40 Days of Musa Ler

[robertik1]

Does anyone know if Sylvester Stallone is going to make the remake of the movie?

[Arpa]

Dear Robertik, we love you!

Can you please amend the title of your thread to Musa Ler?

As we speak there is no such thing as Musa D**h. Even those SSOs** call it Saman D**h.

To us it has been and will always be Musa(neri) Ler.

Even though many of us may know that goddam language, we prefer to not use it.

Franz Werfel was not Armenian, he did not know the difference of the furkish d**h and the Armeian LER. What is our Excuse???

We still remember when you came here with a furkish nickname, thank you for amending it.

And, please, please, if and when that Italian Stallion decides to follow suit, urge him to use MUSA LER as his title.

Thank you!!!

** SSO stands for "sun-shan-ordi"

Edited May 31, 2008 by Arpa

[robertik1]

Dear Robertik, we love you!

Can you please amend the title of your thread to Musa Ler?

As we speak there is no such thing as Musa D**h. Even those SSOs call it Saman D**h.

To us it has been and will always be Musa(neri) Ler.

Even though many of us may know that goddam language, we prefer to not use it.

Franz Werfel was not Armenian, he did not know the difference of the furkish d**h and the Armeian LER. What is our Excuse???

We still remember when you came here with a furkish nickname, thank you for amending it.

And, please, please, if and when that Italian Stallion decides to follow suit, urge him to use MUSA LER as his title.

Thank you!!!

 

 

That was the name of the original movie. But Ill change it the same.....

 

btw, how would you edit? I could this edit this now, but that first post was posted some time ago.

Edited May 31, 2008 by robertik1

[Arpa]

That was the name of the original movie. But Ill change it the same.....

 

btw, how would you edit? I could this edit this now, but that first post was posted some time ago.

Yes, we know. Did Franz speak Armenian?

Those SSOs call Masis "aghri". Shall we amend our language here too?

 

[robertik1]

Yes, we know. Did Franz speak Armenian?

Those SSOs call Masis "aghri". Shall we amend our language here too?

 

Ok, how do you do it?

[Arpa]

There is till time.

Bring up your post. Go to edit, and... good luck. Otherwise let our mods do it.

And please, please forget that goddam language. Learn to speak Armenian.

We speak Armenian here! Mountain is LER not (MUSA) qaq-d**h!

We don't allow to describe that murdere talaat qaqa as p*s*a, and Artsakh as kara***qaqa here, why should we allow (Musa) qaq-d*g*?

Do we know Armenian? Do we know that the Armenian word for mountain is LER/SAR?

When did Franz Werfel, the Austrian-German Jew, as sincere a he may have been become an Armenian linguist?

Can we teach him how to speak Armenian?

Hopefully, some day our mods and ads see it fit that that goddam D*** word never displays again, perhaps replace it it with LER??!! Just as they have placed filters to never display talat qaqa or kara-qaq= Artsakh.

Please eveyone! Don't use that cursed D word. We have more words than that drunken idiot Noah** to deascribe mountain, words like LER and SAR.

** Does any one know that the Bible never said Mountain (singular) of Ararat, but the plural thereof as MounainS of Ararat, i.e the Land of the Araratians?

If only we, and those illitero-biblio-fundamentaist idiots would learn how to read!!

Edited May 31, 2008 by Arpa

[robertik1]

There is till time.

Bring up your post. Go to edit, and... good luck. Otherwise let our mods do it.

And please, please forget that goddam language. Learn to speak Armenian.

We speak Armenian here! Mountain is LER not (MUSA) qaq-d**h!

We don't allow to describe that murdere talaat qaqa as p*s*a, and Artsakh as kara***qaqa here, why should we allow (Musa) qaq-d*g*?

Do we know Armenian? Do we know that the Armenian word for mountain is LER/SAR?

When did Franz Werfel, the Austrian-German Jew, as sincere a he may have been become an Armenian linguist?

Can we teach him how to speak Armenian?

Hopefully, some day our mods and ads see it fit that that goddam D*** word never displays again, perhaps replace it it with LER??!! Just as they have placed filters to never display talat qaqa or kara-qaq= Artsakh.

Please eveyone! Don't use that cursed D word. We have more words than that drunken idiot Noah** to deascribe mountain, words like LER and SAR.

** Does any one know that the Bible never said Mountain (singular) of Ararat, but the plural thereof as MounainS of Ararat, i.e the Land of the Araratians?

If only we, and those illitero-biblio-fundamentaist idiots would learn how to read!!

 

Its ok, did mods did it.

 

[MosJan]

There is till time.

Bring up your post. Go to edit, and... good luck. Otherwise let our mods do it.

And please, please forget that goddam language. Learn to speak Armenian.

We speak Armenian here! Mountain is LER not (MUSA) qaq-d**h!

We don't allow to describe that murdere talaat qaqa as p*s*a, and Artsakh as kara***qaqa here, why should we allow (Musa) qaq-d*g*?

Do we know Armenian? Do we know that the Armenian word for mountain is LER/SAR?

When did Franz Werfel, the Austrian-German Jew, as sincere a he may have been become an Armenian linguist?

Can we teach him how to speak Armenian?

Hopefully, some day our mods and ads see it fit that that goddam D*** word never displays again, perhaps replace it it with LER??!! Just as they have placed filters to never display talat qaqa or kara-qaq= Artsakh.

Please eveyone! Don't use that cursed D word. We have more words than that drunken idiot Noah** to deascribe mountain, words like LER and SAR.

** Does any one know that the Bible never said Mountain (singular) of Ararat, but the plural thereof as MounainS of Ararat, i.e the Land of the Araratians?

If only we, and those illitero-biblio-fundamentaist idiots would learn how to read!!

 

 

Arpa papik teteven vertsur

 

hima tansyon@d noren ver bid yella

[robertik1]

Ok getting back the original topic, is Stallone going to make the remake or not?

[Zartonk]

I hope so. We should petition.

[hyethga]

Ok getting back the original topic, is Stallone going to make the remake or not?

 

I'm curious, how did Stallone's interest pique in the Armenian Genocide. I know that for years, we've been lobbying for the biggest genocide director (Stevie) but he's never commented about it. In fact, I think he just made a new film or is in the middle of making one about Ukrainian Jews in occupied USSR.

[Yervant1]

REDISCOVERING FRANZ WERFEL: POTSDAM CONFERENCE ANALYZES LIFE OF BRAVE HUMANITARIAN

 

http://www.mirrorspectator.com/2013/03/18/rediscovering-franz-werfel-potsdam-conference-analyzes-life-of-brave-humanitarian/

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE, ARTS | MARCH 18, 2013 4:54 PM

 

Franz Werfel

By Muriel Mirak-Weissbach

 

Special to the Mirror-Spectator

 

POTSDAM, Germany - Among the required reading for most Armenians

is the novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel, and the

author is thus known among Armenians mainly - if not exclusively -

for this monumental work. But, as a conference held on March 10-12

in Potsdam, Germany documented, Werfel's literary accomplishments

include a large number of other significant works which deal

with a vast array of issues. The title of the three-day conference

cosponsored by the Lepsius House and the Moses Mendelssohn Center in

Potsdam already gives a sense of the scope of his activity which has

been the subject of extensive research: "Genocide and Literature:

Franz Werfel in an Armenian-Jewish-Turkish-German Perspective. In

the course of the speeches and concluding round table discussion,

speakers from Germany, France, Austria and the United States shed

new light on the many facets of this extraordinarily complex figure.

 

Peter Stephan Jungk, who has written a Werfel biography, introduced

the author with an overview of his life and works, and remarked that

doing research for the book took him on a journey through the first

half of the 20th century. In fact, Werfel had experienced World War

I first-hand and suffered persecution under the Nazi regime prior to

World War II. Although he was born in 1890 in Prague to Jewish parents,

as a youth Franz did not receive formal religious instruction and

became in fact enamored of Christian culture. This was due to a close

relationship he had with governess Barbara Simunkova, a Catholic who

took him to mass and taught him prayers. His early exposure to both

religious cultures was the source of a theme that was to become a

leitmotif in his thoughts and works. At 12, a passionate opera goer

and Verdi fan (he wrote Verdi. Novel of the Opera, 1924), Franz started

composing poetry at 16 and his first volume of verse published in 1911,

Der Weltfreund (Friend of the World), was a bestseller. Other works

in drama and fiction followed, many crowned with success. Musa Dagh,

which appeared in 1933, was acclaimed and rightly seen as a foreboding

to Jews in Germany. When, in May 1933, his book was publicly burned

along with others by the Nazis, Werfel's persecution began. He had

to flee Vienna after the 1938 Nazi invasion, and, after the Nazis

entered Paris, he fled Zurich via France for the US, where he settled

in California.

 

Who was Franz Werfel really? As Prof. Hans Dieter Zimmermann of Berlin

put it, there were three souls in the author - a German, a Czech and

a Jewish soul. A member of the celebrated Prague circle along with

Max Brod, Franz Kafka and others, Werfel was a German-speaking Jew

like the majority of his intellectual companions, but they were a

tiny minority in Czechoslovakia. Politically they stood apart from

the other German-speakers, the Sudetendland Germans in Bohemia, who

were pro-Nazis. Forced by political developments to move from place

to place, Werfel often asked himself where his "homeland" really was.

 

Werfel also had a Christian soul, to be precise, as Viennese scholar

Dr. Olga Koller put it, a Catholic soul. In his works, he "lived

between two religions" and "felt at home in both." Thus, Paul Among the

Jews: A Tragedy (1926) and his novel, Jeremiah: Listen to the Voice

(1937), which dealt with Jewish figures, came from the same pen that

wrote Barbara oder die Frommigkeit (Barbara, or Piety, 1929), Der

veruntreute Himmel (Embezzled Heaven, 1939) which relates the tale of

a woman seeking assurances of entering heaven, as well as The Song of

Bernadette (1941), featuring the young girl and her vision at Lourdes.

 

If Martin Buber reacted to his Christian writings with accusations of

"betrayal," his wife, Alma Mahler, pressured him to renounce Judaism.

 

His commitment to the Armenian cause was unequivocal. It was during

his second trip through the Middle East in 1930, which took him and

his wife through Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, that he came

face to face with the issue. In Damascus he saw groups of abandoned,

dirty, hungry children, whose huge dark eyes haunted him. When he

asked who they were, he learned that they were the survivors of the

Armenians massacred by the Turks, and that no one was caring for them.

 

As Prof. Andreas Meier from Wuppertal recalled, Werfel could not

get their images out of his mind and the idea for the book "became

virulent."

 

The Werfels were not the only author couple travelling in the region

at that time, Meier said. There was also Armin Wegner and his wife,

and he too set out to write about the Armenian Genocide. The story of

how the two men approached the subject and how a literary controversy

ensued was treated by several speakers in Potsdam.

 

Dr. Rolf Hosfeld, director of the Lepsius House, focused on the

historical facts behind Werfel's novel, identifying the real-life

figures who inspired the leading protagonists in the novel: priest

Dikran Andreasian (Aram Tomasian) and Moses Der-Kaloustian (Gabriel

Bagradian), the former military officer who led the resistance.

 

In his summary of the account, Hosfeld distinguished fact from fiction:

in addition to the two historical personalities, the story of the

flight up the mountain was true, as were the descriptions of the three

Turkish attacks, the signs calling for help, the altar the resisters

built, and the fire which alerted the French ship Guichon and led to

their rescue. The dramatic encounter between the German humanitarian

Dr. Johannes Lepsius and Young Turk War Minister Enver ***** also

corresponds to reality, as recorded by Lepsius himself in his report.

 

The rest, as Prof. Martin Tamke from Gottingen detailed, was fiction.

 

Herein lies the main difference between the approaches taken by

Wegner and Werfel. When Wegner read in a newspaper in 1933 that

Werfel was touring to present his new book, he was shocked and

accused the author of having taken his material. Wegner, who had

witnessed the Genocide as a medic in the German army, had documented

the atrocities in photographs, and later also interviewed survivors,

visiting them in camps, could not believe that Werfel could have

written such a book without having had this first-hand knowledge. In

their correspondence on the controversy, Werfel expressed his respect

for Wegner's eyewitness experience, but could not acknowledge him as

a source. He also specified that he had isolated a single episode for

his novel, whereas Wegner, in his diary, had been compiling material

for a historical account. For Werfel, Tamke said, the aim was not to

write an eyewitness report but poetry, a work of art.

 

In addition to researching the saga of the resistance, Werfel also

drew on his extensive knowledge about the Armenian church, or, better,

churches. As Prof. Hacik Gazer from Erlangen explained, Werfel was

familiar with the Armenian churches and cloisters in Venice and Vienna,

and the documents in the Mkhitarist archives there which provided

him with valuable source material.

 

Through his contact with art historian Josef Strzygowsky, he learned

about Armenian church architecture. Significantly, his references in

the novel are not limited to the Armenian Apostolic Church, but include

several figures from the Protestant churches and missionaries, thus

expressing an "ecumenical" approach. Gazer also noted that Lepsius,

before his encounter with Enver, had met with the Patriarch Zaven,

and that the fictional figure, Juliette (Bagradian's wife) converts

from Catholicism to the Apostolic Church.

 

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh made history, not only as a work of art,

but as a political message. Prof. Rubina Peroomian, an expert on

Genocide literature from Los Angeles, cited several ways it has been

honored. There is the new English translation by David R. Godine which

represents a complete and accurate rendition of the German original.

 

Werfel, "a virtual Armenian saint" and a "national hero," was

honored with his wife in New York City in 1935 by the Armenian

community. A plaque in Toulon plays tribute to the sailors who

rescued the Armenians and carries Werfel's name. The survivors of

Musa Dagh and their descendants, though scattered through the world,

have an association and members meet every year in September to

celebrate their victory. Peroomian also reported on how an Armenian

translation had been smuggled into Soviet Armenia in 1935, and later

in the 1960s inspired dissidents and a nationalist revival. In 1988,

as the political climate changed, it was republished. Now there

is a memorial plaque dedicated to Werfel at the Armenian Genocide

monument in Tsitsernakaberd alongside those commemorating Lepsius,

Wegner and others.

 

But if the novel has brought Werfel recognition and praise, it has

also been slandered, suppressed and officially banned. Dr. Werner

Tress of Potsdam reported that, although Werfel's earlier works had

made him famous by 1933, after the Nazis took power he was persecuted,

expelled from a writers' association, and his novel publicly burned.

 

With the aid of projections of actual documents from the Nazi

era, Tress showed how one after the other, political and literary

organizations issued black lists of publications considered "damaging"

and "undesirable," and therefore banned. Werfel's name features

prominently in all the documents, sometimes with several works listed

by title, other times, with "complete works." On one black list put out

by the Bavarian Political Police, among the 15 books by Werfel, there

is a "+" mark added to Musa Dagh. This sign meant that if that book

were found in the possession of private persons, in house searches,

it would be confiscated and the owners put under pressure.

 

Publishers and distributors were ordered not to deliver the book

and customs officials stopped any copies coming across the border

into Germany.

 

Even long after the defeat of Nazi Germany and in faraway America,

Werfel's monumental work has continued to spark hefty political

controversy. Most clamorous was the fight around a film version of

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Planned by MGM in Hollywood in 1935,

the original production never made it into movie theatres, due to

insistent, heavy-handed intimidation by Turkish authorities. As Dr.

 

Raffi Kantian from Hannover related, the Turkish government made

known through diplomatic channels that it wanted to stop the project,

which, if completed, would "harm" Armenians in Turkey. Other pressure

consisted of threats to ban all MGM films in Turkey, Yugoslavia,

Bulgaria and Greece, while rumors circulated that it was a

"Jewish-Armenian plot," etc.

 

The political impact of Werfel's work is still felt today, in the

form of the continuing strife around Turkish recognition of the

past. In a concluding roundtable discussion addressing the issue in

the context of European integration, Markus Merkel, a Social Democrat

who introduced a resolution on the Armenian Genocide into the German

Bundestag in 2005, called for an official exhibit to be organized in

Berlin in 2015. He expressed his hope that the Armenian Diaspora would

wield its influence to promote democratization in Armenia as well as

in Turkey, lending support to the expanding debate in Turkish civil

society around the Genocide.

[Yervant1]

80TH ANNIVERSARY OF FARNZ WERFEL'S "THE FORTY DAYS OF MUSA DAGH" FIRST PUBLISHING CELEBRATED IN VIENNA

17:23 28.11.2013

On the occasion of 80th anniversary of the first publishing of the
famous novel by the Austrian writer Franz Werfel "The Forty Days of
Musa Dagh", a cultural ceremony was organized in Vienna, by the joint
efforts of the Armenian embassy in Austria, the Armenian Genocide
Museum Institute, and the community of the Armenian Apostolic Church
in Austria, the Austrian radio, the Austrian Literature Society and
"Franz Werfel" committee also participated in the organization.

The event was attended by representatives of the Armenian community
in Austria, and Austrian intellectuals.Ambassador Extraordinary and
Plenipotentiary of Armenia in Austria Mr. Arman Kirakosyan made a
welcome speech.

During the event director of the AGMI, Dr. Hayk Demoyan presented the
photographs of the exhibits from Armenian Genocide Museum collection,
related to the heroic Resistance of Musa Dagh.

The event was followed by a concert. Specially for the occasion the
original manuscript of Franz Werfel's famous novel "The Forty days
of Musa Dagh", was brought from the Austrian National Library, and
was presented to the audience.

http://www.armradio.am/en/2013/11/28/80th-anniversary-of-farnz-werfels-the-forty-days-of-musa-dagh-first-publishing-celebrated-in-vienna/

[Yervant1]

AUTHOR OF "THE FORTY DAYS OF MUSA DAGH" WOULD TURN 124 TODAY: HAARETZ

17:06, 10 September, 2014

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 10, ARMENPRESS: September 10, 1890 is the birthdate
of Franz Werfel, the Prague-born Jewish poet, dramatist and novelist,
whose most acclaimed work, the 1933 "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,"
about the Armenian genocide, was widely read as a warning about the
Nazi rise to power and the murderous threat it posed to the Jews. As
Armenpress reports, the Israeli "Haaretz" has issued a special article
entitled "This Day in Jewish History", which is devoted to the author's
life and activity.

Werfel was introduced to the Armenian saga by a chance meeting in
Damascus, and the result was a best-selling novel about the Turks'
1915 campaign against the Armenians.

He described the book to audiences as telling how "one of the oldest
and most venerable peoples of the world has been destroyed, murdered,
almost exterminated ... ." Not surprisingly, "The Forty Days" was
one of the first books consigned to the bonfires by the Nazis.

Franz Werfel died on August 26, 1945, at the age of 54.

http://armenpress.am/eng/news/775730/author-of-%E2%80%9Cthe-forty-days-of-musa-dagh%E2%80%9D-would-turn-124-today-haaretz.html

[Yervant1]

102-year-old Armenian Genocide survivor hurries home after surgery

07/02/2015 13:47:00
Oratert News

The witness of the Mount Musa Battle and the traditional Harissa
creation, Silvard Atajyan is waiting for her 103rd anniversary in
April impatiently. The Armenian Genocide witness, notwithstanding the
respectable age, has overcome a serious surgery, which was successful.
At first sight it is unbelievable though fact that even at this age
the woman managed to overcome such a serious health problem and get
well with the help of the doctors. At the hospital ward she does not
feel lack of visitors. Surrounded with the love and care of the
members of her family, Silvard Atajyan is waiting for the soonest
recovery and for the return home.

"Grandma is really strong. Five years ago she got an injury in the
left leg, in which a metal structure was placed and the whole weight
of the body fell on her right leg, which in fact did not endure and
was broken years later", - told the grandson of the Genocide survivor,
Arshavir Atajyan to Armenpress correspondent.

Earlier Armenpress presented the story of the Armenian Genocide
witness, which is as follows:

The Armenian Genocide initiated in the Ottoman Empire during the World
War I in the beginning of the previous century is one of the biggest
crimes against humanity. Advancing the 100th anniversary of the
Armenian Genocide the new project introduced by Armenpress news agency
is dedicated to the story of the eyewitnesses and survivors of the
calamity to prove the world one more time that our demand for the
recognition of the Armenian Genocide is fair and justified. This time
the project is dedicated to the story of 101-year old Silvard Atajyan.

MAY 14, 101-year old Silvard Atajyan living in Armenia is one of the
few witnesses of the events described in renowned novel "The Forty
Days of Musa Dagh" by Austrian author Franz Werfel.

Her family, which comes from Suedia region of Cilicia, was among those
Armenians, which participated in the heroic struggle against the
Turkish slaughterers in 1915. When the local authorities tried to
realize the order to force the Armenians to leave their homes, the
Armenians had made decision to resist and they climbed up the Mount
Musa, where they organized struggle for their self-defense and managed
to throw back the attacks of the Turkish troops 53 days.

Among other things Silvard Atajyan noted: "I climbed up the Mount Musa
along with my sister, mother, and grandmother in 1911. I was three
years old at that time. My father and uncle were soldiers. My father
ordered the mother to take us and climb up the mountain."

After the 53 days of resistance the family reached Egypt due to a French vessel.

Silvard remembers how a part of the women was at the side of their
husbands and the other part supplied food and arms to the fighters.

"In the evening women usually brought figs, grapes and bread for the
fighters. But little by little our forces expired...", - the 101-yer-old
woman said with excitement and tears in her eyes. In the memory of
Silvard, notwithstanding her little age, come out the images of the
French ships, bringing assistance to the Armenians. After the 53 days
of resistance the family reached Egypt due to a French vessel.

Harissa has got a historic past for Musa Dagh people

"During the fights my uncle died, who was thrown into the river. That
was the reason my aunts did not eat fish for years after that", - says
the witness.

After living for five years in Egypt, in 1919 the family of Silvard
returned to the motherland. Then in 1939 they moved to Aleppo and
later, in 1947 - to Yerevan.

"We grew up in Aleppo, where I got married with Hovsep, born in 1911,
who was a colonel. We got a house and came back to Yerevan, from where
we were exiled to Vardenis", - remembers Silvard, who worked there as
a carpet weaver.

In 1953 the Atajyan family moved from Vardenis to Yerevan and got a
land in the Malatia-Sebastia administrative district, where they have
lived up to now.

The hero of our story states that Harissa is one of the traditional
Musa Dagh dishes and has a historic past. It is mainly prepared for
happy or sad ceremonies. And that is the reason it is made after it is
blessed by a priest and necessarily from sacrificed lamb meat.

Years after touching upon the recognition of the Armenian Genocide,
the 101-year-old Silvard says that she does not lose hope, as living
with hope is characteristic of an Armenian. "I often watch news
programs and tell everybody to watch it too, so that they know what is
happening in the world. I am not educated but my brain works", -
states the hero of the story half-seriously and half-jokingly, adding
that according to the forecast, she will live for 5 years more.

She is fond of the flowers, which she has planted and cares with her own hands.

"When I got ill, in the hospital I even told my son not to dry my
flowers", - emphasized the Genocide-atrocities-survived Silvard, who,
using her walking device, showed us all her flowers in the house yard,
the care of which she does not trust anybody.

Today Silvard has 3 sons, one daughter, 7 grandchildren, and 12 great grandsons.

http://www.oratert.com/news/armenia/armenian-diaspora/80280.html

[Yervant1]

A Brief History Of Musa Dagh Armenians

13 hours ago 11/09/15
BY VAHRAM L. SHEMMASSIAN, Ph.D


This essay is a brief account of the history of Musa Dagh Armenians
from mid-nineteenth century to the present. Musa Dagh was situated by
the Mediterranean Sea, in the Svedia sub-district within the Antioch
district of the Ottoman Province of Aleppo. Presently, it is located
in the Samandagh district in the Hatay province of Turkey. Armenians
are believed to have lived in Musa Dagh since antiquity. To date,
their origins remain shrouded in uncertainty. They spoke a dialect
called Kistinik, meaning, the language of Christians. In nineteenth
century, six main Armenian villages existed: Bitias, Haji Habibli,
Yoghunoluk, Kheder Beg, Vakef, and Kabusiye, with a total of about
6,000 inhabitants. The original villages from which the others emerged
were Haji Habibli, Yoghunoluk, and Kabusiye.

The nineteenth and early twentieth century proved a period of change
that transformed the Musa Daghtsis from an isolated, obscure, and
ignorant lot to a conscious collectivity fighting for its very
existence as part of the larger Ottoman Armenian community facing
total annihilation by its own, Young Turk government. Several factors
effected this transformation. A retired British diplomat by the name
of John Barker, who had a summer residence at Bitias and other
property in Kheder Beg, experimented with new vegetables and fruits
acquired from around the world, improved the silkworm seeds for
sericulture, the main occupation in the area, and introduced medicines
to fight epidemic diseases. Equally important, foreign travelers
visiting him exposed Musa Dagh to the outside world for the first time
through their published accounts. American Protestant missionaries
likewise made inroads in Musa Dagh beginning in 1840, leading to the
establishment of Protestant churches in Bitias in 1857 and in
Yoghunoluk in 1869-70. The direct or indirect teachings of the
American ideals of equality and freedom must have impacted the
people's thinking to some extent. Then came Capuchin missionaries from
Europe and established the St. Paul congregation in Kheder Beg in
1891. Their presence, too, must have influenced the locals in terms of
European notions of human rights.

Armenian clergymen, educators, and revolutionaries likewise stopped by
Musa Dagh beginning mid-nineteenth century. When the Armenian National
Constitution was promulgated in the Ottoman Empire in 1863, the
Prelacy in Aleppo dispatched clergymen to its parishes in northwestern
Syria to introduce reforms. As a result, the majority Apostolic
community of Musa Dagh underwent some positive changes, albeit with
difficulty. Similarly, as a consequence of the ongoing Armenian
social, cultural, and political Renaissance across the empire,
`national' primary schools were established in Musa Dagh, whereby
youngsters began to learn about Armenian civilization with its
accomplishments.

Revolutionary societies penetrated Musa Dagh beginning in the 1890s.
Outside activists belonging to the Social Democrat Hnchakian Party
(SDHP) established there what they termed `absolute monarchy' from
1893-96. Many Musa Daghtsis, including large numbers of women, adhered
to the SDHP, were indoctrinated, and underwent some military training.
A degree of `racial `awareness' was thus attained. The Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (ARF) became interested in Musa Dagh during
the Zeytun uprising of 1895-96. Agents were sent to Musa Dagh in the
early 1890s to introduce the party's ideology and platform. An actual
ARF sub-committee was formed in 1908. The Reformed Hnchakian Party had
a cell in Haji Habibli beginning in 1911, and a few followers in some
of the other villages. All three parties smuggled arms into Musa Dagh
for self-defense, although their respective quantities cannot be
verified. The need for self-defense became more acute during the 1909
Armenian massacres in Cilicia and northwestern Syria. Musa Dagh was
spared the carnage thanks to the self-defensive measures it adopted as
well as the presence of a British warship that prevented the Muslim
ruffians from assailing Musa Dagh.

In late July 1915, when Musa Dagh received a deportation order,
two-third of the population chose resistance, whereas one-third
complied with the command and was deported to the Syrian city of Hama
and environs. More than half perished as a result of exposure,
malnutrition, and diseases. The defiant majority fought the Ottoman
Army and Muslim irregulars for more than forty days, and was rescued
by French warships monitoring the coastline and taken to Egypt, where
they would stay for four years in a refugee camp on the eastern banks
of the Suez Canal across from Port Said. The international press
covered this heroic saga with editorials, articles, and pictures.
Material assistance poured into the camp from around the world. In
1933, Franz Werfel, a Jew then living in Vienna, Austria, published a
historical novel, titled The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. It was
translated from its original German into numerous languages in
subsequent years. Musa Dagh became a household name globally, and the
saga itself was immortalized. It also inspired artists and
intellectuals alike to create works that heartened especially
oppressed people with messages of hope for survival. Unfortunately, a
film project by the movie giant Metro-Goldwin-Mayer (MGM) was shelved
due to pressure exerted by the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C.,
and the US State Department. Fortunately, another film is currently in
the pipeline.

At Port Said, the refugees lived in tents, and were fed through
bakeries, a kitchen, and a soup kitchen. Children attended the Sisvan
(old name of Cilicia) school run by the Armenian General Benevolent
Union (AGBU). The infirm were tended to in a clinic-hospital supported
by the Armenian Red Cross. Men and women alike worked in various
industrial departments operated by the American Red Cross and the
British Friends of Armenia Society. Some 500-600 youths in 1916 formed
the backbone of the French Légion d'Orient, later renamed the Légion
Arménienne. This force, augmented by Armenian volunteers from the
United States, Europe, and elsewhere, fought victoriously against the
Ottoman Army at the Battle of Arara in Palestine on September 19,
1918, thereby facilitating the Allied occupation of the rest of
Greater Syria as well as Cilicia.

In 1919, the refugees at Port Said and survivors at Hama repatriated
to Musa Dagh. The following two decades witnessed reconstruction and
the resumption of old professions such as comb, spoon, and charcoal
making, sericulture, and farming. A new textile industry inspired hope
for a better future. Bitias, in particular, became a popular tourism
and vacationing center. The three denominations reopened their
churches and schools. Voluntary associations sought to ameliorate
religious, educational, social, and cultural life. The SDHP and the
ARF vied for political dominance through local councils and regional
legislatures, with the latter party succeeding to a larger extent.
Unfortunately, all this would come to an abrupt end in the summer of
1939, when France ceded the Sanjak of Iskenderun/Alexandretta, an
autonomous province in northwestern Syria encompassing Musa Dagh and
other Armenian communities, to Turkey. The overwhelming majority of
Armenians chose to leave the area for other parts of Syria, and
Lebanon, fearful of Turkish rule so tarnished with brutality in recent
memory. Only 6 percent of Musa Daghtsis elected to stay behind. They
are now concentrated in the village of Vakef/Vakifli, which has been
showcased in recent years as the only Armenian village left in Turkey.

The majority that departed Musa Dagh encamped temporarily at Ras
al-Basit, along the Mediterranean between the Armenian enclave of
Kessab and Latakia. They were relocated to a place called Anjar in
Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Not only did the French High Commission of
Syria and Lebanon purchase the land, but it also constructed the
houses. With much difficulty, hard work, and perseverance, Anjar in
due course became a vibrant rural community. Last year it marked its
seventy-fifth anniversary. In 1946-47, more than half of Anjar's
population resettled in Soviet Armenia.

Wherever they may be, the Musa Daghtsis commemorate their heroic feat
of 1915 annually. Monuments have also been erected. The Damlajik
monument on Musa Dagh itself was inaugurated on September 18, 1932
with pomp and circumstance. The remains of the eighteen fighters who
lost their lives during the resistance were interred in a fenced
cemetery nearby. In Armenia, a majestic monument and an adjacent
museum stand on a hilltop in the town of Musa Ler (Musa Dagh), between
the capital of Yerevan and the Holy See of Echmiadzin. In Anjar, a
memorial complex is situated between the Harach College (high school)
and the St. Paul Apostolic Church. In Cambridge, near Ontario, Canada,
an edifice likewise attracts celebrants each September.

On this centennial of the Musa Dagh resistance to the Armenian
Genocide, challenges remain. How to preserve Musa Daghtsi identity?
How to preserve the dialect? How to impart the history? How to raise
future generations conscious of their roots? And so on. Leadership,
vision, imagination, ingenuity, technology, and other innovative
approaches are key to meeting those challenges. Relegation to oblivion
is not an option.


http://asbarez.com/139756/a-brief-history-of-musa-dagh-armenians/

[Yervant1]

VICE-ADMIRAL DARTIGE DU FOURNET - SAVIOUR OF MUSA DAGH ARMENIANS

December 28, 2015

Soldiers are trained to do one thing above all else: follow orders.

Soldiers who disobey face the repercussions of insubordination. Louis
Dartige Du Fournet, a vice admiral of the French Eastern Squadron that
was blockading Ottoman shores near Syria in 1915, was aware of what
the consequences could be should he take matters into his own hands.

Nonetheless, he ordered the rescue of over 4,000 Armenian men, women
and children from certain death in the foothills of Musa Dagh (Mount
Moses, also known as Jebel Musa) in what is present-day southeastern
Turkey.

Dartige had no idea how his commanding officers would respond to his
orders, but he did not wait to find out. He was acutely aware of the
bureaucratic nightmare of intervening in such a conflict, but he was
too short on time.

The story began in the summer of 1915, when the council of six
Armenian-populated villages - Haji Habibli, Kebusiyeh, Vakif, Kheder
Bek, Yoghunoluk and Bitias - located in the Suede district, defied
Ottoman orders to join deportation marches out of the country. On July
30 some of the Armenian inhabitants obeyed the Ottoman instructions
and were eventually killed during death marches to Syrian deserts.

Others - a group of over 5,000 Armenians - left their homes and took
refuge in the foothills of Musa Dagh, on the northern tip of the Bay
of Antioch. There they mounted a valiant military resistance agaist
the Ottoman forces.

There were only 600 fighters among the 5,000 Armenians and they had
few weapons. But they were determined and well disciplined.

They built temporary fortifications around the foothills of the
mountain. Initially, the Armenian fighters resisted heroically, but
with dwindling food and ammunition supplies the situation deteriorated
quickly.

In an attempt to attract the attention of allied warship crews,
the fighters raised two flags made out of bed sheets that would be
visible from the sea. One of the flags bore a red cross, the other
had "Christians are in danger" written on it. They also made bonfires
around the flags, hoping to draw attention.

Survivors from Musa Dagh with one of the flags noticed by the French
navy, The Graphic, November 13, 1915

On September 5, after nearly a month of fighting, the crew of a French
cruiser called The Guichen spotted the signals. Peter Dimlakian,
a member of the resistance, boarded the ship and spoke directly to
the French command. The French left with a promise to bring relief.

As Vice Admiral Dartige du Fournet wrote in his diary on September
6, 1915, he "received a telegram reporting on this and immediately
sailed in this direction on Jeanne d'Arc." The next day Jeanne d'Arc
approached the coast on a reconnaissance mission. Tigran Andreasyan,
one of the Armenian leaders, came onboard and asked for at least the
civilians - women, children and the elderly - to be evacuated. He
was once again promised that French navy would help.

"I realized that we had to help these miserable people," du Fournet
wrote in his diary. He sent an emergency telegram to the high command,
but was still extremely concerned about the complex bureaucracy back
in France.

At the risk of tarnishing his career, he gave the order to send all
cruisers at his disposal to Musa Dagh to begin evacuations immediately.

In his own words, "The time was scarce and whatever they [the high
command] told us, it was necessary to evacuate all of them."

Louis Dartige du Fournet, Armenian Genocide Museum Institute collection

The vice admiral also contacted the British authorities in Cyprus and
Egypt, asking them to shelter the refugees. His request was denied at
first, but he soon managed to convince the allies to set up a refugee
camp in Port Said, Egypt, without the consent of his senior command.

On September 10, 1915, on the 41st day of the resistance, two French
warships began bombing Ottoman positions around Musa Dagh in a
cover operation. On September 12, five French cruisers - Le Guichen,
L'Amiral Charner, Le Desaix, La Foudre and Le D'Estrées approached
the shore, cast anchor and dropped boats. Tiran Tekeyan, an officer
of Armenian origin on Le Desaix, coordinated the rescue operation,
which lasted three days. First the women, children and the old people
were evaculated, then the armed forces.

The total number of those rescued was 4,058. It included 1,563
children, several of whom had been born during the operation itself.

Some children born on board were named Guichen in honor of the first
cruiser whose crew had noticed the signal from Musa Dagh.

"There were poor little newborns among them wrapped in towels. The
Mussalertsi children were passed from hand to hand through the roar
of waves. They pulled through the waters and will never know what
kind of danger they managed to escape in reality," du Founet wrote
in his diary.

Refugees from Musa Dagh boarding French ships, The Sphere, October
30, 1915

When the refugees reached Egypt, they were offered shelter, food,
healthcare and schooling, as Dartige had arranged.

Three months after the evacuation, Dartige received a response to his
initial telegram. It contained only one phrase in French: "Où se
trouve mont Moise?" ("Where is Mount Moses?)" This proved that had
Dartige chosen to follow military procedures and wait for orders,
not a single refugee would have survived.

On October 10, 1915 du Fournet was appointed allied commander in the
Mediterranean Sea. In December 1916, after the landing of French
soldiers near Athens, Louis Dartige Du Fournet was dismissed. He
never had children and married a widow after his dismissal. He lived
in a small villa near St. Chamassy in southwestern France. Du Fournet
died in 1940 and was buried in St. Chamassy. At the time of his death,
and for many decades after, the French population knew nothing about
his rescue efforts.

However, in 2010, Tovmas Aintabian, a descendant of a Musa Dagh
survivor, conducted an investigation into the vice admiral's life
and discovered the location of his hometown, as well as his tomb.

Aintabian contacted the local authorities in St. Chamassy and arranged
a joint ceremony to honor his ancestors' savior. Word of Dartige
Du Fournet spread throughout France, with most French television
channels and newspapers covering the occasion. A marble sculptured flag
depicting the one waved by the freedom fighters was placed on the tomb.

Dartige's tomb has become a pilgrimage site for both Armenians and
French paying homage to the man who risked so much and saved so many.

100 LIVES Research Team http://www.horizonweekly.ca/news/details/78763

[Yervant1]

How novel about Armenian Genocide became bestseller in Warsaw ghetto

Werfel's true masterpiece

Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, known colloquially as Yom
HaShoah, is observed as Israel's day of commemoration for the
approximately six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, and for
the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. It was
inaugurated on 1953, and is held on the 27th of Nisan (this year it
coincided with May 5).
May 5, 2016

PanARMENIAN.Net - Edna S. Friedberg, a historian at the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum wrote an article about the novel The Forty
Days of Musa Dagh by Austrian-Czech writer Franz Werfeland the impact
it had on members of Jewish youth groups marshalling the courage to
revolt. The article, published on The Jewish Daily Forward in 2015,
reads:

“By any measure, the Warsaw Ghetto was hell on earth. An urban prison
zone in the middle of German-occupied Warsaw, after November 1940 the
ghetto was enclosed by a ten-foot high wall that was topped with
barbed wire and tightly guarded. German authorities packed over
400,000 Jews of all ages into an area of just 1.3 square miles, with
an average of 7.2 persons living in each room. Conditions were
miserable: inadequate food, no sanitation, little heat. By mid-1942,
83,000 Jews had died of starvation or disease. Of those who managed to
survive, the German authorities deported almost three hundred thousand
of them to the Treblinka killing center to be gassed.

And yet in Warsaw and many other ghettos across occupied Poland, Jews
organized clandestine schools and libraries, smuggling in books and
other cultural materials in collective acts of spiritual resistance.
Arguably the most popular book in the Warsaw Ghetto was the novel The
Forty Days of Musa Dagh, by Austrian-Czech writer Franz Werfel.

The Nazis had burned Werfel’s earlier writings in May 1933, labeling
them the poison fruits of a Jewish author who advocated pacifism, love
for all mankind, and hostility to extreme nationalism and Nazism.
First published in Austria just a few months after the Nazi book
burnings, Musa Dagh detailed the systematic expulsion and murder of
Armenian Christians by authorities in the Ottoman Empire starting in
1915-16–a series of actions we now call the Armenian Genocide.

Based on actual events, Werfel shone a light on a group of Armenian
men fighting under desperate conditions. Quickly translated from its
original German into many languages, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was
critically acclaimed and widely read in both the United States and
Europe, except in Nazi Germany where it was soon banned.

Werfel cast the Armenian characters’ armed revolt against their
oppressors in a heroic vein. As the editor of The New York Times Book
Review described the novel in 1934, “[it is a] story which must rouse
the emotions of all human beings… . a story of men accepting the fate
of heroes… . It gives us the lasting sense of participation in a
stirring episode of history.” Just a few years later, Werfel’s tale of
a besieged people taking control of its destiny captured the
imagination of those imprisoned in German ghettos. Copies of the novel
were passed from hand-to-hand among members of Jewish youth groups
marshalling the courage to revolt. When leaders of the underground
movement in the Białystok Ghetto debated whether to take up arms, they
invoked Werfel’s book.

A young man wrote, “Only one thing remains for us: to organize
collective resistance in the ghetto, at any cost; to consider the
ghetto our ‘Musa Dagh’, to write a proud chapter of Jewish Białystok
and our movement into history.” Many leaders of the resistance in the
Warsaw Ghetto also drew strength from the struggle at Musa Dagh.
Across Europe, Jews in mortal danger looked back one generation to the
annihilation of the Armenians and saw themselves.

We study history for inspiration and for warning. But first we must
remember–and the Armenian Genocide has been almost totally forgotten
in this country. In 1915 alone, The New York Times published 145
stories about Ottoman attacks, including startling death tolls.

Millions of Americans supported food and clothing drives to help
Armenian refugees in what may have been the first public charitable
appeal of its scale. Yet how many Americans today have even heard of
the atrocities that rallied their great-grandparents to action?

Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the word “genocide” in 1944 and who
himself was deeply influenced by Armenian suffering, wrote that “the
function of memory is not only to register past events, but to
stimulate human conscience.”

Haunted by the loss of his own family during the Holocaust, Lemkin
declared, “I have transformed my personal disaster into a moral
striking force.”

If we forget what happened in 1915, which forces truly prevail? Which
books will guide our actions?”

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.panarmenian.net_eng_details_211738_&d=DQIFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=LVw5zH6C4LHpVQcGEdVcrQ&m=AcMhIg9eWsS1h4oBaKvcrMXkhPx5adgO8NNKGHh-4_M&s=q1rsH_bkfyYm-8UNkPgM_NWdGsdv4M71Ha8OzHvKma4&e=

[Yervant1]

Pan Armenian, Armenia

Dec 25 2017

http://media.pn.am/media/issue/250/311/photo/250311.jpg

December 25, 2017 - 13:04 AMT

Never-before-seen Armenian Genocide photos discovered

The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute (AGMI) has discovered 25 never-before-seen photos depicting scenes from the process of evacuating the participants of Musa Dag resistance.

Musa Dag was the location of a successful Armenian resistance to the Genocide, an event that inspired Franz Werfel to write the novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.Allied warships, most notably the French 3rd squadron in the Mediterranean under command of Louis Dartige du Fournet, sighted the survivors, just as ammunition and food provisions were running out. French and British ships reportedly evacuated 4,200 men, women and children from Musa Dagh to safety in Port Said.

The pictures were taken in September 1915 by a French Navy officer.

They portray the process of transporting the civilian Armenian population to French warships, the moment of their boarding the vessels and other scenes.

The newly-discovered photos will be available to public beginning from April, 2018, AGMI director Hayk Demoyan said.

http://panarmenian.net/m/eng/news/250311

[Yervant1]

BBC 3 Radio

Jan 28 2018

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh

Sunday Feature

Listen to the program at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09pkmpc

In 1933 Franz Werfel's epic novel "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" was published to huge acclaim. The story of a guerilla army of Armenian villagers holding out against overwhelming Turkish forces on themountain of Musa Dagh in 1915, before evacuation by French forces to Port Said in Egypt. The mass murder of more than a million Armenians during this period had led to an international outcry during the war and, after 1919, the beginning of a campaign of denial by the Turkish government that succeeded the collapsing Ottoman empire. Germany, former ally of the Ottoman empire, also rejected any guilt by association but the assassination of Talaat Bey, former Ottoman Minister of the Interior and the key architect of the Armenian extermination, who was gunned down in Berlin in 1921 by an Armenian, caused a furore. The subsequent trial became a major media event and exposed the knowledge of the German government about the massacres. The fate of the Armenians was widely discussed and many on the right explicitly linked them with the 'Jewish question' as Hitler rose to power.

Franz Werfel, already a famous poet and well-known author, touring the Middle East in 1929 with his new wife, Alma Mahler, encountered pathetic Armenian refugee children. Their plight was the spark for his vast work. For both Werfel and its many readers "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" was not just an epic tribute to Armenian resistance and survival but a warning. Werfel's works were burned and banned after Anschluss and in 1938 he and Alma Mahler fled to America. Hollywood's attempts to film it soon after publication began a decades-long campaign of long-distance censorship by the Turkish government. Maria Margaronis tells the extraordinary story of an extraordinary book and its impact as Europe descended into barbarism.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09pkmpc

[Yervant1]

Rest in peace!

News.am, Armenia

Feb 2 2018

One of Armenian Genocide survivors dies aged 106 (PHOTO)

15:56, 02.02.2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Armenian Genocide survivor Silvard Atajyan died on Thursday night at the age of 106.

Silvard Atajyan’s granddaughter Nune said the old woman was conscious and talking. She died sitting in her armchair.

In 1915 disregarding the threats by the Turkish authorities, the residents of Armenian villages on the Mediterranean coast climbed Mount Musa (Musa Dagh) and organized a self-defense. Silvard’s parents Hayrapet and Maritsa Sherbetyan were among them. She was only three years old during the events.

Two years ago, Silvard Atajyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am that the Turks killed her uncle and threw him into the river, whereas her father managed to escape.

“In the daytime, the women were standing, without fear, with their fathers, husbands and brothers. At night, however, they were slipping down the mountain without being noticed, and to collect grapes and figs to somehow provide something to eat for the fighting men" she said. Sometime thereafter, Silvard Atajyan was to notice that her future mother-in-law, Silvard Atajyan, also was taking part in their defense of Mount Musa.

After the First World War, however, the Armenians again had the opportunity to go back to Mount Musa. But the Sherbetyan family, which already had settled in Aleppo, stayed in Syria.

“The French gave our lands to the Turks,” Silvard Atajyan said trying to hold back the tears in her eyes. “We could no longer travel home.”

Silvard Atajyan’s granddaughter Nune told us that on every third Sunday of September, Grandma Silvard cooks Harissa, the traditional food of the Mount Musa residents, for her grandchildren and relatives. Thus, she pays tribute to her father and the defenders of Mount Musa.

In 2015, NEWS.am interviewed Silvard Atajyan within the framework of the “Survivors” project ahead of the centennial of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated in the Ottoman Turkey in 1915-23.

https://news.am/eng/news/434363.html

 

 

[MosJan]

Astvats Hogin lusavory

[Yervant1]

QANTARA, Germany

Aug 3 2021

The fate of the Armenians Vakıflı: The last Armenian village in Turkey

The village of Vakıflı in the southern Turkish province of Hatay near the Syrian border, population 150, is the last remaining Armenian village in Turkey. Lately, interest in the town and the history of Armenians has been growing. By Jochen Menzel

The taxi driver from Samandağ, a town near the ancient site of Seleucia Pieria, was amazed when in June 1992 we asked him to drive us up the mountain Musa Dagh to the Armenian village of Vakıflı. We were in search of the "Mountain of Moses" described by Franz Werfel in his famous Armenian novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.

We didn't get very far, because the road soon ended at a field. After we started talking about the Armenians, however, our driver evidently realised what we were interested in seeing. So he took us to the small village of Vakıflı, or Vakıflı Köy as it is known in Turkish. We could already tell upon arriving at the little church with its steel-framed bell tower and small cemetery full of old graves that we now found ourselves in the only remaining Armenian village in Turkey.

We stopped at a two-storey stone house that was once the school and focal point of the village. Men and women sitting together in front of the church invited us to join them for a mocha coffee. Before we drove on, we also had to taste the plums, a variety called yeşil erik, which many hands had picked from the tree.

Service in the Church of the Holy Mother of God

Fast forward to many years later. It's Sunday, 1 March, at ten o'clock in the morning, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Bells are calling the faithful to pray at the Church of the Holy Mother of God, Surp Asdvadzadzin in Armenian, which is held here every fortnight. The modest church with its two small spires has in the meantime been completely modernised. Between 1994 and 1997 it was restored by the village community with the support of the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul and the Turkish government. In front of it is now a small paved square with trees. The outer wall is decorated with two khachkars, typical Armenian memorial stone steles with a cross carved in relief in the middle. The church interior, in a modern design with an altar, is concealed by a curtain for Holy Week. As usual, the priest has come over from the nearby port town of Iskenderun, where he serves a small Armenian congregation.

The priest from Iskenderun and members of the local church congregation share traditional lavash bread after the Church service in the village of Vakıflı. The Church of the Holy Mother of God, "Surp Asdvadzadzin" in Armenian, was restored between 1994 and 1997 by the village community with the support of the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul and the Turkish government

The church is crowded today, because the service is dedicated to the memory of a parishioner who passed away 40 days ago. After a sung liturgy lasting nearly two hours, the congregation goes outside. Small pieces of blessed lavash bread are distributed at the exit. We follow the priest through an ornate wrought-iron gate into the cemetery for devotions.

The custom here – as it is among Muslims – is to commemorate the deceased by distributing food to be eaten together. And so, the service is followed by a shared meal, eaten in the new parish hall next to the church.

The transformation of a village

It's not only the church that has changed since our last visit. The village too, which perhaps still has around 150 inhabitants, has been redeveloped. The old schoolhouse along with two additional buildings has been converted into a bed and breakfast. And a museum on the history of Armenian villages on Musa Dagh has been set up in the basement of the community centre with the support of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and the Armenian Patriarchate. Inside, an Armenian association exhibits objects, pictures and texts with academic, diplomatic caution. The opening has unfortunately been postponed due to the pandemic.

In the old square in front of the former schoolhouse, a women's cooperative has established a sales outlet for handicrafts, jams, wine and spices. Somehow, the women have to live and to pay the expenses for the priest from Iskenderun from the meagre proceeds. A short way down the road, where the minibus to Samandağ stops, there is a tea garden offering breakfast and small snacks.

In the summer months, life returns to the quiet village for a few weeks thanks to the festivities and weddings held here. People whose ancestors once lived here want to go back their roots and homeland, to have their children baptised here and their marriage blessed according to the Armenian rites. But worries are also part of everyday life in the village. Young people are leaving, dreaming of a better education, work and a future in Europe, America or just Istanbul. The old folks are left behind.

Graveyard in the village of Vakıflı. According to Jochen Menzel, "the history of Christian and Armenian settlement in this region is also a story of the early Christians, to which the four churches in Samandağ still bear witness today. But the history of the Armenian villages on Musa Dagh comes to an almost complete end with the year 1915, the beginning of the brutal expulsion of the Armenian population of Anatolia"

The Armenian villages on Musa Dagh

The history of Christian and Armenian settlement in this region is also a story of the early Christians, to which the four churches in Samandağ still bear witness today. But the history of the Armenian villages on Musa Dagh comes to an almost complete end with the year 1915, the beginning of the brutal expulsion of the Armenian population of Anatolia.

There are thus few reminders left today at the foot of Musa Dagh. Visitors still come to Hıdırbey, the village neighbouring Vakıflı, to see the centuries-old sacred Tree of Moses. A few restored buildings provide a glimpse of Armenian history.

Further up the mountain is the village of Yoğunoluk, which is described in detail in Werfel's novel. A small mosque now stands on the foundations of a former Armenian church there. The next village, Batıayaz, features an impressive unfinished three-aisled church. This sacred building was meant to stand for a new beginning when the Armenians who had once fled returned to their villages after the First World War. The Hatay region, together with modern-day Syria, was part of the French protectorate until 1939. But when the province was then incorporated into the Turkish Republic that year, mistrust returned. Most Armenians emigrated to Lebanon or Syria.

The "Vapur" memorial on the high plateau

The plateau at the summit of the 1,355-metre-high Musa Dagh is a site of Armenian identity and the main setting in Franz Werfel's novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. The inhabitants of six Armenian villages gathered here in September 1915 to escape deportation by the Ottoman army. To draw attention to their plight, they hoisted a huge home-sewn flag bearing a red cross and the words "Christians in Danger", which was visible far out to sea. The French warship Guichen spied the flag and succeeded with the help of four additional warships in evacuating some 4,000 Armenians to Port Said in Egypt a few days later. An account of the dramatic events is also given in a 1916 report by the German theologian and Orientalist Johannes Lepsius.

The "Vapur" memorial on Musa Dagh. Vapur, meaning ship, commemorates the evacuation of 4,000 Armenians to Port Said in September 1915. The inhabitants of six Armenian villages gathered here in that month to escape deportation by the Ottoman army. "To draw attention to their plight," writes Jochen Menzel, "they hoisted a huge home-sewn flag bearing a red cross and the words 'Christians in Danger', which was visible far out to sea. The French warship Guichen spied the flag and succeeded with the help of four additional warships in evacuating some 4,000 people […] a few days later." The memorial was constructed in 1932 to mark the 17th anniversary of the expulsion of the Armenians

Today, after a climb of several hours, we reach this high plateau. We come upon a memorial, popularly known as Vapur, meaning ship, which commemorates the evacuation. Rough-hewn stones in the shape of a ship, two metres wide and four to five metres long, were piled on top of each other in 1932 to mark the 17th anniversary of the expulsion of the Armenian returnees. On the western edge of the plateau, which slopes steeply down to the sea, we look out over the hazy horizon where a large ship is cruising. It might be a Russian vessel bound for Latakia or the naval base in Tartus, Syria.

Tourists come to see the church and museum

Back to Vakıflı village. The weekend is approaching and the few restaurants in the area are preparing for guests. Interest in Vakıflı and its Armenian history is growing. Tourists come here to see the small church and the cemetery, or they stand in front of the still closed museum. Their faces betray inquisitiveness, a tentative optimism. Perhaps some contemporary witnesses or their descendants can still be found here?

Part of this hopeful development is the small museum that is waiting to open. It can be seen as a sign that social discourse is still possible even under difficult conditions. People want to get a close-up impression of Anatolia's history, which has been shaped so significantly by its large and important Armenian community.

Jochen Menzel

© Qantara.de 2021

https://en.qantara.de/content/the-fate-of-the-armenians-vakifli-the-last-armenian-village-in-turkey

[Yervant1]

Turkey - Feb 2 2024

HATAY ONE YEAR AFTER THE EARTHQUAKES

Turkey's last Armenian village stands strong with its women after earthquakes

"As a cooperative, one month after the earthquake, on Women's Day, we immersed ourselves in work with the orders that came to us, trying to forget this period. But when they say 'it's being forgotten,' it really isn't being forgotten."

Last year’s earthquakes on February 6 and 20 undoubtedly changed the routines of intra-city travel in Hatay.

Most of the city's roads are in ruins not only because of the earthquakes but also due to the heavy machinery and trucks involved in debris removal. If you are driving from Antakya to Samandağ, you need to be careful along the way. The road, usually two lanes, can suddenly narrow down to one, and construction machinery and trucks can appear any time.

Vakıflı is a small village, approximately 5 kilometers from Samandağ and 25 kilometers from Antakya districts. Nestled at the foot of Mount Musa, overlooking the Mediterranean, it is surrounded by orange, tangerine, lemon, and grapefruit trees, emanating the fragrance of citrus. It is the last Armenian village in Turkey.

Vakıflı is located in southern Hatay. (Wikimedia Commons)

Journalist and author Serdar Korucu, in his 2021 book "Sancak Düştü" (The Sanjak Falls), writes about the Armenians of Mount Musa, once part of the "İskenderun Sanjak" during the Ottoman era:

"Out of the six villages on Mount Musa – Hıdır Bek/Hıdırbey, Yoğunoluk, Kebusiye (now known as Kapısuyu), Hacıhabibli (Eriklikuyu), Bityas (Batıayaz), Vakıf (Vakıflı) – many Armenians 'preferred' leaving Hatay. The ones who stayed gathered in Vakıflı, affectionately termed by the media as Turkey's 'only Armenian village' (actually the 'last Armenian village'). These migrations were not limited to Mount Musa. In 1936, the Armenian population, constituting 11% of the Sanjak's population, dwindled to a symbolic number."

While the earthquakes on February 6 did not cause destruction in the village of about 35 households and 135 residents, the earthquakes centered around Defne and Samandağ in the Hatay-centered quake on February 20 resulted in nearly half of the church and houses being either damaged or collapsed. The heavy rainfall the day before filled small potholes on the damaged village roads with water, making our journey to Vakıflı a bit challenging.

Vakıflı is a special case for women. The women's cooperative, established long before February 6, re-engaged in regional production activities shortly after the earthquake. We visited Vakıflı to see the women's production workshops and discuss the period before and after February 6.

After the collapse of its bell tower and damage in its walls, Surp Asdvadzadzin Church will undergo restoration.

We call Kuhar Kartun when we arrive at the Vakıfköy Patriarch Mesrob II Cultural Center. A minute later, she greets us from a short distance: "Come, come, we are downstairs, in the production workshop."

The lower floor of the cultural center, located just behind the Surp Asdvadzadzin Church, is the Mihran Ulikyan Production and Food Workshop. The center consists of two separate three-story buildings, including a guesthouse, lodge, and museum.

Kuhar Kartun is from the Vakıfköy Women's Cooperative management and has been living in Vakıflı for about 30 years.

"Unfortunately, Vakıfköy has been the last Armenian village in Turkey since 1938. I say 'unfortunately' because we are the only village left from thousands of villages in these lands," says Kartun.

They make a living through agriculture, with citrus being the most important product, she says. "At a time when agriculture and production were declared over, we said, 'No giving up.' We came together in 2005 under the name 'Vakıfköy Women's Club.' In December 2021, we formed a cooperative. The goal is for every woman to earn an equal share. We said this village belongs to all of us. There were about 30 women. We, the women, united, sold whatever we could produce, and supported our family budgets. We educated our children."

"We rolled up our sleeves after the earthquake”

When we ask her about the February 6 quake,. She says, "I have very, very bad memories of those days." Her mother, living in İskenderun, lost her life under the rubble. She mentions being in İstanbul at that time, with her husband and son in the village.

After the earthquake, the village tea garden became a refuge for all families. Men and women, old and young, everyone lived there for a while, all together. She says, "I couldn't see those here, but I knew what they were going through, what they felt, that they couldn't enter their homes because of their fears. I returned from Istanbul in March. After coming back, I felt relief."

The tea garden became a shelter for the village people after the earthquake. Nowadays, it is a 'spare time' area for the village men; playing backgammon, watching others play... The owner Garbis says they are economically in a difficult situation, mentioning that either the mandarins stay on the trees or they can be sold for next to nothing.

During those days, they received orders upon orders for solidarity purposes, and they quickly consumed the products they could save from the earthquake. Kuhar, who tells us that they rolled up their sleeves afterward, says, "Working became therapy for us."

However, many women had to leave the village after the earthquake. "Why? For the education of their children," says Kuhar Kartun. "Some sent their children to another city, and those whose children were young had to leave themselves. Because transportation to schools from here is difficult; no vehicles, no services, nothing."

Still, hopeful Kuhar says, "I'm sure they will all come back." A short moment of silence. Then, with a confident _expression_ on her face, she says:

"Hatay will rise again. Antakya, Samandağ will rise again. Any place touched by a woman's hand will recover, I'm sure. Just let's unite."

"Everyone has a different role"

Orange peels carefully arranged are gently placed into two large pots where the sherbet is boiling. A pleasant aroma fills the entire workshop. Elena Çapar, one of the most diligent members of the Vakıfköy Women's Cooperative, slowly stirs the orange peels with a large ladle.

Elena, who was in the village during the earthquakes on February 6 and 20, had her house destroyed, and they had to live in a tent for a long time. Nowadays, they stay as a family in a container provided by the patriarchate and installed by the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality. "My three sons, my husband, and my 92-year-old father-in-law. We're all together."

Her "workday" begins at home early in the morning, then she deals with cooperative tasks. If she's not cooking, she's at her desk, taking notes on orders with her phone in hand. At the end of the day, she returns "home," and the work cycle continues.

"As Vakıfköy women, we all participate in the production processes. Some of us use our hands, some our eyes, some our noses; everyone has a different role," says Elena.

"For example, today, the syrup for orange jam is boiling. Tomorrow is the day to fill the jars with jams. Orange jam is one of our main products. Walnut jam, orange jam, pomegranate molasses, concentrated syrups, olives, laurel soap.

“These are our other main products. We make all of these with what we obtain from our own lands. We also have an agricultural cooperative in our village. We process the products we receive from them here."

Unable to forget

"They say, 'It's being forgotten,' but it's not forgotten," says Elena. "As long as we live, this fear, this pain will live with us."

"What the state doesn't do, civil society does"

Nilgün Aşkar, co-chair of the Health and Social Service Workers Union (SES) Hatay Branch and a psychologist, believes that the solidarity networks established and the cooperatives formed since February 6 have been positive for earthquake-affected women. However, she thinks that these efforts are not sufficient.

Meeting with Aşkar in the park area next to the Zeynelabidin Tomb in Armutlu Neighborhood, where the SES Hatay Branch container is located, Aşkar emphasizes that both women's organizations and labor-professional and democratic mass organizations sensitive to women have been trying to support women through solidarity networks and meet their needs since the beginning of the earthquake.

Psychologist Nilgün Aşkar, noting that earthquake-affected women have dealt with many problems over the past year, says, "Having to deal with so much deprivation, lack, and workload, taking care of household responsibilities such as children, disabled individuals, and the elderly in large families have greatly exhausted women."

Aşkar says that they have formed psychosocial support groups as SES, and women's organizations have carried out similar activities. "Yes, these are breath-giving activities, but they do not reduce this burden. A year has passed, but there has been no change in terms of women's workload, and perhaps paid work has been added, along with financial difficulties."

"Efforts are positive but not sufficient"

Aşkar points out that some of the civil society activities for women in Hatay have evolved into the process of cooperativization by the end of the year:

"In these cooperatives, work is being done on the production of local products and their marketing. Of course, these are positive and valuable developments. Unfortunately, they are not enough."

Aşkar, despite these supportive activities, emphasizes that a heavy labor process continues for women in tents, containers, and homes, saying:

"Yet, what is needed here is the rapid opening of care centers and nurseries, the implementation of supportive activities for people with disabilities, and making schools as serviceable as possible. And these can be done by the state.

“Unfortunately, it is not possible to meet all these needs through palliative methods, projects, and various organizational efforts."

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2023 Maraş Earthquakes

On February 6, 2023, earthquakes with epicenters in the Pazarcık and Elbistan districts of Maraş, registering magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.5, respectively, resulted in destruction in 11 provinces in Turey’s eastern Mediterranean, Southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Anatolia. The earthquake also caused significant damage and losses of life in Syria and the tremors were felt in almost the entire Turkey, as well as in various parts of the Middle East and Europe.

Maraş, Hatay and Adıyaman suffered the heaviest destruction. In addition to these cities, a three-month state of emergency was declared in Adana, Antep, Elazığ, Diyarbakır, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye, and Urfa.

According to official data in Turkey, 50,783 people lost their lives, more than 100,000 people were injured, and 7,248 buildings, including public buildings, collapsed during the earthquake. Approximately 14 million people were affected by the disaster. After the disaster, more than 2 million people faced housing problems, and at least 5 million people migrated to different regions.

Hatay was hit by two more earthquakes, measuring 6.4 and 5.8 magnitudes, on February 20, 2023, with the epicenters in the Defne and Samandağ districts. Some buildings heavily damaged on February 6 collapsed due to these earthquakes.

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https://bianet.org/haber/turkey-s-last-armenian-village-stands-strong-with-its-women-after-earthquakes-291348

[Yervant1]

Aug 19 2024

 

 

Armenian community in Hatay celebrates feast at church restored after earthquakes

The Armenian Patriarch of Turkey also attended the celebration of the Feast of the Assumption.

 

The Feast of the Assumption, or Asdvadzadzin, one of the five major holy days in the Armenian Church, was celebrated with special significance this year at the Surp Asdvadzadzin Church in Vakıfköy, Hatay. 

The church, which had sustained damage in the devastating February 2023 earthquakes, was reopened for worship after repairs.

On Saturday, August 17, the church was rededicated in a ceremony known as "Odzum," marking its return to service, according to reporting from the Agos newspaper. 

Sahak Maşalyan, the Armenian Patriarch of Turkey, traveled to Vakıfköy to lead the celebrations, which included a blessing service and a festive gathering. The Assumption Mass was conducted by Bishop Hovagim Manukyan, the spiritual leader of the Armenian communities in the UK and Ireland.

Before the ceremony, the patriarch visited Hatay Governor Mustafa Masatlı. Uupon his arrival in Vakıfköy, he was greeted with traditional drum and zurna music. 

'Double feast'

Touring the newly restored church, Maşalyan expressed his joy at the renovation, emphasizing the collective effort that went into the restoration. 

He remarked, "We are celebrating a double feast today. We bless the grapes and hold the church's Odzum service. After a year of repair, the church looks beautiful. This is a gift to Vakıfköy, made possible through contributions from benefactors in İstanbul and abroad."

The evening continued with the official opening ceremony, where hymns were performed, and blessings were offered by church officials. The celebration extended into the evening with a traditional "harisa" feast, where seven pots of the dish were prepared to symbolize the seven Armenian villages of Musa Dagh.

The next day, the Badarak service was held with a large turnout from the local community. During the service, Bishop Manukyan delivered a sermon in Armenian, while Patriarch Maşalyan spoke in Turkish, highlighting the recent natural disasters and the importance of living with integrity. 

"Nature is sending us its curse, not its blessing," he said, referring to the earthquakes, adding, "It's not the earthquake that killed people, but the buildings constructed by dishonest people. Over 50,000 lives were lost. If you want blessings, don’t be deceitful—be honest, don’t steal, and live like a human being."

The celebrations concluded with the blessing of the harisa pots, as the community came together to honor their traditions and reflect on the challenges they have overcome. (VK)

https://bianet.org/haber/armenian-community-in-hatay-celebrates-feast-at-church-restored-after-earthquakes-298722