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George Aghjayan

George Aghjayan

George Aghjayan is the Director of the ARF Archives and a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Central Committee of the Eastern United States. Aghjayan graduated with honors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1988 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Actuarial Mathematics. He achieved Fellowship in the Society of Actuaries in 1996. After a career in both insurance and structured finance, Aghjayan retired in 2014 to concentrate on Armenian related research and projects. His primary area of focus is the demographics and geography of western Armenia as well as a keen interest in the hidden Armenians living there today. Other topics he has written and lectured on include Armenian genealogy and genocide denial. He is a frequent contributor to the Armenian Weekly and Houshamadyan.org, and the creator and curator westernarmenia.weebly.com, a website dedicated to the preservation of Armenian culture in Western Armenia.

25 Comments

  1. George, Thank you for your beautiful story, which moved me to tears. I hope to follow in your footsteps one day, too. Please consider my disagreement with your last sentence, “A crime silenced and forgotten is a crime that never occurred.” The Turkish government hopes this statement is true, but the fact is that it is incorrect. If a murderer is not brought to justice, there is still a dead victim produced by the crime. Forgetting the murder and the victim is a moral crime, although it is not written in any statute. When societies remain silent in the face of genocide denial, we are accomplices in a crime against humanity.

  2. “A crime silenced and forgotten is a crime that never occurred.”
    Thank you, George, for this timely reminder that the most meaningful way to ensure that the genocide is never forgotten, and our demands for justice are never silenced, is to make sure our children know our history. This is the only way the torch will be carried forward to succeeding generations. Just as we now speak for our fathers, our children will speak for us and transfer the torch to theirs. Our demands for justice will never be silenced. I can think of no more effective way to teach our history to the next generation than to take our children to our villages just as you did. You are right when you say this is not a pleasure trip. This is indeed a pilgrimage. We go so that our voices are heard in the same mountains and valleys that still hold those of our fathers. There is a profound need to walk in the same fields, under the same skies, to feel the same winds that caressed our mothers. And yes, George, to see the killing fields. How symbolic to have found a groong there. Thanks for sharing your journey with us.

  3. The following poem, written by a noted Canadian author, Margaret Atwood, was sent to me just before my daughter and I also went on pilgrimage.

    The Moment

    The moment when, after many years
    of hard work and a long voyage
    you stand in the centre of your room,
    house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
    knowing at last how you got there,
    and say, I own this,

    is the same moment when the trees unloose
    their soft arms from around you,
    the birds take back their language,
    the cliffs fissure and collapse,
    the air moves back from you like a wave
    and you can’t breathe.

    No, they whisper. You own nothing.
    You were a visitor, time after time
    climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
    We never belonged to you.
    You never found us.
    It was always the other way round.

    Margaret Atwood

  5. Dear George

    I felt every step you felt …
    to reach so far…
    So far and there
    where your DNA…s…
    is still hidden somewhere…
    under the rocks under Katchkars
    I can feel your silent tears
    You made us weep together with you
    to see your green land
    birds are still singing there
    Where your grandparents loved and prayed
    Storks are there since ancient days
    laying their eggs
    caring babies
    from place to place…
    they must carry some Armenian genes…
    Under their wings…
    I Can feel…They knew you…
    who are you
    but they could not utter…sing …cry… speak…
    afraid they will get shot
    by new scavengers…carrying killing genes…!!!

    Sylva-MD-Poetry
    Written instantly

  6. A few days ago I was speaking with Paul Bedrosian the son of a childhood friend, the late Michael Bedrosian and nephew of RI Family Court Chief Justice Haiganoush Bedrosian. Paul earned his BA in anthropology at the University of Vermont and we talked about just the kind of challenge upon which you and Stepan Mesrobian embarked. And now your lovely daughter has become ambassador or point person for our new generation. How well stated in the last paragraph which captures the wishes of all survivors, their children, grandchildren and moreover those martyred ancestors whose presence you must have felt where you stood. All of this, all you have done, strikes so deep into the contrived armour of Genocide denial.

    I

  7. Beautifully written, George. It brought back all the memories of the trip my son Michael and I made to Historic Armenia in 1998. It was both emotional and exhilarating, feelings that ordinary words just cannot truly capture. Regards to your family.

  8. Dear George,
    Thank you for sharing your story and trip. I remember your grandmother well and she was a wonderful woman. Your story reminds us all of our parents and grandparents who went through the same terrible horrors of the Genocide. My father was from Govdoon, Sepastia and my grandfather Hagopos Ayvazian from my mothers side was the musicologist at Armash Vank and taught many of the priests who were at that church and killed. He was taken away and killed also. Great article. God Bless you and your family.
    Joyce

  9. I am wondering if one day i will have courage and opportunity to go to our ancestral lands and villages where our grandparents were born, I admire your exemplary patriotic spirit. I pray God to spread your thoughts and feelings in the minds of Armenians all over the world.
    I wish I was able to understand the meaning of your article’s last statement “A crime silenced and forgotten is a crime that never occurred.”
    I hope to have your explanation. May be there is nothing to explain. if we are speaking about a crime it means that it has occurred and has not been silenced by all means and hopefully it will not be forgotten.
    It is providential that the man who offered you a cup of tea had Armenian grandparents of both sides. What a powerful coincidence!
    God bless you and our new generation. Sarah is the young girl who had drawn our Genocide commemoration flyer two years ago in Worcester placing ‘ two Vartabeds helmets on the top of little and big Ararats peaks, with tears joining them together, and us survivors, to our sacred exiled mountain.

  10. Hello George,
    I was so moved by your article about Palu.
    My father was born in Palu and was the only survivor from his family after the Genocide. I have visited Palu on a trip to Historic Armenia. Can’t explain why I needed to drink from the fountain, pick the mulberries from the trees he always talked about, and walk the soil he walked on. So impressed that you have evoked that emotion in your daughter. I would like to revisit Palu again.
    Mary Derderian

    • Hello Perouz,
      My father’s name was Manoog Derderian. He did not have a son. Just one daughter.

  12. My mother was born in Uzunova, and was a survivor. She ended up in the orhanage of the Near East Relief Society. She has written her story, self-published and which I have now reprinted. She was a wonderful woman, told her story to many, but without bitterness from her suffering. She was able to forgive, because of her relationship to Christ who had restored her broken life.

    It is interesting to find someone with the same ancestoral heritage. Thank you for sharing your pilgrimage story.

  13. I don´t concurr with name historic Armenia.Exact denomination of it as of 1895/6(Zyetoon, comes to mind) is Western Armenia, where and when our fight for independencde began, to shake the Ottoman Turkish yolk…
    Historic Armenia is the Times of the Bagratuni, Rshtunis, Ardzrounis,Tigran the Great , Ardavazd,Gagik Ardzrouni(builder of Akhtamar) and the lands that extended from the Caspian to the Meditarranean.
    I have many books both in Armenian and in foreign languages-English,French-wherein even non Armenian historians have clearly defined where Historic Armenia was and is.
    Nowadays by referring to those lands as historic belittles our CASE/Cause.
    For we did stand up and shook away the chains the conquering Turk,-tatar moguls had put on us.
    W/ref. to Pilgrimages to Western Armenian lands to recall where my grandfather and g.mother lived,to me at least would not cause me to come to tears but rage!!! why should they have been evicted and put on DEATH MARCH!!!!
    And not just Western Armenia but on mother´s side the G.D.Azeris slaughtered them in Nakhijevan ,taking over their ages old properties and riches. Got o pilgrimage? That I do the pressent RA/Artsakh since 31 yrs…and follow up on latest achjievements of Armeniasn worldwide.

  14. This was a fantastic read, thanks a lot for sharing this. My ancestors are also from Palu but they left some time before the genocide after trouble with the local “bey”. They moved on south and finally settled in the eastern Mardin region which I have visited. I hope to visit Palu next year! How did you communicate with the villagers? Did you have a translator?

  15. George, my family is from Palu as well, my great grand mother saw her father get killed outside the church, which I believe still stands. They were Nahabedians and Chakoians

  16. Hello Chad,
    My relatives are Chakoians from Khosmat/Palu too and I am trying to trace them back. So many died in 1915. Could we get in touch?
    Mardiros Chakoian was my grandfather. His father Hagop Chakoian.
    Regards,
    Janet

  17. George, I am doing ancestry work and my grandfather Bedros Takvorian was born in Palu. I’m interested in knowing how you found the exact part of the village they were from as I would like to do that also. Thanks for sharing the story of your touching journey.

  18. HI, thanks for your story. my husbands great grandfather came from Palu, he was Haqob Mesrobian. I am trying to find out more about his family. He left for Ethiopia. I know he had a brother but dont know the name, I think he died when they left the village. Does anyone know anything? Let me know

  19. George – Thank you for sharing your story. My grandparents are from Palu and we’d like to visit in 2020. I’m seeking resources on how to best travel to and from Palu. Any resources you can share would be incredibly helpful. With gratitude!

  20. My family is also from Palu, My grandfathers name was Hagop Bogosian and escaped the massacre. We have very little info on my grandmother who fled palu and ended up in an orphanage in France. We heard her name was katchadorian , mary … but we are not sure . My grandfather found her as a child and married her to bring her to the US.

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