[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 64 (Tuesday, May 19, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H3369-H3371]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   THE ARMENIAN JOURNEY TO WORCESTER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 1 minute.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, on Sunday I had the privilege to welcome 
to Worcester, Massachusetts, His Holiness Karekin I, Supreme Patriarch 
and Catholicos of all Armenians.
  Also present were Worcester Mayor Raymond Mariano; Massachusetts 
Governor Paul Celluci; Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, Primate of the 
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America; Reverent Father Aved 
Terzian, Pastor of the Armenian Church of our Savior; and many other 
ecumenical and governmental officials.
  Worcester is a fitting site to welcome his Holiness on his Pontifical 
visit to celebrate the centennial of the Armenian church in the United 
States. In 1891, the Armenian Church of our Savior on Salisbury Street 
in Worcester was the first Armenian church founded in the United 
States.
  Today, over 1,400 Armenian Americans reside in the Third 
Congressional District of Massachusetts. The history of their journeys 
to America is a proud and important part of our community heritage.
  These stories were recently highlighted in a published story in the 
Worcester Magazine entitled, ``The Armenian Journey to Worcester''. In 
honor of the visit of his Holiness to Worcester, I include the story in 
the Record:

                [From Worcester Magazine, Apr. 29, 1998]

                   The Armenian Journey to Worcester

                            (By Clare Karis)

       ``Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?'' 
     Adolf Hitler's ominous words, spoken on the eve of his 
     invasion of Poland on Aug. 22, 1939, launched his six-year 
     extermination of 6 million Jews and 7 million others. His 
     reasoning, unconscionable as it was, was chillingly clear: 
     Not much attention was paid to that genocide, surely we can 
     up the count this time.
       Nearly 60 years later, the average American knows little of 
     the Armenian Genocide. But that blood-soaked page of history 
     is seared indelibly into the memories of those who survived. 
     Those who saw their own mothers doused with kerosene and set 
     on fire. Those who saw their brothers beheaded. Those who saw 
     their families, one by one, drop starved and exhausted to the 
     burning desert sands. Those who saw a river run red with 
     blood. Those who, by whatever twist of fate or fortune, 
     escaped with their lives.
       But those survivors' numbers are fast dwindling. Children 
     who witnessed the Armenian Genocide of 1915 are now 90 or so. 
     And as the corps of survivors is reduced, so too is the 
     chance that the story will be documented, recorded and passed 
     on--and heeded.
       ``Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to 
     repeat it.'' George Santayana's prophecy, inscribed in the 
     atrium of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, is 
     darkly telling on the 83rd anniversary of the genocide, which 
     began April 24, 1915, and before its end claimed the lives of 
     up to 2 million Armenians.
       A goodly number of the diaspora settled in Worcester. The 
     Armenians equated the city with America; they would say, 
     ``Worcester is America.'' A strong and insular Armenian 
     community sprang up in the Laurel Hill neighborhood, which 
     reminded the emigres of the sun-splashed hills and valleys of 
     their beloved homeland. That neighborhood was known as 
     ``Little Armenia''; after housing became scarce there the 
     population spilled out onto nearby streets--Chandler, 
     Bancroft, Pleasant, May, Irving--to become the colony ``Big 
     Armenia.'' It was a joyful day for the God-fearing tempest-
     tossed when the Laurel Street Church opened its doors for 
     worship and community gatherings.
       The survivors live each day with their memories. Their ears 
     echo even now with the sound of an ax splitting a door, 
     bullets whistling through the air, a baby crying over its 
     mother's body. Their unrelenting mind's eye flashes back and 
     then fast-forwards--like jump cuts in a macabre film 
     noir--to and from images that can never be forgotten.
       For some eyewitnesses, the memories run clear and pure as a 
     mountain stream. For others, the waters have muddied; images 
     have begun to dim and blur and overlap until it's hard to 
     separate what happened eight decades ago from yesterday's 
     daydream or last week's nightmare. One of our chroniclers, 
     Dr. George Ogden, is very careful to say that he can't be 
     quite sure that all he remembers today happened exactly the 
     way he thinks it did. It was a lifetime ago, after all, and 
     he was just a little boy. But how can he forget being dragged 
     to a police station and having his hands flayed until they 
     bled because he hummed a patriotic song?
       In the book Black Dog of Fate, a cousin of author Peter 
     Balakian gives this acount of what she saw along the 
     Euphrates. ``We were delirious from hunger and thirst. We 
     picked seed out of the camel dung and cleaned them

[[Page H3370]]

     off the best we could and put them on the rocks to dry them 
     out in the sun before we ate them. . . . Whenever we passed a 
     eucalyptus tree I gathered some leaves so that at night I 
     could suck on them to get water in my mouth. . . . For miles 
     and miles you saw nothing but corpses, and the brown water 
     sloshing up on the banks. I found corpses washed up, half 
     deteriorated, headless, limbless, body parts floating. 
     Hundreds of rotting bodies were piled in heaps and the black 
     terns were feeding on them. Many women and girls threw 
     themselves in the river rather than be abducted or raped. At 
     several spots there were girls who had tied their hands 
     together and drowned themselves . . . their blue bodies were 
     still tied to each other's. Their tongues were black, half-
     eaten, and their hair was muddy and dry like old grass. There 
     were dead babies too . . . when Dikran, who was delirious 
     now, began to pick the bodies out of the water, the gendarmes 
     whipped him and told him to put them back. Later the geese 
     and the wildcats came down from the valley to eat them.''
       Turkish officials denied then--and continue to deny--that 
     such gory tableaux were any more than the usual unfortunate 
     sidelights of war, certainly not evidence of any premeditated 
     plot to kill off the Armenians. At a genocide commemoration 
     at which Balakian, a poet, spoke, Turkish people passed 
     around pamphlets. One, published by the Assembly of Turkish 
     American Associations, attempted to debunk Armenians' claims 
     that they had suffered atrocities in the Ottoman Empire.
       ``Carefully coached by their Armenian nationalist 
     interviewers,'' it said, ``these aged Armenians relate tales 
     of horror which supposedly took place some 66 years ago in 
     such detail as to astonish the imagination. Far more Turks 
     then Armenians died in the same war . . . consequently one 
     cannot conclude that the Armenians suffered any more terribly 
     or that the Ottoman government attempted to exterminate them. 
     There was no genocide committed against the Armenians in the 
     Ottoman Empire before or during World War I. No genocide was 
     planned or ordered by the Ottoman government and none was 
     carried out.''
       But Judith Herman, in Trauma and Recovery, points out, 
     ``After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same 
     predictable apologies: It never happened; the victim lies; 
     the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it about herself; 
     and in very case it is time to forget the past and move on. 
     The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his 
     prerogative to name and define reality, and the more 
     completely his arguments prevail.''
       The people whose stories are told here have done their best 
     to move on. But they will never forget.


                          marion der kazarian

     Marion Der Kazarian was born in 1909, and is 89. She 
     witnessed the death of her father, the Rev. Father Haroutune 
     Der Harootunian, at the hands of Ottoman Empire soldiers in 
     Armenia when she was 6 years old. She immigrated to America 
     in 1921. Graduating from North High School in 1930, she 
     opened Marion's Beauty Shop, where she worked until she 
     married Garabed Der Kazarian and they had children. She has 
     written a book about her experience, ``Sacrifice and 
     Redemption.''

       I was 6 years old when the massacres started. My father was 
     reading the Bible to us. It was night. All of a sudden, the 
     door broke and six gendarmes came in and dragged my father 
     out--like a criminal. My father, who was the priest of the 
     village. My youngest sister Rose ran after them, begging, 
     ``Daddy, Daddy, don't go! Please don't take my daddy away.'' 
     Father stopped and removed a cigarette case from his coat 
     pocket and handed it to her. ``Keep this for me until my 
     return,'' he said in a soft voice. His cheeks were wet with 
     tears. We were left alone.
       My mother had gone to Chimishgazak [a city in Armenia, now 
     part of Turkey]. In 1914, my father had befriended a gendarme 
     who told him, ``This time it's going to be terrible, not like 
     before. You come over my house. I'll save all your 
     children.'' My father didn't want to leave so the gendarme 
     said, ``Then separate the children.'' My mother took my 
     brothers to Chimishgazak and they went to school there. When 
     the war broke out, my father said, ``We must bring the 
     children together. If anything happens, we'll all die 
     together.'' So my mother went to bring the boys back to 
     Ashodavan.
       After my father was taken, we were all alone and scared but 
     we thought we should go outside. We knew they would find us 
     anyway. People were gathered in front of our house. They were 
     all crying and the gendarmes were hitting them. They used 
     cloths [in people's mouths] to keep them from yelling. The 
     weather was cool and damp. Everyone was crying for their 
     father and mother. The Turkish soldiers were very mean. They 
     wanted to keep the people quiet so they were hitting . . . 
     hitting them hard.
       The men had been tied up and taken to the Euphrates River. 
     They lined the men up by the river, with my father in front. 
     They were on their knees with their hands bound behind them. 
     They told my father, ``If you renounce your Christian faith, 
     we will spare your life.'' But my father said, ``I will die 
     for my faith.'' So they killed him. Then they went down the 
     row asking all the men the same thing. When they said ``No,'' 
     they killed them.
       Suddenly, people started to yell and scream. They saw 
     clothes coming down the river--the river was all bloody. My 
     sister-in-law Anna had three young children. When she saw the 
     priestly robes of my father in the river, she knew he had 
     been killed. She was crazed with grief. She jumped into 
     the current with her sons. All four drowned. The men's 
     bodies were left on the bank, purposely, to rot and be 
     picked over by birds and animals.
       Now we waited for our destiny. What would happen to us? 
     Toward morning, the Turkish soldiers came and took us. They 
     wanted us to cross the river. The man who had befriended my 
     father, the same soldier who warned us about the massacres, 
     came over and said, ``I want to take the whole family to my 
     house. I'll keep you. Or you probably won't come out alive.'' 
     So we went with him.
       In the meantime, my mother was out looking for us in the 
     Dersim mountains. She had gone to Chimishgazak to get the 
     other children but they weren't there, so she set out to find 
     the rest of us. She met a lady who told her, ``I saw your 
     children. I know where they are. I'll get them to you.'' The 
     lady told my sister, who had gone to fetch water, ``Come here 
     next day, and I'll bring your mother.'' The next morning my 
     sister told me, early, ``We're going out to fetch water.'' So 
     we went. These two ladies came. We could not recognize the 
     ladies. They were all bundled up so they wouldn't be 
     recognized.
       We started walking. Halfway, we met my brother. He was 
     looking for my mother too. We walked all day and came to a 
     cottage in Haghtouk where everyone was staying. I found my 
     sister there, my youngest brother. They were all there. When 
     the lady from the well took off her disguise, Rose and I 
     said, ``Mother, mother!'' We all cried.
       We stayed there that winter. It was a very bad winter. In 
     the summer we heard that the Russian Armenians were coming to 
     save us. There were about 10,000 Armenians in the Kurdish 
     mountains. We had to wait for our turn. We came to Erzeroum. 
     We stayed in the barracks. There was no food, nothing. The 
     Red Cross came the next day and opened a cafeteria. They 
     would give us just a cup of tea and one piece of sommi, 
     bread.
       In 1987, the Turkish government claimed that the bones and 
     skeletons of more than 10,000 bodies found in Erzeroum 
     belonged to Turkish citizens killed by Armenians. They built 
     a monument over the bones and said we killed them, that the 
     Armenians killed the Turkish people. But they lied. If the 
     genocide didn't happen, where are all our relatives? What 
     happened to 2 million Armenians? they didn't just disappear.
       One day all the men and women were called together and told 
     they would be separated because the Turkish soldiers were 
     coming. So the older people were separated on one side and 
     the younger ones on the other. There were two different roads 
     we were supposed to take. There was fighting in back of us. 
     We reached Baku. We stayed there three days. Again the 
     Turkish soldiers came. Then we went on to Stavropol. We met 
     my mother, who was already there.
       We stayed there in Russia for three years. We were 
     comfortable. Then the revolution started. It was terrible, 
     worse than the first one. When we tried to leave, a crowd of 
     men and women were at the railroad station. It was full of 
     people. Everyone was pushing, pushing. I couldn't find my 
     mother. I was crying for her. Everyone was gone, and I was 
     screaming for my mother. This old man came and said, ``Why 
     are you crying?'' He said, ``Don't cry, they'll wait for you 
     at the second station.'' Then he put me on the wagon, the 
     train, and then my mother was there. From there we went to 
     Constantinople and from Constantinople to America.


                            dr. george ogden

     Dr. George Ogden was born June 5, 1911, in Armenia and is 87. 
     He immigrated to the United States in 1920, settling in 
     Kenosha, Wis., and earned a Ph.D. in surgical chiropody from 
     Northwestern Institute of Foot Surgery. He relocated to 
     Worcester, where he practiced for many years. He and his wife 
     Mary, who was a WAC during World War II, have been married 
     since 1941.

       It was a terrible massacre. In order to hide it, the 
     Turkish soldiers sent the Armenians to the desert. They threw 
     them in the river. But they couldn't hide it. They would pick 
     you at random from every family in the country where there 
     were mostly Armenians. They would take the Armenians out and 
     wouldn't tell them what it was all about. They colored it as 
     if nothing serious was going to happen until they collected 
     them all together. And then! Some of them they threw out to 
     the desert, some they threw in the river. Any way it was 
     convenient for them to kill the Armenians.
       After the genocide, people sang the song of the misery they 
     went through. It describes the Euphrates river flowing with 
     blood, how awful the Euphrates river looked, flowing with 
     blood instead of water.
       I remember I was given a licking in one of the police 
     stations because I hummed the song I was singing as I was 
     selling pencils. The commissar had a whip and a sword on the 
     wall and he said, ``Tell your story.'' I told him where I 
     heard the song and he took the whip from the wall and hit me 
     in the hand. Oh, I was in such pain. It took weeks to heal 
     the wounds. I was only 5 or 6 years old. He said, ``Next time 
     you say anything against the government, we're going to cut 
     your hand off.'' And that's all I remember as a child. There 
     are other things . . . but it was so long ago and I was very 
     young. It's like a dream.
       My mother used to lose her babies and she blamed it on the 
     condition of the country,

[[Page H3371]]

     what was happening, how terrible it was how the Turks 
     persecuted the Armenians. She had so much milk after losing 
     the babies that she used to feed other children.
       Because of my experiences as a 5-year-old in Turkey it has 
     been my ambition to take children at kindergarten age and 
     teach them that human beings ought to be cherished and raised 
     in the right way: to be proud of their heritage, believe in 
     the sanctity of children and teach them peace--instead of 
     when they get to high school creating their own heritage 
     because they think they're ``it,'' you know! And when they 
     get to be 20, 21, they want to make all the money in the 
     world. Proudness doesn't come from money. It comes in taking 
     care of the young. The kindergarten program should be 
     revamped so by the time children graduate kindergarten they 
     are already good citizens of America--citizens of peace.


                             john kasparian

     John Kasparian was born in Van, Turkish Armenia, in 1907, and 
     is 91. He immigrated to the United States in 1927. He married 
     in 1932; his wife Virginia died recently. For 55 years, 
     Kasparian owned and operated a shoe-repair shop in Worcester. 
     He saw his 5-year-old brother die of starvation in Armenia.

       I lived in Van. I was 7 to 8 years old when I noticed the 
     fighting--24 hours steady, for three months. The Armenians 
     didn't have any army but everyone got together to fight 
     because the Turks were trying to get our country at any cost. 
     They were killing us right and left. But being killed was 
     happier than having your arm or leg cut off and suffering for 
     God knows how long. If you say anything against them, they 
     cut your neck. It was nothing to them to kill humans left and 
     right. It's the God's truth.
       My father was trying to protect our house and got shot in 
     his leg. They bandaged it up and he was still fighting, 
     fighting. Finally one of our close friends came and said, 
     ``Dick, you better get out of the house and run for your 
     life. They're going to kill your family, without any 
     question.''
       So we got out, ran out with just what we had on us. No 
     food, nothing. For four or five days, believe me, eating 
     grass. We lived on grass. And thirsty! You couldn't get any 
     water until the rain came. We had to drink the dirty water 
     that animals were going through. We traveled 11 days to reach 
     Yerevan. Left and right, oh my God, people were dying.
       Of course, in Armenia they were just as poor as we were in 
     those days. We had to go in back of restaurants and houses 
     and go through garbage, we were so hungry. Who would think to 
     take a bone and bite to try to get something from it? We were 
     six of us, two sisters, my brother, my mother and my father 
     and myself. On the way we lost my brother. In Armenia--we got 
     there at night, it was cold weather--we stay outside, nothing 
     on us, until the sun comes up. Someone told us all the people 
     from Van were in a central park so we go over there and I see 
     my brother who was lost, 5 years old. He was delirious. He 
     didn't know what was going on. He was hungry, thirsty. After 
     three of four days of suffering, he died of starvation.
       I have to try to make some money for the family. My mother 
     and father had no job yet so I go around selling water for 
     money. So help me, 2 cents, anything, just to get us by. Then 
     my mother started to make cigarettes, wrapping cigarettes. 
     She hung a box on my neck and I said, ``What the heck is 
     this?'' She said, ``People smoke--you go out, you sell 
     cigarettes.'' That's how I lived until my father got a job 
     for the American consulate as an Armenian interpreter. From 
     then on, I was relieved! (laughs). Hey, at that time I was 9 
     years old.
       I came here in 1927. We landed in Providence. A friend of 
     my father who was like a brother to him, they had an 
     apartment already, a four-room apartment. We had been living 
     six of us in one room in Armenia, in Van. I couldn't believe 
     it. Four rooms?!--I never saw that in my life.
       I have to ask: All the world knows this [genocide] 
     happened. Why is the American government not taking it 
     seriously? Why?
       But the only enjoyment and pleasure I get out of my life is 
     in living in the United States. There is no other country in 
     the world would ever be happier than here. A lot of Americans 
     don't appreciate this life. It's a heavenly country. It's 
     heaven on earth.

                          ____________________