The Armenian Genocide:

The story of Garabet and Manam Buchaklian

My great grandfather and great grandmother Garabet Buchaklian and Manam Zakian have passed away but their memory lives on in the stories my family is still half afraid to mention. My great grandparents were in the Armenian genocide. This story has been part of my consciousness since birth in varying degrees of comprehension, told to me by my mother and grand mother Vartouni Torosian Ward. This project has opened my eyes beyond my comfort level to the evil humans can inflict upon one another--especially the innocent. The all out slaughter of over 1.5 million people by inconceivably violent means has led me to think Anne Frank was naive when she wrote the words “people are truly good at heart.” We convince ourselves that humans are truly good at

heart because we feel ashamed and overwhelmed by the constant suffering plaguing our world. We humans fear suffering and death so we advert our eyes from it. Anne Frank wrote her words before experiencing the concentration camps. Her denial was due to her youth and inexperience.

However, other forms of denial exist. The motives lurking behind these are more sinister and evil. These forms of denial are often committed by the perpetrators of genocides, as in the case of the Armenian genocide. “Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian genocide--eyewitness accounts,

official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats and the testimony of survivors--denial of the Armenian genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present” (Smith, Markusen, Lifton,p3). The Turkish government denies its crimes in order to convince itself and others of its innocence. This denial continues the Armenian genocide because it not only insults the survivors of the genocide but also closes the world's eyes to suffering. Such denial allows these horrors to repeat themselves and should be considered one of the root causes of genocide. By telling

the story of my great-grandparents' suffering I am fighting against this history of denial.

Manam Zakian and Garabet Buchaklian were Armenian. To be Armenian Means to belong to an Indo-European civilization, the Urartu civilization, dating back to the third and second millennia B.C. This civilization spanned across eastern Anatolia and western Transcaucasia. The Greek historian Herodotus described the Armenians as strong and hardy people who had adapted to the rough and rugged terrain on which they lived. My grandmother describes Manam and Garabet in similar terms, “they had a capacity to work that put me to shame.” The Armenians are also known for their close knit families and entrepreneurship. This tendency continues in our family as well. Deeply religious, Armenians claim Mt. Ararat, located in historic Armenia and the reputed landing site of Noah's arc, as their national symbol. Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity in 301 AD. In the fifth century, the monk Mesrop Mashdats invented the Armenian alphabet and translated the Bible into Armenian.

In the seventh and eleventh centuries Armenia was beset by many Arabic

and nomadic tribes including the Saracens, the Seljuks, the Mongols, the Tartars and the Ottomans. The Ottomans were the last to invade the region and had the forces to occupy it. Soon after they began oppressing the Armenians and laid down a series of political and social rules which discriminated against the Armenians. These rules put the Armenian people into the category of gâvur , which means “a non-muslim infidel” in the Turkish language. These rules persisted well into the twentieth century and were a daily part of Manam and Garabet's lives. The rules denied them any legal rights in the Islamic court system. Armenians were expected to be deferential to Muslims in public. They were not allowed to ride a horse when a Muslim was passing by. They were made to dress in an easily identifiable way. They were not allowed to speak Armenian in public, the punishment for this was having your tongue cut out. Armenians were not allowed to own weapons of any kind. They were also subject to devshirme or boy collection. An

Ottoman Turk official could take any Armenian boy away from his family, convert them to Islam and force them to work. The Turks also held auctions and allowed the highest bidder to collect taxes from the Armenian farmers. Finally, the Armenians were forced to allow both Kurds and Turks to move into their homes during the long winter months.

This obligation was known as kishlak . It meant that a well-armed Kurd or Turk could move into an Armenian home steal his possessions as well as rape or kidnap the Armenian women. The unarmed Armenians had no physical or legal means with which to defend themselves. Putting the Armenians into the category of Gavúr dehumanized them and set the stage for the genocide.

Garabet Buchaklian and Manam Zakian were married sometime between 1905

and 1915. No one knows exactly when because all the records were lost, as were their records indicating when they were born. Regardless, they had been married long enough to have had two young sons. Garabet heard that the Armenian men were being rounded up in a neighboring province and put into the army. He believed the rumors that men were being rounded up to be killed and escaped in the night. He was lucky that he

had the money to do this. He changed his name to Azar Torosian and went to the coast where he was able to buy passage to Argentina. His plan was to find a home there and send for his family. No one knows why he didn't take his wife and children with him. He could not have imagined the fate that he was leaving his wife and children to endure.

Had he stayed he might have been rounded up and tortured to death and thrown into the Euphrates river. Viscount James Bryce, a member of the British Parliament and Arnold Toynbee a young historian described such a fate. ”Corpses...floating down the River Euphrates nearly every day, often in batches from two to six corpses bound together. The male corpses are in many cases hideously mutilated and the female corpses ripped open.” (Miller and Miller, 26). Had that not happened, Garabet would have been tied up and placed in a barn with other men and boys and burned alive. The chances that he would have survived are very slim. Two out of every three Armenians were massacred. Most of the survivors were women and children.

While Garabet was in Argentina, Manam and the two boys were deported. The Turks told them that they had to move away to escape from the war. But “[d]eportation proved to be merely euphemism for extermination”(Miller and Miller,79). Deportation meant that Armenians were forced to leave their homes and forced to march hundreds of miles to the deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia. On their journey they were killed outright, subject to violent attacks by Kurds who would steal everything they owned including the clothes on their backs, leaving them to continue their journey naked. The Turkish soldiers would deny them water or food. Manam would tell the story of having to eat grass and grain collected from animal feces. Death came by dehydration, hunger, exhaustion, exposure and disease. One survivor described the march, “the road on both sides was filled with dead bodies. I have seen with my own eyes thousands of dead bodies”(Miller and Miller, 84). During her march Manam lost both of her children. She would tell that they died but leave out any details. “Survivors told us numerous stories about babies that had been abandoned along the deportation routes. Sometimes they were put under the shade of a tree, and other times they were simply left along the roadside to die. On occasion, they were also left on rocks in streams, from which they would tumble

into the water and drown”(Miller and Miller, 98). If a baby died in its mother's arms she wouldn't be allowed to bury it. Manam would tell the story how upsetting it was to imagine wild animal eating the bodies of her children. She also told the story of a woman whose baby died and the woman was so hungry that she tried to eat her own baby. The woman went crazy. When Manam would tell that story she would make

the sign of the cross and say a prayer, tears squeezing out of her eyes.

When the soldier got tired of marching the Armenians they would sometimes just kill them en masse . Burning alive was one method. “The way they killed them was to put them in the cave, place wood in front of it and burn them. They burned them alive, and there was no way to escape from it” (Miller and Miller, 84). Manam told the story of

another way they would kill the deportees en mass. The Turkish soldiers would line the people up and cut off their heads one by one. Manam's cousin, Anoush, was in such a line and fainted before they cut off her head. The soldiers thinking she was dead tossed her body onto the pile of headless corpses and went off to eat their dinner. Anoush

woke up covered with blood and dead bodies. She snuck away and escaped. When my grandmother Rose Torosian was young everyone knew that the reason Auntie Anoush always trembled was because of what had happened to her in the “old country.”

Somehow, Manam managed to survive and get to the coast and get reunited with Garabet who had returned from Argentina. With the help of something called “red gold,” a type of currency, they bought passage to the United States and started over.

The Turkish government would claim that the story of my great grandparents was a lie. This type of denial is not the only cause of genocide. According to the United Nations the main reasons genocides happen are because there are unstable political situations. War times are often perfect stages for genocide. The Armenian genocide took

place during World War II. Also, the Perpetrator must single out a group for extermination, in this case the Armenians. The generator, must also have a reason or reasons for committing the genocide. The Turks put the Armenians into the category of Gavúr and had been singling them out for centuries. The Turks pretense was that they were evacuating the settlements because of the war, which resulted in the “Deportation Marches.” Most Turks today still believe the Turkish propaganda that the resettlement was legitimate. The Turkish penal code was recently amended to actually state that one cannot say the Armenian genocide happened. In article 301, which took effect on June 1, 2005, it states that insulting “Turkishness” is punishable by law. To say the Armenian genocide happened is considered an insult to “Turkishness”. The author, Elif

Safak recently was charged for insulting “Turkishness” because a fictional character in her latest novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, said the Armenian genocide happened. Safak is only one of numerous authors and journalists that have been prosecuted under of article 301.

Laws like article 301, make it impossible for denial of genocides to stop. The only way we can stop genocides like the Armenian genocide from happening is if we recognize the Turkish behavior as denial and hold them accountable for their actions. If we do not, and denial lives on, it is as if the genocide is still taking place. Therefore,

we must stop telling ourselves that people are truly good at heart. We convince ourselves of this because we feel ashamed and embarrassed at the truth. By telling ourselves people our truly good at heart we are supporting this denial because we are admitting the causers of genocides would not do such a thing. Each one of the individuals who helped to exterminate the Armenians, from butcherer to high ranking officials, needs to be held responsible for their actions. We need to stop thinking of the Turks as a group of wrongdoers and instead as individuals. If we do this we will realize people can NOT be truly good at heart and therefore stop atrocities like these from happening.

In conclusion, denial must be stopped because to deny genocide is to repeat it.

In order to stop this evil on a personal level we must not shield ourselves from human suffering and instead combat this evil on our own capability level. On a national level, countries must hold one another accountable for their actions even though it may mean military or economic loss. Even if this means going against the majority of world nations because then, and only then, will we be able to prevent future genocides. Many, mainly Turks, still live in denial of their ancestors actions because they are ashamed of their predecessors. The only way this genocide can be accounted for is if we, the people who stood and let this happen admit that this atrocity took place and lament for its victims.

WORKS CITED

Balakian, Peter. Black Dog of Fate. New York: Broadway books, 1997.

Balakian, Peter. The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and

America's Response. New York: Harper Collins, 2003.

Dhilawala, Sakina. “Armenia.” Cultures of the world. New York:

Marshall Cavendish, 1997.

Miller, Donald and Lorna Miller Survivors: An Oral History of the

Armenian Genocide.

Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993.

Smith, Roger W. and Eric Markusen and Robert Jay Lifton “Professional

Ethics and the Denial of Armenian Genocide” Holocaust and Genocide

Studies. College of William and Mary Williamsburg, Virginia and

Southwest State University Marshall, Minnesota and The City

University of New York.

<http://www.ids.net/~gregan/ethics.html>

By: Wilson Fanestil