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Armenian Orphan Rug will be displayed at White House Visitor Center

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  • Armenian Orphan Rug will be displayed at White House Visitor Center

    San Bernardino County Sun
    Oct 25 2014


    Armenian Orphan Rug will be displayed at White House Visitor Center


    By Brenda Gazzar, Los Angeles Daily News

    Sarkis "Steve" Manoukian's father was 6 years old when Ottoman Turk
    forces and their proxies brandishing swords and sledgehammers ambushed
    his family and others in the Syrian Desert nearly a century ago.

    Manoukian's mother told him that the horsemen brutally chopped off
    heads and limbs of Armenian women, children and the elderly who were
    forced to march for weeks in a caravan in 1915, leaving a sea of
    severed bodies in their wake. Manoukian's father, Khatchik, was the
    only family member to survive that attack. He was knocked down in the
    chaos and awoke that night to a gruesome scene of desert animals
    devouring the dead.

    The orphaned Khatchik, who was rescued that night and adopted by Arab
    Bedouins, lived as a shepherd in a Syrian village for nine years
    before running away from desert life. He was about 15 years old when
    he found his way to an American orphanage for Armenians in Aleppo that
    was run by Near East Relief, a congressionally chartered organization
    that contributed more than $110 million in humanitarian assistance
    from 1915 to 1930 to help the survivors of the Armenian Genocide,
    Manoukian said.

    "I feel so grateful for the people of the United States, who in a way
    saved my dad," said Manoukian, 69, of Reseda, who himself later lived
    in a Danish orphanage in Lebanon with his mother and sister after his
    father died of a stroke. "Otherwise, he would have had a hard life.
    ... They let him work in the orphanage, helping the baker for three
    years until he became 18."

    Now, these little-known American relief efforts will be spotlighted
    when an elaborate rug woven by orphans of the genocide will be taken
    out of storage and displayed as part of an exhibit at the White House
    Visitor Center from Nov. 18-23. The Armenian Orphan Rug, also known as
    the Ghazir Rug, was woven by seven Armenian girls from Near East
    Relief's Ghazir Orphanage in Lebanon in 1920 and presented to
    President Calvin Coolidge in 1925 as a symbol of their gratitude for
    American humanitarian aid.

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    The rug was originally going to be exhibited in the Smithsonian last
    year in connection with a new book by Dr. Hagop Martin Deranian about
    the Near East Relief organization, but the event was canceled at the
    11th hour, said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank. President Barack Obama's
    administration informed the museum that it was not appropriate to
    exhibit the rug, part of the White House collection, at a book sale,
    Schiff said. The Armenian community, however, was skeptical and
    thought the decision had more to do with not wanting to offend the
    Turkish government, which has long denied there was a systematic
    campaign by the Ottoman Turks to kill Armenians, Schiff said.

    Not long afterward, Schiff asked the White House if the rug could be
    exhibited at a reception on Capitol Hill that focused on the efforts
    of Near East Relief. Several months ago, the White House assured him
    they would make the rug available in the fall, Schiff said, "and now
    they have made good on that commitment."

    The Turkish Consulate General in Los Angeles sees "the display of the
    Armenian Orphan Rug, along with two other items, as a cultural
    exhibit," a spokesperson said in an email. A vase and artwork titled
    the "Flowering Branches in Lucite" will also be displayed.

    This will be the third time the rug, slated to be part of the exhibit
    entitled "Thank you to the United States: Three Gifts to Presidents in
    Gratitude for American Generosity Abroad," will be displayed since
    Coolidge's family returned it to the White House as a gift in 1982. It
    was removed with his possessions when he left office in 1929,
    according to the National Security Council.

    The ornate rug, which has more than 4 million hand-tied knots and
    measures 11 feet 7 inches by 18 feet 5 inches, represents the tragic
    story of what happened to Armenians between 1915 and 1923, with
    massive deportations, displacement and genocide in which as many as
    1.5 million Armenians were killed, said Deranian, author of the book
    "President Calvin Coolidge and the Armenian Orphan Rug."

    But "more than that, it represents America as a nation of compassion
    that came to the aid of the orphans," he said.

    Near East Relief, once called the American Committee for Syrian and
    Armenian Relief, saved the lives of at least a million people amid the
    wreckage of the Ottoman Empire, treated more than 6 million patients
    in NEF-run clinics throughout the region, established orphanages and
    provided education and training to more than 100,000 Armenian children
    who became orphaned in the turmoil, according to the website of the
    Near East Foundation, which is what the organization is called today.

    "I think (the rug) is an important link not only between the terrible
    dark days of the genocide but also the beginning of an American
    tradition of providing assistance to those in need, a tradition that
    very much continues to this day," Schiff said.

    Manoukian said he's proud that the Armenian Orphan Rug will finally be
    displayed but characterized it as a "small step" taken by the White
    House in an effort to satisfy the Armenian-American community.

    "We'd like to see the U.S. government be more courageous and be more
    honest about its past history and come forward and say, 'Look, this is
    our ancestors. This is what they did. They conducted such a
    humanitarian effort while a whole nation was being butchered,'"
    Manoukian said.

    Armenian-American Maurice Missak Kelechian, 54, of Toluca Lake, an
    independent researcher who gives talks on Near East Relief, says he
    believes the rug should be displayed much longer and in a prominent
    museum such as the Smithsonian, particularly in light of Turkey's
    denial and U.S. administrations' reluctance to use the word genocide,
    he said.

    "You think all Armenians are happy to remember the genocide?"
    Kelechian said. "It's such a trauma to carry from one generation to
    the other."

    By displaying the Armenian Orphan Rug, "you're watering their souls
    (of those who perished.) You're acknowledging their story."

    Deranian, who lives in Massachusetts, will speak about the themes in
    his book from 6 to 8 p.m. on Nov. 6 at Woodbury University, 7500 N.
    Glenoaks Blvd., Burbank. The event, sponsored by the Armenian Assembly
    of America, will include the display of a "sister rug" that was also
    produced by girls in the Ghazir Orphanage.


    http://www.sbsun.com/general-news/20141024/armenian-orphan-rug-will-be-displayed-at-white-house-visitor-center

    Also at http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/general-news/20141024/local-armenians-proud-orphan-rug-will-be-displayed-at-white-house-visitor-center

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