Stories from My Father

By Matthew Grigoryan

“I have hope that these two proud halves of me, the knowledge of my family stories will help me when facing my own struggles in life.”

Matthew: I am of mixed heritage. My mother’s family is Jewish, and my father’s family is Armenian. These two cultures may seem very different, but they share a lot of similarities: food, for one. A Jewish celebration and an Armenian party both involve a lot of food. Both cultures also have a focus on family. While most of my grandparents are no longer alive, I feel that I know them well from all of the stories I hear. They also sadly share history of persecution. Most people know about the Holocaust and the death of six million Jews. Not as many people know about the Armenian genocide and the struggles Armenians faced when their country was controlled by the Soviet Union. My dad grew up in Armenia, and shared many of his stories with me.

Dad: I grew up in Soviet Armenia… was a kid in the 70s. And, my uncle, my mom's brother, who was an engineer… very much wanted to leave Soviet Union, but he couldn't, because there was no legal way of leaving the Soviet Union. So what my uncle decided to do was build an airplane, out of scratch, and they were gonna use that airplane to fly across the border into Turkey. And, when they decided to finally get the plane on the road to use it as a runway to get in and fly, it was really close to the border. A lot of trucks were going by with soldiers in them. So they had to push the plane down to get it out of sight. So they did that apparently several times, and…it was getting early morning hours, was starting to get light, and they finally got into the plane and tried to start it, and they had flooded the engine so they could not fly it anymore. So they had to get out and get the plane out of sight. They had nowhere to hide it, because they had tore down the shack that they had built it in very close to the border. And they pushed it and it landed in this gorge on its nose. They were intending on taking the plane apart, and by the time they got back to where they had hid in the plane in this gorge, there were Soviet army soldiers everywhere, the trucks and their machine guns out, and so then… they fled. The authorities, KGB, soon eventually found out who they were. They were after them. So, they had come to our house, five KGB agents, at one point, and…to talk to my parents. Then afterwards, me and my brother were playing around under the table, and, um, somehow we knocked something loose under the table. And, we at first thought, oh geez, we broke the table, we're going to be in serious trouble. And so both of us were scrambling trying to figure out how to fix it and…couldn't really figure out what part it was, where it went. And then eventually we told our parents and we're, we thought we were going to be in trouble because we broke the dining room table. And… my parents took one look at what it was. The KGB had bugged our house. So, literally within a few minutes, the KGB stormed the house again and they demanded their, um, listening device back. So, he eventually was caught, and he and his friends, all three of them, were sent to a Siberian Gulag. So that was a… a very much a Soviet state experience.

Matthew:strong> Hearing the hardships of my dad's childhood and knowing the history of my Jewish family makes me feel proud of my resilient ancestors. I have hope that these two proud halves of me, the knowledge of my family stories will help me when facing my own struggles in life.