here - Armenian Weekly

HERITAGE
4
4 A visitor to the Holy Sepulchre Church in Jerusalem runs
his hand across the crosses that pilgrims have engraved
on a wall in the Armenian section of the church. Thousands
of Armenian refugees arrived in Jerusalem after
surviving the deportations from Ottoman Turkey in 1915.
5 Snow blankets the countryside along a road between Van
and Dogubayazit, Turkey, close to the border with presentday
Armenia. After the deportation decree of April 24,
1915, almost all of the Armenian communities in the
area were wiped out.
6. A small child plays in the rubble of Sancak (Sanjak) camp
in the Bourj Hamoud district of Beirut, Lebanon. Sancak
was originally an Armenian refugee camp and is now a
very poor neighborhood. In 2008, the municipality demolished
a part of the camp in hopes of eventually building a
modern shopping and apartment building in its place.
7. Children play in the courtyard of the old Ihlasiye
Madresesi, or religious school, in Bitlis, Turkey. Bitlis’s
population was half Armenian before 1915, when the
Russians advanced on the town and the Ottoman Turks
emptied it of Armenians, most of whom were massacred.
8. Tables and chairs are set up before the start of an
Armenian celebration in Vakifli, Turkey. In 1915, about
5,000 Armenian inhabitants of Vakifli and 6 other nearby
villages defended themselves and resisted Ottoman
troops until they were rescued by a French naval ship
and taken to Egypt. It was only many years later that
some of their relatives returned to Vakifli to live again.
5 6
7
8
www.armenianweekly.com
APRIL 2013 | THE ARMENIAN WEEKLY | 23