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About Me — Joe Murkijanian
“A storyteller shaped by faith, forged by struggle, driven by destiny.”
I was born and raised in Montebello, California — ground zero for a tight-knit Armenian community forged in fire, war, and unbelievable resilience. My family’s story isn’t something you’d find in a history book, but it shaped every corner of who I am and why I write.
My grandparents came from a generation of Armenians who were used as slave labor during the Nazi occupation of Europe and Russia. After the war, they were placed in an SS camp near Stuttgart, Germany — roughly three thousand survivors living with nothing but each other. In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt stepped in. She fought to get displaced families visas, jobs, and a shot at rebuilding their lives. Mine were sent to Santa Clara to pick oranges, and from there, they migrated to Montebello, where they built a community from scratch — without government help, without safety nets, just grit.
My great-grandmother died because they didn’t know the hospital would help them for free. That loss, that pain, and that determination to survive are the first stories I ever heard. They became the foundation of my entire storytelling life.
Missionaries converted them to Catholicism in the camps, so I was raised Catholic. Then my father bought a Jewish deli in…
