My sister Gina Ayvazian and I cannot pinpoint whether this is year 30, 31, or 32 that we have organized a gathering in downtown Northampton on April 24 to mark the beginning of the Armenian genocide by the Turks in 1915 — a systemic and massive slaughter that killed 1.5 Armenians. My son Sasha, now 38, was a child when we stood in our circle that first year — so this somber tradition began 30-plus years ago.
For Gina and me, the annual gathering is not just a formal recognition of a tragic day that began the horrors that lasted for years. It is a deeply personal day because our father, L. Fred Ayvazian, was a survivor of the “massacres,” as he called the genocide. After our father and mother, both of Armenian descent, retired to Northampton in 1996, they joined the circle every year.
Seated in a lawn chair, my father spoke and wept — holding tight to the hands of those on his right and left. He talked about how he lost an entire generation of his family to the genocide. My father’s maternal grandfather was fatally shot at his pulpit while delivering a sermon. My father’s mother and her sisters, in hiding, watched from an attic window as a pogrom devastated their village.
Eventually, in 1921, my paternal grandparents, my father, and his older brother escaped in the night, fled to Paris, and then boarded a trans-Atlantic ship bound for Ellis Island in America. All their friends perished.
What happened on April 24, 1915, that marked the beginning of the genocide?
In the evening of that day, while the world’s attention was focused on World War I (then in its second year), armed men rounded up 300 Armenian political leaders, educators, writers, clergy and dignitaries in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) and took them from their homes to be tortured and then hanged or shot on the edge of the city.
Shortly thereafter, Armenian men throughout the country were arrested, tied together with ropes in small groups, taken to the outskirts of their towns and shot or bayoneted by death squads.
Armenian women, children and the elderly were ordered to pack their belongings and leave their homes under the pretext that they were being relocated to a non-military zone for their own safety. In reality, they were marched toward the Syrian desert to die. Along the way, woman and girls were abused and raped. Most dropped dead by the roadside from exhaustion and starvation. In the end, 1.5 million of the Ottoman Empire’s 2.1 million Armenians were killed or died on death marches to the desert.
The Turkish government has never acknowledged its role in the slaughter.
Eyewitnesses, including German liaison officers, American missionaries, and U.S. diplomats attested to the atrocities. The U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, reported to Washington: “When the Turkish authorities gave the order for these deportations, they were giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.”
All his life, my father hoped that he would live to see the day when Turkey acknowledged the genocide of the Armenian people. But Turkish authorities have continually denied the Armenian genocide and applied considerable pressure to stop anyone studying or writing about it.
It is exceedingly painful for all Armenians that Turkey has not acknowledged the genocide of the Armenian people. Turkey officially denies that the events of 1915–1923 amounted to genocide, stating only that many Armenians died during “inter-communal fighting and displacement within the context of World War I.”
My father faithfully recounted his family’s history, wrote op-ed pieces, served on panels, gave speeches, and spoke out publicly about the Armenian genocide year after year. He died at age 90 in 2009 — crushed that the genocide was still consistently and forcefully denied by the Turkish government.
My family, millions of other Armenians, and many others who have studied the historical record know the truth. That is why locally Armenian-Americans and our allies gather in a mournful vigil every April 24 to mark the onset of the genocide. We all know too well the stories of the deportations, the death marches, the imprisonment, the torture and the mass killing. Some in the circle that gathers every April 24 in Northampton had relatives survive because children were hidden under dead bodies.
Every year when we gather, the short program we create varies. This year, we will hear Hope Jinishian recount some stories from her recent trip to Armenia. Nancy Talanian will speak about her family history. Stephen Saxenian will talk about the Armenian influence on his work as a sculptor. And Steve Berian will again sing the Lord’s Prayer in Armenian.
Everyone is invited to join the circle. We gather at 5 p.m. on April 24 in front of Memorial Hall, on Main Street in Northampton. We welcome your presence at this important witness.
As we have created the program for this year’s circle, we have been holding this thought close to our hearts — a precious saying by Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos: “They tried to bury us, but they did not know that we were seeds.”
The Rev. Andrea Ayvazian, Ministerial Team, Alden Baptist Church, Springfield, is also founder and director of the Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership.