Courageous and Strong People of the Past Anne Frank once said, “The weak die out and the strong will survive, and will live on forever! ” People must be strong and hopeful if they want to persevere through extreme circumstances like a genocide. Anne Frank and Vahan Kenderian were these strong people. Vahan, like Anne Frank, was in his teen years when there was a genocide of his people. All of his family was killed, so his only option was to escape to Constantinople.
Vahan Kenderian from Forgotten Fire can be connected to the historical figure Anne Frank because both people share parallels of living during a genocide, and doing everything that is possible to survive. The main character of Forgotten Fire was completely independent and was sadly alone from his family, while Anne Frank was with her family throughout her journey. Vahan had to travel by himself and find help by himself. He had to hide in the closet of a family, fearing his capture for several days.
Vahan reminisced, “The problem was, I did not want to be smart. The problem was, I had spent the last seven days in a closet and I could not stay in this house a moment longer. The problem was, I was more afraid of being alone, or never seeing Sisak again, that I was of all the soldiers and gendarmes in Turkey” (Bagdasarian 85). Vahan was more afraid of being isolated and taken from his family than being captured by the soldiers of Turkey. Similarly to Vahan, Anne Frank only wanted to stay with her family and dreamt about being separated from them.
Anne Frank wrote, “At night in bed I see myself alone in a dungeon, without Father and Mother. Or l’m roaming the streets, or the Annex is on fire, or they come in the middle of the night to take us away and I crawl under my bed in desperation” (Frank 11/8/1943). Anne Frank feared one day she would never see her family again because they would all be taken away similarly to what Vahan and his family have already experienced. Without the Hope and love of family, both Vahan and Anne Frank would most likely have given up on surviving.
Vahan thought back, “I do not remember that meal very well. I am sure that Diran, conscious of his role as the oldest son and being a natural leader and optimist, said something to raise our spirits and give us hope” (Bagdasarian 23). Vahan’s head was so stocked full of thought that he was not listening to his older brother at all because he was so focused on what was going to happen to their family. Family and love connects us all and gives everyone a reason to push forward and to keep going, without it, many people would no longer have a reason to go on.
Many people and friends helped Vahan Kenderian and Anne Frank survive during the terrible holocausts that they endured. One of the main reasons why Vahan and Anne Frank were able to survive was due to how much help they received from others during the event of the genocide. Kahan understood the blacksmith, “I knew he was taking a chance by letting me stay with him, and I knew what would happen to him, to all of us, if I was discovered by the gendarmes” (Bagdasarian 182).
Ara Sarkisian, the blacksmith that took in Vahan knew of Vahan’s lamentable struggle and decided to house him because he knows what he has seen and gone through. Just like Ara Sarkisian, Miep Gies and her husband helped the Frank family and others by stowing them away in the annex of their house. Miep Gies said, ‘We did our duty as human beings: helping people in need” (Miep Gies). Gies was doing what she felt was right and she was helping people that were in need. The people that helped Vahan and Anne Frank were just ordinary people trying to do what was right.
They were risking everything to hide these people. Vahan thought to himself, “Although my surroundings were new, they were not strange to me, and I felt very much at home, as though I were sharing a meal with my grandfather and a favorite cousin” ( Bagdasarian 183). People help others because they feel it to be necessary and that it is their duty to help the less fortunate, especially if these unfortunate people are family or friends. Without the help and aid provided by the Gies family or by Ana Sarkisian, Vahan and Anne Frank would have never made it as far as they did.
After two years of surviving in Turkey, Vahan finally escaped and is able to tell his unfortunate story, however Anne Frank and her family are eventually captured and killed. Vahan looked back,”We started toward the bank. When my foot touched it, I dropped to my knees and thanked God, then picked up a handful of dirt, of freedom, and rubbed it on my arms and hands. I looked back at the sea, at the blue-green water and the cargo ship that distance had made small. I looked at the horizon beyond the sea, at a world I would never see again” (Bagdasarian 261).
Vahan could not believe that he had made it and survived the Armenian genocide. His life was ahead of him now and he could now tell the world what had happened. After two years of hiding from German soldiers, everyone in the annex of Miep Gies was arrested and brought to concentration camps on August 4, 1944. Anne Frank proclaimed, “I don’t want to live in vain like most people. I want to be useful for bringing enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want stay living even after my death! ” (Anne Frank). Anne Frank was hopeful until the end.
She only wanted everyone to be happy even if she was going to die. Since Vahan was now free, he not only had to tell his story of surviving the Armenian genocide, but it was also his duty to pass on his people through his seed. Vahan recalled, “I knew that there would never again be another Bitlis or Erzurum or Van, that the world I had known would survive in the seed I carried with me, and the memories of that seed would fade as one generation succeeded another one. I knew I was free and that I would never be free” (Bagdasarian 269).
Vahan was one of the few surviving Armenians that were living in Turkey during this time, and he was the one that needed to describe everything because he had seen and been through everything that involved the Armenian genocide. Even though Vahan survived and Anne Frank did not, both of their stories are still equally relevant and important in today’s society Vahan Kenderian from Forgotten Fire can be connected to the historical figure Anne Frank because both people share parallels of living during a genocide, and doing everything that is possible to survive.
It is the duty of today’s people and the people of the future to remember these events of history so that they are never to be repeated again. Vahan Kenderian and Anne Frank were two courageous people of the past that went against all odds to survive the circumstances that they faced. These two robust, ordinary people will now live forever in the history books and in the minds of the people of today because of the struggle they faced to survive.
