Culture
Echoes of the Twenty from Istanbul
By Daniel Varoujan Hejinian
On Oct. 29, I received an e-mail from Istanbul in which a representative of the Evrensel Publishing House asked my permission to use, as a book cover, my painting “The Twenty Executions,” which I had painted in 1976.
The letter states: "As to the book for which we humbly ask your permission... During his research on the ‘turkification’ of Armenian properties, the author Nevzat Onaran found the book accidentally in a public library, and brought it out of
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Dear Daniel Varoujan Hejinian,
What an absolutely riveting account of the journey of your powerful painting to the cover of the recently unearthed book about the twenty Social Democrat Hunchak activists. After I read your account, I immediately wanted to learn more. The twenty young men and their leader, Matteos Sarkisian aka PARAMAZ were arrested early in 1915, held in the basement of Istanbul’s central prison and repeatedly tortured. Ittihad executed them by hanging in Istanbul’s Sultan Bayazid Square on June 15, 1915. They all showed unbelievable courage at the scaffolds. PARAMUZ even faced his executioners and called out, “You can only hang our bodies, but not our philosophy.”
I am so proud of my uncle Minas who was killed near his beloved village of Keramet in 1915 (southern Marmara region) after going AWOL from the Turkish army. He was a Hunchak.
Best,
Ellen Sarkisian Chesnut
http://www.scarshecarried.com and Youtube.
The name of the book “Paramazlar” resonates with “Denizler” who along with many other leftist student leaders were hanged in Turkey. Not much changed!
There are over million hunch again all over the world…