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SAINTHOOD FOR ARMENIANS WHO DIED 100 YEARS AGO
Orlando Sentinel, FL
April 19 2015
By Jeff Kunerth
They prayed for the lost and the forgotten. They prayed for the
martyrs and the survivors. They prayed for those who died and whose
deaths have been denied.
On Sunday, the congregation of the Soorp Haroutiun Armenian Church
near Windermere held a requiem for the estimated 1.5 million Armenians
killed between 1915 and 1923. It marks the 100th anniversary of what
the Armenians call genocide.
The disappearance of two-thirds of the Christian Armenian population
from Muslim Turkey is explained by the Turks as both an exaggeration
and a voluntary exodus brought on by World War I. If atrocities
occurred, Turkish officials say, it was the byproduct of war. But
they insist there was no systematic plan to annihilate the Armenian
population -- the definition of genocide.
Members of Soorp Haroutiun church, though, remember it differently.
The survivors carried with them stories not unlike the Jews and Poles
and other victims of ethnic cleansing.
Anna Tabirian's grandmother was 6 years old when she, her three
siblings, and mother were forced from their home in Turkey. Her two
youngest sisters died of thirst and starvation in the desert of Syria.
Turks found her mother and took her away. The grandmother and her
11-year-old sister became the property of a Turkish family, who used
them as servants.
Years later, her grandmother's father who was away on business,
paid the Turkish family for his daughters' release.
"Every time she would tell this story, she would cry and say in her
words, 'Until the day I die, if grass grows over my heart, I will never
forget that,' " said Tabirian, 50, a member of the church's council.
Lucine Harvey, a founding member of the Soorp Haroutiun church in 1985,
tells the story of her mother, who was 12 when she was shot by a Turk.
"He left her for dead, but before he did that my mother had a niece
five years old, and he took the little girl, threw her into the creek,
and made my mom watch her drown," said Harvey, 75, of Windermere.
Last week, Pope Francis acknowledged the systemic murder of Armenians
as the first genocide of the 20th century. The United States and
Israel are not among the 22 countries in the world that recognize
what happened to the Armenians as genocide.
But inside the Armenian church, there was no debate. In the social
hall, there was a banner that said "100 Years of Remembrance 1915-2015
The Armenian Genocide." A Christmas tree was reconfigured into a
"martyr tree" decorated with 3-by-5 index cards containing the names
of relatives who survived or lost their lives.
In his Sunday sermon, visiting priest Father Daniel Findikyan talked
about the upcoming event on Friday, April 24, when the Armenian Church
will officially recognize the those who died as martyrs and saints.
"For the first time in centuries, the entire Armenian church will
come together and canonize those Christians who were massacred in
the event of the genocide as saints of the church," Findikyan told
the congregation of about 70 people.
Findikyan preached that it didn't matter when, if ever, Turkey
acknowledges what happened to its Christian population 100 years ago.
Those who died because of their religious beliefs did so with the
martyr's belief that God was there with them, he said.
"As we battle these conflicting feelings -- sadness over the loss of
ancestors, anger at the injustice and the denial of truth -- there is
also some sense of hope that God is with us," he said. "It has taken
100 years, but the Armenian people can see in that disaster glimmers
of God's presence."
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-sunday-armenian-martyrs-20150419-story.html
From: A. Papazian
Orlando Sentinel, FL
April 19 2015
By Jeff Kunerth
They prayed for the lost and the forgotten. They prayed for the
martyrs and the survivors. They prayed for those who died and whose
deaths have been denied.
On Sunday, the congregation of the Soorp Haroutiun Armenian Church
near Windermere held a requiem for the estimated 1.5 million Armenians
killed between 1915 and 1923. It marks the 100th anniversary of what
the Armenians call genocide.
The disappearance of two-thirds of the Christian Armenian population
from Muslim Turkey is explained by the Turks as both an exaggeration
and a voluntary exodus brought on by World War I. If atrocities
occurred, Turkish officials say, it was the byproduct of war. But
they insist there was no systematic plan to annihilate the Armenian
population -- the definition of genocide.
Members of Soorp Haroutiun church, though, remember it differently.
The survivors carried with them stories not unlike the Jews and Poles
and other victims of ethnic cleansing.
Anna Tabirian's grandmother was 6 years old when she, her three
siblings, and mother were forced from their home in Turkey. Her two
youngest sisters died of thirst and starvation in the desert of Syria.
Turks found her mother and took her away. The grandmother and her
11-year-old sister became the property of a Turkish family, who used
them as servants.
Years later, her grandmother's father who was away on business,
paid the Turkish family for his daughters' release.
"Every time she would tell this story, she would cry and say in her
words, 'Until the day I die, if grass grows over my heart, I will never
forget that,' " said Tabirian, 50, a member of the church's council.
Lucine Harvey, a founding member of the Soorp Haroutiun church in 1985,
tells the story of her mother, who was 12 when she was shot by a Turk.
"He left her for dead, but before he did that my mother had a niece
five years old, and he took the little girl, threw her into the creek,
and made my mom watch her drown," said Harvey, 75, of Windermere.
Last week, Pope Francis acknowledged the systemic murder of Armenians
as the first genocide of the 20th century. The United States and
Israel are not among the 22 countries in the world that recognize
what happened to the Armenians as genocide.
But inside the Armenian church, there was no debate. In the social
hall, there was a banner that said "100 Years of Remembrance 1915-2015
The Armenian Genocide." A Christmas tree was reconfigured into a
"martyr tree" decorated with 3-by-5 index cards containing the names
of relatives who survived or lost their lives.
In his Sunday sermon, visiting priest Father Daniel Findikyan talked
about the upcoming event on Friday, April 24, when the Armenian Church
will officially recognize the those who died as martyrs and saints.
"For the first time in centuries, the entire Armenian church will
come together and canonize those Christians who were massacred in
the event of the genocide as saints of the church," Findikyan told
the congregation of about 70 people.
Findikyan preached that it didn't matter when, if ever, Turkey
acknowledges what happened to its Christian population 100 years ago.
Those who died because of their religious beliefs did so with the
martyr's belief that God was there with them, he said.
"As we battle these conflicting feelings -- sadness over the loss of
ancestors, anger at the injustice and the denial of truth -- there is
also some sense of hope that God is with us," he said. "It has taken
100 years, but the Armenian people can see in that disaster glimmers
of God's presence."
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-sunday-armenian-martyrs-20150419-story.html
From: A. Papazian