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Kirk Vartan, Santa Clara entrepreneur, holds a1965 newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn., telling the story of his Grandparents, G.S. Vartan and his wife Yeranoohi Vartan. They were among the few survivors of the city of Hadjin, Turkey during the tragic Armenian Genocide during World War I, 1915-1919. The page also contains an ad for G.S. Vartan's oriental rug company.
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Unique Family History
By Suzy Paluzzi
Kirk Vartan, owner of Santa Clara’s “A Slice of New York”, wouldn’t be here if his grandfather had not survived the Armenian Massacre that occurred during and just after World War I. This genocide “is the closest parallel to the Holocaust” of World War II, according to Hebrew University scholar Yehuda Bauer. And only recently, in 2007, did the US House of Representatives acknowledge that era in the “Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution.” The Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, does not accept the word “genocide” as an accurate description of the event. Vartan has been able to recreate his family history from family documents.
Vartan’s grandfather was the only survivor out of eight children. He was to attend a private school that was four days away by horseback from his home in Hadjin, when the alleged annihilation of the Armenians began. Later, he learned that all 500 students had been killed. The total number of deaths during that political power struggle with the Ottoman Empire has been estimated to have been between one and one-and-one-half million.
The family was “driven on foot to Syria”, according to Vartan. There they were able to hide with a family of Arab sympathesizers. Vartan’s grandfather was captured with 20 other Armenians by the Turkish police and sent to a concentration camp. He escaped, but later learned that the rest of the family had been forced to march into the desert to die.
Vartan’s grandmother’s brother fought in the war against the Turks and “ was one of 347 survivors out of 6,000 Hadjinists,” says Vartan. Vartan’s father’s uncle and others took shelter in local caves and ate nuts and berries in order to live. The Turks tried to flush them out with grenades and Molotov cocktails, improvised bombs. The family records say they were also without water and down to single bullets. Upon managing to escape, this side of Vartan’s family witnessed hundreds of corpses and saw starving people eating farm animals raw and gobbling honey from beehives, in spite of the bees’ stings.
Vartan’s grandfather arrived in Rhode Island in 1920, and refused to return to his homeland. He became a citizen in California. Over 200 family members are documented as killed overseas during 1916-20, including many little children.
Vartan’s father was born in California and was a successful newspaper reporter. “ He had simple tastes and didn’t believe in waste,” comments Vartan, who believes this was a result of the family background.
“I don’t harbor any ill feelings about any of this history. We should honor our family and move on,” Vartan concludes. Vartan’s Auntie Margaret made lahmajoon, an Armenian dish of ground meat, spice, and often tomatoes, served on something tortilla-like. It is no wonder he sells New-York style pizza and other east coast comfort foods, since he moved from there.
