On Sunday night, June 13, 1915, Clara Childs Richmond, an American missionary in Talas, Turkey, could not sleep. As she lay awake in her hilltop bedroom—which had a sweeping view of the town below—she suddenly saw lanterns flashing and heard the loud voices of Ottoman provincial police.
They had come to arrest the prominent Armenian men of Talas—37 of them in that sweep.
Childs Richmond in a testimonial recalled the lanterns going house to house, the women and children screaming as their husbands and fathers were taken.
One of the men arrested that night was Boghos Haroutounian, steward of the American missionary hospital of Talas. Also arrested around that time was Haig Haroutounian, the hospital pharmacist.
Haig was my grandfather. Boghos was his brother. Their crime was being Armenian.
If I weave together the testimonies of American witnesses like Childs Richmond and the family stories I heard growing up, I can piece together what happened.
Boghos and Haig were taken to a prison in Cesarea, now called Kayseri. There, they promised each other that, if either of them got out alive, he would take care of the family. Their mother was an elderly widow. Boghos was married and had six children. Haig, the younger brother, was engaged to my future grandmother, Sima.
Within days, Boghos was taken out and shot. His clothes turned up later for sale in a nearby town. Haig was tortured but eventually released, thanks to the intervention of American and Turkish friends.
My grandfather kept his promise. He took care of the family and eventually managed to resettle them in Beirut, Lebanon.
But an estimated 1.5 million Armenians did not survive that time. They died by massacre and starvation, fire and disease. When Raphael Lemkin coined the word “genocide” during World War II, he recalled the destruction of Ottoman Armenians. Lemkin was a Jewish lawyer from Poland who lost most of his family in the Holocaust. He wanted a way to identify and prevent a recurring crime with no name.
Today, the organization Genocide Watch identifies Ten Stages of Genocide. The 10th stage is denial. For more than a century, Turkey has denied the Armenian genocide. The United States for years inched toward recognition through congressional resolutions. President Ronald Reagan in 1981 referred to the “Armenian genocide” in a statement about the Holocaust. But, concerned about NATO bases—and cowed by Turkish threats of non-cooperation—no American president has dared to officially apply the “G” word to the destruction of my people.
Until Joe Biden did on April 24.
“Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring,” Biden’s White House Statement reads. “We honor their story. We see that pain. We affirm the history.”
Finally, truth acknowledged. I feel such relief.
I know a geopolitical calculus impacted the words and their timing, but I also believe Biden followed a moral imperative. The statement matters to me. It contradicts my invisibility, the world’s indifference to my family’s trauma.
But why should it matter to you?
You live in a world where genocide continues. The Rohingya of Myanmar, Yazidis in Syria, the Uyghur of China, and many others remain under assault. The Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh in the Caucasus very recently have lost life and home. Perhaps you are a member of a group that has been or currently is targeted.
Consider again the 10 stages of genocide. They are not linear; they can occur simultaneously. They are not a spontaneous combustion of mass killing, but rather can develop when the human tendency to divide people as “us” and “them” turns ugly. When circumstances align in particular ways, genocide can arise.
Anywhere.
Here’s part of Genocide Watch’s description of Stage 3: Discrimination: “A dominant group uses law, custom, and political power to deny the rights of other groups. The powerless group may not be accorded full civil rights, voting rights, or even citizenship.”
Sound familiar? What about voting rights in Georgia?
Or how about Stage 6: Polarization: “Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda.”
Stage 8: “Children are forcibly taken from their parents.”
Genocide develops along a continuum. You have to be aware of the signs a society is moving in that direction. I was frankly worried about the United States under President Donald Trump. Less so under Biden. But this remains a nation that has never officially acknowledged the genocide of Native Americans. And what does it say about us that the statement “Black Lives Matter” is controversial?
Long ago, I decided that I could not allow my power or well-being to be held hostage to whether Turkey or anyone acknowledged the Armenian genocide. I wanted instead to inherit my history by making my own promise to watch out for the family, the vulnerable people of this world.
It’s not yesterday’s genocide we can stop. It’s tomorrow’s.
E.C. Salibian is Rochester Beacon senior editor.
For more information:
■ Monroe Community College Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Project
Allison, thank you for writing and for sharing this piece of our shared history. It so happens that Steven Boghos Derounian helped my Maida Morkour when she was immigrating to the United States! That would have been in the early 1960s when he was our Congressman; I remember his name. Also quite interesting is the work of Avedis Boghos Derounian.
Thank you, Cathy, for sharing your story. And thank you to the Beacon for considering this topic worthy of coverage. As a 2nd generation Armenian American, I’m grateful for the official acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide and saddened that it was not given more exposure in mainstream media. Your words really touched me. My great grandfather, Boghos Derounian and his wife Eliza Aprahamian lived in the Ottoman Empire in a region destabilized during WWI. Before the genocide, the family migrated to Bulgaria, then came to the US in 1921. Boghos, a butcher, set-up shop on Long Island, in Mineola, NY . The couple had 3 sons who were educated in the US. One died prematurely, the two others rose to prominence. My great uncle, Steven Boghos Derounian served six terms in the House of Representatives from 1953-1965, then served as a NYS Supreme Court Judge; and my grandfather, Avedis Boghos Derounian, a prize winning investigative journalist, wrote for Fortune Magazine as well as the Armenian Mirror-Spectator. He also authored three expose books under the pseudonym John Roy Carlson. Each book explored the rise of fascism and the threat it created for democracy. Under Cover, written prior to and during WWII, exposed fascist subversive activity in the US before WWII. The Plotters and From Cairo to Damascus, written on the heels of WWII, centered on Arab fascists in the Middle East during the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948. In each book, he went undercover with the subversive organizations posing as a journalist interested in distributing their propaganda. While the brothers were of different political affiliation, as Armenians who were displaced and attuned to the genocide against their brethren, they were both staunch defenders of democracy and served this great nation in order to defend it.
HI Cathy. beautifully written. My cousin was Missak Manouchian of the FTP Moi–I wrote about my own family’s history in 100 Lives, among other places: https://auroraprize.com/en/christopher-atamian
Hope to meet you some day.
Parev, Christopher. Thank you for writing. I appreciate your work and hope to meet someday. I suspect we would find that our families knew each other. In the 1920s, Haig became the Beirut-based pharmacist for the Near East Relief Society, and I know the family visited Zahleh often. Genadsset!
Powerful, Cathy! Thank you for all the work you’ve done to document your family’s journey, and to share that with us.
Heartbreaking and beautiful, Cathy. Wow. Thanks for sharing your family’s story.
Genocide is vile. But so is misusing the charge to tar innocent people. Linking it to “Voting rights in Georgia?” is libelous. Georgia’s voting reform bill provides more opportunities to vote than in many Democrat-controlled states. Joe Biden’s Delaware has never had early voting; when added in 2022, it will be for a shorter period than Georgia. It requires a reason to vote absentee, unlike Georgia. It has no ballot drop boxes, unlike Georgia. New York also has more limited early voting than Georgia. There are valid security interests in voting; allowing illegitimate votes is just as injurious to our democracy as denying legitimate votes. (Georgia has a history of both; see Jimmy Carter’s book “Turning Point” for the story of how his first election was nearly stolen from him by ballot-stuffing.)
Legal discrimination in Georgia was a reality 60 years ago. It is not today, and it cheapens the word to claim it is. I applaud Biden for speaking the truth on Armenia. I reject his dishonesty on Georgia.