Bringing Order To Survivors' Memories

[MosJan]

Bringing order to survivors' memories

Armenians gather stories of genocide

 

By Lauren K. Meade, Globe Correspondent | April 21, 2005

 

At night, they listened to stifled weeping and murmured secrets through their bedroom walls.

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By day, they were greeted with smiles -- a facade that belied a horrific past.

 

For the children of Armenian immigrants who survived the genocide of 1915 to 1922, assembling a picture of their parents' suffering was like piecing together a shredded diary. They collected fragments from history classes and overheard conversations.

 

''Armenian parents never talk about genocide in front of their children," said Varoujan Froundjian, curator of the Armenian Oral History Archive at Columbia University. ''It was always a mystery in the minds of young people."

 

Froundjian addressed an audience at the Armenian Library and Museum of America in Watertown during a panel discussion about keeping alive the memory of the massacres of 1.5 million Armenians, launched 90 years ago by the Ottoman Turks.

 

For three decades, the children of the survivors have been recording oral histories of their parents' experiences. Much of Sunday's discussion centered on how to preserve the deteriorating tapes and make them accessible to the public through an online database.

 

Bethel Bilezikian Charkoudian, 65, of Newton, is championing this project in Massachusetts. In the '70s, Charkoudian collaborated with the Armenian Library to record 600 hours of interviews with survivors about the genocide and the immigration waves that followed.

 

She has donated copies of the tapes to Columbia, where Froundjian is synthesizing personal experiences with the documented historical data. While oral histories may lack precision, they provide an emotional intensity that brings the facts to life.

 

The Armenian Library's project is similar to Froundjian's. Charkoudian is recruiting volunteers to index the tapes for names, dates, geographic locations, and key phrases, such as ''starvation" and ''losing a child." These indexes will be used to create searchable databases online.

 

The process is tedious and will require more than 60 volunteers, she said.

 

''It's like going into a concentration camp every day," Charkoudian said of listening over and over to the taped horror stories. ''One person alone will get burned out."

 

Once the project is completed, Charkoudian said, the library's ''digital collection will be among the largest in the United States."

 

Children of survivors have expressed frustration that their parents' recorded stories were locked away for preservation and scattered throughout the country.

 

''My father-in-law was interviewed four times," said Paul Der Ananian, 70, at last Sunday's discussion. ''They gave us a copy and probably kept the originals in their own archives. But I want to know how we are going to gather the stories and educate non-Armenians."

 

Online databases will be the solution to Der Ananian's complaint.

 

When Charkoudian started the oral history project 30 years ago, she divided the questionnaire into three stages: early life in Armenia, the genocide, and immigration to America. A former guidance counselor, she trained volunteers from the community and from universities to interview survivors. Their stories include memories of culture clash in the New World mixed with feelings of isolation as news of the atrocities overseas surfaced.

''Many of the people had heart conditions," Charkoudian said in the parlor of her Newton home before the panel discussion. Most of the subjects were in their 50s and 60s at the time of the interviews. Overprotective spouses and children often intervened during the conversations.

 

''People didn't want their parents to relive that," she said.

 

Charkoudian, like most second-generation Armenians, had grown up listening to her father, Peter Bilezikian, speak of the genocide with family members who visited well into the night. Never invited into the conversation, the young girl heard the stories through the bedroom door.

 

Such was the experience of historian Bob Mirak, who moderated Sunday's panel discussion. He has studied the Armenian chain immigration to Watertown and chronicled their experiences in his book, ''Torn Between Two Lands." Mirak's parents were both survivors.

 

''The stories were always in the background," he said in an interview before the panel discussion. ''[My parents] didn't want to scare us."

 

According to Mirak, Watertown became a nucleus for Armenian immigrants who flocked to the Hood rubber plant, which was located near today's Arsenal Mall. Nearly 500 Armenians worked at the factory during its peak in the 1920s.

 

Mirak recounted the monotonous 12-hour days at the plant. The immigrants, mostly men, had little time for leisure and were plagued by feelings of helplessness as they heard reports of the massacres, even as they raised money for relief efforts and self-defense battalions.

 

After World War I, the immigrants sent for their families in Armenia. Watertown thrived with Armenian coffee houses, churches, and schools.

 

But today, new immigrants are bypassing Watertown for the greater economic opportunities of Los Angeles, Mirak said. The Armenian population in Watertown today numbers 7,000, according to the library.

 

At age 92, Peter Bilezikian -- Bethel Charkoudian's father -- is one of only a handful of people who can speak firsthand of the genocide. His gait has slowed and his hearing is slipping away, but those who know him well describe the long-retired electrician as ''sharp as a tack."

 

In his daughter's living room, Bilezikian told the story about the time when a stately Irish woman purchased a lamp at his electrical shop in 1932. She arrived hot with bigotry toward the young Armenian.

 

''You dirty Armenian. Why didn't you clean it?" she demanded. Bilezikian imitated the woman's Irish brogue, his voiced laced with the remnants of an Armenian accent.

 

''What did you call me?" Bilezikian said, ripping the lamp from the woman's hand. He tore out the electrical wiring and slammed the empty vase back into her hands. ''Get the hell out of here."

 

Days later, a lawyer called Bilezikian at the store.

 

''Did you swear at my wife?" the lawyer asked. Bilezikian gave his side of the story, daring the lawyer to put him in jail.

 

''At least I'll get three square meals a day," Bilezikian said. Soon, customers poured into the shop in droves to see the pugnacious Armenian and to ''get the dirt" on the Irish woman.

 

''I made a lot of friends on account of someone's hate," Bilezikian said.

 

Like most oral histories, some of the dates and factual minutiae changed when Bilezikian repeated the stories during the interview. But he remembers the suffering with remarkable clarity. At times, his eyes grew pink with forced-back tears.

 

For his daughter, Bethel Charkoudian, chronicling these stories has been a personal journey. She is already planning the next step.

 

''Nothing has been done to record the experiences of the second generation," she said.

 

To volunteer for the oral history project, call the Armenian Library and Museum of America Inc., 617-926-2562 or e-mail info@armenianlibraryandmuseum.org. For more on the massacre, visit the Armenian National Institute website, www.armenian-genocide.org.

© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.