The forward trenches in the hills just beyond the abandoned village of Talish, in Nagorno-Karabakh, are reminiscent of World War I: long, endless, slits in the ground, the dirt buttressed by wood, with periodic firing posts and dugouts. Stacked tires packed with dirt stand in for sandbags, but otherwise it looks like the Western Front […]
Category Archives: Armenia
26
Apr
Apr
ADOLF HITLER KEPT a bust of Ataturk in his office. Heinrich Himmler considered moving to Turkey in the early 1920s. And Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, admitted in his memoirs (penned while awaiting his execution) that he first killed while serving in the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. Make no mistake: The Young […]
16
Dec
Dec
The forward trenches in the hills just beyond the abandoned village of Talish, in Nagorno-Karabakh, are reminiscent of World War I: long, endless, slits in the ground, the dirt buttressed by wood, with periodic firing posts and dugouts. Stacked tires packed with dirt stand in for sandbags, but otherwise it looks like the Western Front […]
21
Oct
Oct
For most of America, the heartbreaking faces of Syrian refugees this year have belonged to children. We have seen them drowned and we have seen them stunned into silence by warfare and covered in blood. (We’ve also seen them likened to Skittles, but that appalling analogy belongs only to the Trumps.) At the moment, however, […]
24
Apr
Apr
Last Friday morning, Rep. Jim Costa placed a wreath in Fresno, California’s Masis Ararat Cemetery at the grave of an Armenian who died peacefully in San Francisco 56 years ago. Most Americans are more familiar with the Peloponnesian War than they are with the fellow Costa remembered. Even in the San Joaquin Valley, home to roughly […]
26
Apr
Apr
Today I am in Manhattan. This morning I am at St. Vartan, the magnificent Armenian Cathedral on Second Avenue, for the Divine Liturgy. In the afternoon I am in Times Square, helping to host the commemoration of the centennial of the start of the Armenian Genocide. There will be thousands of Armenians at both events. […]
22
Apr
Apr
The photo can only be called exotic. It was taken at the end of the 19th century in an Ottoman city southeast of Ankara called Kayseri. It’s a fraying family portrait of the eight people who comprise the Bohjalian family, and the toddler sitting in his father’s lap is my grandfather, Levon Nazareth—or Leo as […]
19
Apr
Apr
Earlier this year, I journeyed from Vermont to Oslo to introduce myself to Marit Greve, an 86-year-old Norwegian who still swims in the fjord outside her home on the outskirts of the city. I wanted to meet her because it’s possible some of my Armenian ancestors would not have wound up in America were it […]
07
Dec
Dec
You know your moral compass is a little off when you censor a story about a gift to a U.S. president from a group of orphans — even though that story makes your grandparents and great-grandparents look like Mother Teresa. But this is essentially what the White House Visitor Center did for six days in […]
30
Aug
Aug
The other day I watched an eight-year-old boy named Ulash (pronounced Oo-lush) spontaneously take a white plastic grocery bag and fill it with potato chip wrappers, cigarette butts, and crushed plastic water bottles. This was newsworthy not simply because small boys are not known for their fastidiousness or their desire to make the world a […]
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