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Bourdj Hammoud, 37° C: On the Trail of Ottoman Armenian Treasures
It’s likely many of you have had this same experience: You live far away from your birthplace, in a very different social environment, and when you get the opportunity to return, you are euphoric about the journey. Your imagination takes flight, and you begin to form plans in your mind—meeting friends old and new, visiting places known and unknown, eating delicious authentic meals. Then, you reach your birthplace...and suddenly are faced with its negative aspects which, it seems, were set as
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Thank you for doing this critical work. Your website is a great resource and beautifully done. We need more Armenians to put time to such efforts. It is even more important that Armenians know where they can send letters, old books and family bibles, photographs, film and audio recordings, artwork, diaries, and other old hand-me-downs that belonged to their grandparents. Even if we cannot read what we find (because it is in Turkish, Armenian, etc.) someone can. Several Armenian family members and friends have translated letters and photo inscriptions and even parts of books for me. In the US we have Project SAVE for old photos and there are a few Armenian Museums and libraries (including those at Columbia University, University of Michigan, Tufts, University of Southern California).
Thank you for the wonderful and difficult job “Houshamadyan” is doing.Thank you Hazar shnorhagaloutyunner !!!I love it.
I was very happy to meet Houshamadyan and Haygazian teem in Bourj Hamoud, and to share with them my ancestors “treasures”, like the small bell ,that Vahe mentioned, a toy that had belonged to a little girl from Marash. and brought to Lebanon (belonged to my grand mother).
When the Houshamdyan newsletter arrives in my mail-box, I make a cup of tea, and everything else in my life goes on hold until I have read every single word and looked at every single photo. It is such a joy to receive it. They have promised me that they will eventually put out a coffee-table book. I can hardly wait!
Sheri, thanks for this additional, very valuable information. I have a stack of old recordings, my father’s books from the 30s, and wonder of wonders, I actually have my grandmother’s sterling silver wedding belt. It is all hand- made, exquisitely engraved with pictures of buildings. How she ever managed to save it is beyond me. Her husband was a doctor in Kharput, and he was murdered right at the beginning of the genocide. After the genocide, she married my grandfather, whose wife had also been murdered. She was the only grandmother I knew. Her name was Kghetsig, and she was, as her name says, very beautiful. She had three small children, one a very young baby. When the forced deportations started, her mother took the baby. My grandmother never saw them again. She carried one child and led the other by the hand. One of her little girls died of starvation in her arms; her body was left in a ditch by the side of the road. She lost her other small daughter during the atrocities of the death march. Some years after the genocide, the Red Cross found her lost daughter, Shamiram. She had a very unique strawberry-red birthmark that identified her. A Kurdish family with several children of their own had found Shamiram and taken her in as one of their own. She was 8 years old when the Red Cross arrived to return her to her birth mother. She remembered no other family except the Kurdish one that had taken her in. She screamed and fought as the Red Cross pried her from her adoptive mother’s arms. All the children in the family threw stones and pulled at the skirts of the Red Cross women, as they removed the hysterical child away from the only mother she knew. When Shamiram was in her 80s, I remember her sitting quietly, her hands folded in her lap, unbidden tears running silently down her face, as she said to me, “I wonder if they remembered me after I was gone. I wonder if they missed me. I remember them all. I remember them still”
This is the story that goes with my grandmother’s wedding belt.
Dear Peruz, thank you so much for your commets, this are really rewarding words. please send us a picture of that gorgeus belt, we would love to include it in our digital tressors. See the deatils in my comment down!
Great story, I forgot how humid it was in Beirut in the summers. I was most fascinated with the diploma from Tarsus St. Paul college (Diplom of Haydostian). I have been collecting information about it and on Thomas Christie who was the president of the school and great benefactor of Armenians in the region. His signature is still legible on the diploma. I am in the process of writing an article about him, hopefully someone will be interested in publishing it. Gregory Ketabgian.
Would Gregory Ketabgian please contact me for info re Thomas Davidson Christie and his family? I think I can help him.
My father was Sisetzi; he survived the exiles.
My great Grandfather was Thomas Davidson Christie, I am the grandson of Paul T. Christie. I have been researching and gathering information about the Christie’s since 1995. I have read Carmelite’s diaries that cover 1915 to 1920, the period when Thomas was not in Tarsus. I have information.
Chris
I AM SOOOOO HAPPY TO SEE THAT WE ARMENIANS WHO CONSIDER OURSELVES ONE FAMILY, HAVE NEVER GIVEN UP–T-H-A-N-K-S TO ALL THE GENERATIONS OF ARMENIANS THAT HAVE COME FORTH TO LET THE WORLD KNOW OF OUR MANY, MANY HORRIBLE HAPPENINGS TO US BY THE TURKISH GOVT…YES, WE HAVE SURVIVED – JUSTICE, NO MATTER HOW SLOW, WILL HAPPEN….AT 81, I CONTINUE TO HELP WHENEVER I CAN.
Very important work being done by Houshamadian and Vahe Tachjian. I have also left Bourdj-Hammoud long time ago but have not forgotten the heat and the dampness. Would love to cooperate. Any plans to come to Yerevan? Or I can send photos of what I possess… Please let me know!!
Dear Armineh Haladjian, in name of houshamadyan thank you very much for your comments. For the moment we have no plans to come to Yerevan at the short term. But we are working developping different possibilities for later. We will be very glad to get the high resolution fotos of the objects you have. (I’m the art director of the houshamadyan homepage) if it’s possible, the best is to fotograf with natural light and with a simple background as one colour wall.
Congratulations, very impressive and wonderful work.
Please keep contact with PROJECT SAVE
Director Ruth Thomasian
Tel: 617-923-4542
Fax: 617-924-0434
E-mail: archives@projectsave.org
http://www.projectsave.org
You can work together as a team.
God bless your mission.
Dear Armineh Haladjian, in name of houshamadyan thank you very much for your comments. For the moment we have no plans to come to Yerevan at the short term. But we are working developping different possibilities for later. We will be very glad to get the high resolution fotos of the objects you have. (I’m the art director of the houshamadyan homepage) if it’s possible, the best is to fotograf with natural light and with a simple background as one colour wall.
Dear Peruz, thank you so much for your commets, this are really rewarding words. please send us a picture of that gorgeus belt, we would love to include it in our digital tressors.
We are counting on the efforts of the individuals and institutions of the WHOLE WORLD that are inspired to send the materials that are feeding our homepage.
Please contribute to our project sending the pictures to houshamadyan@gmail.com or if you like to donate originals for our archives to our office adress:
Houshamadyan e. V.
Berliner Str. 100
D-13189 Berlin
Thank you for a very interesting article.
I am a 1968 graduate of Tarsus American College, originally established as St. Paul’s Institute in 1888.
I may be able to provide information about Dr. Thomas Christie to those interested.
Can I get a copy of the graduation certificate from St. Paul’s Institute for the Alumni Magazine?
Thank you.
Dear Vahe,
I would like to congratulate you for your work. You are doing more than collecting and publishing photos of artifacts of our ancestors. You are conducting a work of reconsiliation, as the above comments show.
I have a few items, such as silverware, embroidery, a small spinning loom. Would you be interested?
Sincerely,
Catherine
GREAT WORK DEAR VAHE,
Do carry on with your good zeal and get together all such memorabilia,which will proove Armenian presence on those lands in the past.
Meanwhile Prof. Richard G.Hovhannissian told me that a Vahe Tashjian in Berlin might be able to help me get to the bottom of my endless search for recuperating Reaal Estate in Budapest as my and my sibling inheritance.
Could you please let me know about your knowledge about that .
My email is gayzagpal”aol.com and often post my viewpoints onm this site.
Thanks in advance,
Best rgds
Reconciliation does not mean surrender.