My father was born in a house I've never seen. Will it ever be mine?

I want my house back.

Forget that I’ve never seen it and have no idea what the address is, much less what it looks like. It’s my house, damn it, and I want it.

This is not a snap decision. I started thinking about this over 40 years ago, when my father told me he was sure Turkey would never acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. I asked how he could be so certain.

“Because they’d have to give me my house back,” he said. “They would have to give all the Armenians their houses back.”

Until that moment, I hadn’t thought of my father owning any house except the one where we lived in New Jersey. I understood immediately he was talking about his father’s house in Diyarbakir. It had most likely been in the family for generations.

My father was three years old when his family was forced out of their home and his mother murdered. He was probably 60 when we had that conversation, but the house most likely still stood somewhere within the city’s ancient walls and it most definitely belonged to his parents’ only child by any civilized code of law.

I’d put all this aside until a few years ago when my friend Art Heise shared his own experience with a lost family home in a far-off place that had been wracked by war and genocide.

He and his family were evicted by the Red Army at the end of World War II when Art was barely school age. They were lucky to escape East Germany, but his parents were never able to return to their house.

When the Communists finally cleared out nearly a half century later, Art returned to claim the family home only to discover it had been home to another family before the war – a Jewish family.

Art’s research confirmed that the previous owners were murdered by the Nazis. It also revealed something even more shocking to him: His father had been a member of the Nazi Party. He could not proceed with his claim without delving even deeper to find out if his father had used his influence to force this helpless family out of their home.

The result was a fascinating, difficult and even painful journey of family discovery that became all the more challenging and meaningful when Art tracked down the other family’s heir and persuaded her to join his quest.

At its core was a daunting reality: Art would lose all claim to the home if he uncovered evidence of his father’s complicity. Worse, he would live with the knowledge. I know Art, so I know the courage he showed in going forward.  

J. Arthur Heise and Melanie Kuhr both overcame suspicion, distrust and history to make a successful joint claim to the house, and then shared the profit when they sold it. They also wrote a book about their unlikely partnership, Das Haus.

From Art’s perspective, the circumstances of his house odyssey are a strange reversal of the Armenian predicament. But his decency and his determination are heartening to anyone who hopes for the best in human behavior.

I wonder if I’d discover the same qualities in the Turks or Kurds who most likely live in my father’s house?

I want to believe it is possible, just as I want to believe my father was wrong. 

Dad is gone now so his house is just as surely mine. I will make my claim if the day ever comes when justice extends to Armenians. 

Straw Dolls: A film that deserves to be made about a story that needs to be told

I got an interesting email the other day from an independent film maker who's trying to raise money to tell a story about the Armenian Genocide.

What interested me most about Jon Milano's project is that he isn't Armenian.

Jon Milano

Milano, an independent director based in Los Angeles, is a graduate student at Chapman University. He explained his interest this way:

"I grew up in Oradell, New Jersey. My closest and dearest friends were Armenian, so I became aware at a young age of the magnitude of the Genocide and since then I have always wanted to make a film about the subject. 

"My friend Yervant's grandmother was a survivor. He had told me her story when we were growing up and it has stuck with me since. I came to him and told his family I wanted to make a movie about her and her journey. We also brought in some other stories from survivors and incorporated them into her story. Our research began about six years ago, combing archives and meeting grandchildren and children of survivors."

The result of this research is Straw Dolls, which tells the story of a girl named Lucine. As a survivor living in latter-day California, Lucine relates the story of her parents' murder and the journey of survival in which she set out with nothing more than the straw doll her mother had made for her.

The events and people her character describes are all based on true stories told by other survivors. "The film is one of the first narrative movies about the Genocide that isn't a documentary," Milano said. 

Milano's immediate goal is to raise enough money to make a short film that will serve as a showcase to garner support for a feature-length version.

I know just enough about the film industry to be impressed by Milano's ambition.

As in print publishing, changes in technology have made film-making more affordable and accessible than in the days of the big studios but a well-told story is still a challenge—particularly one set in another time and place.

That challenge is certainly compounded when the underlying story is one that so many have tried very hard to ignore or deny.

So bravo to Milano, who is hoping to raise money through crowd funding. Do you know about crowd funding? All I know is that gutsy people who believe in their ideas can pitch them to the world via the Internet. If all goes well the crowd responds with contributions.

Milano's first round of solicitation is over but he's still seeking support. 

Intrigued? Check out Milano's video and extended proposal. 

Another Armenian tragedy is unfolding in Syria

The scene in Aleppo as reported by The Armenian Weekly

I’m an average American in my knowledge of the political, social and economic forces animating the current turmoil in Syria.

In other words, I know very little.

I’m more interested than most, however, in part because so many Armenians are in the line of fire.

Armenians have a long history in Syria, particularly in the north.  

During the Genocide of 1915, vast numbers of Armenians were driven into the Syrian desert to die. But with the end of Ottoman rule after the First World War, Syria became a haven for thousands of Armenian refugees.

Like most predominantly Arab countries, Syria has a Muslim majority but it also has a significant Christian population and a historic practice of tolerance. Feeling both thankful and secure, Armenians turned their temporary settlements into permanent homes by building villages and churches in their own traditions.

At the population’s peak, there were was many as 150,000 Syrians of Armenian descent. That number has probably been reduced by a third in recent years for all the expected reasons, including the region’s conflicts.

Now the Armenians who remain are caught in the back-and-forth between government forces of President Bashar-al-Assad and anti-government rebels. Among the hardest hit are the Armenians of Aleppo, where many of my father’s relatives settled after being displaced from Turkey in 1922.

Some Armenian villages have come under direct attack. The long-standing Armenian community of Kessab was left deserted after assaults by fighters who crossed the border from Turkey. Government forces have since retaken the town.

The death toll in Kessab remains unclear, as does the extent of Turkey’s involvement in the broader Syrian conflict—but the parallel to 1915 is eerie and infuriating to Armenians everywhere.

Armenians throughout the world are responding to urgent calls for donations while also pressing for international intervention.

Whether the United States or any other outside power will do much to help is beyond me. But here’s what I do know: Much of what we’ve read and heard about the Syrian conflict is wrong.

It was initially portrayed as the latest iteration of the Arab Spring, a phrase that assaults both language and logic. This is not a simple good guy/bad guy battle between a despotic regime and idealistic democrats.

As in all the Middle East, there are more than two sides vying for domination and it’s hard to tell whether there’s much good in any of them.

What is clear is that Armenians are suffering once again for the very reason that has threatened our existence so many times: We are simply in the way.

Armenians should learn from the success of efforts to educate the world about the Holocaust

Why is there no  major film
 about the Armenian Genocide?

In my experience, Jewish people respond more strongly and with greater empathy to stories of our tragic history than any other non-Armenians. Many are well aware that Hitler was emboldened by the world's refusal to punish the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide.

Then why do some Armenians bristle at any mention of the Holocaust?

Their complaint boils down to this: We were slaughtered first, so why do they get all the attention? Implicit in this thinking is a fallacy: recognition of the Holocaust and recognition of the Armenian Genocide are not mutually exclusive.

The impression of an imbalance exists for a number of reasons, among them Israel's stubborn and shameful refusal to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. But the most obvious reason is the volume and frequency of Holocaust references in the media. Armenians notice this more than most because we're so sensitive to the Genocide's relative lack of recognition.

Many of us, however, don't realize that today's Holocaust consciousness is the result of a long and sometimes complicated effort.

Like Armenians after the Genocide, many Jewish refugees focused on rebuilding their own lives after World War II rather than reliving their nightmare. Even many American Jews, conscious of antisemitism here at home, shied away from talking publicly about the tragic events in Europe.

Several developments after the war encouraged survivors to speak about what they'd experienced: The Nuremberg prosecution of war criminals documented and exposed the Nazis' crimes. Faced with the world's judgment, Germany renounced its past and began making reparations.

Finally, the creation of Israel lent survivors a sense of hope as well as purpose. Giving testimony about the death camps and other atrocities became a way to help ensure that the world would not allow a recurrence.

Even so, public consciousness was slow to awaken while much of the conversation remained muted. The Holocaust as an upper-case term didn't begin to come into popular use until the 1960s. Schindler's List, the first major Hollywood film to deal with the Holocaust graphically and at length, wasn't released until 1993.

Armenians have had more time to find their voice but they've had a much harder time making it heard.

The Western powers abandoned the Armenians after the Great War and quickly withdrew their attention and sympathy. Absent the sort of international pressure Germany experienced, Turkey has continued to deny history while continuing to receive military and economic support from America and its allies.

As a result of these disparate circumstances, Holocaust deniers are rightly dismissed as kooks while Genocide deniers receive cover from an American government that will not acknowledge the history documented in its own records.

These are undeniably serious obstacles, but they're not insurmountable—and that is the crucial point.

I understand why my father spoke so seldom and quietly about the horrors he experienced as a child, but I'm under no such compulsion. I'm blessed to live in a country where I can't be prosecuted for speaking the truth about the Armenian experience before, during and after the Genocide.

The hoodlums who committed that horror tried to erase me before I was born but they failed. No one stopped me from writing a book about my struggle to learn my history and embrace my identity. It may be too late to hear the stories of our parents and grandparents, but we can tell their stories as well as our own.

It's worth noting that the screenplay for Schindler's List was written by Steve Zaillian, an Armenian-American who won an Oscar for his efforts. So why has there been no such ambitious portrayal of the Armenian Genocide?

I know about the efforts over the years to keep Hollywood from making such a movie, but Hollywood is an anachronism. Today there are more ways then ever to tell a story visually and deliver it to an audience anywhere in the world.

Who could stop us if we were truly committed?

To me it's clear that we Armenians simply haven't told our story loudly enough or well enough or insistently enough to command the world's attention. Instead of resenting the effectiveness of writers, film producers and survivors who keep the Holocaust in view, we should admire and emulate them.

The Palm Beach Post shares the story behind my book Stories with its readers

I was quite proud and a bit humbled this morning as The Palm Beach Post published an excerpt from Stories My Father Never Finished Telling Me. 

The book sample was accompanied by a first-person story about the book, along with several photographs of my father and the rest of the family.

With luck, you'll be able to see it by clicking here. 

I qualified that because I'm still sharpening my tech skills while trying to find my way through the maze of public-access and subscriber-only pathways on most modern news sites. I'm very much old school in such matters: I remember the day when you could simply pick up a paper and read it.

I even remember the day when people actually did just that.

Nostalgia aside, my friends at the Post did a beautiful  job of presenting the story and were extremely generous in giving it such space. Thanks to all!

In Montgomery, Alabama, history is so close you can touch it but you can't always see it clearly

That's me and Denny outside the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery.

My friend and co-author Denny Abbott lived the story behind his memoir They Had No Voice: My Fight For Alabama's Forgotten Children. I got the easy end of the deal when he asked me to write the book.

Denny's legal war with the State of Alabama on behalf of poor, black children more than 40 years ago fascinated me, in part because it turned on a series of decisions that showed great courage as well as unusual moral clarity.

But hearing Denny's tale also opened a window to a time and place that signaled a significant change in our country over the past century.

Denny grew up in Montgomery, Alabama. For a guy like me from New Jersey, that seemed as exotic as Bangkok and just about as difficult to imagine.

Denny's childhood in the 1940s and '50s traced the decline of the Old South and the rise of the Civil Rights Movement. Montgomery was at the center of both, and Denny got a close-up view of this seismic shift in culture and law.

As a young man, Denny listened nightly to his father's racist rants. As a young adult, Denny watched from his office window as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. marched along the street below.

Denny respected his father, but he followed Dr. King's example.

Listening to Denny, I was struck by the pride he showed in his Southern identity despite his break from traditions we Yankees associate so closely with The South. I asked him why he still felt such attachment to a place that had caused him real anguish.

Denny said I'd just have to go back to Montgomery with him to understand.

Meeting our publication deadline kept that from happening until earlier this year when Denny and I were invited to speak about the book at several campuses of Troy University.

I'm going to write about that in some detail soon, because the experience was emotional, even inspirational. So was our tour of Montgomery, a city where the past and present meet head-on but never quite connect.

Our walk began at stately Union Station, an old red-brick rail terminal that now houses a visitor center where reminders of the city's economic and historical importance are showcased.

The narrator of the city's welcome video boasted of Montgomery's "two" rich histories as the original capital of the Confederacy and as a pivotal Civil Rights battleground. We encountered reminders of both everywhere we went.

Among the most striking was a statue of Jefferson Davis atop the steps of the state capitol, which is a white-columned monument to the city's antebellum grandeur. Denny led me up the stairs to stand over the gold star that marks the spot where Jefferson Davis took the oath as president of the confederacy on March 9, 1861.

In March 1965, Dr. King led thousands of men, women and children to those very steps after a 54-mile march from Selma. The event is recognized as a landark of the Civil Rights Era.

That march took five days, but Dr. King's march through Montgomery's history had begun years before. Among his notable achievements there: he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which ended segregated seating in 1956.

There was no statue of Dr. King at the capitol, however, nor anywhere else we stopped.

Our most informative stop was at the Southern Poverty Law Center's civil rights memorial, but I also learned a lot just walking through downtown where historical markers illustrate the city's long and deep racial divide.

You can follow the trail if you read them all and read them carefully. If you don't, you might not realize there is a trail at all.

As Denny and I left Union Station, we walked through a short tunnel under the old train tracks to the waterfront along the Alabama River. It was a pleasant stroll on a bright, cool morning.

Reading the markers, I learned that same waterfront served as the arrival port for countless slaves, who were marched to holding pens to await auction at Court Square a few blocks away.

Our short tour nearly overwhelmed me with images from Montgomery's past. Over the next few days, I learned much more. I met a great many people who were all gracious and helpful, and who shared Denny's obvious pride in their heritage.

I left with a better understanding of that pride, but what I understood most clearly was that I'd been misinformed by the narrator of the video we watched at the beginning of our tour.

Like the rest of America, Montgomery does not have two histories. It has one history that is rich but also complicated. Some of it is glorious and some of it is awful, and that seems too much for many people to acknowledge.

Our nation's buses and coffee shops were integrated long ago. Why is our history still segregated?

Silence was my father's only shield, and it worked for both of us better than I ever understood

The photo at left was shot in the late 1940s, a few years before I was born.

That's my father, Nishan Kalajian, standing in front of the dry cleaning store he and my mother bought when he came home from the Army after the Second World War.

I don't know anything about the picture beyond what I can see, but I see enough—and know enough—to understand that Dad was mighty proud. His name stenciled on the window next to the word "proprietor" is a sure sign that he was feeling good about being his own boss for the first time in his life.

Even better, nobody was trying to kill him.

Understanding my father's tortuous and tortured journey from Diyarbakir, Turkey to New Jersey would have been less challenging if he'd been willing to talk directly and plainly about what he'd seen and experienced. Instead, I had to settle for the occasional revelation that would appear in a flash and disappear just as quickly.

I pieced together as much of my father's life as I could in my book Stories My Father Never Finished Telling Me. But understanding his experience proved to be even more difficult than reconstructing it.

I'm always wary of lapsing into solipsism, but nothing in my childhood in America prepared me to relate to what he'd known in a far more dangerous and desperate part of the world.

Dad watched as his homeland was consumed by genocide and famine. I watched Hopalong Cassidy and ate Twinkies.

By the time I came along in 1952, my parents were on solid footing as small-business owners. They'd bought a bigger store that came with a house, and Dad even rented a garage down the street to park his big, new station wagon. That Plymouth was a fitting metaphor for my smooth ride down life's highway.

I was reminiscing about all this with my father's cousin Gloria Allum the other night. Although Gloria also grew up in New Jersey, she's older than I am by enough years to have experienced a time when life for our family and other Armenians was far less settled and secure.

Her father, like mine, rarely talked about his youth and left even fewer clues about how or when he made the leap to America. But Gloria saw the lingering effects of trauma all around her in a community of immigrants struggling to adapt to America while also struggling to surive economically.

Some struggled harder than others. She recalled one close relative whose alcoholism affected the entire the family. As a child, she was embarrassed and angered. Looking back she understood much more and she empathized.

"It was all from the massacres," she said. "They had to deal with so much."

I wish my father had told me more about his life but now I understand that silence was his way of dealing with the pain. I also understand that he was doing his best to protect me from the effects.

I wish I'd understood that in time to thank him.