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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/jabhat-alnusra-blows-up-armenian-church-in-deir-elzour-a-savage-blow-that-echoes-through-armenian-history-9852372.html
Jabhat al-Nusra blows up Armenian church in Deir el-Zour: A savage
blow that echoes through Armenian history
By Robert Fisk
Nov. 10, 2014
In the most savage act of vandalism against Syria's Christians,
Islamists have blown up the great Armenian church in Deir el-Zour,
built in dedication to the one and a half million Armenians
slaughtered by the Turks during the 1915 genocide. All of the church
archives, dating back to 1841 and containing thousands of documents on
the Armenian holocaust, were burned to ashes, while the bones of
hundreds of genocide victims, packed into the church's crypt in memory
of the mass killings 99 years ago, were thrown into the street beside
the ruins.
This act of sacrilege will cause huge pain among the Armenians
scattered across the world ` as well as in the rump state of Armenia
which emerged after the 1914-1918 war, not least because many hundreds
of thousands of victims died in death camps around the very same city
of Deir el-Zour. Jabhat al-Nusra rebels appear to have been the
culprits this time, but since many Syrians believe that the group has
received arms from Turkey, the destruction will be regarded by many
Armenians as a further stage in their historical annihilation by the
descendants of those who perpetrated the genocide 99 years ago.
Turkey, of course, miserably claims there was no genocide ` the
equivalent of modern day Germany denying the Jewish Holocaust ` but
hundreds of historians, including one prominent Turkish academic, have
proved beyond any doubt that the Armenians were deliberately massacred
on the orders of the Ottoman Turkish government across all of
modern-day Turkey and inside the desert of what is now northern Syria
` the very region where Isis and its kindred ideological armed groups
now hold. Even Israelis refer to the Armenian genocide with the same
Hebrew word they use for their own destruction by Nazi Germany:
`Shoah', which means `holocaust'.
The Armenian priest responsible for the Deir el-Zour district,
Monsignor Antranik Ayvazian, revealed to me that before the explosions
tore the church apart towards the end of September, he received a
message from the Islamists promising to spare the church archives if
he acknowledged them as the legislative authority in that part of
Syria. `I refused,' he said. `And after I refused, they destroyed all
our papers and endowments. The only genocide victims' bones left were
further north in the Murgada sanctuary and I buried them before I
left. They destroyed the church there, but now if I could go back, I
don't even know if I could find where I put the bones.'
Msr Ayvazian later received a photograph taken in secret and smuggled
to him from the Isis-controlled area, showing clearly that only part
of the central tower of the Deir el-Zour church, built in 1846 and
renovated 43 years later, remains. Every Armenian who has returned to
the killing fields of the genocide has prayed at the church. Across
these same lands, broken skulls and bones from 1915 still lie in the
sand. When I investigated the death marches in this same region 22
years ago with a French photographer, we uncovered dozens of skeletons
in the crevasse of a hill at a point where so many Armenian dead were
thrown into the waters of the Khabur that the river changed its course
forever. I gave some of the skulls and bones we found to an Armenian
friend who placed them in the crypt of the Deir el-Zour church ` the
very same building which now lies in ruins.
`During the Armenian genocide, the Turks entered the church and killed
its priest, Father Petrus Terzibashian, in front of the congregation,'
Msr Ayvazian said. `Then they threw his body into the Euphrates. This
time when the Islamists came, our priest there fled for his life.' Msr
Ayvazian suffered his own personal loss in the Syrian war when
Islamist fighters broke into the Mediterranean town of Qassab on 22
April this year. `They burned all my books and documents, many of them
very old, and left my library with nothing but 60cm of ash on the
floor.' Msr Ayvazian showed me a photograph of the Qassab church
altar, upon which one of the Islamists had written in Arabic: `Thanks
be to God for al-Qaeda, the Nusra Front and Bilal al-Sham' (another
Islamist group). The town was retaken by Syrian government troops on
22 June.
Msr Ayvazian recounted his own extraordinary story of how he tried to
prevent foreign Islamist fighters from taking over or destroying an
Armenian-built hospital ` how he drove to meet the Islamist gunmen and
agreed to recover the corpses of some of their comrades killed in
battle in return for a promise not to damage the hospital. `As I
approached the hospital, a Syrian jet flew over me and dropped a bomb
40 metres from the building. I know the officer who sent the aircraft.
He said it was his way of trying to warn the rebels not to harm me.
They came out of the hospital like rats ` but they did not harm me.'
I spoke later to the local Syrian military air force dispatcher and he
confirmed that he had indeed sent a MiG fighter-bomber to attack waste
ground near the building. Msr Ayvazian subsequently went to the old
battlefield with Syrian government permission and recovered several
bodies, all in a state of advanced decay and one with a leg eaten off
by dogs. But he bravely set off with trucks carrying the dead and
handed the remains to the Islamists. `They kept their word and later
withdrew all their foreign fighters from the province of Hassake. I
later received a letter from one of their emirs, very polite, telling
me ` and here the priest produced a copy of the note ` that: `We vow
to keep your property and your cherished possessions, which we also
hold dear to us.' Msr Ayvazian looked scornfully at the letter. `Look,
here at the start,' he said, `they have even made a mistake in their
first quotation from the Koran! And then look what happened at Deir
el-Zour. It was all for nothing.'
Each year, thousands of Armenians have gathered at their church in
Deir el-Zour on 25 April ` the date they commemorate the start of the
genocide, when Armenian lawyers, teachers and doctors were arrested
and later executed by the Turks outside Istanbul ` to remember their
million and a half dead. The 100th anniversary of the mass slaughter
would have been a major event in Deir ez-Zour's history. And although
Syrian soldiers are still holding out in part of the town today, and
Syrian authorities have promised to rebuild Armenian churches when
their lands are retaken from the Islamists, there is little hope that
any Armenians will be able to visit the ruins of their church in five
months' time. As for the Turks, they will do their best to stifle
interest in the Armenian holocaust by holding their own commemorations
next year ` to mark their victory over Allied troops at the 1915
battle for Gallipoli.
From: A. Papazian
Jabhat al-Nusra blows up Armenian church in Deir el-Zour: A savage
blow that echoes through Armenian history
By Robert Fisk
Nov. 10, 2014
In the most savage act of vandalism against Syria's Christians,
Islamists have blown up the great Armenian church in Deir el-Zour,
built in dedication to the one and a half million Armenians
slaughtered by the Turks during the 1915 genocide. All of the church
archives, dating back to 1841 and containing thousands of documents on
the Armenian holocaust, were burned to ashes, while the bones of
hundreds of genocide victims, packed into the church's crypt in memory
of the mass killings 99 years ago, were thrown into the street beside
the ruins.
This act of sacrilege will cause huge pain among the Armenians
scattered across the world ` as well as in the rump state of Armenia
which emerged after the 1914-1918 war, not least because many hundreds
of thousands of victims died in death camps around the very same city
of Deir el-Zour. Jabhat al-Nusra rebels appear to have been the
culprits this time, but since many Syrians believe that the group has
received arms from Turkey, the destruction will be regarded by many
Armenians as a further stage in their historical annihilation by the
descendants of those who perpetrated the genocide 99 years ago.
Turkey, of course, miserably claims there was no genocide ` the
equivalent of modern day Germany denying the Jewish Holocaust ` but
hundreds of historians, including one prominent Turkish academic, have
proved beyond any doubt that the Armenians were deliberately massacred
on the orders of the Ottoman Turkish government across all of
modern-day Turkey and inside the desert of what is now northern Syria
` the very region where Isis and its kindred ideological armed groups
now hold. Even Israelis refer to the Armenian genocide with the same
Hebrew word they use for their own destruction by Nazi Germany:
`Shoah', which means `holocaust'.
The Armenian priest responsible for the Deir el-Zour district,
Monsignor Antranik Ayvazian, revealed to me that before the explosions
tore the church apart towards the end of September, he received a
message from the Islamists promising to spare the church archives if
he acknowledged them as the legislative authority in that part of
Syria. `I refused,' he said. `And after I refused, they destroyed all
our papers and endowments. The only genocide victims' bones left were
further north in the Murgada sanctuary and I buried them before I
left. They destroyed the church there, but now if I could go back, I
don't even know if I could find where I put the bones.'
Msr Ayvazian later received a photograph taken in secret and smuggled
to him from the Isis-controlled area, showing clearly that only part
of the central tower of the Deir el-Zour church, built in 1846 and
renovated 43 years later, remains. Every Armenian who has returned to
the killing fields of the genocide has prayed at the church. Across
these same lands, broken skulls and bones from 1915 still lie in the
sand. When I investigated the death marches in this same region 22
years ago with a French photographer, we uncovered dozens of skeletons
in the crevasse of a hill at a point where so many Armenian dead were
thrown into the waters of the Khabur that the river changed its course
forever. I gave some of the skulls and bones we found to an Armenian
friend who placed them in the crypt of the Deir el-Zour church ` the
very same building which now lies in ruins.
`During the Armenian genocide, the Turks entered the church and killed
its priest, Father Petrus Terzibashian, in front of the congregation,'
Msr Ayvazian said. `Then they threw his body into the Euphrates. This
time when the Islamists came, our priest there fled for his life.' Msr
Ayvazian suffered his own personal loss in the Syrian war when
Islamist fighters broke into the Mediterranean town of Qassab on 22
April this year. `They burned all my books and documents, many of them
very old, and left my library with nothing but 60cm of ash on the
floor.' Msr Ayvazian showed me a photograph of the Qassab church
altar, upon which one of the Islamists had written in Arabic: `Thanks
be to God for al-Qaeda, the Nusra Front and Bilal al-Sham' (another
Islamist group). The town was retaken by Syrian government troops on
22 June.
Msr Ayvazian recounted his own extraordinary story of how he tried to
prevent foreign Islamist fighters from taking over or destroying an
Armenian-built hospital ` how he drove to meet the Islamist gunmen and
agreed to recover the corpses of some of their comrades killed in
battle in return for a promise not to damage the hospital. `As I
approached the hospital, a Syrian jet flew over me and dropped a bomb
40 metres from the building. I know the officer who sent the aircraft.
He said it was his way of trying to warn the rebels not to harm me.
They came out of the hospital like rats ` but they did not harm me.'
I spoke later to the local Syrian military air force dispatcher and he
confirmed that he had indeed sent a MiG fighter-bomber to attack waste
ground near the building. Msr Ayvazian subsequently went to the old
battlefield with Syrian government permission and recovered several
bodies, all in a state of advanced decay and one with a leg eaten off
by dogs. But he bravely set off with trucks carrying the dead and
handed the remains to the Islamists. `They kept their word and later
withdrew all their foreign fighters from the province of Hassake. I
later received a letter from one of their emirs, very polite, telling
me ` and here the priest produced a copy of the note ` that: `We vow
to keep your property and your cherished possessions, which we also
hold dear to us.' Msr Ayvazian looked scornfully at the letter. `Look,
here at the start,' he said, `they have even made a mistake in their
first quotation from the Koran! And then look what happened at Deir
el-Zour. It was all for nothing.'
Each year, thousands of Armenians have gathered at their church in
Deir el-Zour on 25 April ` the date they commemorate the start of the
genocide, when Armenian lawyers, teachers and doctors were arrested
and later executed by the Turks outside Istanbul ` to remember their
million and a half dead. The 100th anniversary of the mass slaughter
would have been a major event in Deir ez-Zour's history. And although
Syrian soldiers are still holding out in part of the town today, and
Syrian authorities have promised to rebuild Armenian churches when
their lands are retaken from the Islamists, there is little hope that
any Armenians will be able to visit the ruins of their church in five
months' time. As for the Turks, they will do their best to stifle
interest in the Armenian holocaust by holding their own commemorations
next year ` to mark their victory over Allied troops at the 1915
battle for Gallipoli.
From: A. Papazian