Armenian survivors mark tragedy

As the group of seven elderly residents gathered in the entertainment room of the New York Home for the Armenian Aged in Flushing, 99-year-old Kristine Naldjian began to sing, belting out an Armenian patriotic song.
Around her, the other seniors picked up their heads and hummed the tune to the song, which in English translates to, “We are honest soldiers.”
Each of the elderly residents - ages 93 to 102 - already knew why they were gathered in the room on Sunday, March 18 - to speak about a piece of history that began 90 years earlier. The oldest survivor Israel Arabian was only 10 at the time.
Although most were young children, the years between 1915 and 1923 — during what most call the Armenian genocide - left lasting impressions in these seniors’ minds.
Up to 1.5 million Armenian people in Turkey were believed to have been killed by the Young Turks, more formally known as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), according to the Armenian National Institute. The Turkish government, however, does not use the term genocide and attributes the deaths to an inter-ethnic conflict.
The number of people that remember these events firsthand is decreasing each year, said Aghavni “Aggie” Ellian, Executive Director of the Flushing senior residence, explaining why she organized interviews with survivors. “To me, they are my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, my family.”
To hear their stories will keep others from forgetting, she said.
“You can’t tell words of what they did to her,” translated Karine Barsoumian for Naldjian, who, when prodded explained that Turkish soldiers took young girls out of their school classrooms up into the mountains, then raped and killed them.
“With her mind, she always goes back to those atrocities,” the translator said.
Hearing the story, 95-year-old Annie Karakaian brushed falling tears from her cheeks.
Karakaian, who earned her bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Queens College at the age of 61, recounted in perfect English how her father hid in a secret stairwell so that he would not be picked up by the Turkish army. Her family packed up and moved to the United States in 1920 from Istanbul to make a better life.
Ninety-nine-year-old Adriyan Bagciyan’s entire family was killed in Turkey, but she and her husband were able to escape to Ilepo, Syria, where there was a large population of Armenian refugees.
“What did the Turks do? What story can I tell you? What story can I say? They killed us all,” Bagciyan said.
Even after Bagciyan returned to Turkey in 1941, she and her young children faced prejudice from residents. Her daughter was locked in the basement of her Turkish school for calling herself an Armenian.
Hengeni Evernsel, who turned 99 on March 15, spoke of how she was rescued by a Turkish general - her neighbor - as her family was collected and killed. The general raised her as his own, Evernsel explained in Turkish, which organizers on hand translated.
Arabian remembered being hidden in a basement for three days by neighbors so that the soldiers would not find him. After the ordeal, he was dropped in an orphanage and never saw his parents, two brothers, or sister again, although he later found out that his sister had lived and escaped to Greece. She died before the two could reconnect.
Arabian’s daughter-in-law, Nini Arabian, also spoke of her family’s ordeal during the “Armenian genocide” - termed the first genocide of the 20th century. Her grandmother fled to Syria with her five children - four girls and one boy. Along the way, all four girls perished, and years later, the woman often had random panic attacks, choking and gasping for air, Nini Arabian said.
Now that her father has passed away, Nini Arabian continues to tell his story, to pass along her family’s history and remember the historical event, which is commemorated annually by Armenians in Turkey through a pilgrimage and during memorials around the world.
Each year on April 24 - or the closest Sunday to the date - Armenians and supporters gather to remember the roundup of about 200 Armenian community leaders in Constantinople in 1915. The leaders were brought to prison, and most were executed, according to Armenian historians.
This year as they have done for the past several years, Ellian and the staff of the Armenian home in Flushing will bring all ten genocide survivors in limousines to the New York memorial, held in Times Square from 2 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 22.
“We don’t do much around here because we don’t want to give them bad memories,” Ellian said. “So we help them get there [to the memorial] and just stay with them.”