 24, 1908)

Artem (Russian Artyom) Alikhanian, regarded as the father of Armenian physics, was born in the historical Armenian city of Gandzak (Elizavetpol during the Russian Empire, and now Ganja, in Azerbaijan). He did not attend school regularly, but was mostly schooled at home. Later, he received an external degree from school Nr. 100 of Tiflis.

In 1930, before he graduated from Leningrad State University, he became a staff member at the Physico-Technical Institute of Leningrad (nowadays St. Petersburg), working together with his elder brother Abraham Alikhanov (Alikhanian, 1904-1970). The Alikhanian brothers, together with Piotr Kapitsa, Lev Landau, Igor Kurchatov, and others, have been credited with laying the foundations of nuclear physics in the Soviet Union.

During the siege of Leningrad by the German army in World War II, Artem Alikhanian and some of his colleagues were excused from full-time defense tasks in order to work on the design of a synchrocyclotron, the accelerator of particles eventually constructed in 1955. The Alikhanian brothers, who were not members of the Communist Party, received the USSR State Prize in 1943. They started a scientific mission on Mount Arakadz, the highest peak of the Republic of Armenia, and researched the third (proton) component of cosmic rays. They founded a cosmic ray station at an altitude of 3250 meters, and participated both in the foundation of the Armenian SSR Academy of Sciences (now National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia) and the Yerevan Physics Institute in 1943. Abraham Alikhanov—who founded the first nuclear reactor of the USSR in 1949—went on to found and direct the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics in Moscow, which he headed until 1968.

The brothers’ findings deserved them the USSR State Prize for the second time in 1948 (Alikhanov would win it alone for the third time in 1953). They initiated the creation of the Yerevan Synchrotron in 1956, together with astrophysicist Victor Hampartsumian.

Artem Alikhanian promoted the training of young physicists and from 1961 to 1975 organized and directed the International Schools of High Energy Physics at Nor-Ampert. A staunch supporter of the international co-operation of scientists, his fidelity to science, his personality, and his great erudition captivated everyone. In 1965 he was invited by Harvard University to give the Loeb and Lee lectures in Physics, and he became the first Loeb professor of Harvard University from Europe. He founded the chair of Nuclear Physics in the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute and was a professor at Yerevan State University. He received the Lenin Prize in 1970, together with his colleagues, for the work on wide-gap track spark chambers.

In 1966, director Frunze Dovlatian filmed “Hello, It’s Me!” (Բարեւ, ես եմ, Parev, Yes Em), a drama based on the life of Alikhanian (the main character is a physicist called Artyom Manvelian who has founded a cosmology laboratory at Mount Arakads). The film was nominated to the Golden Palm of the Cannes Film Festival of 1966 and awarded the State Prize of Armenia in 1967, the same year when Alikhanian obtained the title of Honored Scientist of the Armenian SSR in recognition of his scientific achievements and contributions.

Alikhanian resigned from his position at Yerevan Physics Institute in 1973 and left Yerevan, after conflicts with very high level Soviet statesmen. He passed away in Moscow on February 25, 1978. The Physics Institute was named after him, and a street in Yerevan has been named after the Alikhanian brothers. In 2010 the government of Armenia decided to rename the Institute as Artem Alikhanian National Scientific Laboratory.

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Birth of Yervant Kochar (June 15, 1899)

June 13, 2013 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

Prepared by the Armenian National Education Committee (ANEC)

 

Birth of Yervant Kochar (June 15, 1899)

          Either in photographs or personally, every Armenian has seen at least once the statues of David of Sassoun and Vartan Mamigonian in Yerevan. These are among the most recognizable symbols of the city—the David of Sassoun statue has transcended to become a national symbol—and are the work of one of the most remarkable Armenian artists of the twentieth century: Yervant Kochar. Kochar

Yervant Kochar (Kocharian) was born in Tiflis (Tbilisi, Georgia) in 1899. He graduated from the Nersisian Lyceum in 1918 and in the meantime (1915-1918) studied in the O. Schmerling School (Art School of the Caucasus Association for the Promotion of Fine Arts).  After a year at the State Free Art Studio of Moscow, he returned to Tiflis in 1919 and participated in his first exhibition, the second fall show of Georgian painters in the same year. He received a diploma of professor of fine arts and technical studies from the Soviet Georgian government in 1921, and in 1922 he left to study abroad. He first sojourned in Constantinople and then in Venice; he had exhibitions in both cities. He settled in Paris by 1923, where his art enjoyed a good reception. His participation in the Salon of the Independents in 1928 was accompanied with scandal: two of his works were vandalized, and the press printed sympathetic echoes. Those works were the first examples of his new direction, “Painting in Space,” also called tri-dimensional painting. He gave his first solo exhibition in the same year. In an international exhibition, “Panorama of Contemporary Art,” also held in Paris (1929), Kochar presented his works, along with avant-garde artists such as Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Robert Delaunay, Georges Braque, Joan Miró, and others. He participated in exhibitions of French painters in Prague, Brno, Bratislava, New York, and Brussels (1935), and London (1936). Polish-French art critic Waldemar-George (1893-1970) defined his painting in the following terms: “The dimensional painting of Kochar is one of the conquests of modern art, as significant as the pure forms of Brâncuşi and the structures of Picasso and Braque . . . The dimensional painting has crushed the boundaries of sculpture and one-dimensional painting. It has reformed the visual laws, opening a third way before painters and sculptors. It is about time to tribute honors to Kochar the creator, which he truly deserves.”SasountsiTavit

Kochar was a well-known artist in French circles in 1936 when he decided, surprisingly, to repatriate to Soviet Armenia for good. However, his innovative art was not well-received by the regime, particularly in Stalinist times. He was charged with formalism, which was something tantamount to “enemy of the people,” the standard accusation that cost prison and exile to Siberia for many. He even was imprisoned on politically motivated charges between 1941 and 1943, but was eventually freed thanks to the intervention of two of his school friends, Anastas Migoyan and architect Garo Halabian. He married scholar Manig Mkrtchyan (1913-1984) and had two sons. Over the years, Kochar created graphic works, plaster busts, statues, and designs for theatrical plays. The political “thaw” after the denunciation of Stalin’s crimes in 1956 by Soviet strongman Nikita Khruschev helped him to achieve actual recognition. He created the statue of David of Sassoun in 1959, which was placed at the square of the Yerevan railway station, and won the State Prize of Armenia in 1967. He said: “Whatever you have seen at the studio, I do it myself. And this [the statue of David of Sassoun] is for Caesar. However, I pay Caesar with pure gold.”
VArtanMamigonian

            His first solo exhibition in Yerevan, after thirty years, was held in 1965; other solo exhibitions followed in 1971 and 1978. His works were also exhibited in Moscow (1973) and Baku and Tbilisi (1974). He never traveled outside the Soviet Union, but his collected works were exhibited in Paris (1945 and 1966). He earned recognitions such as Emeritus Artist of Armenia (1956), People’s Artist of Armenia (1965), Soviet Order of Red Banner (1971), and People’s Artist of the Soviet Union in 1976. He created “The Eagle of Zvartnotz” (1955), the obelisk-type monument set at the entrance of the ruins of the church of Zvartnotz, near Holy Etchmiadzin. Some of his most important paintings of his last years were “Extasis” (1960), “The Disaster of War” (1962), and “The Muse of Cybernetics” (1972). His major last work, the statue of Vartan Mamigonian, was inaugurated in 1975 on Khanjian Street, near the actual location of the open-market Vernissage.

Yervant Kochar passed away in Yerevan on January 22, 1979. Five years later, a museum dedicated to his art opened near Yerevan’s Cascade. A street in the city bears his name, as well as the art school of the city of Hraztan.

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