Varaztad Kazanjian was born in Erzincan, Ottoman Empire on March 18, 1879. In 1879, he attended a French Jesuit school in the city of Sivas. Thereafter, he moved to Samsun to live with his older half-brother. While in Samsun, he worked with his brother but eventually worked in a post office. In an attempt to escape the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, he left to the United States in October 1895 and settled in Worcester, Massachusetts, and took a job in the local wire factory. It was at the mill that Dr. Kazanjian first displayed the natural dexterity that would serve him well in the field of plastic surgery.