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A flight from Armenia
Story of survival told with pride and some sadness
Kourken Kulegian was 5 years old in 1915 when he and his family fled his village in Armenia to escape war. It took him, his mother, and several members of his extended family a grueling month to make it over the border to Baghdad.
One of his most vivid memories is of trying to cross a river running through mountains, with thousands of fellow Armenians.
''We started crossing the river. It was so powerful. They was trying to cross with the carriages. The horses and buggies, they couldn't go through. It was too powerful. The people, it wiped out everybody. ... There was no way to turn back,'' Kulegian said recently in an interview at his Watertown home.
Snipers perched in the mountains shot at them as they tried to cross the river, he said, but his uncle got the family through alive. ''They put me on [an] ox. From that noise, she went crazy, hit me on some big rock.''
An old man cared for his broken arm, he said, but then asked Kulegian's uncle to repay him with a mercy killing: The old man wanted his son killed, to prevent a more torturous death at the hands of the enemy.
''His son was wounded, was bleeding, 24 years old. He begged my uncle to
shoot him. If they don't, the Turks are going to come down and shoot him.
...
My uncle, he didn't want to shoot him; he couldn't do it.'' The father got
mad [at] my uncle.''
Now 90 years old, Kulegian is a survivor of the Armenian massacres, in which up to 1.5 million Armenians were murdered or died during mass deportations by the Ottoman Turks during World War I. Turkey has denied that what happened was genocide, as Armenians contend, and maintains that the number of fatalities is exaggerated.
The Armenian National Committee of America continues to lobby to gain recognition of the killings as genocide, from not only the US government, but also local and state governments. Every year in April, communities across the country issue proclamations commemorating the events that began around April 24, 1915, when Armenian intellectual, religious, and political leaders were rounded up and killed.
Many states have passed resolutions, and Massachusetts is once again expected to issue its annual proclamation honoring April 24 as Armenian Martyrs' Day, according to the Armenian National Committee of Eastern Massachusetts.
Although Congress has passed resolutions of support in the past, activists were disappointed last year when congressional leaders, at the urging of President Bill Clinton, abandoned a resolution recognizing the killings as genocide because of fears that such action could have long-term repercussions on relations between Turkey and the United States. Twice in recent years, French lawmakers have voted to recognize the killings as genocide, most recently in January. Even local Armenians want to share in that faraway acknowledgment, as evidenced by two Boston events this month titled ''Thank You France,'' one of which will be held at the State House.
Events to commemorate the Armenian massacres are held every April in major cities, including Washington, D.C.
Grace Kehetian Kulegian, Kourken Kulegian's daughter-in-law, won't send her children to school on April 24. Many Armenian businesses will be closed in observance, she said, and churches will hold special services, which her family will attend.
Kulegian also talks to her children about what her family went through. Her mother's mother was raised in an orphanage and her mother's father was left for dead after the Turks tried to kill him, she said.
''This is something that binds us all together. I cannot imagine that there is any Armenian who is not touched in some way by the genocide,'' she said. ''My father used to come home and ask why don't we have big family gatherings. My grandmother looked at him and told him, `We don't have any. They're all dead.'''
They don't confine their remembrance to April 24, Kulegian said. Her sons go to visit their grandfather, Kourken Kulegian, at least once a week, and he tells them stories about his life and travels. ''We want them to recognize how strong of a heritage that we come from,'' said their mother.
Their grandfather could tell them about the farm his family had in Armenia, about the fruit trees and wheat fields and winery, which he never saw again after 1915. Kulegian recalls watching his grandfather make wine as if he can see the wine press right there in his living room. He can look across the century and see his grandfather putting the grapes in and watching the juice come out, even summoning up the tall clay barrels used to hold the wine.
Tatul Sonentz-Papazian has also worked with the Armenian National Committee of America to win broader recognition for the mass killings. ''The fact that the genocide happened has been proven by many historians. The problem is mostly political,'' he said. ''When you kill a million and a half people in a very short time, in one way or another, it cannot be disorganized or just something that happened during war.''
The word genocide was coined after World War II. If the international community could agree that what happened to Armenians was a planned extermination of an ethnic group, a genocide, the government of Turkey would be responsible and be expected to pay reparations to survivors, said Sonentz-Papazian. It is important to get the United States to recognize it, because that would put pressure on Turkey to follow suit, he said.
The battle for recognition is waged on smaller fronts, too. Locally, the Armenian community has tried for years to get The Boston Globe to change the way it writes about what happened to Armenians during World War I. The Globe's policy is to use the word ''massacre'' instead of ''genocide'' unless it can be attributed to a source.
''Every time a newspaper or the news media uses the word `alleged' that's like an insult, a slap in the face,'' Sonentz-Papazian said. ''Can you imagine someone saying `the alleged Holocaust,' the pain that would cause?''
The third front for Armenian activists, in addition to governments and the media, is academia. There, scholars can be found on both sides of the argument, although Armenian-Americans insist the evidence is on their side.
Henry Theriault, who is of Armenian descent, is an assistant professor of philosophy at Worcester State College, and teaches courses on genocide and denial. Recognition of the Armenian massacres as genocide is important, he said, to prevent future atrocities, to improve current relations between Turkey and Armenia, and to allow the Armenian community worldwide to heal.
Muslim Turks were worried that Armenians, as a strong Christian minority, could never be part of a unified state, said Theriault. The weight of the evidence showing that what happened was planned and carried out as a ''race extermination'' has allowed the Armenian killings to be included in research among other instances of genocide, he said. As a recent example, he points to the inclusion of the killings in the ''Encyclopedia of Genocide'' published last year.
For Kourken Kulegian, what Armenians endured during World War I isn't something to be debated by legislators or academics or journalists - it's part of a personal history that saw his family ripped apart.
His brother died in Yerevan from contaminated water, he said, before his family set out for Baghdad. Kulegian didn't meet his father until he was 18 years old, because he was sent to the United States just before Kulegian was born. He recalled that meeting his father, just after he got off the boat that brought him to Providence, was like meeting a stranger.
''He says, `Come over here, have a cup of coffee.'
`What's that?' I said. So the first time I have a cup of coffee, [it] tastes pretty good.''
Kulegian is a retired mechanic and World War II veteran. He remains composed
as he tells his story, if a little sad. But by the end of the interview,
what shows through most clearly is pride and maybe a bit of amazement:
''Everything I've been through in my life - and I'm still alive.''
Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News Archives