I am the Great Grandson of Miriam Shooshian & Khachadour Nahigian; Victims of ‘The Great Crime’.
I did not know anything about Miriam and only knew of Khachadour as ‘The Professor’ until I started diving into the Armenian immigrant ‘Story of Us’.
This is when I learned that Miriam survived by leaving everything behind to get her family out ahead of the incoming Ottoman death squads.
Making their way by night through the desert. Lying with her family amongst the dead to avoid being discovered. Possibly making it when others didn’t for the simple fact that she had a donkey. And then hiding in the countryside outside of Aleppo for over a year until she could find a diplomat to sign their passage to America.
All this knowing her husband Khachadour had already been killed. Taken away with the other Armenian scholars, religious and community leaders.
“He was hung by his arms, beaten, hair pulled from his body in hopes to get a confession.” The New York Times reported on October 7, 1915. “He was taken out toward Diarbekir and murdered in a general massacre on the road.
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Survivors called this The Medz Yeghern — The Great Crime. Today, in America we call it the Armenian Genocide.
It was always unclear to me why we heard so little growing up. My guess is one hundred years ago, if you were an Armenian immigrant, you arrived in America with equal parts fear, hope and the pain of leaving behind everything you knew. In those days when you came to this country, you acclimated, ‘americanized’ your name and spread out into the great promise land — away from the pain, in search of peace.
On her 80th birthday, Aunt Rose decided to break the silence.
I had heard very little about ‘the old country’ until 35 years ago when Angela and I joined the family at Great Aunt Rose’s 80th birthday party. After dinner, Aunt Rose and Great Uncle Kevork moved to the Library and began talking about this very dark time.
I am unsure that this was a planned thing. It is possible that Aunt Rose decided that it was time that we all knew.
While the party continued in the other parts of the house, the library went silent with many of us just trying to get close enough to hear.
Quietly we sat listening to first-hand accounts of the systematic slaughter of 1.5 millions of their own while occasionally they slipped in and out of their childhood language. Tears rolled down Kevork’s face as he remembered wholesale killing of able-bodied men, rapes of wives and daughters and starvation of children as they were death-marched to the Syrian desert. The images were gruesome. Seventy years had done nothing to soften the emotions on Aunt Rose’s face as it moved from rage to anger to sadness. And then ultimately, resolve.
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My Dad said he had never heard many of the stories. Probably true of many in the library that night. But I am sure none of us will forget what we heard.
It was part of The Story of Us I did not know. It was their story they wanted us to know.
We left that night having felt as though we had somehow witnessed the collective unburdening of their souls as they handed us important responsibility.
The more I have learned about this dark time, the closer I am to understanding why many that lived through The Great Crime intentionally blocked the memory out; since there was no accountability for the guilty and the world acted as they wanted it to go away — they would too.
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Why April 24, 2021 matters to me.
I am certain Miriam and The Professor would have been proud to know they had grandsons that served in World War II even fighting at Iwo Jima. And their family became doctors, dentists, entrepreneurs, engineers, stenographers, shop clerks, actors and artists.
I picture them smiling at their great-great grandchildren. All like me — some part Armenian ‘immigrant from Harpoot’ and 100% American.
And this is why April 24, 2021 is so important to me. It is the day that Their America dropped the political pretense to finally acknowledge that the planned, organized, unchecked extermination of unarmed Armenian men, woman and children was in-fact, Genocide.
I do no think that America’s official recognition of this atrocity will make a substantive difference to victims of The Great Crime — But I hope it will give them peace.
More importantly is that I think Miriam and Khackadour, Rose and Kevork, Terez, Soren, and Kissag and Veronica would be glad to know that their story was not forgotten and that we will all be watchful so it does not happen again.
