RENDAHL: UNDERSTANDING GENOCIDE

[Yervant1]

RENDAHL: UNDERSTANDING GENOCIDE

By: Kristi Rendahl

 

http://www.armenianweekly.com/2011/03/03/rendahl-understanding-genocide/

Thu, Mar 3 2011

 

I knew little of Armenia's history when I moved there in May 1997.

 

Those were the days before I relished research, before I could draw

parallels between historical events and different cultures, before I

understood how young and inexperienced my own country really was. Were

I a more diligent person, perhaps I would have read more in advance

and begun to form impressions. Instead, I got on a plane with little

more than the special-ordered small English-Armenian dictionary that

I couldn't read.

 

For as far back as I can recall, I've been a student of people. Books

provide more words and more depth, but people often provide more

context. There are few things I enjoy more than hearing someone's

perspective about most anything. And so my education on Armenia began,

listening to countless tellings and retellings of the stories that

define the Armenian world today.

 

After arriving, my head was swamped with information and ideas. It

was a foreign language to me, but the culture itself was just as

filled with newness. Suddenly, I was learning words in Armenian that

I couldn't recall ever having used or heard so frequently in English:

Corruption, bribes, shame, diaspora, genocide. I struggled to relate

these concepts to my short American life. I'd never had a mortgage,

worried about health insurance, held a full-time job, been close

friends with a soldier, or even signed a letter of protest to a

legislator. How could I possibly understand what follows 600 years

of repression by foreign rulers?

 

The public dialogue about genocide was indeed new to me. While I'd

learned about the Holocaust, I had not thought enough about how this

kind of systematic elimination of people continued to occur. What

I also did not yet understand was how something so truly wicked and

evil could impact subsequent generations-both those who remained in

their homeland and those who survived by fleeing.

 

It was when I first heard songs like "Giligia" and "Akh, Vaspurakan"

that I began to understand the depth of the pain. I'd studied music

since I was a child, but had played predominantly Western classical

music. Armenian music had a mournful quality achieved through

instrumentation and intervals unfamiliar to my ear.

 

The words of the songs, too, expressed the meaning of genocide in terms

that shook me to my core. From "Giligia": "Yertam nnjel zim Giligia,

ashkhar vor indz yetur arev" (I wish to fall asleep in my Giligia,

the country that gave me the sun).

 

I come from the prairies of North America, where land means something

to people, where the nights are quiet and the skies are vast. That

people could be separated from that life-giving soil and air had a

profound impact on me.

 

>From "Akh, Vaspurakan": "Nerkvetsan dashter hayu aryunov" (The fields

were colored with Armenian blood). The image of blood-drenched fields

reminded me of the 120 years that my family has filled our fields with

sweat and tears while battling stone, drought, and disease in pursuit

of an honest living that puts food on people's tables. Later in the

song come the words "Odarn sirum e mez ibrev geri" (The odar loves

to consider us their prisoners). And the notion of people imposing

their power over others-especially those with less might and more to

lose-grated against my sense of pride and independence.

 

Those notes and those words, ironically, brought genocide to life

for me. Described in academic terms, it was yet another tragic part

of history to which I could barely relate. Expressed in song, it was

an assault on my senses and a reminder of the common human experience.

 

That realization was more powerful when I grew close to so many

Armenians whose ancestors had escaped the genocide and made their

homes elsewhere.

 

Seeing the tears fall down their faces at the Dzidzernagapert Genocide

Memorial in Yerevan. Hearing stories of heroism and sacrifice like

this. Watching them recommit and return to their homeland to carry

forward their traditions of greatness against all odds.

 

To say that I can now comprehend what it means to be a genocide

survivor would be a statement of disproportionate ignorance. But to

say that I understand it more because of what Armenians have taught

me would be a good start.

[Louise Kiffer]

I spent my chilhood and youth in a house which had been constructed in France, near Paris, by a rich armenian woman, digin Kapamajian, spécialy for the survvors of armenian genocide.

My parents were from adabazar, they were poor refugies in France. Just after I was born, in 1925, they came to live in that house. All our neighbours were poor like us, from different places of Turkey, they were survivors. Each one told his or her story, I heard all.

There was no armenian school. We went to the French school. The parents wanted their children work very well at school

At home, we used to speak armenian, not outside.

My mother and grand-mother used to sing revolutionary songs, like 'Iprev Ardziv savarnum yer ler ou jayr' or: "Tashnagtsagan Khoump kenank menk Sasun .. They wanted us to know all our history, they tol us the past, they do not want us to be ashamed of our poverty, but to be proud of being armenians. My father was born in 1901, my mother 1902.

Now I have 4 children (boys and girls) and 4 grand children ( boys and girls). They all know our story.