No Labels: A Memoir By

By Monica Gurdjian

Monica Gurdjian was born in Bucharest, Romania, where her earliest memories were of a brutal and oppressive communist regime. Her multicultural and multi-faith family - her mother, was an Austrian operetta singer of Jewish descent and her father, a Roman Orthodox Armenian surgeon - fled to Vienna in 1960, hoping for a better life. Regrettably, the familys first year of freedom was informed by prejudice and lack of employment opportunities and they eventually made their way to Iran, where they found acceptance and a true home for 13 years until they immigrated to Canada.

Monica saw herself as a descendant of talented and brave individuals - both her grandfathers had risked their lives to shield Jewish families from the Nazis. Neither she nor her family were defined by cultural or religious markers. They just happened to be Jewish, Christians, Armenians, Romanians and Austrians. As Monica navigated lifes peaks and valleys, flavoured by a kaleidoscope of cultures and religions, she learned to embrace her label-less identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Sep 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781480821408

Monica Gurdjian

Monica Gurdjian lived in Romania, Austria and Iran before settling in Canada. She worked for the United Nations, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, conducted seminars on Middle Eastern topics for Canadian Government departments and private sector companies and managed her own international management consulting firm. Monica speaks five languages and holds a third degree Black Belt in karate. She and her husband enjoy their retirement and with their pit bull, Tiger, divide their time between Victoria, British Columbia and Tucson, Arizona.

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NO LABELS

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a memoir by

MONICA GURDJIAN

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Copyright © 2015 Monica Body.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-2139-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-2138-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-2140-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015948846

Archway Publishing rev. date: 8/26/2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Why write a book?

THE PAVELS

THE GURDJIANS

FASCISM IN ROMANIA AND WORLD WAR II

NEW BEGINNINGS

A COMMUNIST EXPERIENCE

EXODUS

IRAN

FROM MITTELEUROPA TO THE MIDDLE EAST

A NEW LIFE

THE SEARCH FOR LABELS

SETTLING IN

GOD! SHAH! COUNTRY!

THE WHITE REVOLUTION – FORESHADOWING

TEENAGER WITHOUT A CAUSE

MOVING ON?

AN ISLAND OF STABILITY

NEW EXPERIENCES

CANADA

GAME CHANGER

MONTREAL

RETURN TO IRAN

NEW REALITIES

CAREER DREAMS

TOM

TRANSFORMATION – PART I

ANTHONY

A DREAM JOB?

ISSUES AND DETAILS

TRANSFORMATION – PART II

NEW BEGINNINGS – AGAIN

SO, WHAT DID YOU LEARN?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"All the people like us are WE,

and everyone else is THEY."

R. KIPLING

"I may be no better,

but at least I am different."

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

For Tom and Anthony

In memory of my parents, with gratitude for their love, wisdom and guidance, and Mania, my guardian angel and protector.

preface

WHY WRITE A BOOK?

A utobiographies are interesting when they are written (or ghost written) by individuals, who have captured our imagination, who have contributed, for better or worse, to a national or international discourse, or who reflect a particular Zeitgeist. Beyond that, who cares? So why did I write a memoir? Because I believe that a story about tolerance, strength and resilience within an overarching theme of a century of politics, culture and religion can be inspiring.

The initial impetus came from a simple question I seem to provoke when meeting people: where are you from? I always hesitate with the response. How much detail do I provide? Do they really want to know? Are they just being polite? Do I care enough to share? Over the past several decades my response was Canada, my adoptive country, where I have lived for almost 40 years. Not good enough. Because of my accent, there is usually a follow up: yes, but before that? So now what? Romania and Austria sound safe and boring, Iran usually opens up a whole new line of questions, including whether I am Moslem, whether I wore the chador… (no and yes).

The more important reason for writing this book, however, is my son, Anthony.

Anthony was born and raised in Canada and lives in the United States. Other than his parents, he has no family. He never met his maternal grandparents and is the only child of only children. Anthony was raised with European traditions, frequent travels to Europe and tales about his family’s history. While he seems to appreciate his heritage, he is essentially a child of North America, enriched by his heritage but not informed by it. Anthony will have his own narrative, specific to his own experiences and points of reference, and hopefully his family’s history will echo in it. We raised him to grow wings and fly. This book represents his roots.

And hopefully, the lessons l learned from my experiences can provide him with some insight on how to live life on his terms.

No Labels, as the reader will quickly come to realize, is not a scholarly document. A bibliography is attached solely for the purpose of listing the sources I consulted for historic accuracy and relevancy.

Writing this book took me on a private voyage. I relived the peaks and valleys and confirmed that the right lessons had been learned and applied. To paraphrase Aeschylus "I’m not afraid of storms, because I have learned how to sail my ship"

1

THE PAVELS

M y mother’s mother, Elizabeth Liesl Waldmann, was born into a Viennese Jewish home in 1896. Under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Jews had acculturated into German culture and embraced their ethnicity and culture equally. My grandmother’s family self-identified as Austrians first and Jews second. Liesl’s father had died when she was ten and her mother raised her and her two younger brothers, with help from an uncle, a Rabbi. The family lived in middle upper class comfort and enjoyed frequent travel to European spas, opera performances, and active participation in Viennese café society. Liesl was a willful and stubborn teenager, who would shock her family and their conservative and bourgeois friends with her unbridled delight in young men. The Rabbi, in an attempt to focus his niece’s interests on more socially acceptable activities, decided on music lessons. For this, he turned to a young violinist and junior conductor at the Vienna State Opera, George Pavel. George, a gentile, was born in the Banat, an eastern province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A graduate of the Vienna Conservatory, George supplemented his income by offering private violin lessons to affluent Viennese families. George was handsome and charismatic and Liesl quickly fell for her teacher. George, impressed with his young student’s joie de vivre and spunk, was equally attracted and soon their relationship developed to include more than violin lessons. The Waldmann family was not concerned that George was not Jewish. Liesl had found a socially acceptable suitor, who could support her and perhaps even moderate her behaviour. For his part, George did not care that he married into a Jewish family. George’s three sisters, Friedl, Coca and Mimi, however, were less enthusiastic. Friedl and Coca, accomplished musicians in their own right, felt that their brother’s marriage to a Jew had significantly lowered his prestige in class-conscious Vienna. They refused to accept Liesl and as a result, the relationship between the Waldmanns and the Pavel sisters remained reserved and strained.

Liesl and George were married in 1913, when Liesl was 17 years old. At the wedding, Liesl’s uncle, the Rabbi, and a Romanian orthodox priest from the Banat officiated jointly. Liesl and George considered themselves Austrians, their identities were informed by their Germanic culture not their religion.

The outbreak of World War I brought fundamental changes to Europe and transformed the lives of my grandparents. The root cause of the conflict was the imperialistic ambitions of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, British and Ottoman Empires, as well as France and Italy. In order to protect their global interests and continue their territorial expansions, the colonial powers entered into mutually beneficial alliances and treaties. However, ruling over a myriad of ethnicities and nationalities, whose quest for independence and statehood was supported by local anarchist and terrorist groups, proved to be unsustainable. On June 28, 1914, a Serbian anarchist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, in Sarajevo.

The Empire invoked alliances that had been established for political advantage over the previous decades and within weeks all major powers were at war.

The War ended in 1918 and subsequently, the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 dismantled the German, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian Empires and gave effect to the creation of several sovereign nations in the Balkans. In 1920, the Treaty of Trianon awarded large tracts of the Austro Hungarian Empire to Romania. The Banat, which had been part of the Hapsburg Empire since the 18th century and had been colonized by German settlers, the Donauschwaben, became a Romanian province and George Pavel found himself transformed into a Romanian subject. No longer an Austrian citizen, George was required to move home to Romania with his wife and infant daughter, Dita. While this move challenged their self-image and identity as cosmopolitan Austrians, it had a positive impact on George’s career. He rose to prominence as a first violinist and then later as a conductor at various opera houses in Arat, Cluj and Cernowitz, small but culturally prominent towns in Romania.

In 1926, my grandparents made Timisoara in Transylvania their permanent home. George was an accomplished and popular musician and eventually became principal conductor of the Filarmonica Banatul Timisoara, a position he held until his death in 1947. Timisoara had a large ethnic Hungarian population and had been part of Hungary until the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. Timisoara’s Hungarian population had a history of uneasy coexistence with the Romanians. Hungarians made up a large proportion of the professional class, including wealthy industrialists. They considered Romanians provincial, uneducated and unsophisticated and treated them with distain. Romanians, in turn, regarded Hungarians as arrogant and elitist. These perceptions and prejudices survived two World Wars, communism and both countries’ entry into the European Union. Timisoara was also home to Ottomans, Serbs, Gypsies, Austrians, Armenians, and Germans. George and Liesl enjoyed the rich cultural life, which flowed from this cosmopolitan environment and Liesl basked in the social status, which came with George’s position as the Opera’s conductor.

A handsome and charming man and a prominent member of the cultural elite of Timisoara, George was very popular with the female members of his orchestra, many of whom did not hesitate to act on their setinments. For his part, George happily spread his affections among the female musicians and other groupies, much to the displeasure of his wife. Liesl was rebellious and headstrong. Determined to frustrate her husband’s wandering eye and indifferent to conventional norms or decorum, she became a constant presence at rehearsals and recitals and accompanied her husband on European tours. But she also encouraged male attention in retaliation for George’s affairs. Eventually the situation turned into a game, which both parties seemed to enjoy, and which, according to my mother, appeared to keep their marriage exciting and strong.

Predictably, the level of effort required to maintain this lifestyle, left Liesl with little time for her infant daughter. She needed to find permanent and reliable childcare for my mother. The search led her to a young woman, Maria Mania Peter from Cernowitz. Cernowitz, the capital of Bukovina, was incorporated by the Austrians into Galicia in the 18th century. From 1918-1945 it became part of Romania and after 1945, the USSR permanently integrated the city into the Ukraine. Like my grandfather, Mania was born in one country and found herself in another as a result of World War I. Mania, born in 1900, was the result of a brief dalliance between a German soldier and a Polish teenager, who committed suicide after her baby was born. The girl’s parents dropped the baby off at the local orphanage, run by the Catholic Church, and never returned. For the next 17 years, until she ran away, Mania was abused and mistreated by the nuns, in whose care she had been entrusted. Priests, who held mass at the orphanage, would arrange for better food in return for sexual favours. Paradoxically, while this experience left Mania with bitterness and contempt for the hypocrisy of priests and nuns, she remained a devout Catholic, who prayed daily and whose belief in God remained unshaken. Until my grandmother hired her, Mania supported herself by working as a domestic helper and cook. Mania was my grandmother’s ideal nanny. Only 16 years older than my mother and deprived of a family of her own, she showered her ward with love and affection. Mania became our family’s guardian angel and by the time she died in Ottawa, Canada at the age of 96, Mania had taken care of three generations: my mother, me and my son.

Mania’s wisdom and pragmatism was born out of her early experiences and reflected the social realities of the early 20th century. I asked her once why she never married. Her response: I have no family, no relatives, nobody. What is to stop a husband from abusing me, kicking me out and leaving me with nothing? Nobody will come to my defense or take care of me. Being independent, I am not accountable to anyone and do not depend on charity.

True to her word, Mania never married, although she had many friends, both male and female. Her social life included movies, the opera and concerts. She led her life on her own terms, which was quite scandalous at that time. Oblivious to what people thought of her, Mania’s main constant was her fierce and protective love for my mother and later for me and my son. Mania was only briefly separated from her ward. In 1934, at the age of 18, my mother was accepted at the Vienna Conservatory, where she was graduated as a concert pianist and trained as an operetta singer. She lived in Vienna with her maternal grandmother until 1938, when she returned to Timisoara in the wake of Austria’s Anschluss with Germany. The Anschluss was Austria’s annexation and absorption into Germany and reflected Hitler’s plan to unify German populations under one nation. Though Austria and Germany were independent states, they shared a common history, ethnicity and language.

My mother and her cousin Erich had gone to watch Hitler’s triumphant march into Vienna. Both were dismayed by the cheering and the welcome he received from the jubilant Austrians. My mother concluded that she no longer wanted to pursue her career in Austria and returned to Timisoara. George was delighted that his daughter had graduated from the Conservatory in Vienna, but did not believe that a career as concert pianist and operetta singer provided sustainable financial security. George and Liesl had raised Dita to be independent and not assume that she would be taken care of financially by a husband. While justifiably proud of his daughter, George now insisted that she complement her professional credentials with a teaching certificate. Dita, ever the obedient daughter, returned to her studies and two years later received her diploma as a music teacher.

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My grandfather, George Pavel, conducting his orchestra in Timisoara, Romania

2

THE GURDJIANS

M y father, Cary, (Caruso) was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1921. His mother, Nevart, came from a prominent Armenian family, which placed great importance on and was proud of their labels – middle upper class, Armenian, Christian, wealthy. These labels defined their place in a society, which was predominantly Moslem. During that period, Turkish society was divided into a minority Armenian Christian bourgeoisie and the majority Moslem population. The Armenians were excellent businessmen and their economic leverage exceeded that of the Turks, who gravitated towards prestigious but low paying government positions. My grandfather Ardashess came from a less privileged background. Shrewd and a cynical judge of character, his labels only mattered in so far as they could bring him financial advantages. Gregarious, erudite and charming, Ardashess’ talents lay in manipulating people. Popular with both Turks and Armenians, he made his living by arranging deals, which provided him with income and commissions. He organized high-stakes backgammon and roulette tournaments and facilitated introductions between business partners – Turkish and Armenian – who would subsequently reward him for his services. Though considered socially inferior by the insular Armenian community, his successes were sufficiently persuasive to convince my grandmother’s family that he was a suitable match for their pampered daughter.

When the Ottoman Empire entered World War I as an ally of the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary), it launched an unsuccessful attack against Russia in the hope of capturing oil-rich Baku on the Caspian Sea. The campaign failed and blame fell on the Armenians for siding with and supporting the Christian Russians. Subsequently, the Ottoman government passed restrictive laws, aimed to disenfranchise the Christian Armenians. This was followed by forced deportations and confiscation of properties. Armenians were driven from their homes and herded towards the Syrian border. Described as a resettlement program, the deportees were made to walk through the desert without food or drink. There they were routinely attacked by bandits and killed along the deportation routes. Those who survived starvation and attacks, and reached northern Syria, were shipped to concentration camps. By 1923, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, one million Armenians, which included the families of my grandparents, had been exterminated in the holocaust.

My grandparents escaped the holocaust. Forewarned by a Turkish government official, who had benefited financially from a deal brokered by Ardashess, my grandparents and their infant son fled to neighbouring Iran, a country, whose language they did not speak and whose religion they did not share. That notwithstanding, within ten years after their arrival in Tehran, my grandfather had established a network of Iranian contacts and arranged deals between and among different social and ethnic groups. His ability to charm people in several languages (Armenian, Turkish, Farsi, German and French) brought him to the attention of the Foreign Ministry and in 1932 he was appointed to the position of General Consul of Iran to Bucharest, a position he held for about 18 years!

While my grandfather thrived on challenges, Nevart had a difficult time accepting her changed circumstances. She had lost her family and wealth during the holocaust. The transition from proud socialite to refugee was devastating. Although her husband’s position as Iranian Consul in Bucharest somewhat restored her sense of social superiority and self-image, she never failed to lament her fate and express her resentment.

Grandfather Pavel and Grandfather Gurdjian were charming and socially prominent men. Women, who were drawn to them, found both men receptive. Unlike Liesl, however, Nevart did not consider her husband’s infidelities a game. Nevart came from a rigid and formal Armenian family, which took social standing and decorum seriously. Young women from prominent families were expected to behave with dignity. Nevart’s response to Ardashess’ philandering was to withdraw into silent disapproval. She wore her cloak of martyrdom and victimization so well, that it eventually became part of her persona. Still, the marriage was not uncivilized. Ardashess treated Nevart with extraordinary politeness and respect, always ensuring that his activities would not cause his wife public humiliation.

My father, who had been born in Istanbul, was raised and educated in Romania. After graduating from the German School in Bucharest, he attended the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bucharest and after graduation, worked at that Institution’s teaching hospital. Romanian doctors had developed a well-deserved reputation for the accuracy of their diagnostics and my father enjoyed his profession and the ability to help others. When his parents returned to Iran in 1950, he remained in Bucharest. He had spent most of his life in Romania, and felt no affinity for his Armenian roots or Iran.

3

FASCISM IN ROMANIA AND WORLD WAR II

T he rise of fascism in Romania was the result of the political, economic, and ideological instability that informed European affairs in the interwar period. The Treaty of Versailles and other treaties, which determined the future of Europe, planted the seeds for the next major conflict. The political instability in various European countries gave rise to disaffected and discontented populations.

Then the crash of the New York Stock market in 1929 and the Great Depression resulted in economic crisis. Romania, an agrarian country, was hard hit by the collapse of grain prices, which had a catastrophic impact on the rural population. Peasants could no longer pay the rent on their land. They left their villages and migrated into the cities in search of work. Rootless and alienated, they were drawn to the Legion of the Archangel Michael, aka the Iron Guard. The Iron Guard, violent, anti-Semitic and nationalistic, called for war against the Jews, who were blamed for the economic crisis, a message which resonated with unemployed farmers, workers and intellectuals. Unlike other fascist movements in Europe, the Iron Guard’s ideology incorporated religious principles, based on Romanian Orthodox Church doctrine. Since more than half of the rural population was illiterate, the Iron Guard relied on music and oral history, which glorified Romania’s past and linked Romania’s future to fascism. Members of the Iron Guard were able to win a majority in Parliament and by 1940 they had become the most powerful faction in the Romanian Government.

In September 1940, General Ion Antonescu, Romania’s Prime Minister, convinced King Carol to suspend the Constitution, dissolve Parliament, and give Antonescu full powers. Then Antonescu forced the king to resign. The new government, dominated by the Iron Guard, introduced new laws, inspired by the Nuremberg Laws in Germany, aimed at the systemic eradication of the Jewish population of Romania.

By the time, Romania joined WW II on the side of Germany in June 1941, atrocities against Jews had become a common occurrence. Romanians took to this task with zeal. No country, with the exception of Germany, had massacred Jews on such a large scale.  Unlike the Nazis, however, who had institutionalized the eradication of their Jewish population through an infrastructure of transportation networks and concentration camps, the Romanians preferred more ad hoc methods, such as suffocation, starvation, and hanging.

In October 2004, the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, chaired by Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize laureate Eli Wiesel, reported that between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews out of a population of about 760,000 were murdered as a result of the deliberate policies of Romanian civilian and military authorities. In addition, 132,000 Romanian Jews were killed by the pro-Nazi Hungarian authorities in Transylvania.

Romania joined the war on the side of Germany in part in the hope that it would be rewarded with northern Transylvania, which had been given to Hungary after World War I. For Hitler, who was by then already considering a confrontation with the USSR, Romania was an attractive ally. The country was oil-rich and could, by virtue of its location, secure Germany’s southern flank during a conflict with the Soviet Union.

Germany benefited from its alliance with Romania. Romania mustered more combat troops for the Nazi war effort than all of Germany’s other allies combined. Romania also supplied Germany with oil, grain, and industrial products. By 1944, however, the relationship had turned sour. The Germans refused to pay for the goods and Romania was no longer sure that it had joined the winning party. In 1944, the Romanians switched sides, joined the Allies and soon were fighting alongside the USSR against Germany.

George Pavel had become an institution in Timisoara and his performances always played to a full house. His fluent German, tinged with a lilting Austrian accent, reassured the Nazis, stationed in Transylvania. He was popular and respected and they frequently attended his concerts. But George also had a Jewish wife and many members of his orchestra were Jewish. In an effort to inculcate them, George ingratiated himself with the German leadership. He succeed to advocate for the safety of the Jewish members of his orchestra by convincing the German and Romanian authorities that he could not put on performances with a decimated cast. My mother also recalled that their home became a sanctuary for Jewish musicians, who needed a refuge during the sporadic Nazi raids. Elizabeth did not approve of George’s generosity. Her brother Leo and his wife had been beaten to death by a group of Nazi Hitlerjugend in Vienna; other relatives had perished in Dachau. Elizabeth did not think she needed any more attention from the Nazis. Far from feeling any kind of kinship with George’s Jewish protégés, Elizabeth wanted to keep a low profile to ensure her family’s safety.

At the time the Iron Guard rose to power in Romania, Ardashess Gurdjian had been the Iranian Consul in Bucharest for about 8 years. His job was not arduous. Iran’s foreign policy during the inter-war period was focused on Britain and the newly established USSR to the North. In particular, Reza Shah’s plan consisted of playing the Soviet Union off against Great Britain. Thus Ardashess’ functions in Bucharest were primarily representational and to a lesser extent, trade related. Iran’s foreign policy failed when the USSR and Britain became allies in the wake of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Iran’s new railroad, linking the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea was seen as a strategic supply line and despite Iran’s declaration of neutrality, Britain and the USSR invaded the country under the pretext that Iran was about to join Nazi Germany. The allies forced Reza Shah to abdicate and installed his young and inexperienced son on the throne. Iran was carved up into two spheres of influence – the north was governed by the USSR, the south by Britain. These events did not affect Ardashess’ position in Bucharest, where he remained, apparently forgotten by the Iranian Foreign Service. As his diplomatic duties did not fully occupy his time, Ardashess had time to expand his social circles and, as was his habit, surround himself with people of influence in the Romanian Government. His outgoing and gregarious personality, coupled with a shrewd intellect, soon gave him access to Romanian politicians at the highest levels. Ardashess was deeply affected by the plight of the Jewish population in Romania. Perhaps it reminded him of his own experiences in Turkey. Bucharest was home to Jews from the Balkans, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, whose situation in Romania had become precarious after the rise of the Iron Guard. Returning to their original countries was no longer an option and few had the funds to secure exit visas to Palestine. Ardashess decided to help. On the strength of his diplomatic status