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WITNESS TO GENOCIDE
Pasadena Weekly
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/witness_to_genocide/9011/
July 15 2010
CA
How one survivor of the Armenian Genocide made peace with the past,
and why the United States has yet to do likewise
For 400 miles Flora Munushian Mouradian and her family marched, the
dead and dying underfoot as nearly an entire nation inched closer
to oblivion.
This forced exodus from Turkey was filled with horrors, and by its
end the 14-year-old Mouradian would see her share of them -- Turkish
soldiers trying to abduct her and her sister, the disappearance
of her brother at the hands of the same soldiers, the death of her
grandmother during the march to Syria, and camps filled with tens of
thousands of Armenians on the brink of starvation.
So slim was the chance of survival that Mouradian's parents chose to
abandon her and her sister along the way in an unfamiliar Syrian city,
where she would be sold into a harem before stealing away to the
United States, while her mother and father were forced to continue
on for at least 100 more miles, never knowing what would become of
their teenage daughters.
Mouradian lived to tell her story, and it is now one of many
being entered into the Congressional Record to propel US leaders
over increasingly complicated political obstacles keeping the United
States from officially recognizing the Armenian Genocide, in which 1.5
million people perished at the hands of the Ottoman Empire between
1915 and 1923. That recognition could carry enough weight to force
reparations from the government in modern-day Turkey -- a strategically
positioned US ally in a volatile region -- and bring some solace to a
culture that has long been denied peace, say descendents of Armenian
Genocide survivors.
"What other country will be the most powerful country to stand
up and say this happened and it should be corrected, it should be
recognized?" asked Katia Kusherian, a Glendale resident who submitted
three stories of her family's struggle to Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena,
who is heading up the project. "Otherwise, the souls of the dead
cannot be in peace, and our souls are not in peace."
'Pain that never sleeps' Memories of the death march, which began in
1915 after the reformist and nationalistic Young Turks came to power
in the Ottoman Empire, haunted Mouradian from the time she set foot in
Boston, a member of the growing Armenian diaspora fleeing persecution
that would continue through 1923 under the Young Turks' equally
ethnically exclusive predecessors, the Turkish Nationalists. Bottled
for decades, the torment would escape in bursts when Mouradian tried
to relate her ordeal to her young daughter, Kay Mouradian.
"Hunger is a pain that never sleeps," Kay Mouradian, now a South
Pasadena resident, recalled her mother saying.
But it wasn't until 1984, at the onset of series of cathartic brushes
with death, that Flora Mouradian would finally overcome profound
feelings of self-pity and grief over losing what could have been
some of the most enjoyable years in life. It was then, too, that her
daughter saw the value in recording her mother's horrific experience.
At 83 and diagnosed with a terminal heart condition following a heart
attack, Flora came to South Pasadena to stay with her daughter to
live out what a doctor expected would be her last days. Kay figured
those days would be very few; dementia had already made strangers of
friends and family in Flora's mind, and tremors kept her from feeding
herself as her health declined in the years prior.
But, gradually and inexplicably, Flora became more alert, more active
and, as her daughter tells it, the "dark shadow" so much death and
suffering created suddenly lifted. The tremors stopped, she rekindled
friendships with people she was unable to recognize months earlier
and the hardness tragedy had forged in her heart began to soften. "I
just can't explain it. It was as if all the trauma that had fallen
upon her was completely released," Kay said.
But health problems landed Flora in the hospital again soon after. One
night as she seemed to be leaving the living world, she returned
again, this time with a sibylline prophecy. "Do you know why I'm still
here?" she asked her daughter. "Because if I died, nobody would know."
Then she told her daughter she would write a book about her life,
and Kay set out soon after to trace the desert path her ancestors
walked during their forced deportation.
One of the stories Flora relayed to her daughter began in Aleppo,
Syria, where her mother and father left her and her sister before
walking to their likely demise. That's where the then-14-year-old
Flora was sold to a wealthy Turkish man who made her the newest member
of his harem. But as she was being carted off, Flora pleaded with a
young Armenian boy in the street to tell her sister what had happened
to her. The same night, her sister donned Muslim garb and snuck her
away from the harem, her daughter said, and a Syrian family then gave
her refuge until she left for the United States.
'The bastards!' Researching for a book about her mother's struggle,
Flora in 1988 was in Aleppo searching for relatives of the family
that took in her mother after she escaped the rich man's harem. Then
she learned her mother was back in the hospital for the fourth time.
When Kay arrived at the hospital, her mother was on her side in
bed in the cardiac care unit. "I don't know why I didn't die," her
mother whispered.
Days later Kay was bewildered to find her mother sitting straight up
in the hospital bed bellowing in Turkish, a language she hadn't used
in 50 years, before reverting back to English.
"They took my education! They took my family! Do you know what it
was like? I went crazy!" Flora shouted. "The bastards!"
With that, the Turks seemed to gain atonement and Flora a peace that
lasted until her death in South Pasadena in 1989, her daughter said.
Doomed to repeat Glendale and Pasadena are home to one of the largest
Armenian populations in the country, and for years Congressman Schiff,
who represents the area, has tried to convince Congress of the need to
formally characterize the 1.5 million Armenian deaths as a genocide,
as France, Belgium, Russia, Italy, Canada and more than 20 other
countries have already done. But legislation that would accomplish
that goal has fallen prey to the political process each time it's
been introduced, due in large part to this country's strong political
relationship with Turkey, a key ally in the Middle East that to this
day denies the massacres and death marches ever happened.
But Schiff is hoping the Turkish government's recent actions in support
of Iran, which he said complicated US diplomatic efforts to curtail
Tehran's nuclear capability, its complicity in the recent fatal Gaza
aid flotilla raid and its changing sentiment toward Israel may finally
break the hold diplomacy has had on recognizing what most historians
consider a crime against humanity.
"If we are to assert our moral leadership in the fight for human
rights, we cannot pick and choose which genocides to recognize,"
Schiff said. "Every year, the Turkish lobby fights recognition with a
multimillion-dollar lobbying effort. But Turkey's recent decision to
embrace Iran, its attempt to block sanctions against Iran's nuclear
program and its defense of the clerical regime's crackdown on its own
people should cause members of Congress to question their willingness
to back its campaign of genocide denial."
Now, in what he calls an effort to educate his colleagues on the
importance of recognizing the genocide, Schiff is making the stories
of Flora Mouradian and other survivors part of the national record.
But while Ankara's actions may not be winning any new friends
in Congress, Turkey's position as a US trading partner, ally and
NATO member give it a strong enough position to continue denying
the genocide despite the recent developments, according to Levon
Marashlian, a Glendale Community College history professor who's
written opinion pieces about Armenian-Turkish relations for newspapers
here and abroad.
"I'm not sure that the real tension that exists now is enough to
overcome those other factors," Marashlian said. "Turkey is still
viewed in Washington as a valuable ally, so its image has declined
a bit, but it's nowhere near being an out-and-out break."
Call for revival Glendale's Katia Kusherian, who submitted stories
on her family's ouster from the ancient Armenian capital Tigranakert,
said the near-perennial defeat of legislation recognizing the genocide
has been a constant disappointment to Armenians here who want their
adopted country to recognize the atrocities that brought many of them
here. "My expectation is justice with a capital J," Kusherian said.
"Armenian people all hope that this time is the time. We have been
disappointed year after year. For political reasons we can't just
ignore the justice, ignore the truth. This is a moral thing, and
without morals any country will go down."
What exactly would happen if the United States were to recognize the
genocide is uncertain, but some hope it would bring about the return
of property and territory taken by the Turks. "The dream for a lot of
Armenians is that we gain all that territory back and once again call
it Armenia, but I doubt that will ever happen," Kay Mouradian said.
But, as a retired educator, Mouradian said she would rather see Turkey
sponsor a college fund for Armenian students. "We lost our best and
brightest, and it's taken 96 years for the Armenian intelligentsia
to revive," she said.
Mouradian said it could also heal the rift that exists between Turks
and Armenians in the Middle East and clear up misconceptions that
hinder greater cultural unity. "The ordinary citizen in Turkey has
no knowledge of what happened at that time. They have an opinion of
Armenians as bad people," she said.
From: A. Papazian
Pasadena Weekly
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/witness_to_genocide/9011/
July 15 2010
CA
How one survivor of the Armenian Genocide made peace with the past,
and why the United States has yet to do likewise
For 400 miles Flora Munushian Mouradian and her family marched, the
dead and dying underfoot as nearly an entire nation inched closer
to oblivion.
This forced exodus from Turkey was filled with horrors, and by its
end the 14-year-old Mouradian would see her share of them -- Turkish
soldiers trying to abduct her and her sister, the disappearance
of her brother at the hands of the same soldiers, the death of her
grandmother during the march to Syria, and camps filled with tens of
thousands of Armenians on the brink of starvation.
So slim was the chance of survival that Mouradian's parents chose to
abandon her and her sister along the way in an unfamiliar Syrian city,
where she would be sold into a harem before stealing away to the
United States, while her mother and father were forced to continue
on for at least 100 more miles, never knowing what would become of
their teenage daughters.
Mouradian lived to tell her story, and it is now one of many
being entered into the Congressional Record to propel US leaders
over increasingly complicated political obstacles keeping the United
States from officially recognizing the Armenian Genocide, in which 1.5
million people perished at the hands of the Ottoman Empire between
1915 and 1923. That recognition could carry enough weight to force
reparations from the government in modern-day Turkey -- a strategically
positioned US ally in a volatile region -- and bring some solace to a
culture that has long been denied peace, say descendents of Armenian
Genocide survivors.
"What other country will be the most powerful country to stand
up and say this happened and it should be corrected, it should be
recognized?" asked Katia Kusherian, a Glendale resident who submitted
three stories of her family's struggle to Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena,
who is heading up the project. "Otherwise, the souls of the dead
cannot be in peace, and our souls are not in peace."
'Pain that never sleeps' Memories of the death march, which began in
1915 after the reformist and nationalistic Young Turks came to power
in the Ottoman Empire, haunted Mouradian from the time she set foot in
Boston, a member of the growing Armenian diaspora fleeing persecution
that would continue through 1923 under the Young Turks' equally
ethnically exclusive predecessors, the Turkish Nationalists. Bottled
for decades, the torment would escape in bursts when Mouradian tried
to relate her ordeal to her young daughter, Kay Mouradian.
"Hunger is a pain that never sleeps," Kay Mouradian, now a South
Pasadena resident, recalled her mother saying.
But it wasn't until 1984, at the onset of series of cathartic brushes
with death, that Flora Mouradian would finally overcome profound
feelings of self-pity and grief over losing what could have been
some of the most enjoyable years in life. It was then, too, that her
daughter saw the value in recording her mother's horrific experience.
At 83 and diagnosed with a terminal heart condition following a heart
attack, Flora came to South Pasadena to stay with her daughter to
live out what a doctor expected would be her last days. Kay figured
those days would be very few; dementia had already made strangers of
friends and family in Flora's mind, and tremors kept her from feeding
herself as her health declined in the years prior.
But, gradually and inexplicably, Flora became more alert, more active
and, as her daughter tells it, the "dark shadow" so much death and
suffering created suddenly lifted. The tremors stopped, she rekindled
friendships with people she was unable to recognize months earlier
and the hardness tragedy had forged in her heart began to soften. "I
just can't explain it. It was as if all the trauma that had fallen
upon her was completely released," Kay said.
But health problems landed Flora in the hospital again soon after. One
night as she seemed to be leaving the living world, she returned
again, this time with a sibylline prophecy. "Do you know why I'm still
here?" she asked her daughter. "Because if I died, nobody would know."
Then she told her daughter she would write a book about her life,
and Kay set out soon after to trace the desert path her ancestors
walked during their forced deportation.
One of the stories Flora relayed to her daughter began in Aleppo,
Syria, where her mother and father left her and her sister before
walking to their likely demise. That's where the then-14-year-old
Flora was sold to a wealthy Turkish man who made her the newest member
of his harem. But as she was being carted off, Flora pleaded with a
young Armenian boy in the street to tell her sister what had happened
to her. The same night, her sister donned Muslim garb and snuck her
away from the harem, her daughter said, and a Syrian family then gave
her refuge until she left for the United States.
'The bastards!' Researching for a book about her mother's struggle,
Flora in 1988 was in Aleppo searching for relatives of the family
that took in her mother after she escaped the rich man's harem. Then
she learned her mother was back in the hospital for the fourth time.
When Kay arrived at the hospital, her mother was on her side in
bed in the cardiac care unit. "I don't know why I didn't die," her
mother whispered.
Days later Kay was bewildered to find her mother sitting straight up
in the hospital bed bellowing in Turkish, a language she hadn't used
in 50 years, before reverting back to English.
"They took my education! They took my family! Do you know what it
was like? I went crazy!" Flora shouted. "The bastards!"
With that, the Turks seemed to gain atonement and Flora a peace that
lasted until her death in South Pasadena in 1989, her daughter said.
Doomed to repeat Glendale and Pasadena are home to one of the largest
Armenian populations in the country, and for years Congressman Schiff,
who represents the area, has tried to convince Congress of the need to
formally characterize the 1.5 million Armenian deaths as a genocide,
as France, Belgium, Russia, Italy, Canada and more than 20 other
countries have already done. But legislation that would accomplish
that goal has fallen prey to the political process each time it's
been introduced, due in large part to this country's strong political
relationship with Turkey, a key ally in the Middle East that to this
day denies the massacres and death marches ever happened.
But Schiff is hoping the Turkish government's recent actions in support
of Iran, which he said complicated US diplomatic efforts to curtail
Tehran's nuclear capability, its complicity in the recent fatal Gaza
aid flotilla raid and its changing sentiment toward Israel may finally
break the hold diplomacy has had on recognizing what most historians
consider a crime against humanity.
"If we are to assert our moral leadership in the fight for human
rights, we cannot pick and choose which genocides to recognize,"
Schiff said. "Every year, the Turkish lobby fights recognition with a
multimillion-dollar lobbying effort. But Turkey's recent decision to
embrace Iran, its attempt to block sanctions against Iran's nuclear
program and its defense of the clerical regime's crackdown on its own
people should cause members of Congress to question their willingness
to back its campaign of genocide denial."
Now, in what he calls an effort to educate his colleagues on the
importance of recognizing the genocide, Schiff is making the stories
of Flora Mouradian and other survivors part of the national record.
But while Ankara's actions may not be winning any new friends
in Congress, Turkey's position as a US trading partner, ally and
NATO member give it a strong enough position to continue denying
the genocide despite the recent developments, according to Levon
Marashlian, a Glendale Community College history professor who's
written opinion pieces about Armenian-Turkish relations for newspapers
here and abroad.
"I'm not sure that the real tension that exists now is enough to
overcome those other factors," Marashlian said. "Turkey is still
viewed in Washington as a valuable ally, so its image has declined
a bit, but it's nowhere near being an out-and-out break."
Call for revival Glendale's Katia Kusherian, who submitted stories
on her family's ouster from the ancient Armenian capital Tigranakert,
said the near-perennial defeat of legislation recognizing the genocide
has been a constant disappointment to Armenians here who want their
adopted country to recognize the atrocities that brought many of them
here. "My expectation is justice with a capital J," Kusherian said.
"Armenian people all hope that this time is the time. We have been
disappointed year after year. For political reasons we can't just
ignore the justice, ignore the truth. This is a moral thing, and
without morals any country will go down."
What exactly would happen if the United States were to recognize the
genocide is uncertain, but some hope it would bring about the return
of property and territory taken by the Turks. "The dream for a lot of
Armenians is that we gain all that territory back and once again call
it Armenia, but I doubt that will ever happen," Kay Mouradian said.
But, as a retired educator, Mouradian said she would rather see Turkey
sponsor a college fund for Armenian students. "We lost our best and
brightest, and it's taken 96 years for the Armenian intelligentsia
to revive," she said.
Mouradian said it could also heal the rift that exists between Turks
and Armenians in the Middle East and clear up misconceptions that
hinder greater cultural unity. "The ordinary citizen in Turkey has
no knowledge of what happened at that time. They have an opinion of
Armenians as bad people," she said.
From: A. Papazian