Irish Armenians ‘descendants’ of escapees from genocide

As Armenian diasporas go, the one in Ireland is small. Approximately 500 Armenians live in the Republic. Most are in Dublin. A few hundred more live in Northern Ireland.

Just three million people live in the small mountainous state between Turkey and Russia created after the first World War. Another seven million live abroad, mainly in Russia, France and the United States.

Most of the global exodus can be traced back to the Armenian genocide, which began on April 24th, 1915. It is their Great Famine, their Shoah or as they call it the Metz Yeghern (great crime).

The collective folk memory of what happened in 1915 has never gone away. Irish-born children of Armenian descent learn about the genocide just as they learn Armenian.

Last Sunday the children attached to the Armenian Sunday school sang hymns and recited poems about the genocide. The community rents rooms in Taney Hall, Dundrum, for their Sunday services. Many are third- and fourth-generation Armenian but they have retained the language.

Memorial

They are surrounded by the symbol of the genocide – five purple petals signifying the five continents of the diaspora, the yellow representing the genocide memorial in the capital Yeravan and the black centre representing the genocide itself.

Armenian honorary consul to Ireland Ohan Yergainharsian says his grandfather was the only one of seven brothers and four sisters living in the Turkish city of Erzurum to survive the genocide.

“Three-quarters of the Armenian population were killed. We are the descendants of those who managed to escape.”

Mr Yergainharsian has compiled a series of Irish Times reports from 1915 suggesting that a massacre was taking place in Armenia. He wants Ireland to recognise what happened to his people as genocide without equivocation.

Dentist Kristina Begoyan says she is in a minority of Armenians in that she was born in the country. "After the genocide, no men were left in the family," she said. "My grandmother went into hiding and she finally came to modern day Armenia."

Ms Begoyan says modern Armenia constitutes just 9 per cent of Armenian territory that was once part of the Ottoman empire.

When Ayda Sarafian heard the pope was going to acknowledge the genocide, she flew to Rome along with thousands of other Armenians from the diaspora. The Armenians are not in community with Rome, but as Christians they were persecuted for their faith.

“It gives me great comfort for a religious leader to say it was a genocide. It wasn’t just a war.”

Dr Paul Manook of the Armenian Church of the UK and Ireland has been told that his grandfather was killed; and his grandmother, who survived, witnessed the beheading of almost all of her family.

“I have no hatred of the Turkish people ... However, it is very difficult to forget or forgive when the successive Turkish governments continue to deny that the genocide ever happened.”

Today and tomorrow there will be a photographic exhibition in Christ Church, Dún Laoghaire, and a commemoration ceremony will take place in Dún Laoghaire this evening.

The 100th anniversary remembrance service will take place in Taney Parish on Sunday, April 26th, at 3pm. Church leaders will be invited to this service. In November a genocide memorial will be erected in Christ Church Cathedral.