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JOURNEY TO SOVIET ARMENIA, PORT STOP IN WAR-TORN NAPLES
Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso (press release), Italy
March 14 2013
Hazel Antaramian Hofman
14 March 2013
A group of 162 American-Armenians on a journey form New York towards
Armenia in 1949 stops in the port of war-torn Naples. Women and men
who soon afterwards would be living in Stalin's USSR are astonished
by the misery they see in post war Italy
Twenty-five years to the day of the death of the father of the
Bolshevik Revolution, V.I. Lenin, the Sobieski set sail from New
York, on January 21, 1949, to Naples, its final port of call. The
repatriates were leaving the United States for Soviet Armenia. After
surrendering their American citizenship papers, they set sail as
Soviet citizens on the Polish transatlantic passenger ship. The ship
was navigating the same route of the Rossiya, the Russian-confiscated
German ship that took the first group of American-Armenians to Batumi
in the Fall of 1947. One-hundred and sixty-two of the little over
300 American-Armenians repatriates were part of the second caravan
leaving America for Soviet Armenia after World War II. Despite efforts
by those who left on the first caravan to warn family and friends
about their impending fate, the 162 American-Armenians made the same
unfortunate voyage.
The 162 were originally going to set sail late in 1948, on the Pobeda,
the ship that was instrumental in the repatriation of Armenians from
France, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine and Iraq. 1 However, in September of
1948, a fire damaged the ship, the cause of which was unknown. After
a closed-door trial, it was later reported that the captain of the
Pobeda, the telegrapher, and the dispatcher were all pronounced guilty
of negligence. Two weeks after the event occurred, Soviet leader
Josef Stalin laid acrimonious blame upon the Americans, consequently
effecting Soviet regulation to "completely and immediately" 2
desist the further repatriation of Armenians from the Diaspora. An
exception was made less than a month later, where, in the end, the
162 American-Armenians became the last group to repatriate. 3
-Pictures -- Postcards, dinners, group photos. The journey of
American-Armenian repatriates aboard the Sobieski in 1949. A photo
gallery. Images courtesy of Crosby Phillian -When a number of the
ship's passengers disembarked at various times at the three ports of
call before Naples, the 162 American-Armenian "repatriates" remained on
board. Repatriate Sonia Meghreblian recalls in her published memoir
4 a brief first stop at Gibraltar where several vendors boarded
the ship to sell souvenirs. The next entry port for the ship was in
France at Cannes. There, one passenger was allowed off the Sobieski,
who went ashore on a small boat. After a few hours in Cannes, the
ship headed for Genoa, where again other passengers left the ship,
while the repatriates remained onboard. The last stop was at Naples.
Naples
It was at the port of Naples where the repatriates soon sensed that
their relatively adventurous journey had ended and they faced a
foreboding situation as they headed toward their final destination.
Largely ignorant of the devastating effects of World War II in Europe,
the American-Armenians would soon witness the extremes of poverty.
Beginning first in Naples, the prosperous world of experienced reality
by the American-Armenians collided with the surrealism of post-WWII
destruction in Europe. As non-repatriate passengers disembarked,
the American-Armenian passengers remained on the Sobieski, awaiting
further word about plans to change ships.
The sketchy logistical travel plan for the 162 repatriates was to
first bring them to Naples on the Polish passenger ship and then have
them transfer to the Ardeal, a Romanian cargo ship. The transfer
of passengers did not proceed as planned. The Ardeal did not enter
the Naples port as anticipated. The reason remains unclear, but many
assumed that when the Soviets and Romanians learned of the presence
of the United States Navy, the Ardeal remained at sea to avoid an
international incident. The politically awkward affair left the
repatriates in an indeterminate state of transport.
-From James Dean to Stalin: the tragedy of the Armenian repatriation --
As a young child, she always wondered why she lived in Yerevan when
her father was born in the U.S. and her mother was from Lyon. Then
she understood. With an historical-artistic project, Hazel Antaramian
Hofman follows the footprints of those people, who, from all over the
world, decided to migrate to Armenia after the Second World War. Read
her article: From James Dean to Stalin: the tragedy of the Armenian
repatriation -With no official papers to set foot on Italian soil, the
situation was quite precarious. Adding to the dilemma was the presence
of the Sixth Fleet of the United States Navy docked in Naples. At the
conclusion of World War II, Italy faced trying economic devastation.
The Treaty of Peace with Italy in 1947 rendered the country's prior
international standing lifeless. Disarmament clauses and imposed
reparations to various countries, including the Soviet Union, created
economic and political turmoil for Italy. 5 According to Crosby
Phillian, a fifteen-year old New Yorker heading to Soviet Armenia with
his family, among the warships in the Naples port was the aircraft
carrier, the USS Philippine Sea. He also recalls that the fleet was
granted shore leave. He saw boat loads of sailors traversing between
ship and shore and back. 6
After a few days, the Soviets decided to allow the repatriates off
the ship while waiting out the situation. Before boarding buses to
the Hotel Grilli, the repatriates were allowed a sequestered sojourn
while awaiting their transfer. They walked in military fashion from the
ship to the buses. On one side of the single-filed line of repatriates
was a Soviet official and on the other side was an Italian official. 7
During their time in Naples, the repatriates witnessed extreme
situations of poverty. Meghreblian, a nineteen year-old at the time,
noted the devastation caused by the war. They saw locals living in
bomb-shelled buildings. 8 Phillian remembers an incident on the wharf
that spoke to severe shortages:
The stevedores were unloading a cargo net when one of the sacks burst
open. It was sugar! All of a sudden there was a swarm of people, I
don't know where they came out from, scooping up the spilt sugar with
their bare hands and putting it into bags. When you have never seen
anything like that, it leaves a very deep impression on you. Who would
scoop up spilt sugar with their bare hands in the United States? You
never even thought about things like that. 9
Unbeknownst to the repatriates, this incident foreshadowed their own
upcoming plight in Soviet Armenia. Another teenage American-Armenian
repatriate from Watertown, Massachusetts, Deran Tashjian, indicated
that after experiencing the poverty in Naples some of the repatriates
finally began to question their future predicament. 10
The 162 stayed at the hotel in Naples for nearly a week. Phillian
said that at every entrance to the hotel, there was "an armed soldier
standing guard." The "captive guests" whiled away the time by reading,
talking, and playing poker. At the hotel there was a barber, so some
of the repatriate men took the opportunity to get their hair cut.
Phillian noted how with only a pair of scissors and a comb the
man worked "like an artist...for only 50 cents," a bargain for the
Americans.
When word was received that the Sixth Fleet had left Naples, the
Ardeal made its way into port to retrieve the repatriates. With the
same 'military escort,' the repatriates were taken from the hotel
to the port. They were counted again to assure that everyone who had
originally disembarked the Sobieski for the hotel was there to board
the Ardeal. Like day and night, for the passengers, no reasonable
comparison could be made between the Sobieski and the Ardeal. The
repatriates arrived in Naples on a passenger ship with comfortable
amenities, and left Italy on a "squat ugly-looking cargo ship with
no accommodations for all...who were to board it." 11 With only a few
cabins assigned to the women, children, and the elderly, the mess hall
during the day was converted to a large sleeping area at night for the
men. After the Ardeal left Naples, it moved passed Sicily, up along
the Greek Islands and headed toward Romania. While passing through
the Dardanelles to enter the Black Sea toward Batumi, the repatriates
confronted Turks sailing the waters in rowboats. Insults were exchanged
between the repatriating American-Armenians and the Turks, whereby the
Turks gestured with a "sign of cutting the throat." 12 In retrospect,
Phillian says that he was not too sure if this gesture had more to
do with the animosity between the two peoples, or more reflective
of the plight that the American-Armenians would be facing as they
"returned" to Soviet Armenia.
The Ardeal eventually docked in Constanza, a port on the Black Sea
that once flourished as a trading port between the Byzantine Empire
and Italian ports during the tenth and eleventh centuries. A number
of officials came on board the Ardeal, but only the Romanian-native
sailors were allowed to go ashore. Phillian tells of an interesting
event that took place on the Ardeal between an American-Armenian and a
Romanian-Armenian sailor. The sailor spoke Armenian and was approached
by one of the repatriates to help send a letter back to the United
States. Since Romania was under the political yoke of the Soviet Union
at this time, the sailor was concerned with communist officials who
conducted routine searches. Cautiously the sailor refused to deliver
the letter; he knew that he would be searched by Romanian authorities
when leaving the ship and then again before boarding. 13 This was
probably a wise move for the safety of the repatriates as well. It
was not uncommon for many American-Armenians to be under suspicion
of American espionage, a real concern for many American-Armenians
once on Soviet land. Many were later interrogated and tortured by
the Soviet Committee for State Security, better known as the KGB,
its Russian acronym.
>>From Romania, the ship arrived at its final destination in Batumi,
a port in Soviet Georgia, where they were awaited by a delegation
as well as family members who had arrived in 1947. The landing was
filled with propaganda-driven speeches and political fanfare. The
162 American-Armenian repatriates were soon taken to a hangar where
again they awaited the final stage of their ill-fated journey to
Soviet Armenia.
1 The Armenian General Benevolent Union, One Hundred Years of History,
Vol. II, 1941-2006, AGBU, Central Board of Directors, Paris, 302.
2 Armenian General Benevolent Union, "Realizing a Dream: Then and Now,"
Vol. 20, No. 2, November 2010, 6.
3 AGBU, "Realizing a Dream," 6.
4 Sonia Meghreblian, An Armenian Odyssey, Gomitas Institute, 2012.
5 John B. Hattendorf, Naval Policy and Strategy in the Mediterranean
Sea: Past, Present and Future, Routledge Publisher, 2000, 198. The
pressure by the peace treaty lessened its impact as the West drew Italy
more within its sphere. See Roy Palmer Domenico, Remaking Italy in the
Twentieth Century, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., New York,
2002, 108.
6 Phillian, letter to author, September 19, 2012.
7 Phillian, letter to author, September 19, 2012.
8 Meghreblian, An Armenian Odyssey, 2012, 76.
9 Phillian, letter to author, September 19, 2012.
10 Tashjian, personal interview with author, July 8, 2012.
11 Phillian, letter to author, September 19, 2012.
12 Phillian, letter to author, September 19, 2012.
13 Phillian, letter to author, September 19, 2012.
-About the author --Hazel Antaramian-Hofman was born in Soviet Armenia
to two 1947 repatriates, whose families respectively came from the
United States and France. Her family eventually left Soviet Armenia
in 1965. Her family was considered among the first of the post-WWII
repatriates to leave the country. For the past several years,
Antaramian-Hofman has been documenting stories of repatriates and
the images from the period as sources for her artwork on the history
of what now many are calling the Great Armenian Repatriation. The
first series of her paintings and drawings will be on exhibit at the
Armenian Museum of Fresno from March through April 2013. To contact
the author, please write "repatriation project" in the subject line
and email her at [email protected]
http://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/All-news/Journey-to-Soviet-Armenia-port-stop-in-war-torn-Naples-132254
Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso (press release), Italy
March 14 2013
Hazel Antaramian Hofman
14 March 2013
A group of 162 American-Armenians on a journey form New York towards
Armenia in 1949 stops in the port of war-torn Naples. Women and men
who soon afterwards would be living in Stalin's USSR are astonished
by the misery they see in post war Italy
Twenty-five years to the day of the death of the father of the
Bolshevik Revolution, V.I. Lenin, the Sobieski set sail from New
York, on January 21, 1949, to Naples, its final port of call. The
repatriates were leaving the United States for Soviet Armenia. After
surrendering their American citizenship papers, they set sail as
Soviet citizens on the Polish transatlantic passenger ship. The ship
was navigating the same route of the Rossiya, the Russian-confiscated
German ship that took the first group of American-Armenians to Batumi
in the Fall of 1947. One-hundred and sixty-two of the little over
300 American-Armenians repatriates were part of the second caravan
leaving America for Soviet Armenia after World War II. Despite efforts
by those who left on the first caravan to warn family and friends
about their impending fate, the 162 American-Armenians made the same
unfortunate voyage.
The 162 were originally going to set sail late in 1948, on the Pobeda,
the ship that was instrumental in the repatriation of Armenians from
France, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine and Iraq. 1 However, in September of
1948, a fire damaged the ship, the cause of which was unknown. After
a closed-door trial, it was later reported that the captain of the
Pobeda, the telegrapher, and the dispatcher were all pronounced guilty
of negligence. Two weeks after the event occurred, Soviet leader
Josef Stalin laid acrimonious blame upon the Americans, consequently
effecting Soviet regulation to "completely and immediately" 2
desist the further repatriation of Armenians from the Diaspora. An
exception was made less than a month later, where, in the end, the
162 American-Armenians became the last group to repatriate. 3
-Pictures -- Postcards, dinners, group photos. The journey of
American-Armenian repatriates aboard the Sobieski in 1949. A photo
gallery. Images courtesy of Crosby Phillian -When a number of the
ship's passengers disembarked at various times at the three ports of
call before Naples, the 162 American-Armenian "repatriates" remained on
board. Repatriate Sonia Meghreblian recalls in her published memoir
4 a brief first stop at Gibraltar where several vendors boarded
the ship to sell souvenirs. The next entry port for the ship was in
France at Cannes. There, one passenger was allowed off the Sobieski,
who went ashore on a small boat. After a few hours in Cannes, the
ship headed for Genoa, where again other passengers left the ship,
while the repatriates remained onboard. The last stop was at Naples.
Naples
It was at the port of Naples where the repatriates soon sensed that
their relatively adventurous journey had ended and they faced a
foreboding situation as they headed toward their final destination.
Largely ignorant of the devastating effects of World War II in Europe,
the American-Armenians would soon witness the extremes of poverty.
Beginning first in Naples, the prosperous world of experienced reality
by the American-Armenians collided with the surrealism of post-WWII
destruction in Europe. As non-repatriate passengers disembarked,
the American-Armenian passengers remained on the Sobieski, awaiting
further word about plans to change ships.
The sketchy logistical travel plan for the 162 repatriates was to
first bring them to Naples on the Polish passenger ship and then have
them transfer to the Ardeal, a Romanian cargo ship. The transfer
of passengers did not proceed as planned. The Ardeal did not enter
the Naples port as anticipated. The reason remains unclear, but many
assumed that when the Soviets and Romanians learned of the presence
of the United States Navy, the Ardeal remained at sea to avoid an
international incident. The politically awkward affair left the
repatriates in an indeterminate state of transport.
-From James Dean to Stalin: the tragedy of the Armenian repatriation --
As a young child, she always wondered why she lived in Yerevan when
her father was born in the U.S. and her mother was from Lyon. Then
she understood. With an historical-artistic project, Hazel Antaramian
Hofman follows the footprints of those people, who, from all over the
world, decided to migrate to Armenia after the Second World War. Read
her article: From James Dean to Stalin: the tragedy of the Armenian
repatriation -With no official papers to set foot on Italian soil, the
situation was quite precarious. Adding to the dilemma was the presence
of the Sixth Fleet of the United States Navy docked in Naples. At the
conclusion of World War II, Italy faced trying economic devastation.
The Treaty of Peace with Italy in 1947 rendered the country's prior
international standing lifeless. Disarmament clauses and imposed
reparations to various countries, including the Soviet Union, created
economic and political turmoil for Italy. 5 According to Crosby
Phillian, a fifteen-year old New Yorker heading to Soviet Armenia with
his family, among the warships in the Naples port was the aircraft
carrier, the USS Philippine Sea. He also recalls that the fleet was
granted shore leave. He saw boat loads of sailors traversing between
ship and shore and back. 6
After a few days, the Soviets decided to allow the repatriates off
the ship while waiting out the situation. Before boarding buses to
the Hotel Grilli, the repatriates were allowed a sequestered sojourn
while awaiting their transfer. They walked in military fashion from the
ship to the buses. On one side of the single-filed line of repatriates
was a Soviet official and on the other side was an Italian official. 7
During their time in Naples, the repatriates witnessed extreme
situations of poverty. Meghreblian, a nineteen year-old at the time,
noted the devastation caused by the war. They saw locals living in
bomb-shelled buildings. 8 Phillian remembers an incident on the wharf
that spoke to severe shortages:
The stevedores were unloading a cargo net when one of the sacks burst
open. It was sugar! All of a sudden there was a swarm of people, I
don't know where they came out from, scooping up the spilt sugar with
their bare hands and putting it into bags. When you have never seen
anything like that, it leaves a very deep impression on you. Who would
scoop up spilt sugar with their bare hands in the United States? You
never even thought about things like that. 9
Unbeknownst to the repatriates, this incident foreshadowed their own
upcoming plight in Soviet Armenia. Another teenage American-Armenian
repatriate from Watertown, Massachusetts, Deran Tashjian, indicated
that after experiencing the poverty in Naples some of the repatriates
finally began to question their future predicament. 10
The 162 stayed at the hotel in Naples for nearly a week. Phillian
said that at every entrance to the hotel, there was "an armed soldier
standing guard." The "captive guests" whiled away the time by reading,
talking, and playing poker. At the hotel there was a barber, so some
of the repatriate men took the opportunity to get their hair cut.
Phillian noted how with only a pair of scissors and a comb the
man worked "like an artist...for only 50 cents," a bargain for the
Americans.
When word was received that the Sixth Fleet had left Naples, the
Ardeal made its way into port to retrieve the repatriates. With the
same 'military escort,' the repatriates were taken from the hotel
to the port. They were counted again to assure that everyone who had
originally disembarked the Sobieski for the hotel was there to board
the Ardeal. Like day and night, for the passengers, no reasonable
comparison could be made between the Sobieski and the Ardeal. The
repatriates arrived in Naples on a passenger ship with comfortable
amenities, and left Italy on a "squat ugly-looking cargo ship with
no accommodations for all...who were to board it." 11 With only a few
cabins assigned to the women, children, and the elderly, the mess hall
during the day was converted to a large sleeping area at night for the
men. After the Ardeal left Naples, it moved passed Sicily, up along
the Greek Islands and headed toward Romania. While passing through
the Dardanelles to enter the Black Sea toward Batumi, the repatriates
confronted Turks sailing the waters in rowboats. Insults were exchanged
between the repatriating American-Armenians and the Turks, whereby the
Turks gestured with a "sign of cutting the throat." 12 In retrospect,
Phillian says that he was not too sure if this gesture had more to
do with the animosity between the two peoples, or more reflective
of the plight that the American-Armenians would be facing as they
"returned" to Soviet Armenia.
The Ardeal eventually docked in Constanza, a port on the Black Sea
that once flourished as a trading port between the Byzantine Empire
and Italian ports during the tenth and eleventh centuries. A number
of officials came on board the Ardeal, but only the Romanian-native
sailors were allowed to go ashore. Phillian tells of an interesting
event that took place on the Ardeal between an American-Armenian and a
Romanian-Armenian sailor. The sailor spoke Armenian and was approached
by one of the repatriates to help send a letter back to the United
States. Since Romania was under the political yoke of the Soviet Union
at this time, the sailor was concerned with communist officials who
conducted routine searches. Cautiously the sailor refused to deliver
the letter; he knew that he would be searched by Romanian authorities
when leaving the ship and then again before boarding. 13 This was
probably a wise move for the safety of the repatriates as well. It
was not uncommon for many American-Armenians to be under suspicion
of American espionage, a real concern for many American-Armenians
once on Soviet land. Many were later interrogated and tortured by
the Soviet Committee for State Security, better known as the KGB,
its Russian acronym.
>>From Romania, the ship arrived at its final destination in Batumi,
a port in Soviet Georgia, where they were awaited by a delegation
as well as family members who had arrived in 1947. The landing was
filled with propaganda-driven speeches and political fanfare. The
162 American-Armenian repatriates were soon taken to a hangar where
again they awaited the final stage of their ill-fated journey to
Soviet Armenia.
1 The Armenian General Benevolent Union, One Hundred Years of History,
Vol. II, 1941-2006, AGBU, Central Board of Directors, Paris, 302.
2 Armenian General Benevolent Union, "Realizing a Dream: Then and Now,"
Vol. 20, No. 2, November 2010, 6.
3 AGBU, "Realizing a Dream," 6.
4 Sonia Meghreblian, An Armenian Odyssey, Gomitas Institute, 2012.
5 John B. Hattendorf, Naval Policy and Strategy in the Mediterranean
Sea: Past, Present and Future, Routledge Publisher, 2000, 198. The
pressure by the peace treaty lessened its impact as the West drew Italy
more within its sphere. See Roy Palmer Domenico, Remaking Italy in the
Twentieth Century, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., New York,
2002, 108.
6 Phillian, letter to author, September 19, 2012.
7 Phillian, letter to author, September 19, 2012.
8 Meghreblian, An Armenian Odyssey, 2012, 76.
9 Phillian, letter to author, September 19, 2012.
10 Tashjian, personal interview with author, July 8, 2012.
11 Phillian, letter to author, September 19, 2012.
12 Phillian, letter to author, September 19, 2012.
13 Phillian, letter to author, September 19, 2012.
-About the author --Hazel Antaramian-Hofman was born in Soviet Armenia
to two 1947 repatriates, whose families respectively came from the
United States and France. Her family eventually left Soviet Armenia
in 1965. Her family was considered among the first of the post-WWII
repatriates to leave the country. For the past several years,
Antaramian-Hofman has been documenting stories of repatriates and
the images from the period as sources for her artwork on the history
of what now many are calling the Great Armenian Repatriation. The
first series of her paintings and drawings will be on exhibit at the
Armenian Museum of Fresno from March through April 2013. To contact
the author, please write "repatriation project" in the subject line
and email her at [email protected]
http://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/All-news/Journey-to-Soviet-Armenia-port-stop-in-war-torn-Naples-132254