Monday, 4/21/97 Exhibit brings Armenian massacre of 1915 to
light Survivors look for recognition of, reparation for
injustices
By Vanessa VanderZanden Daily Bruin Contributor The Turkish
government denies having obliterated 75 percent of its Armenian
population. The U.S. government will admit only to having been
aware of a massacre. But for survivors of the 1915 Armenian
genocide, the travesty lives on. "We grew up hearing genocide
stories while other kids heard fairy tales," says photographer Ara
Oshiagan. "It’s still a very real issue for us." Hoping to make it
an issue for more than just members of the Armenian community,
Oshiagan and Levon Parian remember the genocide through photographs
and documents on display this week in the Kerckhoff Art Gallery.
Along with closeups of aging Armenian survivors, the pair include
excerpts from interviews they have conducted with the photographs’
subjects. In addition, the exhibit includes actual photographs
smuggled out of Turkey by German officer Armin Wegner. "He
witnessed the atrocities and was horrified by it," says Parian. "He
sent word and reports to the German government, but to no avail.
The Turks sent him back to Germany and he was only able to smuggle
out 40 images that we know of." Though the rest of the photos have
been destroyed by the Turks, Wegner’s diary of events remains
intact. Parian and Oshiagan have not yet managed to locate the
journal’s whereabouts, but the two plan to create their own sort of
written history of the event. As part of their Genocide Awareness
Project, the 50 photos and interviews already obtained of survivors
will be bound in a book after roughly 50 more similar
documentations have been accumulated. "The project is
well-connected to the community," Oshiagan explains. "We sit down,
chat and have some coffee. Some subjects I’ll interview for two to
three hours. It’s in their home, so it stays personal." Most
survivors are glad to have the company. In many cases, they still
have pictures in their homes of loved ones lost years ago in the
genocide. Some photographs include environmental scenes but most
center on the faces of the survivors. "We put them against a black
background to signify death," Oshiagan explains. "But, they’re in
the foreground because they survived. Usually their eyes are in
focus while other aspects are left blurred. They look straight
ahead." After a year-and-a-half of work on the project, Oshiagan
and Parian have managed to stay focused as well. The two have dug
up documents and letters sent to the U.S. government by
missionaries, consulates and ambassadors stationed in Turkey at the
time of the massacre. They have also made efforts to submerge
themselves in the lives of their subjects. Often times, they find
themselves shocked, not only at the tales they hear from subjects
but from the stories which come from their own families as well.
"My wife’s grandmother was made to watch, with her family, her
father be raped by 10 Turkish jen-darmes," Parian relates. "Later,
he hung himself because he couldn’t bear the humiliation." Sadly,
this story is only one of many. The one-and-a-half million
Armenians living in Eastern Turkey slaughtered by government
sanction, were driven by soldiers from their towns into the barren
desert by the thousands. Many helped to dig their own mass graves,
while others were crammed in caves to be lit on fire with the aid
of gasoline. Yet, in such circumstances, tales of heroism are bound
to arise. "My grandfather was a colonel in the cavalry," Parian
continues. "They took away his weapons and threw him in prison. He
then escaped to Syria, came back disguised as a Turkish civilian,
and rescued as many Armenian orphans as he could from Turkish
orphanages." Still, though many tales of individual bravery exist,
the Armenians were not strong enough to end the ordeal. Without
weapons, even small underground Armenian resistance groups were
unable to stop the two years of bloodshed. Now, most Armenians
reside in the United States or in what formerly was the U.S.S.R.
"Recognition is the first step," says Oshiagan. "Then, maybe we can
re-assert territorial rights in our homeland. Some things still
have yet to be dealt with, like the Armenian property that the
Turkish government confiscated and bank accounts that were frozen."
Also, matters of reparation arise over the American life-insurance
policies that Armenian survivors never collected on relatives whose
deaths bore no official documentation. Mostly, though, Oshiagan and
Parian hope to create an awareness of the event, instilling pride
in their community for finally making steps to publicize the
atrocities. The Armenian photographers hope that through their
efforts, consciousness may be raised so as to abolish future
similar events. "Part of what we want to make clear is that if the
world hadn’t turned a blind shoulder to the plight of the
Armenians, the Nazis would not have considered that it would be
possible to get away with their death camps," Parian stresses.
"After all, Hitler mentions to his own men when questioned about
the Jews, ‘Who remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?’" Armin
T. Wegner Armenian corpses found after the massacre perpetrated by
the Turks, in 1915-16. Ara Oshagan and Levon Parian Manuel
Bogharian, who survived the Armenian genocide, is one of many
portraits on exhibit at Kerckhoff Art Gallery.