J. M. Hagopian, Told of Genocide, Dies at 97
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J. Michael Hagopian, a survivor of the Armenian genocide who came to the United States from Turkey after World War I, studied filmmaking and made a series of documentaries based on interviews with hundreds of other survivors, died on Dec. 10 at his home in Thousand Oaks, Calif. He was 97.
His daughter, Joanne, confirmed the death.
Historians say that as many as 1.5 million Armenians died in orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1918, amid the chaos of World War I and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey, which has always denied that there was a planned genocide, maintains that 300,000 Armenians and at least that many Turks were killed in civil strife after Armenians, backed by Russia, rose up against the Ottomans. To this day, uttering the words "Armenian genocide" can be grounds for prosecution in Turkey.
Mr. Hagopian made 12 documentaries about the genocide. In 1976, "The Forgotten Genocide," his sweeping account of the killings, received Emmy nominations for best documentary writing and production. Since 2000, Mr. Hagopian's Armenian Film Foundation, which he started in 1979, has produced three films about the genocide.
"The River Ran Red" recounts how three waves of Armenians were forced into the Syrian desert, where most of them died of starvation. "Germany and the Secret Genocide" posits that German officials provided cover for the Turks by telling the world that the Armenians had to be deported for their own safety.
Mr. Hagopian appeared in "Voices From the Lake," the first film in the trilogy, about the destruction of his hometown. In the closing scene he says, "I remember my mother saying, 'You can kill a people, but their voices will never die.'Â "
In that film, one survivor, Sam Kadorian, recalls: "The gendarmes came and picked up all the boys between 5 and 10 years old and threw them in a pile. After they had all the boys in this pile they started with swords and bayonets killing us boys, and one of the bayonets just hit me in the right cheek."
First Published December 19, 2010 11:50 pm
