Abstract

The Shoemaker's Children

Hamportzoon Choolokian, an Armenian shoemaker, came to this country in 1913 in order to escape Turkish atrocities designed to exterminate his people. Choolokian and his wife became American citizens and the parents of six children. Due to family crisis, Choolokian requested assistance from the New York City Department of Welfare. Since there is no Armenian children's home in New York, the five oldest children were sent to the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin. Choolokian did not want his children to be reared as Roman Catholics. But in 1944 the institution told him he would have to remove them unless he consented to their baptism in the Catholic church. Faced with this desperate choice, Choolokian consented. After a year later, he received word that space had been reserved on a repatriation ship for him and his family. But when he went to release his children from the Welfare Department, two employees who were in charge of the case and were Roman Catholics told him he could not be given his children. Now, he is fighting court cases to get back his children.