The Globe and Mail newspaper of Canada has devoted an article in memory of Knar Yemenidjian, the Armenian Genocide’s last witness living in Canada, who died this year.
“She was one of Canada’s last living links to an atrocity that occurred more than 100 years ago. Although Knar Yemenidjian, who died on Jan. 19, reached the age of 107, her childhood was marred by unfathomable violence that nearly ended her life,” reads the article.
“We’re all grieving with the family,” Armen Yeganian, Armenia’s ambassador to Canada, commented after Ms. Yemenidjian’s death. “But she was also a bigger symbol, I would imagine, for the Canadian Armenian community and for Armenian people in general.”
She was born Knar Bohjelian on Feb. 14, 1909, in Caesarea, a city in central Turkey now known as Kayseri.
Six-year-old Knar and her family survived the first wave of violence by seeking sanctuary in a barn. Ms. Yeminidjian’s niece Nazar Artinian told CTV News that the family survived only because Knar’s father had been warned by a Turkish friend that “all the Armenians were going to be killed.”
According to Ms. Artinian, the family friend insisted, “if you want to live, leave your house, take your family and go to this farm and hide yourselves there.” So the family hid among the livestock. They were besieged by typhoid and had barely enough food to sustain themselves, but they survived.
When the violence subsided, Knar and her family returned to find many of their neighbors murdered, and all the Armenian homes – including theirs – burned to the ground.
The family’s only hope for continued survival was converting to Islam. So, after they left the barn they adopted Turkish names and Muslim identities.
So they rebuilt the family home and lived under Muslim identities in Caesarea for 10 years.
Despite their conversion, the family lived in constant fear.
Joseph Yemenidjian, Ms. Yemenidjian’s son, told The Globe and Mail that as the genocide continued, Knar got older and began attracting potential suitors. During the family’s remaining years in Turkey, however, her father refused all requests for her hand. “My grandfather was desperate to leave Turkey,” he said.
Once a ceasefire was established, the family fled the region. They travelled to Ankara in 1928, then Istanbul. Eleven months later, they headed to Greece by boat before immigrating to Alexandria, Egypt.
Even after they settled into their new home, Knar’s father continued to reject the suitors who pressed for his permission to marry her. Joseph said that his grandfather insisted that she marry into a respectable family.
“My mother was 34 when she finally met my father,” Joseph said. He explained that his father believed that meeting Knar was fate. “He was already 41 and a goldsmith whose extended family was left destitute following the genocide. The welfare of his family fell upon his shoulders.” Joseph noted that his father worked around the clock.
The couple lived happily in Egypt until 1956, when the Armenian community in Egypt once again found itself the scapegoat as a result of the Suez Canal crisis.
Arab nationalism swept the country, inciting rage and intimidation that was directed at Armenians. As a consequence, Ms. Yemenidjian’s two sons, Joseph and Noubar, left for Canada and settled in Montreal.
And the Yemenidjian couple settled there permanently in 1971.
In 2004, Canada was among the first countries to officially recognize the genocide.
At the age of 106, Ms. Yemenidjian was among a handful of Armenian-Canadians who attended a special ceremony on Parliament Hill in 2015 to mark the centennial of the start of the genocide.
Knar Yemenidjian is survived by her two sons, Joseph and Noubar, three grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
