A Page from the Adana Massacres of 1909 - Prelude to the Armenian Genocide - Grandmother’s Heritage to us All

                           

 

By Harry L. Koundakjian

 Editor’s note: the following is addressed to the Armenian press around the world, as well as members of the Koundakjian clan

We are descendants of natives of Hassanbeyli. Almost all of our great-grandparents came from Hassanbeyli, a mountainous region in Cilicia. Some others are from Aintab, Adana, and nearby villages and towns.

This is a portion of a letter that was found in Germany recently. I understand other parts of this letter might be extant, and we are searching for them.

It was written by our Grandmother, Yeretsgin Mariam (Mary) Koundakjian, widow of Verabadveli (Reverend) Hagop Koundakjian of the Armenian Evangelical Church of Hassanbeyli (Amanos). Medz Mana (Grandmother) wrote this letter on May 7, 1909 after the massacre of our Grandfather Hagop and 28 members of his congregation, including cousins and uncles.

Medz Mama addressed this letter to her three daughters: Persape (nee Koundakjian) Badeer, wife of Dr. Sarkis Badeer of Beirut, Lebanon; Helen (also nee Koundakjian) Hadidian, wife of Rev. Yenovk Hadidian, Pastor of the Ashrafie Armenian Evangelical Church of Beirut, Lebanon; and Yevnigue (nee Koundakjian) Jebejian, wife of Dr. Avedi Jebejian of Aleppo, Syria and to their children’s children, us.

____________________________________________________________________________

My Dearest Children,

I wish I had not been compelled to write about the terrible and frightening tragedies that took place here.

The tragedy struck us like lightning.

With tears in my eyes I write to you.

Your father, (Rev. Hagop Koundakjian) was luckier than we were, because, at the beginning of the catastrophe, he was killed on his way to Adana, burned alive inside the church in Osmaniye with 28 members of his congregation, and did not see the sudden destruction and premeditated attacks on our city.

He did not witness the burning of his city, nor did he hear the shootings by the enemy.

He did not see his sisters, brothers and relatives shot to death indiscriminately.

On April 11, 1909, we had our Communion (at church, during the service). It was a rather heartfelt ceremony. Nobody knew that this would be his last sermon...

On the next day, Father journeyed to the annual Conference of the Armenian Evangelical Churches, which was being held in Osmaniye. We, the womenfolk, were driven (exiled) towards Bakhche, where we are until today. They (the Ottoman Turks) threatened us with death if we did not convert to and accept Islam.

I want to assure you, my children, that all these difficulties, persecutions and doomsday announcements have strengthened us in our father, Christianity, and belief in God.

Everything down to the roots was destroyed: the church, in which your father served for over 30 years disappeared. But we think of Hebrews 10, verses 32-34, where we read: “Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest against suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times, you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.”

Dirty, dry and hard pieces of bread were put in front of us, while the children were dying of starvation...

_____________________________________________________________________________

This is the portion of the letter. All efforts to locate the rest have been in vain so far. But we will continue the search.

Harry Koundakjian is International Photo Editor at the Associated Press Headquarters in New York City.

Handwritten notes, more than fifty years later...

In 1953, Mihran Kassarjian sent this note to his daughter, Marie. It's amazing how much personality can come through in a little, short, handwritten note. Even so many years later, can't you just read the affection on the back of this photo? (The front has been pasted below it so you can see his smiling face, too.) 

Communication between people has changed so much over the time. Distance is shortened by email and facebook and many, many other impersonal typed-up forms. There's something so much more personal and warm about handwriting. No one can copy the way that you form letters on a page. It's uniquely yours... just like it was uniquely his. 

Mihran Kassarjian was a man of God, and my great-grandfather. I wish we could have met... but reading little notes that he left on the back of photos makes me feel close to him. It's obvious that he cared about his own children, grandchildren, and I'm sure his great-grandchildren would have been no exception. 

Brief Life History of Henry Sarkis Badeer

                I was born in January, 1914, in Mersine (Now called Icel), by the Mediterranean Sea in Eastern Turkey. Parents were Sarkis Badeer and Persape Koundakjian, both Armenians. The family survived the First World War miraculously. I was a baby in 1915, with two older brothers, when the order came to be exiled (all Armenians in Turkey). My mother thought that I would never make it. In the meantime, my father being a physician had treated the eyes of a Turkish farmer at the outskirts of the city. He was very pleased with my father, both as a physician and as a good person. He had the bright idea of suggesting to the Turkish Exile Authorities that instead of perishing as a doctor, they would do better by taking him to the Turkish Army and letting him serve the troops during the War. So they did. We survived the War (1914-1918) and returned to Mersine at the end of the War.

In 1924, we got permission to move to Beirut, Lebanon. The intention was to settle there. I grew up in Beirut, first in an Armenian High School for Boys. Then went to the Preparatory School of the American University of Beirut graduating in 1930. This was followed by two years in College (Freshman and Sophomore) and I was accepted to enter the Medical School of the American University. Studied Medicine five years and graduated in 1938. I was lucky to get a job to teach Physiology (1938). Taught physiology to pharmacy students and lab to medical students. In 1939 the Second World War started and in early forties the chairman of the Dept. (Dr. C.W. Hampel) returned to the U.S. and I was alone to teach medical students. In the early thirties, we became citizens of Lebanon and my citizenship record for some unknown reason, stated my birthday to be 1915 (hence my official birthday is 1915).

In 1948, my chairman (Dr. J.O. Pinkston) arranged a Rockefeller Fellowship for me to spend a year of research at Harvard Medical School. Before leaving for the U.S., I got married to Marie Kassarjian from Aleppo, Syria. The research at Harvard was under the guidance of Dr. John Pappenheimer (the effect of cooling the blood on the circulation in the hind-leg of the cat).

On returning to Beirut in 1949, I started research on the dog heart in the heart-lung preparation on Starling. In 1956, I became the Chairman of the Department and in 1957 I took a sabbatical at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. In 1965, I decided to move to the U.S. as a Visiting Prof. at the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. under Dr. Chandler Brooks (1965-67). In 1967 I accepted a position as Prof. of Physiology at Creighton Medical Students. Also taught dental students and Nurses. I retired as emeritus Prof. in 1991. My publications are related to heart and circulation (total 82) and a textbook on Cardiovascular Physiology.

We have two sons and ten grandchildren, two of whom are married. One great-grandson, 2 years old.

Sarkis (Garboushian) Badeer

Sarkis Badeer and Persape (Koundakjian) on their wedding day in 1906.

Daughter Maggie, Persape (Koundakjian) & Sarkis, and son 

Henry Badeer on the balcony in Beirut, Lebanon circa 1939.

A little piece of history that he wrote about himself. A single-page auto-biography of 

Sarkis (Garboushian) Badeer, my great-grandfather. 

"If only I had started this when they were still alive..."

Left, the late Hripsime Kassarjian, Debra (Ridge) Badeer and the late Marie (Kassarjian)
Badeer in Omaha for Christmas, 1980. 

       In response to some emails that I sent to family members {far and wide} I have been blessed to receive support, encouragement, and notes on various family members to help fill out character sketches. The second most popular response is: "Too bad you didn't start this when {insert name here} was still around! They could have been a wealth of information for your project."

This is, of course, undeniably true. On the other hand, when all is right with the world and our loved ones gather around the Thanksgiving table again, like always, do we really think about life without them? Do we anticipate losing our family history to a head injury or a hip replacement? I didn't. Not that day, or the next one, or the next one.

The desire to preserve family history was born out of grief. Let's be honest, that's when it matters: when so-and-so is gone from us.

I want our whole family, present and future generations, to know the people that aren't around anymore. That's why this project was born. Life is short... tragically short sometimes. This is one small way to make it last a little bit longer... 

From Garbushian to Badeer...

Maggie, Persape {Koundakjian}, Sarkis and Henry Badeer

Our story begins around 1884 in an Armenian village known as Kessab in Northeast Syria. A teenage boy named Sarkis Garboushian (birth date unknown) was attending an American Mission School in Latakia, a Syrian town by the Mediterranean Sea, south of Kessab. The School missionary Henry Easson apparently was impressed by Sarkis and asked him to go with him to America. Sarkis was interested, but had to ask the permission of his mother, Martha, who was a practical midwife. “Go my son,” was her reply.

After two months of travel by sea, Sarkis and Missionary Henry Easson arrived in the United States. Whether or not they had to stay at Ellis Island is unknown. Sarkis worked his way through school and graduated from Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania (where Easson was from). Subsequently, he entered Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and graduated in 1893 (His diploma is still in the family archives). 

During this period the college considered the name “Garboushian” to be too long and difficult to pronounce. They asked Sarkis his father’s first name. It was Badeer (traditional counterpart of Peter). They decided to call him Sarkis Badeer, which appears on his diploma from Jefferson Medical College (now known as Jefferson University in Philadelphia.)

A Matter of Perspective.

Here are a few thoughts that have come as a result of my work on this family history project. This is an essay that I wrote back in April, in the middle of digitizing the book, "Survived: How and Why?" by Hripsime Kassarjian. 

I have taken it upon myself to preserve and circulate some important family history. I am creating a new (digital) edition of a little booklet written by my great-great-grandmother, Hripsime Kassarjian. She was an incredible woman of God. Her book is my window into her world ... and it satisfies my grief at having been born after she had gone to be with our LORD. Here is a piece of her life, in my hands.

Life can cloud us, can't it? The sludge of negativity and discontentment slows us down. That moment-by-moment comparison game always yields a winner and a loser. I get so quickly sludged down into a kind of 'slough of despondence' as in Pilgrim's Progress. It starts out innocently enough, and then turns fatal. The lies which draw me deeper into myself, my pity, my heavily-guarded pride ... will sludge me into the bottom of the slough, unless a hand reaches out to pull me back to the grassy banks.

Sometimes, that hand is reaching out from eternity. As I transcribe her story, I cannot help but see how small and ugly my attitude and problems really are. She survived four wars - and the Armenian genocide. She was separated from her brother for forty long years, believing him to be dead. Her years as a school girl were spent as an orphan, not sure of her birthday, without the comfort of parents to love and support her. She and her classmates spent their days between class and hiding in barricades from the Turkish soldiers who came to kill. When the Muslim Turks sought to obliterate the entire race of Armenian people [due to a primarily religious conflict], she kept her faith. She understood that her very life rested in the hand of God. He kept giving it back to her. She kept praising His name. Her hand reaches out to me even now ... pulling me out of the dirty mire of self-pity and into the light.

You may be wondering about her name. What does it mean? Here are her words, from the preface:

"I was named after an Armenian princess (the daughter of an Armenian King). She was a very beautiful young girl, eighteen years old, who had become a Christian at the end of the third century, A.D.

There was a prince, the son of a Gentile king, who intended to marry her, if she would give up her faith in Jesus Christ. He tried to persuade her for some time, but without any result; so she was put in jail. Everyday this prince would visit her to find out if she had changed her mind; her answer was always the same. She would say, “It is far better to die for my dear Savior, Jesus Christ, than to marry a Gentile prince.” Finally, she died in jail. She was called a saint. Of course, I am not worthy to bear her name, but many parents like to name their daughters in memory of that dear princess, who held fast her faith and her deep love for Jesus Christ, her Savior."

All worthiness aside, it is a fitting name for a woman who held so strongly to her faith and her Lord in spite of all obstacles, a lifetime of suffering, and overwhelming grief. Between the lines of her story, there is a deep love for Jesus. May that love speak to me right now, today, and tomorrow, and into eternity.

Who am I?

There is something wonderful about exploring the questions, "Who am I?" and "Where did I come from?" Digging through piles and sacks of old photos is like a treasure hunt. The prize? Realizing that my personal history is woven like an endless, vibrant rug throughout the greater history of all mankind. The deeper I dig the more I can see the faces of people I've never met; read the stories of incredible survival and mercy that happened only a few generations before me. Through their words, and the memories of others, I can travel back in time. I can be there beside them. I can escape my petty little world and see the bigger picture. 

I am the great-granddaughter of a godly woman who survived the Armenian Genocide. I am the granddaughter of a woman who was willing to come to the United States with her husband so that her children could have the best education possible. I am the daughter of one of her sons - a mere boy when he first came to Omaha, Nebraska. 

These people in these dusty old photos are more than blank faces. They are my family. They are the ones who have gone before. Now its time to tell their story. 

Henry and Marie Badeer [my grandparents] with Daniel and Gilbert.
Beirut, Lebanon - c. 1956

Henry and Marie Badeer with newly born Gilbert Badeer, December 1949. 

Henry Sarkis Badeer

Henry Sarkis Badeer; this photo was taken in Mercine, Turkey, the year 1921.

This photo, taken in 1927, shows Henry on the left, between his Father [Sarkis] 

and Mother [Persape Koundakjian]. 

.the beginning.

Welcome! 

This little blog has been born out of a desire to preserve and share our rich family heritage. Our great-grandparents survived the Armenian Genocide. This is to honor them, and to educate us: the next generation.

As some of you know, I am working on compiling an actual physical (coffee table style) book containing some interesting and relevant family history information. This book will include:

"Survived: How and Why?" by Hripsime Kassarjian
"A Brief History of the Badeers," compiled by Deb Badeer and Ruzana Badeer
Photos of Kassarjians, Koundakjians, and Badeers down through the generations
Notes and stories from other extended family that shed light on who our ancestors really were

If you're interested in receiving a finished copy of this book (my goal is to complete it over the Summer), please contact me at noelleskaya@gmail.com - or leave a comment here on this post.

In the meantime, as I find interesting bits and photos, I will post them here for all of you to enjoy along with me! Please subscribe or come back to visit and see what's "new."

~ Noelle (Badeer) Petersen