27/04/2015 10:19
Mount Auburn offers memories on anniversary of Armenian genocide
Flags with wide stripes in the Armenian colors of red, blue, and apricot marked some of the 2,500 Armenians buried between bare birch trees and blooming magnolias at Mount Auburn Cemetery. Boston Globe reports.
A small gathering toured the cemetery on a crisp, sunny Saturday to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks. The group stopped beside gravestones of family members or famous figures, pausing to learn about who the dead were in life and to share in the close-knit community left behind.
“If we will not remember, it means that we are dead,” said Erna Shirinian, who frequently travels in partnership with organizations that support Armenian culture. She flew from Armenia to recognize the centennial in Massachusetts. “For Armenians, it is also a very traditional thing to remember your elders and to know your history. It is something that helps us survive,” she said.
The tour, which lasted into the afternoon and was centered in a portion of the cemetery that falls in Watertown, included stops at 15 gravesites. Sonya Nersessian said touring the grounds where her father, mother, and aunts are buried is like seeing a “microcosm of society.”
“The Armenians are buried here along with everyone else, as it should be,” she said.
Massachusetts, particularly Watertown, has a large Armenian community, many of whom are familiar to one another and relish the opportunity to connect with others who share their cultural history, tour attendees said.
Steve Kurkjian, a former Globe reporter, spoke next to his parents’ headstone. Like other Armenian gravestones, Anooshavan Kurkjian and Rosella Gureghian Kurkjian’s bears an ornate cross, a carved rosette, and sigils representing their great passions — in this case, an artist’s palette and a sheaf of papers.
Anooshavan Kurkjian left Armenia as a 3-year-old, on his mother’s back, to come to the United States. “This country was the soil and the fresh air and the rain,” his son said, standing beside the headstone, a small Armenian flag waving by his ankles. “He blossomed, like so many of our beloved parents and grandparents.”
Among the graves was that of General Drastamat Kanayan, known as General Dro, an Armenian national hero without whom “the state of Armenia would not exist,” said Marc A. Mamigonian, director of academic affairs with the National Association of Armenian Studies and Research. The general’s stepdaughter, Olga, was present for the tour.
Mamigonian joined Ruth Thomasian, founder of Project Save Armenian Photograph Archives, Inc., and Mount Auburn Cemetery docent Stephen Pinkerton in leading the tour.
“Even in death, people connect us through their stories and their lives,” said Thomasian, standing before the grave of John M. Mugar, who worked closely with his cousin Stephen P. Mugar of Star Market renown. The Mugars have an active philanthropic history within the Armenian community.
Some of those commemorated had lived for a century or more, like Areka Janikia Der Kazarian, who died in 2013 at the age of 101. Beside her prominent headstone, Mamigonian said “we lost in her . . . our last links back to this past that doesn’t really exist anymore.”
General Dro was the last stop on the tour. The first had been the Rev. Torkom Hagopian. He was a humble man, a survivor who dedicated his life to the Armenian people, their faith, and their culture, said his daughter, Sonya Hagopian.
After a century of struggling to gain recognition of the massacres as a genocide, “This year, it finally feels like we are not carrying this burden alone,” Hagopian said.