Historian Richard G. Hovannisian talks of straddling two cultures — and the ‘forgotten genocide’

On Jan. 19, 2016, the Organization of Istanbul Armenians (OIA) organized a commemoration for the ninth anniversary of the assassination of prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. It was exactly nine years after my friends and I learned of his murder without fully understanding who he was and what his legacy would mean to us in the years to come.

The more than 1,000 interviews will constitute the largest non-Holocaust-related collection to be integrated into the Institute’s Visual History Archive. It will also be the Archive’s first audio-only collection.

The Institute’s Sara Brown discusses the power of narrative at the 3rd Global Forum Against the Crime of Genocide held earlier this month in Armenia.

In her research of testimonies, USC student Virginia Bullington observed that women in the context of both the Armenian and Tutsi Rwanda genocides are often described as “bearers of culture, maternity and nationalism,” while in the Guatemalan context, “indigenous women were not essentialized -- they were erased.”

Pictured: Holocaust survivor Elly Gotz who gave his testimony to the Azrieli Foundation in 2018. His interview is one of 31 new testimonies from the Azrieli Foundation that have been indexed and catalogued in the Visual History Archive. This week’s semi-annual VHA release adds 128 new testimonies to the 55,000-strong collection. All the updated testimonies are available at 163 access sites worldwide.

In 1985, when Dr. Sharon Aroian-Poiser was a graduate student, she accompanied her grandfather to Washington D.C., to a conference commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Between 1915 and 1918, the Turkish government systematically expelled or massacred an estimated 1.5 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Aroian-Poiser watched as elderly survivors at the conference rose to tell their stories before microphones and video recorders, many of them for the first time. It was, in fact, the first time that Aroian-Poiser learned that her grandfather was a survivor.

‘Dimensions in Testimony Education’ is the first version of the groundbreaking technology available for instruction in classrooms around the world. Teachers and students can ask questions that prompt real-time response from a pre-recorded video of Pinchas—engaging in virtual conversation and redefining inquiry-based education.

USC Shoah Foundation and the Armenian Genocide Museum Institute Foundation (AGMI) in Yerevan have launched a new partnership to develop programming to extend the reach of their collections, research and education initiatives using testimony related to the 1915 Ottoman campaign that murdered 1.5 million Armenians.

Sedda Antekelian, a member of USC Shoah Foundation’s education team, never knew her own great grandmother had recorded testimony about surviving the Armenian Genocide. Hearing her great grandmother’s voice for the first time has brought Sedda closer to family, filled in gaps about her own history, and opened even more questions.