In conversation with ‘Hayrig,’ father to Armenian orphans 

As I prepare to write my next novel based on the life of my grandfather, an Armenian orphan who survived genocide and rebuilt his life in America, I find myself thinking often about a man I never met.

Rev. Aharon Shirajian. To thousands of Armenian children, he was simply “Hayrig.” Father.

During the darkest years of the Armenian Genocide and its aftermath, Hayrig founded and led the Armenian Orphanage of Aleppo. He was an Armenian Evangelical priest whose faith guided him. Between 1915 and 1924, the orphanage became a refuge for thousands of Armenian children rescued from deportation caravans, deserts, disease, starvation and forced “Turkification” of orphans to erase their Armenian and Christian identities. 

As I studied the history of the orphanage, I found myself wishing I could sit down with Hayrig and ask him a few questions. What follows is an imagined conversation, inspired by historical accounts, memoirs and the enduring legacy of the children whose lives he helped save. My special thanks to Grace Shiragian, his granddaughter, who shared priceless testimonies, research and behind-the-scenes stories. 

Victoria: Hayrig, when the first children arrived in Aleppo in 1915, starving, sick, orphaned and traumatized, what gave you the courage to believe that an orphanage could survive in the middle of genocide?

Hayrig: I did not know if the orphanage would survive. I only knew the children would not survive without it. When a child stands before you hungry and alone, hope becomes less important than duty. We began with almost nothing, a few rooms, a few friends and faith. Every child admitted through the door was an act of resistance against those who wanted Armenians erased from the earth.

Victoria: You often accepted children no one else would take, the dying, the blind, the sick, even children who were hours away from death. For those who were too sick to utter their names before their last breath, you named them at their funerals as words for rock, stone or boulder. What did you see in those children that others may have overlooked?

Hayrig: Every child carried a village, a family story, a language, a memory. Saving a child was saving a piece of our people, and giving them dignity was the last kind gift we could give in this life. Each child fought a Herculean battle and deserved to be remembered as the strong, steady and resilient people they were. 

Victoria: You insisted that children learn Armenian, sing Armenian songs, study, pray and learn trades. Your favorite hymns of “Nearer My God to Thee,” “Let thy wings O Lord” and “Der Voghormya” are remembered by all who knew you. Why was preserving Armenian Christianity just as important as preserving life?

Hayrig: Because survival without identity is another kind of loss. We wanted the children to live, but we also wanted them to know who they were. We taught them to read, write and pray in Armenian. As the orphanage grew, we opened several churches so they could worship in their preferred religion, whether Evangelical, Apostolic or Catholic, to name a few. We taught them carpentry, shoemaking, tailoring and music. We wanted them to leave the orphanage not as victims, but as Armenians capable of building a future.

Victoria: Among the children in your orphanage was young Haroutiun Galentz, who came from my grandmother’s village of Gurin. He would later become one of Armenia’s most beloved artists. Do you remember him?

Hayrig: Of course. I remember many children carrying gifts they themselves could not yet see. Some carried music. Some leadership. Some compassion. Some art. The tragedy is that genocide tried to bury those gifts. The miracle is that so many survived long enough for the world to discover them.

Victoria: While caring for thousands of orphaned children, you were also raising seven children of your own, after your first wife and youngest child succumbed to typhus. Did your children ever struggle with sharing their father?

Hayrig: Yes. My family sacrificed much. The orphanage was not separate from our home; in many ways, it became our home. My children learned that love is not divided when it is shared; for some, that lesson came later in life, when they became parents and grandparents. Yet I also know there were moments when they wished they had more of their father to themselves.

Victoria: Your second wife, Aroosiag, worked as one of the “mayrigs,” mothers to the orphans, before becoming your wife and mother to two additional children. What role did she play in helping you continue your work?

Hayrig: No one accomplishes such work alone. The stories often remember the public figures and forget the women who carried burdens quietly. Aroosiag brought strength, stability and kindness. She helped transform survival into family.

Victoria: Hayrig, there is something I find remarkable. Your youngest children eventually immigrated to Rhode Island, where I was raised as a second-generation American Armenian from grandparents whose lives were saved in Aleppo. In fact, I met your daughter, Aranoosh, at an event in 2023 hosted by the Armenian Historical Association of Rhode Island, which spotlighted Dr. Khatchig Mouradian, who wrote about your family in “The Resistance Network.” What makes this deeply personal for me is that my grandfather was quite possibly one of the orphaned children whose life was saved because your orphanage existed. Did you ever imagine that your work in Aleppo would one day echo in places so far away?

Hayrig: How could we? We were trying to save children one day at a time. That your grandfather survived, that he built a family, and his granddaughter now tells his story, then the work was not only about saving lives. It was about preserving futures we could not yet see.

Victoria: My next book will tell the story of my grandfather’s life as an orphan. What message would you like readers to carry with them?

Hayrig: Remember that these children were more than victims. History often records how they suffered. It speaks of deportations, hunger, disease and loss. Those things are true. But they are not the whole story.

The children of Aleppo laughed. They learned. They sang. They argued. They dreamed. They became teachers, artists, craftsmen, mothers, fathers and grandparents.

Do not remember them only for how close they came to death. Remember them for how fiercely they chose life.

And when you tell your grandfather’s story, tell it not as the story of a child who lost everything, but as the story of a child who carried an entire people forward.

The conversation ends there.

Yet as I close the orphanage records and memoirs, I find myself wondering if Hayrig’s greatest legacy was not the buildings he filled or the children he sheltered. Perhaps it is the generations that followed. The grandchildren in Rhode Island. The families who scattered across America, Europe and the world.

The readers who will open a book and discover that somewhere in Aleppo, amid unimaginable darkness, there were people who refused to let Armenian children disappear. My prayer is that Rev. Aharon Shirajian, Hayrig, and others like him continue to guide me and those dedicated to sharing their stories. 

Because of them, we are still here.