family history: Hadjin

The Gertmenian/Devirian families had their origin in Hadjin, Turkey, and background about that area is fundamental to an understanding of the family history.

Hadjin was located in the Antitaurus Mountains, about one hundred miles north of the coastline of the Mediterranean, where its northeast corner makes a bend southward toward Lebanon.  The cities of Tarsus, famous as the birthplace of Saint Paul, and Adana, are located there, and the Gates of Cilicia, a narrow pass where Alexander the Great fought, is nearby.  The Seyham River enters the ocean at this point.

If you follow the Seyham northward, for about ninety miles, you will reach Hadjin.  The mileage betrays the true distance, because the road is a steep, tortuous one and can hardly be called a road by today's standard.  Hadjin, therefore, was pretty much an isolated mountain stronghold, with steep canyons and homes built on rocky hillsides.

Houses were made of stone and consisted of several stories, backed up against the mountain.  Usually, the ground floor served as the stable area, with the roof serving as the front yard for the living areas above, and the roof of one house might be the garden for the house above it.

Just prior to world War I, Hadjin had a population of about 25,000 to 28,000 people, almost all of whom were Armenians.  There were about 800 Turks.

Hadjin ceased to exist after it was destroyed by the Turks in 1920 and the small Turkish village that remained was renamed Sayimbeyli.

In 1959, Vahram Rejebian, and his wife Ermance, traveled to Hadjin and Ermance wrote a vivid picture in her book "Pilgrimage to Freedom."   Below, we reproduce a portion of her story.

Remember, when Ermance refers to "the boy," she is speaking of Vahram, son of Miriam Gertmenian and grandson of Mardiros Gertmenian.  We are deeply indebted to Ermance and Vahram for this insight and for their graphic description of the past.

by Ermance Rejebian

The last thirty-mile stretch is impossible to describe.  We crawled along a narrow ledge hewn out of the rock on the left, with towering crags overhead and a precipice on the right dropping into a narrow gorge.  There were hairpin curves, hair-raising drop-offs, and always the terrifying possibility of coming face-to-face with another vehicle.

At one-thirty in the afternoon, we reached the little stone bridge which leads into Hadjin.  Here, my husband had experienced his first pang, for the sigh beside the road read "Sayimbeyli."  At long last, he realized that the beloved Hadjin of his childhood had, in truth, ceased to exist and would live now only in his memory.

Only two other former residents of Hadjin had returned since the town was annihilated in 1920, and from them my husband obtained the name of the only Turk left from former days, still living in the area.  He asked some small boys, who had materialized from nowhere, the whereabouts of this man and, in no time at all, he was standing at our side - an older man in ill-fitting clothes and, on his head, the ever-present cap which seems to be the modern Turk;s trademark.

With the amenities over, the old-timer took us to the slopes of the mountain where once had stood the homes of 28,000 Armenians.  There was nothing in the few remaining ruins to indicate that a large community had once thrived there.  We walked along a strip of cobblestones which had once been the main thoroughfare.

At the top of a hill, stood the ruins of the mother church and nearby were those of the Catholic and Protestant churches.  On the opposite hill rose the walls of the American Mission School.  We made our way to Kirdet, where the life-giving waters of Hadjin gushed out of the rocks.  We wandered up a barren hill to where my husband's home had stood.  Standing beside him on that desolate spot, all the tales I had heard from him, throughout the years of our marriage, came to life and I began to relive the story of the boy and his town.

Hadjin owed its existence to its inaccessibility in the Taurus Mountains, slightly over a hundred miles northeast of Tarsus, the birthplace of Saint Paul.  Here, at an altitude of 3,500 feet, the town had been built on the banks of the river which came tumbling down from the heights, continuing through this deep, narrow valley on its headlong plunge toward the sea.  From the beginning, it had been called "the city that built in a well." 

During the first decade of the 20th century, Hadjin had a population of 28,000 Armenians and approximately thirty Turkish families, a unique situation in the heartland of Turkey, for in some miraculous way, this Armenian town of Hadjin had come down in an almost unbroken line from the ancient Kingdom of Armenia.

The Armenians, whom Lamartine called "The Swiss of the East," and Lory Bruce called "The British of Asia Minor," came from a Phrygio-Thracian tribe, probably from Thrace or Thessaly.  They crossed the Bosphorus and reached Armenia, a land as old as time itself, the land of Mount Ararat and Noah's Ark.  They brought with them their Greek-like customs and Aravan language, and they prospered in their new home by tilling the soil. 

Although much of this early history is lost in the hazy mist of antiquity, and later history is difficult to reconstruct, it is known that there were periods of great military activity and expansion, first in the sixth century before Christ when, under the leadership of great kings, the Armenian empire extended from the Mediterranean to the Caspian and from the Caucasus to Mesopotamia.

Inevitably, Armenia became a battleground for the conflicting powers of Rome, on the one hand, and Parthia and Persia, on the other, and by degrees lost its independence.

There is one event of great importance to note here.  In 301 A.D., under Saint Gregory the Illuminator, the Armenian king accepted Christianity and founded the National Apostolic Church of Armenia, years before Constantine saw the airborne cross.  Thus, Armenians were the pioneers in this massive religious revolution and Armenia the first country in the world to accept Christianity as the state religion.  They paid dearly for their faith, in battles fought to preserve Christianity.

The Persian fire worshippers were first to come.  Then, in 744, the Moslem Arabs appeared, initiating the oppression and massacres which would henceforth be the lot of the Armenians.  In 1080, the Seljuk Turks appeared and with their arrival, Armenia-proper lost what semblance of independence it had been allowed to enjoy during the preceding centuries.  As a result of this conquest, Armenians began a mass migration, some fleeing northward and others moving westward over the Taurus Range into Cilicia. 

In the opinion of the German historian, RItter, Hadjin was founded by those Armenians who, after the fall of Armenia, sought refuge in the high mountains and the inaccessible valleys of the Taurus Range.  Indeed, the Armenians of Hadjin spike a strange dialect which resembles that spoken far to the east, in what had, centuries before, been Armenia-proper.

It was in this town that the boy was born, in the spring of 1904.  The earliest memories he would carry with him through the years were happy ones.  Though poignant, he was enveloped in the euphoric haze of a childhood secure in the love of his family.  Of the agonies endured by his parents, of the massacres that raged when he was only five, he knew nothing.  His home and family were his world.

He would remember the tall mountain peaks surrounding his town, snow-covered the greater part of the year, and the blue broken skyline above.  He would remember the spur of the mountains extending into the valley, the town rambling up around it so that it was impossible for him to see the homes of friends and relatives on the other side of the slope.  He would remember the thousands of little beehive houses built, one against the other, and tier upon tier, perched and clinging to the side of the mountain, the flat roof of stone serving as the front yard and playground of the house above. 

The steep, narrow streets zigzagged heedlessly up and down.  He would see, in his mind's eye, the government buildings below, on the banks of the river, occupied by the few Turkish officials and their families.  And, he would remember with delight the family "baghtche," the vegetable garden and orchard beside the river, and the family vineyard high up on the opposite slope of the mountain.

Forced to leave his home and his town at the age of eleven, the boy would cherish, throughout a lifetime, the shadowy memory of his parents.  His father was tall, a handsome man with thick, black hair and a luxuriant moustache.  He had the kindest eyes the boy had ever seen and gentle ways about him.  In his company, the boy felt secure from the stern discipline of his mother. 

He owned a farm on a plateau a day's journey from the town, cultivated by a Turk who shared in the crops of wheat and barley and the other products which supplied the family's needs.  In addition, his father had a store, down in the Cilician Plain, and there, as a merchant, he lived rom October through May, leaing his family in the care of his wife.

If the boy would remember his father for his gentle and affectionate ways, the memory of his mother would be of a loving but stern disciplinarian who, in the absence of her husband, had to be both father and mother to her family of five children, for the boy soon had two brothers and two sisters.  Although her role was subordinate to that of the male and the older women of the family, especially the mother-in-law, she managed her household with a firm and capable hand.  Treasured family pictures of her show an attractive, modestly gowned young woman.  She was intelligent, and an able housewife, a good seamstress and needle woman, and a faithful and active member of the Protestant church.  In an age when women were expected to manage only their own homes, she transacted the business of the family farm, during her husband's absense.

Her father was one of the most prominent men in town, (Mardiros Gertmenian, better known as Hadji Agha), an influential leader of the community and of the Protestant church, which had been established with the help of the American missionaries in 1880, and o which he was a charter member.  He was a short, powerfully built man.  In his old age, when I came to know him in Pasadena, he was an impressive figure, reminding one, in his immaculate attire, white goatee and moustache, of Clemenceau.  In those days he came to be known as the Patriarch of the Hadjintsis - the people of Hadjin - and the great heritage he passed on influenced his grandchildren, especially the boy.

He was a man of substance and maintained two homes, one in Hadjin and the other in Adana, where he and his two sons had a mercantile establishment.  Unlike the men of his era and region, he had traveled extensively, and had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with his wife and eldest daughter, the boy's mother.  From then on, he was known as Hadji Agha, the title Hadji being conferred on all those who made a pilgrimage to Jersalem, and Agha, a title of distinction in Turkey.  The boy's mother, whose name was Miriam, (Mary), would be known as Hadji Miriam for the rest of her life. 

Hadji Agha had also gone to the Paris Exposition of 1900 and later to the United States to visit his youngest brother, (Gostantin "G.A." Gertmenian), who was a merchant there.  He had returned with the fantastic tales full of praise and admiration for the Land of Freedom.

One of the boy's earliest recollections was of the first Christmas after Hadji Agha's return from America.  As in all Armenian communities, Christmas in Hadjin was a hold festival.  With the coming of the American missionaries in 1865, some western customs had been added to the ancient rites. 

In the mysterious hush of Christmas Eve, long lines of children from the Protestant church, with lighted candles in their hands, moved like a procession of glowworms up and down the streets, now carpeted with snow.  The silent night echoes with their angelic voices singing the well-loved carols, imparting to those faithful believers, the illusion of a single shepherd's field of long ago and of the heavenly host.  Later, the sexton of the Mother Church, a lantern swinging in his hand, would zigzag his way across the mountain slopes, chanting the ancient hymns, pausing at intervals to announce the great news, "Avdeis - I bring you good tidings of great joy."  To many, the services of the church, on Christmas morning, were anti-climactic; the Christ Child had come in the miracle of the night before.

After church, families always gathered together, but on that first Yuletide after Hadji Agha's return from America, when the boy was about four years old, something new was added to the festivities.  In his grandfather's home, where his parents had taken him, there was the usual noise and clamor of his many cousins, the ritual greetings, the chatter of the uncles and aunts, and the bountiful feast spread upon the patriarchal board.  But, when the boy went to kiss his grandfather's hand, Hadji Agha was nowhere in sight.

Suddenly, there came a break in the conversation, a hush, and down the stairs with a "Ho-Ho-Ho!" came the strangest little man the boy had ever seen.  He had white eyebrows and a flowing white beard and moustache.  He wore a red and white suit and a red cap, and over his shoulder he carried a red bag.  The rumbling sounds from his lips and the strange clothes he wore terrified the boy, and in the twinkling of an eye he had dived in the direction of the settee and had hidden under it.

It was with great difficulty that his parents coaxed him out, and it was with great reluctance that he accepted the gift of fruit and candy, wrapped in red gauze, which the strange apparition presented him.  Later, when his grandfather made an appearance, he told the boy that in America their was a Santa Claus who always appeared at Christmas time and presented all good little boys and girls with gifts.

One of the marvels of the New World remained beyond the boy's comprehension, even after this marvel had been viewed, examined and its function explained.  A certain object which Hadgi Agha had brought with him from America and installed in a tiny room on the upper floor, reserved for his use alone, became a source of mystery and fascination, not only to the boy, who was a frequent visitor at the patriarchal home, but to his cousins who lived there. 

Every day, Hajhi Agha spent some time closeted in this small room, but as the door to it always remained locked, the boys had no way of satisfying their curiosity.  To ask their grandfather, point blank, concerning the contents of the room, would have been a serious breech of established custom.  So, they bided their time until, one day, forgetful for once, Hadji Agha left the door unlocked.

With what expectancy they tip-toed into that room, their eyes wide with excitement!  With what disappointment they beheld only a strange, box-like seat in the middle of the small room, a cover upon it set with hinges.  They peered around it and behind; they lifted the lid and gazed down the round hole; they stood there speculating on its function until their grandfather surprised them there, and at long ast unraveled the mystery for them.

In America, he said, every home had a bathroom, and in every bathroom there was this object called a "water closet."  In Hadjin, he said, with no running water in the homes, such a contraption would be impractical.  But, Hadji Agha was a most ingenious individual.  He had solved the problem by installing a pipe which went from the small room all the way down under the house, and he had the water hauled in containers from the fountain in the street, up to his own privileged "inner-sanctum."

The seasons brought their own delight to the boy.  In the spring the mountain slopes and meadows were a riot of color; blood red poppies sprinkled thickly across the grass, nodding asphodel, lavender candy turf and wild mignonette.  The glory of a flaming pomegranate tree in blossom, its flowers a deep scarlet, was a joy to behold.  The boy and his friends would tumble in these fields of color and roll down beside the little waterfalls bordering them.  Bu best of all, spring meant Easter and the joy and excitement of the Holy Season.

He loved the services in the church and the stories of Jesus' Passion.  He loved the musical cadence of the traditional greeting, "Christ is Risen from the dead," and the response, "Blessed be the Resurrection of Christ."  But, the high moment came after dinner when the battle of the Easter eggs began.

Each member of the family had a colored egg, and with it he tried to crack the eggs of all the others.  With what care and concentration each egg was selected from the basket, testing by quickly tapping it against one's teeth and listening to the "tick tick."  There was always one whose egg cracked all the rest and to him went the spoils of the battle, all the cracked eggs!  Later, the battle was carried on out in the streets.  This tradition is still a most cherished one in our family.

Summer and fall were the boy's favorite seasons, for then his father was home.  they would go to the farm and to the boy, who had never been out of Hadjin, the day's trip would seem like a journey across the world.  They would spend the night with their Turkish tenant farmer, sharing the family's one room.  The next day, his father would attend to the fields of grain, the walnut trees, and the livestock which provided them with their winter provisions.

At home, in the "baghtche," they would spread large sheets under the cherry and mulberry trees, while his father or a friend climbed the tre and knocked on the limbs with a long stick.  The fuit came showering down to be dried and put away for the winter.  Tomatoes were gathered, and okra and squash and eggplants to be prepared for preservation.  Grapes, too, were gathered and after feasting on the fresh fruit, they would spread the clusters on sheets and dry them for raisins which, mixed with walnuts, would help to while away the long winter nights.

With the departure of his father and the opening of school, the boy began the routine of winter, and now he was closer to his mother and her many tasks.  There was no running water in the homes and the boy would run, several times a day, with his mother to the fountain four streets below.  There she would fill the containers with the water that would be used for drinking, cooking and cleaning.

Many women took their clothes down to the river to wash.  The public baths were down there too.  They seemed like a palace to the boy, their marble floors and basins, the pools, and the steam with its indescribable smell, damp and clean, swirling around the disrobed figures and imparting to them a ghostlike appearance.

There was little marketing to be done, for almost all the provisions came from their own land and were kept in the store rooms.  But bread had to be baked, and this event was one of the high moments of the week for the boy.  His mother kneaded the dough in a wooden trough, either at home or at the community oven, and marked the loaves with her own special symbol.  every family had its own mark, a cross, a circle, a triangle.  For his services, the baker received a predetermined number of loaves.  Oh, the heavenly aroma of freshly baked bread! To the boy, there was no delicacy to compare with it.  He would gorge himself on the day the bread was baked, and on the following days, upon his return from school, his favorite snack would be the heel of the loaf, spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar.

Next to his home and that of his grandparents, the boy's earliest memories would center around the Protestant church.  The boy's paternal grandparents, too, were devout Protestants.  His father's younger brother, Samuel, was a minister of the Gospel, serving first in Turkey, later in the United States. 

So, the boy's home life included daily devotions, grace before meals and regular attendance at church on Sunday and midweek services when he sometimes accompanied his grandfather, walking in front of Hadji Agha with a lantern in his hand to light the old man's way through the dark and narrow streets.  Unlike the Mother Church, there were no benches here, the men sitting on one side and the women on the other.  The boy always sat on the floor, in front of his grandfather, and if his head nodded during the long service, his grandfather's knee, sternly nudging him , awakened him to the observance of the time and place.  This early religious training would illuminate his tortuous path through life in the years ahead.

Like all Armenians who cherish education, the boy's mother carefully supervised his schooling.  With what pride she saw him off every morning!  With what concern she admonished him when his reports were not as favorable as she had hoped they would be!  Especially would he remember the cold winter mornings when, after drinking the hot soup his mother had prepared for breakfast, he was put in the saddlebag, slung over the horse, and taken to school through streets deep in snow.  The four or five years spent in the parochial school would be the only formal education he would ever receive, for the gap created by the years of the Great Deportation and Exile would never be bridged.  His achievements, in later years, would be due to his own native intelligence, his determination and indomitable spirit.

\The boy was five years old in the spring of 1909, when the Adana massacres began.  Before it was over, the Turks had butchered 25,000 Armenians, among them his father's youngest brother.  When the news of the massacre and the violent death of the youngest son reached home, the boy's paternal grandfather suffered a heart attack and died.

How can one explain such deeds and events to those who, all their lives, have lived in a country where human life is highly valued, man's religious beliefs respected, and his dignity honored?  How can one describe to the Western mind what the german writer Franz Werfel called the  "Incomprehensible destiny of the Armenians"?  This is not a lesson in history!  I can only present a bare outline of what happened to the Armenians in Turkey.

Through the centuries, the Armenian Question had been the thorn in the Turkish flesh.  During the latter part of the nineteenth century, Abdul Hamid, the Bloody Sultan, had tried to solve it through wholesale massacres.  With the coming World War I, the Young Turks, who were now in control of the government, decided to end the Armenian Question once and for all. 

More sophisticated, better disciplined and organized than the rude forces of Abdul Hamid, they planned and carried out the first genocide of the century.  First, the leaders of the Armenian communities were snatched from their beds and taken away, never to be heard of again.  next, all able-bodied Armenians serving in the Turkish army's labor battalions were destroyed.

With the leaders and the fighting men eliminated, the Turks began the final phase of their program.  They called it "deportation," this mass uprooting of a people from their homes and their so-called re-settlement in the arid deserts of Syria.  Within a few months after the order had gone out of Constantinople, in April of 1915, a million and a half Armenians were on the march.  According to Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to Turkey, they could be seen winding in and out of every valley and climbing up the steep sides of every mountain.

During the first days of the march, they were robbed by the Turkish villagers and peasants, and then by the Kurds who, says Lord Bryce, comitted blood-chilling atrocities . . . "It depended on the whim of the moment," he said, "whether a Kurd cut a woman down or carried her away into the hills.  The babies were left on the ground or dashed against the stones."

It is pointless to describe or elaborate on these atrocities.  Such graphic descriptions are too horrible and offensive to man's sensibilities.  In a measure they defeat their purpose.  All I can say is this: Imagine the worst atrocity man can inflict upon man, the most degrading indignities that can be visited upon a woman, and still you will not began to plumb the depths of the suffering endured by the Armenians during these deportations.

In Hadjin, the order of deportation came in the spring of the year that will live forever in the memory of every Armenian, 1915.  The boy was eleven years old then, and to an eleven-year-old, even a cataclysmic act such as the Great deportation carried with it a certain measure of excitement.  He would remember that his mother cried when his father came home with the news that they must leave, but she also cried a short while when one of his little sisters had died. To him, the unusual activity in the town, the farewells to those who were leaving at once, had the aura of adventure.

The 28,000 Armenians of Hadjin left in groups, at intervals of a few days.  The boy's family started out with a horse and two donkeys, the absolute necessities packed in saddlebags, the foodstuffs in baskets.  His father and mother and the boy himself carried packs, while his two younger brothers and sister rode the animals.

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(Ermance's story continues, telling of Vahram's early life, and is well worth reading, but we leave it here, with its vivid picture of life in Hadjin.)