Boghos Khachadourian Collection – Dourgouti, Athens

Author: Ani Apikian 02/10/25 (Last modified 02/10/25) - Translator: Simon Beugekian. This page was prepared collaboratively with the “Armenika” periodical of Athens.

The history of the Khachadourian family was provided to us by Boghos Khachadourian. Boghos’s grandmother, Yeranouhi Khachadourian (nee Mgrdichian), and grandfather, Boghos Khachadourian (1867-1972), were born in the village of Yerebakan/Yerbakhan near Sis. The village was part of the kaza [subdistrict] of Feke (Vahka) and had a population of approximately 150 Armenian households. The Khachadourians had eight children. Boghos remembers the names of four of these children: Giragos, Arev, Haroutyun, and Ani.

In Yerbakhan, Boghos Khachadourian owned vast fields, which were not all cultivated. Huts were built in some of these fields, where travelers and passers-by could rest without having to pay. These fields were also home to stables and barns, where many animals were kept. Boghos personally supervised his fields, their cultivation, and his workers. Aside from all this, Boghos also owned a smithy on the square, which produced various agricultural implements and repaired various items. Boghos was called “agha” by his compatriots as a sign of respect.

In 1915, the massacres and deportations of Armenians began. Boghos’s family suffered a grim fate during these terrible events. One day, while Boghos was working in his fields, one of his workers, terrified, approached him and told him that two Turkish soldiers had entered his house and had killed almost his entire family and most of the Armenian workers. Boghos rushed home and witnessed the aftermath of this terrible massacre, and saw the two Turkish soldiers, after having slaughtered his family, sitting at his table, eating and drinking. Boghos killed the soldiers, put on their uniform, and disguised as a Turkish officer, reached Smyrna. He spent the rest of the First World War in this city, then emigrated to Greece in 1922.

Boghos’s wife, Yeranouhi, and daughter, Arev, had been able to escape via the fields and had somehow survived. However, Arev had died of starvation and exhaustion on the road afterwards. Yeranouhi, left alone, was able to make it back to Asia Minor, to the shores of the Aegean Sea.

After the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922, tens of thousands of Armenians found refuge in various regions of Greece. Approximately 1,225 Armenian refugees reached the region of Lavrio, in the southeast of Attica. Lavrio (Laurium), famous since antiquity for its silver and metal mines, was still a key Greek mining area in the early 20th century. Many Armenians who arrived in Lavrio settled in Kamariza, a community established to house the workers of the Lavrio mines. Among these refugees was Boghos, who tried to create a new life for himself in this small community of miners.

Boghos became a miner and worked at the mines for four-five years, under difficult conditions. One day, he learned that his wife, Yeranouhi, was alive and living in the Dourgouti neighborhood of Athens. Boghos abandoned his new life and immediately traveled to Athens, where he and his wife were reunited.

In Greece, Boghos and Yeranouhi had two children: Khachadour (Boghos’s father, born in 1926) and Arev (born in 1928). They became the best witnesses of this new life created after the horrors of the Genocide. Boghos owned a horse and a cart. He would fill the cart with vegetables and sell them in the streets of Dourgouti. In her turn, Yeranouhi kept chickens and goats in the courtyard of their family home, thanks to which Boghos could also sell milk and eggs.

In this initial stage of the family’s life as refugees, the Dourgouti neighborhood faced serious challenges – lack of sufficient food, lack of drinking water, unemployment, sanitary challenges, etc. Water was scarce, and the water distribution system was virtually nonexistent. There were few wells in the neighborhood, and the refugees were forced to buy water from companies that sold it. To alleviate the lack of water, Boghos dug a well, which all the residents of Dourgouti could use freely. This well became a Godsend for numerous Armenian families.

Later, with his savings, Boghos purchased land for his two children in the Nea Smyrni neighborhood. In 1960, Khachadour and Arev build their own private homes on this land.

During the years of the war, Greece was under Nazi German occupation. Following the example of many other Armenian youths from Dourgouti, Khachadour joined the Greek Resistance and was a member of the National Liberation Front (EAM). The well dug by Boghos was used by the Greek resistance as a hiding place for weapons. It was during this time that the Dourgouti neighborhood was repeatedly surrounded and raided by the Nazi army and Greek collaborators (bloko operations) to find and arrest members of the resistance.

During one of these operations, an informant with a covered face betrayed Khachadour as a member of the EAM. The Germans arrested Khachadour and took him to Elliniko Prison, where he was held under terrible conditions. Each day, Yeranouhi and Armen would bring food to him. Months later, Khachadour was able to escape with about 100 other prisoners. He returned to his home in Dourgouti and hid there.

At this time, hunger was widespread in Greece. Dourgouti was one of the areas that suffered most. The Khachadourian family was locked in a daily struggle to secure the bare minimum of nutrition they needed.

Khachadour’s life continued to be parlous. At the entrance of Sarkudinu Road in Dourgouti, German forces once again arrested him, alongside seven-eight others. The men were lined up to be shot by firing squad. Khachadour’s mother and Arev witnessed the scene. It is said that at that very moment, a German officer drove through the square on his motorcycle. He immediately stopped the execution and ordered the arrested men to be freed, stating that there was no more room in the cemeteries for bodies. The men were saved, and Khachadour once again escaped certain death.

In 1954, Khachadour married Manishag Chalukian. The couple had two sons, Boghos and Haroutyun; and one daughter, Ani.

Boghos received his higher education at the National Polytechnic Academy of Athens, specializing in mining and metallurgy. He then continued his studies in Belgium, specializing in jewelry and diamond setting. He became the owner of a large jewelry workshop in the Agios Dimitrios neighborhood of Athens. Boghos often participated in international symposia on mining. At present, he is on the African continent, where he continues to be engaged in the trade of diamonds.

Manishag’s parents, Simon and Yester, were also from Sis. Simon worked as a teacher in the city. The couple had six children: Haroutyun, Baydzar, Martha, Manishag, Dikran, and Kevork.

During the years of the Genocide, Kevork and Martha were blinded. After the Second World War, Baydzar joined the hosts of Armenians who repatriated to Armenia. In the photographs she sent back to her family members from Soviet Armenia, Manishag covertly expressed her dissatisfaction with the prevailing conditions in the country. Before her departure, she had told her loved ones that if she sent photographs of herself standing up, conditions were satisfactory in Armenia. But she sent back photographs that showed her lying on the ground…

Kevork and Dikran remained in Greece. Kevork was a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF). The two brothers operated a stand on Neraida Square in Kokkinia, selling small items – tobacco, snacks, and sweets (gum, sugar, and chocolate).