Bedros Hadjian Dies in Argentina

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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Bedros Hadjian, the last old-school Armenian educator, writer and journalist of that community, died on Monday, September 3, following complications due to heart surgery.

Born January 24, 1933, in Jarabulus, Syria, Hadjian became in 1954 the principal of the Armenian school of Deir el Zor, in northern Syria, one of the destination points of Armenians marched off by Ottoman authorities during the 1915 Armenian Genocide.

After teaching Armenian history and literature at the Haigazian Armenian School of Aleppo from the mid-1960s, Hadjian in 1970 was named principal of the Karen Jeppe High School, one of the biggest Armenian secondary schools in Aleppo and one of the most prominent in the Armenian Diaspora.

In 1970, Hadjian moved to Buenos Aires as the editor of Diario Armenia, an Armenian-language daily newspaper that became a weekly in the late 1980s, as well as the principal of Instituto Educativo San Gregario El Iluminador, one of many Armenian schools in South America. He remained the editor of Diario Armenia until

1986 and retired as the headmaster of San Gregorio El Iluminador.

After 1986, he devoted himself to writing fiction and non-fiction books, published in Buenos Aires, Aleppo and Yerevan.

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He was a frequent contributor to Armenian newspapers, such as Haratch in Paris, Nor Gyank in Los Angeles and Sardarabad in Buenos Aires on Armenian and Armenian-Diasporan affairs, Armenian language as well as literature and book reviews. The following are books he published: Grandes Figuras de la Cultura Armenia, Siglos V- X (Great Figures of the Armenian Culture, 5th-10th Centuries, Buenos Aires, 1987, in Armenian and Spanish); Grandes Figuras de la Cultura Armenia, Siglos XI-XVI (Great Figures of the Armenian Culture 11th to 16th Centuries, Buenos Aires, 1989, in

Armenian and Spanish); Armenian Grammar 1, 2 and 3 (Buenos Aires, 1991, in Armenian); Hrammetsek Baronner Badmootyun (One Hundred Years, One Hundred Stories, Buenos Aires, 2003, in Armenian; English translation by Aris Sevag published in 2009); Gargemish (Aleppo, 2003, in Armenian) and El Cinturón (The Belt, Buenos Aires, 2005, in Spanish); Cien Años, Cien Historias (Buenos Aires, 2008, in Spanish, translated by Vartan Matiossian); Janabarh Tebi Garguemish’ (The Road to Gargemish, Yerevan, 2008, in Armenian) and Haravë Spyurki Metch (The South in the Diaspora, Aleppo, 2008, in Armenian).

Funeral services were held on Wednesday, September 5, at St. Gregory Armenian Church, which he attended for more than 40 years. Internment followed at the Armenian Cemetery of Buenos Aires.

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