Good day, dear Take in Mind readers! Very soon, on April 8 and 24, respectively, people in many countries will honor the Holocaust Remembrance Day (also known as the “Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day”) of the Jewish People during World War II and the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire.
We join millions of families who have lost their loved ones. Yes, years have passed, several generations have already grown, but we believe that the memory of those terrible events and each one of the millions of victims who were killed will be carefully preserved and passed on to our children and grandchildren. May your memory be a blessing, our dear ones!
The study of the history of genocides is often limited to the juxtaposition of executioners and victims. However, during these events, there were those who opposed the criminals and collaborators, who resolutely opposed indifference and hostility, those who rescued the persecuted and helped them. It is very sad to note that they constituted only a small part of a community that was largely indifferent to the tragedy.
Of course, we are talking about The Righteous Among the Nations, who, despite real threats to their freedom and life, saved others exclusively due to their kind and just hearts. Is it even possible to find the right words to thank these noblest people?
It is very possible that thanks to these Righteous, we, the descendants, have preserved our faith in humanity, in real responsiveness and compassion. It is very possible that thanks to these Righteous, we retain the hope that real and disinterested friendship between representatives of different peoples is not a utopian invention, but a reality and the basis for our common future.
That is why, for us, it is a great honor to present several stories about unlimited humanity and brotherhood. With love, sincere gratitude, and appreciation!
Dr. Harutyun Khachatryan
In June 1941, Iosip Kogan, an officer of the Red Army, waited for the train at the railway station of Moscow on his way to the frontline. While waiting, Iosip began a conversation with another officer, a military physician of Armenian origin by the name of Harutyun Khachatryan. Khachatryan thought at first that Iosip too was an Armenian, but Iosip told him that he was a Jew. The two parted, without knowing that their paths would soon cross again.
On August 22, 1941, during the battle near Velikiye Luki, Kogan was badly wounded and taken as a prisoner by the Germans. His condition soon deteriorated making him unable to move. It was in this desperate situation that Dr. Khachatryan, who was in the same POW camp, found him. The doctor treated his wounds. Seeing that the Germans were separating the Jewish POWs from the others, Dr. Khachatryan took Iosip’s papers and changed his name to Michail Markosyan.
He even taught Iosip some basic words in Armenian, thus saving him from being killed together with the other Jews. In August 1942, the Armenian prisoners were taken to another camp, where all prisoners were required to undergo a medical examination. Fearing that the physicians would realize that Iosip was circumcised, Khachatryan arranged for Iosip to change places with another prisoner, thus saving his life once more.
In February 1943, rumors spread in the camp that a Jew was hiding among the prisoners. Not wanting to take the risk of being discovered, Iosip escaped and managed to join a partisan group. In August 1944 the area was liberated and Iosip and his comrades joined the Red Army. By the time the war ended, Iosip’s unit had reached Prague. In the years after the war, Iosip never forgot his rescuer and found him after a long search. Unfortunately, they were able to meet personally only in 1983, shortly before Khachatryan’s death. In 2012 Kogan’s memoir was sent to Yad Vashem, and on April 2, 2013, Yad Vashem recognized Harutyun Khachatryan as Righteous Among the Nations.
From the collection of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
Haji Khalil
This story is part of the family history of K. M. Greg Sarkissian. In 1915, the family lived in Urfa. This story was first told publicly at the “Problems of Genocide” international conference in Yerevan in 1995:
“…A Turkish businessman, Haji Khalil, had been my (K. M. Greg Sarkissian’s) grandfather’s business partner, and had promised to care for his family in case of misfortune. When a disaster greater than anything either of them could have imagined struck, he kept his promise by hiding our family in the upper storey of his house for a year.
The logistics involved were extremely burdensome. Including my grandmother’s niece, there were seven people, hiding. Food for seven extra mouths had to be purchased, prepared and carried up undetected once a night and had to suffice until the next night. Khalil’s consideration was such that he even arranged for his two wives and the servants to be absent from the house once a week so that my grandmother and her family could bathe.
When two of the children died, he buried them in secret. He took tremendous risks and his situation was precarious, because his servants knew what he was doing. Had he been caught sheltering Armenians, he would almost certainly have shared their fate. Luckily, his household was loyal and discreet, and so I (K. M. Greg Sarkissian) was one of the few children of my generation and neighborhood to grow up with uncles and aunts, all of whom remember the Turk Haji Khalil. Every night, my mother used to remember him in her prayers to the end of her life—may God bless his soul.”
From George N. Shirinian “Turks Who Saved Armenians: Righteous Muslims during the Armenian Genocide,” Genocide Studies International 9, 2 (Fall 2015): 208–227
Heinz and Josephine Odenthal, Sibylla Cronenberg and Katharina Bayerwaltes
Salomon and Henriette Jacoby (aged 77 and 72) and their widowed daughter Hildegard lived in Cologne, where the family owned a department store called “Kaufhaus Jacoby.” In 1939, the store was confiscated by the authorities in the so-called “Aryanization” of Jewish property, leaving the Jewish family without an income. At the end of 1941 and beginning of 1942, all 7,000 Jews in Cologne and those in the surrounding area had been arrested and held at the Müngersdorf camp, established at Fort V, a former prison. From there, they were deported to the east. Were it not for the Jacobys’ neighbors, Heinz and Josephine Odenthal would have been deported as well.
The Odenthals were a Catholic family that lived in the same building as the Jacobys. Heinz Odenthal was a teacher and an opponent of the occupying regime. When his Jewish neighbors began to be taken away, he decided to act. Since all the neighbors knew the Jacobys, he took them to a relative in Bonn, 72-year-old Sibylla Cronenberg. They were introduced to Cronenberg’s neighbors as relatives whose house in Cologne had been destroyed by Allied bombs. The Odenthals visited “their relatives,” and brought them food and ration cards. In May 1943, Cronenberg became sick and had to be hospitalized. The Jacobys then moved to the house of 29-year-old Katharina Bayerwaltes, whose husband was a soldier at the Russian front.
Bayerwaltes worked at an industrial plant in Bonn, and placed an apartment in her building at the disposal of the Jacobys. Although the subject was never brought up, she suspected that the couple was Jewish. Nevertheless, she shared the secret with nobody, not even her husband when he came on leave. In December 1943, Henriette Jacoby fell down the staircase. When Bayerwaltes offered to call a doctor, the elderly woman began to cry and begged her not to call anyone, and told her that she, her husband, and daughter were actually Jews in hiding. Bayerwaltes hugged her, and assured her she had nothing to fear. She admitted that she had guessed they were Jews. She took care of the wounded woman and attended to all the Jewish family’s needs, despite also having to care for her own infant.
In October-December 1944, Bonn was heavily bombed. Bayerwaltes’ husband, who was home on leave, decided to take his family out of danger and brought them to his parent’s home in Schlegeshaid. The Jacobys stayed at the house, even after they left. The Odenthals continued to check on the Jacobys and bring them food and other items. But Bayerwaltes constantly worried that if the house were to be bombed, the Jacobys would be discovered, and in February 1945 she decided to return home. When Bonn was liberated by the American forces in March 1945, the Jacoby family decided not to return to Cologne, and moved instead to nearby Bad Godesberg.
The elderly couple passed away shortly after the end of the war in 1945 and 1946. Hildegard Jacoby remained in contact with their rescuers until she died in 1980. On May 25, 2005, Yad Vashem recognized Heinz and Josephine Odenthal, Sibylla Cronenberg, and Katharina Bayerwaltes as Righteous Among the Nations.
From the collection of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
Ottoman Officials Who Refused to Act against the Armenians
The number of Ottoman government or military officials who refused to obey the orders to deport and massacre the Armenians or saved Armenians in other ways is remarkable. Such officials were usually dismissed from office and, in more tragic cases, were murdered.
Mustafa Bey Azizoğlu was the Mayor of the town Malatya. He objected to the deportation measures, helped and protected many Armenian families. He was killed by his own son, a militant member of the Union and Progress Committee who considered him a traitor.
Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide. A Complete History, London: I. B. Tauris, 2011, pp. 411-412.
The names of such people as Bedri Nuri (lieutenant governor of Müntefak), Mehmet Celal Bey (governor-general of Aleppo and Konya), Ferit (governor-general of Basra), Ali Suat Bey (district governor [mutasarrıf] of Deir es Zor), Hüseyin Nesimi (mayor of Lice), Hasan Mazhar Bey (governor-general of Ankara), Reşid Paşa (governor-general of Kastamonu), Şabit (deputy prefect of Beşiri), Faik Ali Bey (Ozansoy) (district governor of Kütahya), Cemal Bey (district governor of Yozgat), and others who tried to alleviate the suffering of the Armenians deserve to be remembered today.
It is even reported that Ahmed Rıza, a member of the Committee for Union and Progress (Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti), dared protest against the massacre of the Armenians and was instantly imprisoned (though saved thanks to the intervention of others) and that Hayri Bey, the sheikh ul-Islam, “had the temerity to criticize his colleagues’ policy of massacre of the Armenians.” For this and other disagreements with the government, he was arrested, tried in civil court, and executed.
Based on George N. Shirinian “Turks Who Saved Armenians: Righteous Muslims during the Armenian Genocide,” Genocide Studies International 9, 2 (Fall 2015): 208–227
May the memory of these fearless and noble people be a blessing!