Armenian Genocide: Echoes of the dream

The Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, Armenia, and Bikfaya, Lebanon (inset) by Shant Demirdjian

Today -- April 24 -- commemorates the Armenian Genocide committed in 1915-1916 by the Ottoman Empire’s “Young Turk” government.

Mich Café commemorates the Genocide with testimony of what the day means to those who survived and their offspring.

This year, I chose to cede the Mich Café platform to the young generation of Armenian college students, allowing them to express in their own words what the day means to them.

They are in their late teens at Levon & Sophia Hagopian College.

The college was founded in 1964 in the heart of Bourj Hammoud in Beirut, Lebanon.  Its slogan is “work ennobles.”

It has 195 students under Principal Vicken Avakian and 35 teachers. The college follows the official Lebanese government curriculum, supplemented by the educational plan of the Armenian National Schools.

My friend Shant Demirdjian (@ShantDotMe), who featured in Mich Café’s commemoration last year, teaches computer science at Levon & Sophia and helped me get testimonies from four students.

Shant is also a web developer and a photographer in his spare time. His pictures of Armenia can  be viewed at his blog site, Shant.me – My Photo Blog.

Ninety-eight years on, the Armenian Genocide is still a subject matter that hits a raw nerve with Armenians worldwide.

Roughly half the Ottoman Empire’s 2,500,000 Armenians were killed during the Armenian Genocide through wholesale massacres and deportations by dint of forced marches.

Armenians around the globe commemorate the tragedy on April 24, the day in 1915 when 250-300 Armenian leaders, writers, thinkers and professionals in Constantinople – the present-day Istanbul -- were rounded up, deported and killed.

The Ottoman military at that time uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, without food or water, to the desert of what is now Syria.

Since then, the pomegranate was adopted as a symbol for Armenians.

The narrative is that during the 1915 Genocide and exodus, pomegranate was the only food mothers could find to feed their offspring. Those marching could also count the days with the pomegranate seeds. It is said that each fruit, however big or small, holds 365 seeds!  

So how does the young generation feel about the Genocide?

Gashavan in Dilijan, Hribsime Church and Noravank Monastary in Armenia. Photos by Liliane Assaf

J.H. – Technical Baccalaureate, 3rd year (12th grade technical or BT3)

The Armenian Genocide is not a simple issue that has preoccupied us. It is a collective Armenian feeling. Actually, it is the root of our existence. The grief will never disappear.

Put yourself in our ancestors’ shoes: your life is swept away, your loved ones are slaughtered in front of your eyes and all your dreams are crushed.

What is left is to pick up the pieces and create a new life -- one that is the reason of my existence.

Now, my duty is to honor the memory of those killed during the Genocide and be their voice, lost among the shadows of death.

Our ancestors had a dream, a hope to continue existing. We are the echoes of that dream.

Marita Bardakjian -- Technical Baccalaureate, 3rd year (BT3)

The Genocide was once a nightmare to those who had to suffer the monstrous tortures of the Ottoman Empire. Today, it separates us from all other nations.

We have been reborn from the sand and the darkness where our blood was shed.

A price has to be paid, and someday we will reclaim what was rightfully ours because those who have been in total darkness will not give up after seeing the light.

A pomegranate tree overlooking Lake Sevan, Armenia. Photo by Liliane Assaf

Hratch – Secondary 2nd class (11th grade or SEC II)

Silence behind the gates of destiny is louder than our scream.

It is said that every individual's destiny is written. Written by whom: By the man in the sky, or by the bearded one?

Was it our destiny to be slaughtered and killed? Or was it pure coincidence that 1.5 million people faced the same destiny?

We screamed, we prayed… but the prayers went unanswered.

We were thrown out from our lands; we saw our houses burnt to the ground. And still… there was no answer from heaven.

Where was the world when our children begged to see their mothers one last time?

Where was humanity when the evil Ottomans were burning our churches with our people inside praying for mercy, not from their persecutors, but from our Maker, who chose not to be on our side?

Nancy – Secondary 2nd class (11th grade or SEC II)

It is not merely the tradition, language, mentality, culture or lifestyle that makes us, Armenians, different. Yet our determination and consciousness of whom we are does put an analogy with the rest.

Years, decades and centuries will not be virtuous enough to wipe out our people’s will and a century is not enough to let our anguish fade away.

Ninety-eight years isn’t threatening; it won’t make us oblivious of the “inhumane deeds” meted on us. Instead, we will reconstruct our root and anchor.

No massacre or genocide can eradicate people like us.

We fight back through our mentality, not by butchery.

Related posts:

Armenian Genocide: A tear a day -- April 24, 2011

Armenian Genocide: Lest we forget -- April 24, 2012

‘We are still the mountain’ – The Boston Globe, April 14, 2013

Traditional Armenian Dresses – Mher Krikorian’s Facebook

Armenian artist Galentz at Beirut Souks

Armenian artist Haroutin Galentz (Հարություն Կալենց) 

I am not much into art, unfortunately, despite a brother-in-law who was a painter and my avant-garde sister, Asma. But I tagged along with Asma and my friends Zepure and Yorki on Sunday (November 18) to a retrospective of the works of Armenian painter Haroutin Galentz at Beirut Souks.

Zepure grew up with the family in Tripoli, Lebanon, and was eager to see the exhibit and was also rewarded by a meeting with the painter’s son, Armen, who is in charge of the exhibit while it is in Beirut.

The retrospective is part of a travelling exhibition starting in Beirut before setting off to France and the U.S. next year.

It is being held at The Venue in Beirut Souks under the patronage of the Ministries of Culture of Armenia and Lebanon. It is sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of Armenia and organized by the Galentz Museum and Solidere in association with the Armenian Embassy in Beirut.

The retrospective, titled Two Lives, is the first by the Armenian painter. It offers a rare view of Galentz’ earliest drawings and covers the Lebanon 1930s and 1940s chapter, the Armenian period of the late 1960s and the connection between them.

Seashore Beirut - 1925 (oil on cardboard)

Armenia’s Minister of Culture Hasmik Poghosyan writes in a foreword of the exhibit’s catalogue: “…Haroutiun Galentz was one of those great and authentic artists against whom neither Turkish persecutors nor the Soviet authoritarian and tyrannical regime could fight. Moreover, those awful human and creative conditions gave birth to the incomparable art of Galentz, which had its great influence on the esthetical taste of the forthcoming generations…”

Wedding -- 1938 (gouache on paper, Galentz Museum)

Much of the details on the artist are from a chat with Armen Galentz and Alice Nersisyan of the Institute of Fine Arts and the National Academy of Sciences in Armenia and from the catalogue on sale at the exhibit.

The works on display include:

• the early works of the artist dated 1926-1946 – the Lebanon period. There are bas-reliefs, sketches, caricatures, water colors, prints and oil paintings;
• the bas-reliefs hall features those presented at the Lebanon pavilion at the World Expo in New York in 1933, among them the impressive and timeless seven-meter “Crafts of Lebanon.” Galentz was then awarded the Honorary Diploma of the High Commissioner of the Republic of Lebanon and the board of directors of the New York World Expo;
• the 1942-1945 caricatures and posters showed for the first time. They were created for the French newspaper “En Route,” published during World War II; and
• oil paintings from the Galentz Museum collection and some canvas from private collections in Beirut and Moscow.

Armen with 1959 oil on canvas of botanist Nora Gabrielian 

Galentz was born on Easter night -- March 27, 1910 -- in the small town of Gurun, in Sebastia vilayet of the Ottoman Empire, present day Turkey.

His father, Tiratur, owned a wool-dying factory, which left a profound impression on young Galentz with its vats of bright colors. The family was rather well off and the first five years of his life were those of a happy childhood.

In 1915, during the Armenian Genocide, Galentz’ father was arrested by Turkish soldiers. He was never seen again. Galentz, his three brothers and mother joined the March and escaped to Aleppo. A few days after their arduous trek into the Syrian city, Galentz’ mother died of starvation and fatigue. Galentz would later describe it as “the death march through the desert, with sore and bloody feet, in tattered clothes, famished, miserable and barely alive…”

Garbage collectors -- 1926 (pencil on paper, Galentz Museum)

Galentz and his three brothers were sent to an orphanage for Armenian children. After the first three years, he left the orphanage and settled with his paternal uncle and became an apprentice at a calligrapher’s shop. He cultivated his passion for art and was encouraged by one of the orphanage sisters. He often escaped the orphanage to roam around the Aleppo markets and paint.

Galentz says Onnig Avedissian, an Armenian artist who for a couple of months taught the 13-year-old boy the basics of painting, was his only teacher.

In 1927, the artist moved to Tripoli, Lebanon, where his two older brothers then lived. There he met French artist Claude Michulet, his teacher at the Beirut Academy of Fine Arts, where he taught painting until 1939. They were devoted friends until Michulet’s death in 1942.

Kurdish women -- oil on canvas, Galentz Museum

In 1930, Galentz settled in Beirut. He contributed to Beirut’s artistic life, held solo exhibitions and received commissions from companies and individuals, which culminated in the bas-reliefs for the 1933 World Expo.

In 1938, he took into apprenticeship Armine Paronyan. They married in 1943. Armine became a prominent Armenian painter alongside her husband. They had a son, Armen, who I met at the exhibit.

But in 1946, despite his growing success in Beirut, Galentz decided to return to Armenia as soon as Diaspora Armenians were able to repatriate.

The first 10 years in his motherland were difficult and challenging. After being feted and recognized in Lebanon, the family received a plot of land on a rocky hill outside the city and Galentz had to build his own house. He found himself among hostile locals for whom the repatriates were strangers. He also had no clue about the Soviet reality. He was lonesome and poor.

Self-portrait with pipe -- 1942, Galentz Museum)

For many years, he had to make a modest living from occasional commissions and working for himself in his studio. He had no solo exhibition. Between 1946 and 1949 his works were exhibited only twice. The Union of Artists deemed his paintings formalistic and cosmopolitan and they called him a Western artist – labels which were akin to a death sentence under Stalin. He was expelled from the Union of Artists but readmitted in 1951.

His life changed in 1956 when famous physicist Artem Alikhanian, a prominent and influential founder of Armenia’s schools of physics, became a devoted friend, patron, admirer and relentless promoter of his art.

His only solo exhibition during his lifetime took place in 1962 at the Union of Artists in Armenia. Solitude and oblivion gave way to vivid interest in the unique artist. His paintings, studio and home became the center of gravity for creative people. Among his closest friends were Eleonora Gabrielian, a biologist; Levon Mkrtchian, a philologist; and Hayk Vardanian, a scriptwriter. Scientists, authors, actors, art critics from all over the Soviet Union and other parts of the world visited him.

In May 1967, at his artistic peak, Galentz died of a heart attack on a bright sunny day. He was posthumously awarded Armenia’s State Prize in 1967.

Galentz’ house in Yerevan is now a museum. His paintings are also in the collections of National Museum of Armenia (Yerevan), Republic of Armenia’s Cultural Ministry as well as private collections in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tbilisi, New York, Paris, Vienna, Beirut, Aleppo, Cambridge, San Francisco, Los Angeles to list a few.

In 2010, Galentz’ renovated museum opened its doors in Yerevan to celebrate his centennial and I heard much about it from my cousin Lillian who had recently visited Armenia.

If you are in Beirut, I strongly recommend you spare an hour to go down to Beirut Souks and visit the exhibition. It is touching, compelling but soothing, vibrant and extremely impressive. You won’t regret it.

You can view more of the artists pictures at the exhibition here.