Diasporic Canvass of Armenian Itineraries

[Siamanto]

Almost all of us are born in families that - or have family members who - had a long journey around the globe (mainly) as a consequence of the Armenian Genocide. This thread will hopefully become a map of such journeys.

[Siamanto]

Grigorian's Chant: Canadian Artists Rule

Grigorian's chant: Canadian artists rule
by Joe Fiorito, Toronto Star

The Toronto Star, Ontario
June 29, 2005 Wednesday

Harmik Grigorian was sitting in the back of his music store in
Yorkville a few days ago. He had just celebrated the 25th anniversary
of L'Atelier Grigorian, and he was in a reflective mood.

If history had taken a different turn, he would have been born in
Armenia; instead, his parents fled the genocide and he was born
in Tehran.

If history had taken yet another turn, he'd still be there.

He said, "As soon as I finished high school, I joined a big Dutch oil
company. I ended up on the board of directors. We were designing all
the big oil projects in Tehran. It was very exciting. Iran had all
the latest technology during the time of the shah.

"For me, the country was on its way to becoming a second Japan. You
could buy any kind of car, there were great hotels, there were people
from all over the world - Americans, French, Italians - and there
was no unemployment."

And then he shrugged, the way only an Armenian can shrug. "But the
shah was not using the resources of the country properly; only certain
people were well off." You know what happened next.

Did he sense the revolution? "I was not frightened. But my wife was
not very happy. She thought we should leave. I sent her and our two
daughters to England and I tried to sell our house." That shrug,
again. "I couldn't sell. I lost a lot, like everyone.

"My neighbour at the time was the second-highest official at the
Canadian Embassy. It was his house where the American hostages would
later stay.

"He and I used to have drinks and listen to Tony Bennett on the
stereo. He asked where my family was. I told him. He said we should
come to Canada."

Not long afterwards, Harmik and his family arrived in North York, and
they soon found a house in Oakville. "We didn't know anything at the
time; but you know, it's no problem, we were new, it was very nice,
very beautiful.

"I tried to find a job in my field but either I was overqualified
or I had no Canadian experience." He smiled, and he may have been
frustrated, but those of us who love classical music are very lucky
that he did not find a job crunching numbers.

He said, "I have always loved music. I had been to some of the big
music stores in Toronto. I sensed things were missing. I said to my
wife, 'Why don't we open a store and try to be the best?' She said,
'Let's do it.' The next day I rented a place in Oakville. I am very
fast in deciding things. We started selling music, art, books on
photography and architecture."

His first day in business? "I had bought big ads in the Oakville
Beaver and the Oakville Journal. We wondered, 'Can we handle the
crowd?' I opened at 10 a.m. Nobody came. We waited, waited; nobody.

"My neighbour finally came at 5: 30 and bought a cassette; I think
it was Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue. If he didn't come, it would have
been zero in the cash that first day."

I don't know which is better, luck or nerve, but I do know it's
hard to beat the combination. Around that time, there was a book of
photos of the Sistine Chapel, a costly limited edition produced over
a one-year period prior to the restoration of the frescoes; there
were 100 copies reserved for Japan - the restoration was funded by
a Japanese TV network - and there were 300 copies available for the
rest of the world.

The book cost $5,400. Eaton's had a copy and couldn't sell it, nor
could Edwards, nor could David Mirvish.

Harmik can be irresistible. He persuaded the agent to let him have a
copy for the weekend. He sold one, and then he sold two more, then
another and another; 13 in all. He was on his way.

And when his landlord jacked up his rent in 1986, he opened a new store
in Yorkville, and then he opened again almost immediately in Oakville.

He chief strength has always been in the importing of classical
music from Europe, precious stuff which no other store had wanted to
bother with.

Before long, L'Atelier Grigorian was known worldwide.

One day he got a letter from a Glenn Gould society in the Netherlands,
asking him to provide what recordings he could. It occurred to him
there was no Glenn Gould society here.

And so Harmik and his right-hand man, Bob Trenholm, had a few discreet
conversations with some influential music people; not long afterwards,
there was a Glenn Gould Society here.

He said, "I try to push Canadian artists in my store. I think Canadians
should have nationalism, good nationalism; we should be proud of who
we are. For me, as an Armenian, we would have nothing without our
nationalism. But as Canadians, we don't want to push."

He seemed perplexed. I said we used to push but we've stopped; it is
as if we've conceded culture to the Americans.

Harmik leaned forward and stared fiercely and said, "The past 25 years
have been great, hard-working years, doing good for a country that
has accepted me as a citizen." He paused to gather more fierceness.

"Now I want to tell you from my heart - Canadians should be proud. We
have great artists: Bayrakdarian, Kuerti ... Glenn Gould. We are not
less than the world." He's right.

Here's to 25 more years of fierceness.

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg117383.html

[Siamanto]

The Firebrand

Los Angeles Times
July 6 2005

The firebrand

If it has to do with Armenian Americans, Stepan Partamian is bound to
say something that will push the hot buttons.

By Lynell George, Times Staff Writer


If it has to do with Armenian Americans, Stepan Partamian is bound to
say something that will push the hot buttons. As first impressions
go, you might think you wouldn't want to meet up with Stepan
Partamian in a dark alley - what with his barrel chest, shaved head
and ZZ Top bush of a goatee.

But in reality, it isn't the dark alley to be worried about. With
Partamian, it's the sunny sidewalk cafe, theater lobby, art gallery
or, most particularly, the hot seat on one of his cable TV talk
shows.


With him, it isn't a fist-pounding you risk. But depending which side
of the Armenian divide you stand on, you might be in for a
tongue-lashing.

This night is no different. Dressed in dark suit and tie, Partamian
stands at the lip of the stage of the Barnsdall Gallery Theater, high
above the crush of Hollywood Boulevard's Little Armenia. Though he
looks every bit the urbane emcee, his instigator persona is still
close at hand. He looks out into the auditorium - a room abundant
with St. John suits and Prada shoes - and sees it is barely half
full.

"Ah, you all are the true Armenians," he says, doing a quick head
count. "I guess that means that there are only 135 Armenians who live
here in Southern California. And all of you are here tonight!"

For nearly two decades in Southern California, Partamian has been
using various platforms to impart his message - one that has never
strayed too far from boosting Armenian culture while chastising, some
might say haranguing, those who discount or downplay it, who have
traded in Armenian ways for more assimilated American notions.

It started modestly enough.

Partamian created the Glendale-based music company Garni in 1987 to
package and promote Armenian artists who had low visibility in the
mainstream. Since that time, he has become one of the region's most
prominent Armenian record producers and concert promoters - staging
shows at venues such as the Hollywood Bowl and the Alex Theatre in
Glendale, where more than a third of Los Angeles County's estimated
300,000 Armenians live. It's a significant perch, inasmuch as "the
Alex has become more famous than Mt. Ararat to Armenians around the
world," Partamian will tell you.

Music has been just one path into safeguarding Armenian history and
culture. So has his quarterly publication, Armenian Arts. And his two
cable-access shows, which dip into such topics as language, religion
and local politics. In his multiple enterprises, he has become a
high-profile community firebrand.

So it goes this particular evening. After a "their loss" shrug for
the no-shows, Partamian gets to the meat of the matter: The evening's
event will showcase classical guitarist Lakovos Kolanian, playing a
series of Armenian folk pieces, and Winds of Passion, a quintet
performing on duduks - small double-reed instruments made of apricot
wood that are said to best express the Armenian soul.

"This music is ours. We haven't let them grab it from us yet," he
says, pacing the stage. "You can take an instrument and adapt it to a
culture, but it loses its authenticity - for my purposes this
evening, I've asked the performers to present Armenian culture on
their instruments."

The same is true, he continues, with a people's migrations; things
get shed - or lost - along the way. "When people talk about ethnic
identity, they so often talk about a melting pot. I prefer to think
about ethnic identity as pieces of a mosaic. My stone is as bright as
the stone next to me. We need to leave a legacy. We need to love to
be a proud Armenian stone."

Prodding his audience

Generally speaking, Partamian doesn't believe in the light touch, or
in metaphor or simile. They don't really work for him.

He'd rather go the in-your-face route - everything from his
surly-faced, finger-wagging rants on TV to the logo he dreamed up and
embossed on T-shirts, stickers and other items: a triptych of his
face in caricature, ears covered, mouth covered, eyes covered. "This
to me is the Armenian community here in Los Angeles. They cannot
hear, they cannot speak, they cannot see. Who is an Armenian? An
Armenian is someone who sees with their eyes shut.... "

The image has become not just his logo but his guiding force: "I want
to stimulate their mental capacity. I want them to utilize their
brains."

Such talk creates a fuss, certainly friction: "He's an unabashed,
unrelenting guy," says Maria Armoudian, producer and host of Four
O'Clock Thursdays on KPFK (90.7 FM). "His observations are fresh and
important ... not always accurate ... but they are always
provocative. And he can be hilarious. Stepan does challenge the
community. And he's critical. But I don't think it is because of a
lack of love."

The logo, like the concerts, like the cable shows, has been
Partamian's way to broach uncomfortable, sometimes taboo topics
relating to Armenian culture - hyphenated identities, religion and
politics - that, he says, keep Armenians from being unified. Both his
shows, "Bari Luys" (Good Morning), which airs five mornings a week,
and the late-night-Thursday "Tser Kardzike" (Your Opinion), have
given him wide exposure.

"People say, 'Stepan, you're talking too openly - talking about these
issues.' I tell them: 'They already know. You're the one who is in
denial.' But we spend too much time thinking about being like other
people instead of learning more about ourselves," says Partamian. "We
are slaves to the George Washingtons - too preoccupied with money. We
need to understand our own contributions."

"You talk about 'Armenian identity,' but we don't have one. It's
about who we were, and where we came from. But what is being Armenian
today?" says Peter Balwanian, producer of the Armenian Music Awards.
Partamian, he says, is "jump-starting things. You know, like when
someone's flat-lining? He's, like, putting the defibrillator on the
chest."

Indeed, some call him an Armenian Howard Stern. Others refer to him
as the Armenian Bill Maher - or "Bill O'Reillian."

Garen Yegparian, a founding member of the Burbank Armenian National
Committee, says riling people up is necessary. "There's been this
sort of truncated discourse" in the community. It's not as if things
are swept under the carpet, he says; rather, "there is no carpet.
There's just dust there. And he's mixing it up."


Intense with disarming, smiling eyes, Partamian is proud of the
fights he inspires between husbands and wives and across-the-hedge
neighbors, and that he has men climbing out of their La-Z-Boys in the
middle of the night to drive down to the studio to give him a piece
of their mind.

"I love to make people angry. 'Why is he saying this?' 'Why is he
doing that?' I love it," he giggles as he looks over a menu at a
popular Armenian restaurant on Glendale's main drag, Brand Boulevard,
a week or so after the Barnsdall concert. Partamian can barely get
through the listing of appetizers before a half-dozen people stop by
the table.

Once the interruptions recede, he immediately begins to point out
things that irritate him. "See this dish? That's not really Armenian.
It's Persian. And the music playing now is Arabic. It has a nice move
and grooves, but it's not Armenian," he complains. "It's hard to know
where to start."

So Partamian has set himself on a path to piece together a history
that the Armenian diaspora can learn from and be proud of.

It's been a challenge, he says. "Because of the genocide, diaspora
Armenians tend to want to be someone or something else. We live in
other cultures without protecting or valuing what we have. The
elderly feel it's a shame to talk about it. The younger generation
doesn't want to know. What's the psychological damage being passed on
from generation to generation?"

Immeasurable, he figures. And yet for all his pride in heritage and
place, his own ambivalence about traveling "home" exposes a weak
spot, one that his critics frequently seize upon: " 'What do you know
about Armenia? You've never been!' " He's always had an answer: "My
feeling was, up until recently, I don't need to see Armenia, to see
the homeland, to understand what being an Armenian is."

But now that's changed: He only just announced to equally stunned
friends and audiences that he would be traveling to Armenia, to some
abstract place he's only understood as home.

Building from a vacuum

For Partamian, trying to construct something as intangible as
identity has had its challenges: There's the distance, the vacuum and
a painful history.

One of his ongoing projects has been his website www.april24.com, a
memorial to the 1.5 million Armenians killed by the Ottoman Turks
between 1915 and 1918. But his most ambitious endeavor is to record
the entire Divine Liturgy of the Armenian Church, arranged by the
Armenian monk and musicologist Komitas to be played in its 80-minute
entirety for the first time on duduk, which he would like to complete
by year's end to mark the 90th anniversary of the genocide. "But for
that I need a lot of George Washingtons - $30,000, to be exact. I've
got about 50 minutes done. Somehow it will all come together."

All this reaching back is in many ways Partamian's way to dress an
old wound: that disconnected history. "I always say I'm a product of
1915, even though I was born in 1962."

Partamian was born and raised in Lebanon. Lured by an aunt who had
relocated to the States, his family landed in Glendale when he was
18. So far from everything familiar, Partamian longed for some
connection to his heritage and went looking for music. "It was the
late '80s," he recalls, "when CDs were becoming the thing, and I
couldn't find much of anything Armenian."

His obsessive collecting eventually turned into a brisk mail-order
business, and that into a storefront, which became an after-hours
hangout, a place to talk politics, history. In time, he parlayed that
into a multipronged business producing and releasing works by
emerging Armenian musicians, amassing a roster that blurred the lines
of classical, pop, folk - and that also helped to deepen the cultural
portrait.

For all his passion and cultural boosterism, there are some within
the Armenian community who would rather see the plug pulled on him.
For so long, Partamian's role has been "irritant trigger," says
Yegparian, that "I can empathize with the approach. I'm guilty of it.
But the downside is that people do get hung up on the irritation. So
he may not get to the conclusion. He might be the person to raise the
issue, but he might not be the person who is going to resolve it."

"Some people think that I bash people," Partamian says on a recent
evening, stepping out of his red jeep to make a quick cameo
appearance at a reading at the Abril Bookstore in Glendale. "It's a
way to get their attention." It's just one of the many stops he'll
make this evening before he heads to the studio. He makes a point to
go to four or five events a night, "just to grab the essence," he
says.

He squeezes in. The store is clogged with people, and, again,
everyone has a word for Partamian. "Every morning I watch," says
Hrachia Froundijian "He says, 'Good morning!' But it really means
darkness! I fight with my wife all the time about him ... all the
time, but I keep watching."

Some of those gathered have moved away from the small table where
author Markar Melkonian inscribes his book to ask Partamian about his
upcoming trip to Armenia. And since telling his viewers he's going,
he's been inundated with offers - places to stay, tour guides, even a
ride to the airport. The kindness has surprised him.

But really, what people want to know is, Why the change of heart? Why
now?

"When I thought about it more, I realized I have an answer for
everything. But one thing I don't have an answer for is life in
Armenia."

He talks of maybe doing a stage show on his return. "Make everyone
pay $20 to hear about my travels and my impressions."


As for what he's after? Well, it's an elusive thing. "Some people
think I'm going there to find pride in my culture," he says. "I have
it already. But for the last five years, I realized, I've stopped
[developing] my identity to find out the identity of this community.

"I don't want to call it a soul-finding experience. But it is about
finding who you are. Why they - Armenians in Armenia - are richer in
some ways. I'm going to try to find the things to lock those two
identities together."

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg117754.html

[Siamanto]

Tallahassee Democrat, FL
July 6 2005


Actor Thomajan, 87, dies

He had a long career with Hollywood titans, then spent his last years
in Monticello

By Mark Hinson

DEMOCRAT SENIOR WRITER


Feisty character actor Edd "Guy" Thomajan - who appeared in such
films as "Panic in the Streets," "Miracle on 34th Street" and "The
Pink Panther" - died at his home in Monticello on June 28. He was 87.

Thomajan, who was also a veteran of World War II, retired to the
woods of North Florida to build his own house in the 1980s. A
lifelong bachelor, he left behind no family members or survivors.

The diminutive Thomajan had a scrappy personality and salty
vocabulary, but he could switch from crusty curmudgeon to charming
gentleman in a matter of seconds. Around his friends, he enjoyed
telling colorful tales of his days working on Broadway and in
Hollywood with such famous figures as James Dean, Marlon Brando,
Montgomery Clift, Shelley Winters, Audrey Hepburn, Paul Muni and
legendary director Elia Kazan.

"He was a walking encyclopedia of great stories," Steve MacQueen,
former Tallahassee Democrat theater critic and Thomajan friend, said
Tuesday.

Born in Massachusetts, the son of Armenian immigrants, Thomajan began
developing his street-tough persona as a kid after his family
relocated to a rough-and-tumble neighborhood in Brooklyn.

As a teenager in New York City in the '30s, he hung around the Group
Theatre, known for its socially relevant plays. It's where he first
met Kazan.

After serving four years in India, Burma and Japan during World War
II - a tour of duty that included the liberation of hellish prison
camps in Japan - Thomajan returned to find that Kazan had become one
of the most prominent directors in New York. He worked as stage
manager for a trio of Kazan's landmark Tennessee Williams productions
on Broadway - "Camino Real," "Sweet Bird of Youth" and "A Streetcar
Named Desire."

During "Streetcar," Thomajan's jobs also included keeping Williams
supplied with "the right amount of bourbon" and sparring with Brando
backstage between scenes. Thomajan and Brando never became friends
and "would tolerate each other," he said.

"As an actor, Brando is one of the greatest," Thomajan said in 1995.
"Very powerful, very influential actor who could do some really
amazing things. As a person, of course, he's a jerk, very selfish and
egotistical."

The theater was always Thomajan's first love, and he often spoke
passionately about the need for contemporary plays dealing seriously
with social issues and the human condition.

"Where are the new plays?" he said. "That's what we need. What the
hell do you get out of revivals unless the people involved can
interpret them in a different way than they've been done for 400
years?"

Although he never obtained a college degree, the self-educated
Thomajan could discuss classic plays and literature at length. When
it came to chess, his playing style was as aggressive and keen as the
man himself. In the '90s, the ever-restless Thomajan wrote an updated
stage version of Moliere's "The Miser" and many other works.

Thomajan was on hand when Kazan's career expanded beyond the stage
and onto the screen. He appeared in front of the cameras and behind
the scenes with the director on such films as "Viva Zapata," "East of
Eden," "Wild River," "Boomerang!" and "On the Waterfront."

In the famed car scene in "On the Waterfront" - the one in which
Brando tells Rod Steiger, "I could have been a contender, instead of
a bum, which is what I am" - Kazan filmed the shots of the two of
them, then did Brando's close-ups as Steiger fed him his lines. But
when it was time for Steiger's close-ups, Brando left. Steiger fumed.

"So Kazan said, 'Edd, get in there and give him lines,'" Thomajan
said in '95. "So on the close-ups with Steiger, when he's looking
off-camera at Brando, he's looking at me."

In 1950, Thomajan co-starred with Jack Palance and Zero Mostel as one
of three disease-ridden lowlifes spreading a plague in Kazan's gritty
classic "Panic in the Streets." In one memorable scene, Thomajan was
tossed from a seedy second-story tenement into an alley in New
Orleans.

"We didn't use any stunt guys on that picture," he said in 1999 when
Kazan was being given an honorary Oscar. "It hurt my neck, but I
walked away. I would've done anything for Gadge (Kazan's nickname)."

In the '60s, Thomajan kept working, directing numerous summer shows
in Miami Beach and even made a film called "The Ex-Americans," which
he directed in Rome (he later dismissed the movie as "just plain
bad"). He also worked as an executive production supervisor and scout
for a Canadian firm that financed lesser-known pictures all over
Europe. Other credits include directing a Broadway play ("Harbor
Lights," starring Robert Alda) and even a few operas for New York's
Civic Theatre.

When asked why he settled down in a remote A-frame cabin, which
intentionally had no phone or TV, in the woods near Monticello,
Thomajan liked to joke: "Because it's halfway between New York and
Miami."

Thomajan requested that no memorial service be held after his death.



THOMAJAN PLAYED ...

A postal worker in the Christmas classic "Miracle on 34th Street"
(1947)

A court witness named Cartucci in Elia Kazan's "Boomerang!" (1947)

A plague-infected thief who is eventually tossed from a balcony (by
Jack Palance) in Kazan's "Panic in the Streets" (1950)

A gangster in "The Breaking Point" (1950), directed by Michael Curtiz
("Casablanca").

A dog-stealing henchman for David Niven in "The Pink Panther" (1964)

He was also stage manager for Kazan's Broadway productions of "A
Streetcar Named Desire," "Camino Real" and "Sweet Bird of Youth," all
by Tennessee Williams.

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg117819.html

[bezjian]

my grandmother, who just turned 90 a few months back and lives in england, has had a really extraordinary life. she was born in turkey in 1915, spent the first twelve years of her life in armenian orphanages in lebanon and egypt, and later spent five years during world war ii in german prisoner of war camps in holland, germany, and france. she still speaks and reads armenian, but has no one to speak to since no one in the family over there speaks. my dad wrote the following narrative on behalf of him and my uncle, and submitted it to the bbc world war ii page.

--

We are writing this on behalf of our mother Angele xxxxxian who is still alive at 90 years of age but is starting to forget some of the history of her life and is unable to independently record her story during World War II.

Our record of her incredible story is based upon her recounting it several times and also from tape recordings that we made of her some time ago when her memory was still vivid.

Part I

Our mother was born Shamiram Nalbandian in Yozgat, Turkey in 1915 to an Armenian Catholic family. She survived the Armenian Genocide and subsequently lived in orphanages in Beirut, Lebanon and Alexandria, Egypt before arriving in Belgium when she was twelve years old (another story to be told; she also may be the last survivor of that genocide living in England).

After attending Catholic schools in Belgium, including a convent school in Liege, she then worked as a seamstress and subsequently married our father, Maurice xxxxxian, a British Armenian, born in Manchester, who had settled in Holland. The marriage took place in Brussels on August 29, 1939. They intended to spend their honeymoon in England planning to see Maurice’s brothers Edward and Steven and their wives. However, one week after they were married, war was declared. Mobilization started, so they had to return to our father’s home in The Hague, Holland. They took what was to be the last train from Brussels to Holland before the borders were closed due to the occupation of Belgium by the Germans. Our father had his carpet business in the Hague and he was doing reasonably well. They received a letter from the British Consulate to advise them to evacuate back to England. However, our father had still much business with payments due and they decided to stay. The Germans attacked Holland with much devastating bombing and the country was overcome in four days. During this time our parents went to the shelters. Angele recalls going to see Rotterdam flattened following the heavy bombing by the Germans.

In June 1940, Maurice got a notice from the Germans to go to the “Komandature”. After doing some business errands he arrived there and soon realized that he was with other British nationals and that his freedom was over. Our mother received a call from a friend to say that Maurice had been arrested. She went to see our father and he asked for a pair of pajamas and cigarettes. The Germans told the relatives of the men to come back at 6.00 am the next morning. When our mother came the following morning, along with the other relatives, all the men had already gone. She found out two months later that our father and the other men had been sent to a place called Altmar where there were barracks. Relatives were then allowed to see the men for one hour every month and she managed to travel there on one occasion.

My mother was left on her own in The Hague with little knowledge of Dutch. For safety reasons she was told to leave The Hague since it was near the coast line. A friend, a Belgian lady, told her to go to see a priest for help since our mother is Catholic. The priest gave her a letter to go to a convent in Amsterdam. So she packed up what she needed leaving the business and all their possessions back in The Hague with the landlord. The Nuns said that normally they could not keep married women but because of the war and her circumstances, she could stay. She stayed about two to three months in a building on her own. There was still some bombing going on and she spent many nights petrified. Our mother was also frightened of the German soldiers who did not have a good reputation. She was required to go to the “Kommandature” every week. Our mother supported herself from an allowance she received from the British once a month and from sewing that she did. She usually traveled by bike for her errands.

Angele was arranging with another French lady to find a flat to live together when she was notified on December 19,1940 to go for a special visit to the “ Kommandature”. She had been working doing some sewing and so that morning, as usual, she went on her bike to do her errands and then arrived at the “ Kommandature”. Soon, many others arrived such that eventually there were five hundred or so who also had British citizenship. Her time of freedom was now over. She also had to leave behind her bike which she loved. For our mother, loosing her freedom was ironic since she had not yet been to England and did not speak English. Although some British were discharged, the Germans maintained that she had to be arrested since she was legally a British subject married to a British Citizen.

With the other women internees, she was sent by coach to the barracks at Altmar where Maurice and the other men had been. The men had gone but the women did not know where the men had been sent to. The women subsequently found out that the men had been sent to Tost near Leipzig close to the Polish border and they were soon able to start corresponding with them. The women stayed in Altmar for about three months. At the barracks, life was hard with poor food and no proper toilets. They did have to do some work including being in the kitchen. Most of the other lady internees were Dutch speaking and so she began to learn Dutch earnestly. Angele met Mrs. Gibson, who had lived in Indonesia and who became a life long friend until Mrs. Gibson’s death over forty years ago.

Eventually the internees left Altmar and were sent by train to Germany. They were in a cattle wagon and it was very uncomfortable with most of them getting swollen legs. People were crying, and some were hysterical, particularly the British Jewesses, who thought that they were being sent to the gas chambers. The train stopped at Aachen where they were given salted pea soup. They changed trains at Cologne having an hour to stretch their legs. This time the train was much more comfortable. Eventually the train came to Ravensburg where the SS were waiting. The SS shouted their orders and they were then taken by coach to Libenhau which is in Southern Germany.

The buildings at Libenhau consisted of a castle (called the “Schloss”) and four big buildings. It was run by Nuns and was being used to attend to two to three thousand mental and disabled patients. Hitler gave the orders for six to seven hundred of the mental and disabled patients to be exterminated with needle injection to make way for the internees. There was already about three hundred British people from Poland. Others came from Greece, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and Germany as well as the five hundred or so from Holland. The buildings at Libenhau were large and there was a barbed wire fence around the grounds. The food was very bad, mostly “ersatz” bread but the internees only had to do cleaning and work once a month in the kitchen. The nuns did much hard work including working in the fields and also got some help from the German mental patients that remained there as well as the internees. The guards were mostly old German soldiers who were quite nice since they said that they were well treated by the British in World War I after being captured. After six to eight months, the internees received Red Cross Parcels from Switzerland comprising margarine, meat loaf, dry biscuit, tea and biscuits and money to buy things like toothpaste. Our mother was in room with seven other ladies (Eileen Jarret, Rita Litenhoff, Anita Cohen, Mrs. Gibson, Mrs. Green, Barbara Cornfield and Sophie Newman). The room was comfortable with feathered quilts and feathered mattresses for their beds. By much coincidence, Angele met her school friend from Liege, Helen Eliot, whose English family had lived in Belgium before the war. Life was hard but there was a lot of spirit and camaraderie. They were able to go out for walks once a day within the grounds and they constantly played cards, usually Bridge. They also organized theatrical events once or twice a year including a production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Our mother was in charge of a sewing room to help to make clothes for the show and dressing gowns. She also said that the Germans in her area, who were mostly Catholic, did not want the war and wanted Germany to lose the war.
Internees in the men’s camp and the women’s camp petitioned for the husbands and wives to be together in the same location. They argued that the German husbands and wives, who were being interned by the British, were together on the Isle of Man. Eventually the Germans agreed and on January 22,1943 our mother, along with many other married ladies, were sent to a camp in Vittel in France. However none of the women from my mothers room in Libenhau went to Vittel since they were either unmarried or widowed.

The Germans confiscated several hotels to house the internees. The internment camp at Vittel was also formally a Hotel, with tennis courts and a spa. Its drinking water is still renowned today. The internment camp at Vittel housed about two thousand internees, mostly Americans, Russians, British and also Jews from Poland and Austria who had falsified British and American passports. Part of the Hotel was used as a hospital. My mother was in a comfortable room on the fourth floor with another lady called Jeanne Russell and a very kind French Lady of peasant stock who could not read or write. A French lady, that my mother befriended, persuaded her to work in the kitchen serving the soup. Workers helping in the kitchen got special privileges and were allowed to go as group with a guard to the local village and buy things they needed. They also used to barter with the French farmers with their cigarettes and chocolate.

The men, including Maurice arrived on August 8, 1943 and there was enormous joy. They found that that they had changed somewhat. Our father’s hair had receded and he had been much affected by the rigours of being interned. Our mother on the other hand had put on weight. The married couples were placed in villa type accommodation and our parent’s room was number 330. It was quite comfortable with a large sized kitchen. They continued to get Red Cross Parcels every week which sustained them particularly for breakfast. They also received an allowance from the British once a month.. Life was relatively comfortable and our mother was able to play tennis and netball. Our parents found another Brtitish-Armenian family originally from Manchester, the Gumuchian family, consisting of a mother and two daughters. The eldest daughter, Stella, was conductor of the orchestra and the younger daughter, Sona (who is still alive) used to also play in the orchestra and performed in shows.

[bezjian]

Part II

Angele started to feel sick and went to see her kind Jewish doctor. He prescribed her medicine but it seemed to make her feel worse. They still could not find out what it was but eventually after four months they realized that she was pregnant and that she was to expect twins. The five hundred or so Polish and Austrian Jews in the camp tragically in the spring of 1944 were found out by the Germans to have false documents. These Jews were very distinguished and prominent people from their society. Many of them committed suicide avoiding the inevitable of being sent to a concentration camp. The rest of internees strongly protested the terrible treatment of the Jews but were punished having to stay two nights in their rooms in the dark. This all happened about the same time that our mother gave birth on April 16, 1944 to twins Michael Manouk and Margaret Araxie. Angele and the twins had to stay in the hospital for three weeks since the babies were premature. Michael in particular was not responding well. Mother and the babies were looked after by German, French and British Doctors. During her stay she recalls hearing ambulances coming frequently to the hospital carrying those who had successfully or unsuccessfully committed suicide either by jumping out of windows or cutting their wrists. In the bed next to our mother was a Jewish lady from Austria who also gave birth to a child. The lady cried inconsolably since all her relatives, including her husband and mother, had been sent to concentration camps and she was left behind with her child. Our mother has told this story many times.

The doctors said that Angele could leave the hospital and leave the babies there. She decided not to do so on the advise of others who feared that the doctors would somehow allow the babies to die. After leaving the hospital with the babies our mother was helped by two sisters Rita and Sophie to look after them. Apparently there were about thirty babies born in the camp.

From the radio, the internees heard that the Americans and British had landed on June 6, 1944 and they subsequently followed the gradual retreat of the Germans. Sometime about September of 1944, the area around Vittel was being liberated and much fighting took place around the camp. The German soldiers went to the mountains during the day time for protection. There was a lot of bombing by the Americans and the French Resistance which went on all day. The German Komandant of the internment camp, known as Monsieur Stephan, made everyone go to the shelter. Our mother almost got killed when she went back to the room to get food for the babies and shrapnel burst into the room . The Americans and the French Resistance temporarily succeeded in liberating the area including the camp and the internees threw them flowers, chocolate and cigarettes. The Germans came back and attacked the area. However, the French Resistance had changed all the road signs and the Germans were confused. This time the Germans were trapped and defeated. Monsieur Stephan was killed. Angele saw many of the German soldiers being kept as prisoners in stables and our father went to the fields where many soldiers lay dead. She often said that they suffered too and has since throughout her life been appalled at the modern wars that have started knowing the terrible human suffering they bring.

After being liberated, our father, mother and the twins, along with the rest of the internees, stayed at Vittel for about three weeks or so. The British Consulate came and the were told that they would be in England within a day. On October 16, 1944 our parents, with the twins, took their few possessions and were taken to Tours in France in a group of twenty one refugees. Tours was an airfield with temporary hospitals for the wounded. Instead of staying a short while in Tours, they ended up staying four nights sleeping on stretchers in a large tent waiting to be put on a plane to England. They were well looked after by the Americans and were well fed. They had ran out of nappies for the babies so the Americans gave them four pillow covers to use. The Germans started to bomb and the American General said that it was too dangerous for them to stay. The group of twenty one refugees then traveled to Paris where many soldiers and refugees had gathered. They arrived at noon at the railway station and waited until 6.00pm when they were eventually taken to Monmatre Hotel by the British Consulate. The hotel had no lights so they had to stay in the dark. The following morning, the French Red Cross, who were very good to them, gave then some milk and money. To buy food you needed coupons which they did not have and so they had to go to the soup kitchens for the poor. They stayed at the hotel for four days.

After their stay the Monmatre Hotel, they were sent by the British Consulate by coach to Bourjais Airport which was still operating despite being flattened. They arrived at the airport at noon and had to wait till 6.00pm before being flown to Northholt airport near London on a Dacota plane with the rest of the group of twenty one refugees. After much interrogation at Northholt airport, they were sent to a refugee center in the center of London. They were photographed by the press in the refugee center. The following day, The Daily Mirror wrote an article with the heading “ Twins, born in Hun Camp are freed” and the Evening News showed photographs of mother and the twins with a title “Born in Captivity, Free in London”. Our father went to see his sister in laws in Ruislip who lived on the same street but found neither of them at home since they were at work. He left a note to say that the family had arrived. They were overjoyed when they saw the note. Soon the family was reunited with our uncle and aunts having not seen each other for six years. Our uncles, Edward and Steven, had spent much of the war with the British 5th Army in Egypt.

The family settled in Eastcote, Ruislip, Middlesex where Peter was born in 1948 . Sadly our father died of a heart attack in 1971 and our sister Margaret died of cancer in 1990. Our mother, who has six grand children and two great grand children lived happily and peacefully in Eastcote till August 2004. She now lives in a retirement home in Cambourne near Cambridge and near to where Michael’s family lives.



Postscript: An interesting additional item is with regard to a post card sent by our father dated December 7, 1943 from the internment camp in Vittel to his landlord, Mr Ockemulder, in The Hague, Holland. Mr. Ockemulder only received the postcard some thirty six years later on November 30, 1979. An article in a Dutch Newspaper Haagsche Courant, regarding this astounding occurrence, was published in the newspaper’s December 4, 1979 edition. It is possible that the postcard got left in a corner of the local post office in Vittel to be found decades later.

--

what do you guys think? i am thinking of polishing this up a bit, adding more details about the first part of her life (escaping turkey, living in orphanages in beirut, alexandria) and submitting this to an armenian publication. we have some excellent photos as well. do you think there would be any interest in this from any of the armenian publications?

[karoaper]

^ Wow, I like it a lot. When you say she lived an extraordinary life, boy, you're not exagerating. One thing that is missing is the history of your grandfather Maurice before England. Was he or his family survivors of the Genocide. Great biographical piece though.

[Crissy]

bezjian, what an extraordinary life your grandmother has had. I had tears in my eyes reading it. You should definitely get this published.

[bezjian]

thanks karoaper and crissy for reading through all of that, i'm happy to know you were moved by it. i get a lump in my throat every time i think about my grandmother - where she came from and everything she went through. she is my direct link to the past, to a time when armenians still lived all over anatolia, as their ancestors had done for thousands of years.

the truth is that there are many more details to her story than you get from this piece. it was written for an audience only interested in world war ii and the plight of british nationals during that war. i'll try to put together a fuller version in the next few weeks, because as i mentioned, she spent the first twelve years of her life in lebanon and egypt.

i'm glad you asked about maurice karoaper. he has an interesting story too. he was born in manchester, england in 1908 to an armenian father (samuel)and english mother. samuel was also born in manchester, in 1875, and was from a family of armenian shipping merchants that came to england in the mid-1800s. they were originally from trabzon. the interesting thing is that although samuel was born in england, he received his education in istanbul at the famous robert college. he must have gone back to england at some point, and after he got married there and had his three kids (my grandfather being the youngest), he moved his wife and children to istanbul. so my half armenian-half english grandfather maurice spent the years 1908 to 1915 in istanbul, attending all the armenian schools there. what a time to be armenian in istanbul! they must have seen everything. maurice spoke fluent armenian and turkish - the diaries he kept while in the german camps in ww ii are all written in armenian. sadly they were really separated from any armenian community for a long time, and even after the war ended there weren't many armenians in london (a few families, but not many). my grandmother says about my grandfather though that "he was very armenian in his heart". i think about that very often.

i'm not quite sure but i think the family just fled istanbul for belgium once things started getting out of hand in 1915. other parts of the family however, such as maurice's uncles, aunts, and cousins who were living in trabzon for example were almost all killed in the genocide. he had a girl cousin in trabzon named araxi who survived the massacres but was raped by a turk, and later ended up in england. she must have given birth to the child before she left turkey because many decades later, a visitor from turkey showed up at her doorstep in london one day claiming to be her son. she never opened the door.

it's almost unbelievable when you think about some of these things but unfortunately quite true. there are probably many stories like this we will never know.

[Siamanto]

Ed Minassian

Contra Costa Times, CA
July 11 2005

Author aims to uncover genocide's screen link

CONTRA COSTA TIMES


MORAGA - As a child in the 1930s, Ed Minasian often found refuge in
the movie theater across the street from the three-story tenement
where he grew up in Massachusetts.

"From our window I could see the Grace Episcopal Church, and next to
it was the Capitol Theater. On some Sundays, I chose the latter over
the former," Minasian said. At 10 cents a show, it was the best
entertainment value of the day, and the darkened theater offered an
escape from everyday woes.

There was plenty to escape from: The Depression was in full swing on
one side of the ocean, Adolf Hitler was coming to power on the other,
and in the Armenian community he grew up in, the memory of the
atrocities committed against his people during the genocide that
began in 1915 was still fresh.

Armenians say that Turkish forces, trying to purge the country of
Armenians, caused the deaths of 1.5 million people in outright
killings or in forced deportations that led to starvation during
World War I. The Turkish government denies the genocide occurred.

For someone of Armenian descent, it rarely takes long for the
conversation to circle around to the genocide 90 years ago. For
Minasian, it takes no time at all for the conversation to circle
around to movies.

The 80-year-old Moraga resident, who lost siblings during the mass
killings, has spent 24 years researching the place where those two
circles intersect: 1930s Hollywood. His findings, which he hopes to
publish in a book, detail how the Turkish government managed to
squelch repeated attempts by MGM studios to make a movie about the
genocide.

The Armenian community -- scattered throughout the world after the
genocide -- had hoped the film would finally bring international
attention to their plight, and he felt the loss keenly.

"All of us knew, yes, Turkey had something to do with stopping that
movie from being made, but we never knew who, what, when, where,
why?" Minasian said. "Well, I found out."

He was 10 when the book that piqued MGM's interest -- Franz Werfel's
"The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" -- came out in 1934. It quickly topped
the bestseller charts, but it was another 10 years before he finally
sat down to read it.

By then Minasian was in the Air Force, "stationed in a godforsaken
place in west Texas called Rattlesnake Army Air Base," where they
trucked in girls from nearby towns on the weekends to dance with the
GIs.

"None of us ever got to finish a dance, because we were always cut
in, but I had plenty of time to read in my off hours," he said. He
found the book at the base library. "I read that book more often than
any other book. I used to read it every April ... because April is
the anniversary of the genocide."

Werfel's novel is a fictionalized account of the following events:.
Having heard about the soaring death tolls on the forced "death
marches" to the Syrian desert, the villagers of Musa Dagh decided to
resist Turkish forces. Nearly two months later, the survivors were
rescued by the French, who spotted their distress banners from nearby
ships.

The villagers were relocated to the Middle East, where they formed a
community in the Anjar area of present-day Lebanon, said Barlow Der
Mugrdechian, a professor of Armenian Studies at Fresno State
University who knows of Minasian's project. The incident is "a
well-known story to the Armenians."

But the book, written by an Austrian Jew as Hitler was gaining
influence, had an even broader appeal. It was embraced with
particular enthusiasm by Jews who saw it as an inspirational tale,
and Germany quickly banned the book.

"I say, look, if the world had responded to the Armenian genocide,
there might not have been a Holocaust," Minasian said.

When MGM bought the rights, intending to bring the story to the
screen with the help of Hollywood greats like producer Irving
Thalberg and Armenian director Rouben Mamoulian, Armenians everywhere
were ecstatic, he recalled. "That wonderful book is going to be made
into a movie, and that movie will play all over the world, and
finally our story of the genocide will get out."

The celebration was short-lived.

MGM soon dropped that project, and several subsequent attempts over
the next few decades. It was widely rumored that the deal collapsed
under pressure from the Turkish government, and in 1981, Minasian
decided to find out exactly what had happened.

Over the next decades, Minasian sifted through archives from Armenian
newspapers, Hollywood institutions and the U.S. State Department to
piece together a picture of the doomed flick's fate.

Between raising a family and pursuing a teaching career, he has
written articles on the topic published by the National Association
for Armenian Studies, and a 300-page manuscript he hopes to publish
soon.

"He's done a rather thorough study of this whole issue," said UCLA
professor Richard Hovannisian, a leading scholar of Armenian studies.
Turkey's role in the movie's demise isn't a matter of speculation,
it's well-documented in diplomatic correspondences in the U.S. State
Department archives, he said. "(The movie) would have attracted
worldwide attention on the screen, so the quashing of the work was a
blow to historical memory."

In his quest to document who dealt that blow, Minasian was granted
rare access to MGM's archives by the studio's story editor, Samuel
Marx, and he spent more than a week sifting through four grocery
carts filled with files on the Musa Dagh movie. He dictated the
interesting bits into his tape recorder. It took nearly three years
after that to transcribe the recordings into notes.

Over the years, he also read through Werfel's papers housed at UCLA
and the scripts kept by the American Film Institute.

To cap it off, he used the Freedom of Information Act to get the
State Department's file on MGM and the Musa Dagh movie.

Minasian knows he faces a few publishing hurdles. To begin with, he's
an unknown author with no agent, and also, he's been told his subject
is "esoteric" and "pass�." He figures he may end up self-publishing
the book.

His passion for film is one of the forces driving the project,
evident in the old movie posters lining his walls. Conversations
about almost anything can lead back to movies, from the book Minasian
just finished reading ("The Da Vinci Code," whose movie version will
star Tom Hanks) to Armenia's early embrace of Christianity (which
elicits a reference to the recent Crusades flick "Kingdom of
Heaven").

When "Sideways" came out last year, Minasian was the first to spread
the word throughout the local Armenian community: Some of the final
scenes feature an Armenian-American wedding, filmed at a real
Southern California Armenian church.

For Minasian, the genocide isn't just history, it's family history.

His parents both survived the massacre but lost their first spouses
and some of their children. His mother was 19 when she watched the
men in her village, including her first husband, marched away by
Turkish soldiers, carrying the shovels to dig their own graves. His
mother and sister joined the long line of Armenians forced to march
toward the Syrian desert, with only as much food and water as they
could carry.

His father was already living in the United States, hoping to send
for his first wife and three children back in Turkey, when the
massacre began. Only one daughter from that marriage survived, and
when Minasian met her in 1976, she told him about a brother he had
never heard of, who died of typhus at age 3 on one of the forced
marches. Minasian, who still wonders why his father never mentioned
the little boy, now carries a copy of the child's picture in his
wallet.

His work is a tribute to them.

"I see it as my legacy for my folks, who were survivors, and so many
of the people I came to know in my youth and even now," he said. "You
see, we're not fighting for vengeance, we're fighting for justice. We
want the Turkish government to own up to what they did."

BIOGRAPHY

NAME: Ed Minasian

AGE: 80

EDUCATION: Master's from UC Berkeley

OCCUPATION: Retired teacher from Laney College in Oakland

RESIDENCE: Moraga

CLAIM TO FAME: Spent years researching MGM's attempts to make a movie
about the Armenian genocide

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg118141.html