www.Hadjin.com A Town No MorePILGRIMAGE TO FREEDOMBy Ermance Rejebian
The story of Vahram Rejebian is the story of many
Armenians
who migrated to the
dignity denied them in their own lands. The age-old
horror of genocide became a shocking reality to the
modern world for the first time following World War I,
when hundreds of thousands of Armenians were
slaughtered by the Turks. Sustained by his faith,
perseverance and courage, the young Vahram was able
to survive this holocaust and eventually – after two
tries –
make his way to the
Now an American citizen, successful businessman,
and honored member of his community, Vahram Rejebian
surely is the fulfillment of the American dream. This
story, seen though the eyes of the man Rejebian as
he recalls his youthful pilgrimage to freedom, is his
expression of gratitude to his beloved Introduction The road to freedom has no geographical or regional location. It is a way of personal commitment. Freedom is created by faith, service, character. In a sense, it can be passed, like a fine work of art, from one generation to another, but essentially it is “of the spirit”. For Vahram Y. Rejebian, the
pilgrimage to freedom began somewhere around This, of course, makes the story of The Pilgrimage to Freedom so fascinating to those of us who inherited our freedom, and have enjoyed it so easily. The passage of years, and Vahram’s indomitable spirit, make it possible to chuckle at his tragedies; and rejoice with him in his painful journey. For those of us who have known
Vahram intimately, there is regret that this report has
to end with his arrival in The immigrant boy from Hadjin
became an honored leader in the city of This story of his “pilgrimage” makes all of us appreciate our freedom more dearly. Marshall T. Steel Pilgrimage to Freedom Ermance Rejebian This is the story of a boy and his town, a story which illustrates the life of the Armenian in the early twentieth century. It is an account of the events experience by millions of Armenians as seen in the life of one boy who miraculously survived deportation, massacre, starvation, and who, orphaned and penniless, found a new home and a new country in the land which has been the refuge of all the dispossessed of our modern world. But in essence, this is the story of man himself, his relationship to other men, his love and his hate, his brutality and his compassion. Above all, it is an account of the unconquerable quality of his spirit. The story is timeless. It has taken place whenever and wherever men have dwelt together. It is happening today in many parts of the world and will be reenacted again and again as long as man’s nature remains the same and he fails to follow the precepts given to mankind by the great prophetic spirits of the race. I shall begin my story with what should have been my epilogue but which I am using as my prologue, a journey that my husband and I made in 1959 to his birthplace, Hadjin, once a part of the ancient Kingdom of Armenia, and, since the fourteenth century, in the heartland of Turkey. My husband had been telling me about Hadjin since the day we met and I had come to know this town of his, its terrain, its history, its people, and the poignant memories associated with it, but neither of us ever dreamed that some day he would revisit that town, or the site of it, for Hadjin itself was burned and destroyed by 1920. Even its name was obliterated and replaced by its present Turkish name – Saimbeyli. There is an instinct in man which
draws him mysteriously to the spot where he was born.
Though we knew that nothing remained in Hadjin except
memories better forgotten, still such is this human
instinct that despite the foreknowledge of a Hadjin
forever dead and buried, my husband felt the eternal
longing to return to the place of his birth. To do
so was risky business for a former resident of Hadjin,
even though that former resident was now a citizen of the
great The Fourth of July, 1959, will
live forever in our memory, for it was on that day that
Ismet Bey, the Mobil Oil landman, took us up to Hadjin.
It was The first stretch of sixty miles
was rough but uneventful. In the distance loomed
the great When Ismet Bey found a place where he could stop the jeep, we got out to rest, to feast on the bread and cheese and fruit, and to view the magnificent panorama of mountain peak rising upon mountain peak, and far below, the river which now appeared to be a silver thread winding its way through lush green vegetation. The last thirty-mile stretch is impossible to describe. We crawled along a narrow ledge hewn out of the rock on the left, with towering crags overhead and a precipice on the right dropping into a narrow gorge. There were hairpin curves, hair-raising drop-offs, and always the terrifying possibility of coming face to face with another vehicle. At one-thirty in the afternoon we reached the little stone bridge which leads into Hadjin. Here my husband experienced his first pang, for the sign beside the road read SAIMBEYLI. At long last he realized that the beloved Hadjin of his childhood had in truth ceased to exist, and would now live only in his memory. Only two other former residents of Hadjin had returned since the town was annihilated in 1920, and from them my husband obtained the name of the only Turk left from former days still living in the area. He asked some small boys who had materialized from nowhere the whereabouts of this man, and in no time at all he was standing at our side, an older man in ill-fitting clothes and on his head the ever-present cap which seems to be the modern Turk’s trademark. With the amenities over, the
old-timer took us to the slopes of the mountain where
once had stood the homes of 28,000 Armenians. There
was nothing in the few remaining ruins to indicate that a
large community had once thrived here. We walked
along a strip of cobblestone which had been the main
thoroughfare. At the top of a hill stood the ruins
of the mother church and nearby were those of the
Catholic and Protestant churches. On the opposite
hill rose the walls of the Hadjin owed its existence to its
inaccessibility in the Taurus Mountains, slightly over a
hundred miles northeast of The Armenians, whom Lamartine
called “The Swiss of the East,” and Lord Bryce
“The British of Asia Minor,” came from a
Phrygio-Thracian tribe, probably from There is one event of great
importance to note here. In 301 A.D., under St.
Gregory the Illuminator, the Armenian king accepted
Christianity and founded the National Apostolic Church of
Armenia, years before It was in this town that the boy was born in the spring of 1904. The earliest memories he would carry with him through the years were happy ones, though poignant, enveloped in the euphoric haze of a childhood secure in the love of his family. Of the agonies endured by his parents, of the massacres that raged when he was only five, he knew nothing. His home and family were his world. He would remember the tall mountain peaks surrounding his town, snow-covered the greater part of the year, and the blue broken skyline above. He would remember the spur of the mountain extending into the valley, the town rambling up around it so that it was impossible for him to see the homes of friends and relatives on the other side of the slope. He would remember the thousands of little beehive houses built one against the other, and tier upon tier, perched and clinging to the side of the mountain, the flat roof of one serving as the front yard and playground of the house above. The steep, narrow streets zig-zagged heedlessly up and down. He would see in his mind’s eye the government buildings below on the banks of the river, occupied by the few Turkish officials and their families. And he would remember with delight the family baghtche, the vegetable garden and orchard beside the river, and the family vineyard high up on the opposite slope of the mountain. Forced to leave his home and his town at the age of eleven, the boy would cherish throughout a lifetime the shadowy memory of his parents. His father was tall, a handsome man with thick black hair and a luxuriant moustache. He had the kindest eyes the boy had ever seen and gentle ways about him. In his company the boy felt secure from the stern discipline of his mother. He owned a farm on a plateau a day’s journey from the town, cultivated by a Turk who shared in the crops of wheat and barley and the other products which supplied the family’s needs. In addition, his father had a store down in the Cilician Plain, and there, as a merchant, he lived from October through May, leaving his family in the care of his wife. If the boy would remember his father for his gentle and affectionate ways, the memory of his mother would be of a loving but stern disciplinarian who, in the absence of her husband, had to be both father and mother to her family of five children, for the boy soon had two brothers and two sisters. Although her role was subordinate to that of the male and the older women of the family, especially the mother-in-law, she managed her household with a firm and capable hand. Treasured family pictures of her show an attractive, modishly gowned young woman. She was intelligent, an able housewife, a good seamstress and needle woman, and a faithful and active member of the Protestant church. In an age when women were expected to manage only their own homes, she transacted the business of the family farm during her husband’s absence. Her father was one of the most
prominent men in town, an influential leader of the
community and of the Protestant church which had been
established with the help of the American missionaries in
1880, and of which he was a charter member. He was
a short, powerfully built man. In his old age when
I came to know him in He was a man of substance and
maintained two homes, one in Hadjin and the other in One of the boy’s earliest
recollections was of the first Christmas after Hadji
Agha’s return from After church, families always
gathered together, but on that first Yuletide after Hadji
Agha’s return from One of the marvels of the The seasons brought their own delight to the boy. In the spring the mountain slopes and meadows were a riot of color: blood-red poppies sprinkled thickly across the grass, nodding asphodel, lavender candy tuft and wild mignonette. The glory of a flaming pomegranate tree in blossom, its flowers a deep scarlet, was a joy to behold. The boy and his friends would tumble in these fields of color and roll down beside the little waterfalls bordering them. But best of all, spring meant Easter and the joy and excitement of the Holy Season. He loved the services in the church and the stories of Jesus’ Passion. He loved the musical cadence of the traditional greeting: Christ is Risen from the Dead, and the response: Blessed be the Resurrection of Christ. But the high moment came after dinner when the battle of the Easter eggs began. Each member of the family had a colored egg, and with it he tried to crack the eggs of all the others. With what care and concentration each egg was selected from the basket, tested by gently tapping it against one’s teeth and listing to the tick-tick. There was always one whose egg cracked all the rest and to him went the spoils of battle, all the cracked eggs. Later, the battle was carried on out in the streets. This tradition is still a most cherished one in our family. Summer and fall were the boy’s favorite seasons for then his father was home. They would go to the farm and to the boy, who had never been out of Hadjin, the day’s trip would seem like a journey across the world. They would spend the night with their Turkish tenant farmer, sharing the family’s one room. The next day his father would attend to the fields of grain, the walnut trees, and the livestock which provided them with their winter provisions. At home, in the baghtche, they would spread large sheets under the cherry and mulberry trees while his father or a friend climbed the tree and knocked on the limbs with a long stick. The fruit came showering down to be dried and put away for the winter. Tomatoes were gathered, and okra and squash and eggplants to be prepared for preservation. Grapes, too, were gathered, and after feasting on the fresh fruit they would spread the clusters on sheets and dry them for raisins which, mixed with walnuts, would help to while away the long winter nights. With the departure of his father and the opening of school, the boy began the routine of winter, and now he was closer to his mother and her many tasks. There was no running water in the homes and the boy would run several times a day with his mother to the fountain four streets below. There she would fill the containers with the water that would be used for drinking, cooking, and cleaning. Many women took their clothes down to the river to wash. The public baths were down there, too. They seemed like a palace to the boy, the marble floors and basins, the pools, and the steam with its indescribable smell, damp and clean, swirling around the disrobed figures and imparting to them a ghost-like appearance. There was little marketing to be done, for almost all the provisions came from their own land and were kept in the store rooms. But bread had to be baked, and this event was one of the high moments of the week for the boy. His mother kneaded the dough in a wooden trough either at home or at the community oven and marked the loaves with her own special symbol. Every family had its own mark, a cross, a circle, a triangle. For his services the baker received a predetermined number of loaves. Oh, the heavenly aroma of freshly baked bread! To the boy there was no delicacy to compare with it. He would gorge himself on the day the bread was baked, and on the following days, upon his return from school, his favorite snack would be the heel of the loaf spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar. Next to his home and that of his
grandparents, the boy’s earliest memories would
center around the Protestant church. The boy’s
paternal grandparents, too, were devout Protestants.
His father’s younger brother, Samuel, was a minister
of the Gospel, serving first in Like all Armenians who cherish education, the boy’s mother carefully supervised his schooling. With what pride she saw him off every morning! With what concern she admonished him when his reports were not as favorable as she had hoped they would be! Especially would he remember the cold winter mornings when, after drinking the hot soup his mother had prepared for breakfast, he was put in the saddle-bag slung over their horse, and taken to school through streets deep in snow. The four of five years spent in the parochial school would be the only formal education he would ever receive, for the gap created by the years of the Great Deportation and Exile would never be bridged. His achievements in later years would be due to his own native intelligence, his determination, and his indomitable spirit. The boy was five years old in the
spring of 1909 when the How can one explain such deeds and
events to those who all their lives have lived in a
country where human life is highly valued, man’s
religious beliefs respected, and his dignity honored?
How describe to the Western mind what the German writer,
Franz Werfel, called “the incomprehensible destiny
of the Armenians”? This is not a lesson in
history; I can only present a bare outline of what
happened to the Armenians in With the leaders and the fighting
men eliminated, the Turks began the final phase of their
program. They called it deportation, this mass
uprooting of a people from their homes and their
so-called re-settlement in the arid deserts of It is pointless to describe or elaborate on these atrocities. Such graphic descriptions are too horrible and offensive to man’s sensibilities. In a measure they defeat their purpose. All I can say is this – imagine the worst atrocity man can inflict upon man, the most degrading indignities that can be visited upon a woman, and still you will not begin to plumb the depths of the suffering endured by the Armenians during these deportations. In Hadjin, the order of deportation came in the spring of the year that will live forever in the memory of every Armenian, 1915. The boy was eleven years old then, and to an eleven-year-old even a cataclysmic act such as the Great Deportation carried with it a certain measure of excitement. He would remember that his mother cried when his father came home with the news that they must leave, but she had also cried a short while before when one of his little sisters had died. To him, the unusual activity in the town, the farewells to those who were leaving at once, had the aura of adventure. The 28,000 Armenians of Hadjin left in groups at intervals of a few days. The boy’s family started out with a horse and two donkeys, the absolute necessities packed in saddle-bags, the foodstuff in baskets. His father and mother and the boy himself carried packs, while his two younger brothers and sister rode the animals. Only in the light of later years would the boy be able to interpret the expression in his parents’ eyes as they locked the door of their home, gazed at it long and silently, then wordlessly turned away and began the first part of the march down to the Cilician Plain. There were other children in the caravan and much running back and forth, even though the grim gendarmes herding the procession tolerated no play. But it was not long before the heat of the day and the arduous climb began to tire the boy. No rest periods were allowed, no lagging behind. Relentlessly the gendarmes prodded the line of men, women, and children. When, in late afternoon, the boy suffered a severe nose bleed with no let up in the march, he began to realize that the adventure he had envisioned was in reality a grueling ordeal. The four-year period of exile, from 1915 to 1919, would remain in the boy’s memory as a kaleidoscope of events and experiences, sometimes vivid and painful, at other times hazy and unreal. There are no details in these memories, no frills, only the bare outline as an eleven-year-old or early adolescent would remember. These are the experiences and adventures with which his family and friends are familiar. Through the years, whenever the conversation has turned to that tragic time, we have been enthralled, weeping over his trials, then as spontaneously laughing at an adventure in his struggle for survival. His dauntless spirit, his complete self-reliance during those years between the ages of eleven and fifteen when he was left alone in a world gone mad, his superb sense of humor which made his ordeal endurable, and his sublime faith, have been a source of inspiration to his family and friends. There were those who came through the holocaust maimed and crippled in spirit, carrying with them a vengeful hatred which has eaten away at their hearts like a cankerous sore, but the boy, thanks to his heritage and his own inner resources, emerged from those years of fire tall in spirit, equipped to meet and overcome whatever else life had in store for him. Every night they camped on the
side of the road, and every morning they awakened to find
some of the animals stolen, as well as the supplies they
had carried. On the morning of the fifth day of the
march, the family awakened to find their two donkeys
gone. Even the most optimistic members of the
caravan were now aware of what lay ahead. On they
were driven, the strong and the able-bodied pushing
ahead, the sick and the dead abandoned, until they
reached Perhaps it was the hope that they,
too, would remain in Aleppo that kept the boy’s
family from joining the early caravans moving east to
Der-el-zor, though his mother was anxious to reach
whatever destination was to be theirs and settle down,
and to this end she daily urged her husband to move east.
But here, miraculously, fate took a hand, and for one
reason or another they remained in So it was that the boy’s
family, robbed of their horse and the last of their
belongings, were put into a boxcar going to And now typhus began to rage. Every day many bodies were removed from the barracks and disposed of in heaven knows what manner. The boy’s mother was among the first to go, and immediately after her, his baby brother. By now he had become well-acquainted with death for they lived intimately with it and often welcomed it with relief. Then his father was taken into the labor battalion and the boy was left alone to care for his younger brother and sister. Because he now had to take care of the little family, he became expert at begging food from the charitable Arabs. On Fridays, the Moslem holy day, he went to the cemetery where the Arabs brought food for the poor in memory of their departed dead. In this way the eleven-year-old boy was able to care for the needs of his brother and sister. The story now moves to Now began a period of completely
incomprehensible to us living in a sheltered world.
The boy’s home was the streets, teeming with
children and adults who were homeless and displaced like
him. Sometimes it was a government building which
was opened to shelter these dispossessed, then an open
square where tents had been pitched. There was a
spirit of helpfulness everywhere. Those who had
been separated from loved ones went from group to group
searching, inquiring, and in this way families were often
reunited or the whereabouts of loved ones made known.
The boy learned in this way that his maternal uncle,
Hadji Agha’s younger son, had escaped from the labor
battalion and was in hiding in The boy managed to find his uncle and, seeing his nephew’s plight, this uncle tried to “set him up in business.” He gave him a silver coin with which the boy bought twelve loaves of bread, placed them on a wooden board suspended from his neck, then went to the station to sell them to the soldiers in transit. How delicious was the aroma of the bread to the boy who was forever hungry! What self-restraint he exercised to keep himself from devouring one of the golden loaves! He had promised to give an accounting to his uncle, and he could not eat until all the loaves were sold but one. That would be his profit and he could eat it with a clear conscience. But on the way to the station he broke off and ate tiny pieces of crust from this loaf or that which, far from appeasing his hunger, further tormented and tantalized him. Then he was at the station, surrounded by soldiers. They almost assaulted him, lured by the aroma of the fresh bread, jostling his tray, grabbing the loaves, holding out their coins for change, until the whistle blew. With the bread already in their possession and the bewildered, harassed boy before them fumbling to make change, they turned and ran to their train, leaving him with an empty tray and not one coin in his hand. Still hungry, dejected, and ashamed, the boy would not report to his uncle, but continued in his solitary search for food. It was after that that he spent a night or two in a bakery, tending to the oven in return for a corner in which to sleep and a loaf or two to appease his hunger. But he must have eaten more than his allotted share, surrounded as he was by row upon row of the golden loaves, and in the morning he was dispatched by the baker with a swift kick. He was preoccupied by thoughts of food and how to obtain it. One day as he was passing a grocery store, he saw in front of it an open barrel of thick syrup. Like a magnet the barrel drew him, and he walked back and forth in front of it, scheming to get some. His mind made up at last, he rolled up his sleeve, approached the barrel, stuck his bare arm into the sticky syrup, drew it out, then ran for dear life as the storekeeper chased him, shouting and cursing. At last he found a dark alley where he sat down and licked his arm. For that day at least he was happy. Compared with So the months and the years passed, and the world from which the boy had come became blurred and half-forgotten. Now he lived within the compound, and he was told daily that it he became a Moslem he could truly become a member of the Sheikh’s family and marry one of his younger daughters. But somewhere deep within the boy were the old, old memories of home and church, of Christmas and Easter, and the Armenian’s centuries-old faith in Christ. So, finding one pretext or another, he put off his acceptance of Islam. Then the caravans brought the
great news from The boy feared that the Sheikh
would put obstacles in his way, unwilling to lose a hard
worker who labored without pay, as well as a prospective
son-in-law, so he decided to run away. Early one
morning as the men set out in the dark toward the fields,
he dropped behind, and after waiting awhile, started out
toward the railroad station. All day long he
walked, resting whenever he came to a shady spot, and by
nightfall he reached the station. He had with him
the few coins which had been given him during the Arab
holidays, but he wanted to save his money, so he
concealed himself in the dark and when the freight train
finally pulled in he quickly climbed up on top of a
boxcar and was on his way to As he walked toward town, he came to a fountain where a crowd had gathered. Though he had forgotten his Armenian, he nevertheless realized that these people were Armenian refuges. He asked them in Arabic the way to the refugee camp. In no time at all he was at the camp, but at the gate he was stopped by the soldiers in the strange uniforms who, he learned, were British. They thought he was an Arab and would not permit him to enter. When at last they were convinced that he was a refugee returning to find his father, he was permitted to pass through the gate. It was the largest camp the boy had ever seen. Moving from barracks to barracks filled with family groups, he searched for his father. Suddenly he was face to face with a man who resembled his father, but oh, so much older, the eyes so much sadder. As completely Arab as the boy looked in his long hair and flowing gown, his father recognized him at once. Locked in each other’s arms the years were spanned, and the remnant of the family united. But before he could join his father, he was taken away by the British soldiers, undressed, showered, deloused, and issued a blanket and old, but clean, clothes and shoes. After years of walking barefoot, his feet felt strangely confined. There is an interlude in In In the spring of 1919, the
refugees were returned to their homes, their safety
assured by the British and French forces occupying what
was left of the once mighty Of the 28,000 who had left Hadjin
in 1915, barely 5,000 returned in the spring of 1919.
The first reality hit them as they crossed the little
stone bridge and found their town burned to the ground,
only a few houses left standing. How they lived
during that year is difficult to imagine. There was
no lumber with which to build or rebuild. Commodities
were scarce. The churches had burned, and the
people gathered wherever there was a room large enough to
accommodate the faithful. Together they offered
their thanks to God who had brought them safely home.
The American missionaries returned, providing such work
as sewing and weaving to the needy and a home to the
orphaned. The boy’s father had the farm well
in hand soon after their return, and until they could
rebuild their home, they crowded with other families into
one of the buildings that had escaped destruction. Hadji
Agha and his family had remained in There is an episode during this
period which our children have never tired of hearing.
The boy dearly loved his Uncle Avedis who must have had a
way with him. Like his father, Hadji Agha, he was a
born leader of men. He always dressed colorfully,
and even in exile he had managed to keep his handsome
appearance. By now no one had any decent clothes
left. What the British had given the boy in I did not know until I began to recount this story that our daughter had written and preserved an account of her father’s pantaloons and accessories when she herself was about the age he must have been at the time, fifteen. She brought it to me when she learned I wanted to preserve the story of her father’s early years. She tried to remember the words her father used as he recounted the tale, and which she, a teenager herself, recorded. “My Uncle Avedis,”
begins the account, “was fortunate enough to have
money when we returned from exile, and he was good to me.
How I did love him! Whenever I went to him with
some need, he would say: ‘Hold your head high, look
into my eyes, and tell me what you want.’ So
one day when I felt I just had to have some shoes, I went
to him, shy and embarrassed. He repeated his
command to me, so I did look him straight in the eye and
said: ‘Uncle Avedis, I need a pair of
shoes.’ ‘Fine,’ he said, and off we
went. Because of the war there was no leather, so
our cobbler used pigskin, and he took my fit and made my
shoes. I was so happy I didn’t even notice
they were so hairy they swept the floor as I walked.
To complete my outfit I wanted a red fez with a black
tassle – all the boys had them, and I did so want
one. Again my uncle took me to the shop and at last
my outfit was complete. But after a while the
constant wear was too much for my blanket pants and the
knees wore out. I simply couldn’t ask my
Uncle Avedis for another thing, so I went to my father
with my need and he came up with a solution. ‘Turn
the pants around,’ said he, ‘for people only
look at you when you are coming toward them, and by the
time you pass, they’ll by looking at someone else
and will never see the holes in the back. Besides,
he added, ‘the holes will make the pants airy and
keep you cool.’ When a few months later my
Uncle Avedis took me to Why had the boy left his father
and his beloved Hadjin to go to It was because of the wild rumors
and the reports that the French were withdrawing that
Uncle Avedis asked his brother-in-law’s consent to
take his sister’s only surviving child to Adana, and
the boy’s father, aware that his son’s safety
and future lay away from Hadjin and with his
grandparents, reluctantly consented. It must have
been early spring 1920 when his uncle took the boy to The period from the spring of 1920 to the summer of 1921 was difficult for the boy. Sixteen years old now, he was well aware of the significance of the events surrounding him, of the bitter fighting in Hadjin, and eventually of the death of his father and uncle. But now he had the love of his mother’s family and the companionship of his cousins. Here his grandfather began to instill in him many of the precepts which would serve as guidelines in his later life. He attended school with his cousins and tried to bridge the five-year gap created by the deportation. But it was an insurmountable task; he had forgotten how to read and write, forgotten even the Lord’s Prayer. He joined the Boy Scouts and for the first time felt the joy of just being a boy. In June of 1921, at the age of
seventeen, the boy embarked from To us, his family, this has always
seemed the crowning blow of all that he had endured.
To be on the threshold of Freedom and be refused
admittance can be appreciated only by those who have
themselves found refuge in this blessed land. He,
himself, confesses that he lived the darkest hours of his
life when he was separated from his cousins who had gone
ashore, carrying with them the one suitcase all three had
shared, while he was taken to a ship sailing for Alone and with only three dollars
in his pocket, with no belongings except the clothes on
his back, the boy reached With no knowledge of English, his
elementary education at only fifth grade level, the
seventeen-year-old youth was completely at a loss
academically, but the school authorities were familiar
with the plight of boys such as he, and he was allowed to
attend classes and absorb whatever knowledge was within
his comprehension. In return, he cleaned the rooms
of several faculty members and set the breakfast table
for the boarding students. All the while his
letters to his uncle were crossing the Atlantic, voicing
his fears, his desperate need to get away from This time the period of anxious
waiting and uncertainty did not last long. A
wealthy member of his uncle’s congregation had made
it possible for the minister to assure the authorities
that his nephew would not become a public charge. At
last the golden doors were opened. At last the long
pilgrimage from Hadjin in the Taurus Mountains to the Fifty years have passed since that
memorable day when the youth first set foot on this
modern Promised Land. They have been good years,
lived without fear in the atmosphere of freedom. They
have enabled him to fulfill his potential as a man,
husband, father, grandfather, friend, and citizen of his
beloved BIBLIOGRAPHY: The Forty Days of Musa Dagh – Franz Werfel Beginning Again at Ararat – Dr. Mabel Elliott Vital Issues in Modern Armenian History – Armenian Studies Martyrdom and Rebirth – 1965 Report Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story – Henry Morgenthau In Our Time – Ernest Hemingway The Treatment of the Armenians in
the The Armenian Community – Sarkis Atamian At the Mercy of Turkish Brigands – Eby Hadjin and the Armenian Massacres – Rose Lambert The Neither to Laugh Nor to Cry – A. Hartunian Letters from Cicilia – Alice
Keep The Blight of A Note about the Author: For thirty-eight years Ermance
Rejebian has been contributing to the cultural life of Copyright H.M.
Keshishian 2006. |