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Daily Trojan (USC), CA
April 5 2012
Shoah to add Armenian genocide witness videos
By ANNALISE MANTZ · Daily Trojan
Posted April 5, 2012 (2 days ago) at 11:31 pm in News
Though the USC Shoah Foundation Institute is already renowned for its
collection of testimonies from Holocaust survivors, it now hopes to
broaden its archives to include the Armenian genocide.
More than 400 testimonies from survivors of the Armenian genocide
recorded on 16mm film by Armenian-American filmmaker Dr. J. Michael
Hagopian will soon be added to the foundation's nearly 52,000
testimonies from around the globe.
An estimated 1.5 million people died between 1915 and 1923 in the
Armenian genocide.
Hagopian met survivors of the massacre while traveling internationally
to film documentaries and interviewed them to preserve their stories.
The Shoah Foundation Institute hopes adding the Armenian genocide to
its archives will be the first step in expanding its collection to
include all genocides. Researchers are also working to track down
testimonies from genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia.
Stephen Smith, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation
Institute, said discovering similarities across genocide records
allows scholars to find their origin.
`Having testimonies from different genocides is not about comparing
human suffering, because that's not possible, but about comparing the
causes and the consequences [of the genocide],' Smith said. `It's in
understanding the causes and consequences that we understand how we
might prevent genocide in the future and also how it affects the
individuals who have been through it.'
The diversity in the survivors Hagopian interviewed only makes the
collection more interesting, Smith said. The tapes include interviews
from survivors not only in Armenia, but also from locations as far
flung as North America, the Mediterranean basin and India.
`We are getting both a very personal and a very broadly based
geographical understanding of what those individuals went through,'
Smith said.
Smith said the personal nature of these interviews also makes
Hagopian's collection stand out.
`Most of what we have on the Armenian genocide so far is documentary
information, but these testimonies will lend a tremendously valuable
insight into understanding personally what these individuals went
through,' Smith said.
Members of the Armenian community also see the addition of these
testimonies as a key step in the preservation of the history of this
genocide.
Jerry Papazian, a board member of the USC Institute of Armenian
Studies' Leadership Council and chairman of the Armenian Film
Foundation, has even loftier goals for the institute.
`The goal is to start collecting other collections of Armenian
genocide victim's accounts to add to the collection and make this the
largest collection of Armenian genocide testimonies side by side with
those of the Holocaust survivors,' Papazian said.
Making the stories of these survivors available to the public is also
a key motivator behind the project, Papazian said.
`Right now, when the interviews are sitting in a vault someplace, they
are not available,' Papazian said. `We were originally able to salvage
their testimonies on film, but now with better technology available,
why not share them with more people?'
Combining records of the two genocides could also make the archive a
much better learning tool, supporters said.
`We hope by learning about genocide through the archive at USC, our
students will be better off as citizens of the world to understand
genocide and address it,' Smith said. `Genocide is not something we
want or anticipate, but it is a fact of human existence and something
that we want to understand better.'
The USC Institute of Armenian Studies' Leadership Council will hold a
fundraising gala April 15 to raise money to digitize the testimonies.
The Shoah Foundation Institute expects to complete the project by the
end of 2012.
http://dailytrojan.com/2012/04/05/shoah-to-add-armenian-genocide-witness-videos/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
April 5 2012
Shoah to add Armenian genocide witness videos
By ANNALISE MANTZ · Daily Trojan
Posted April 5, 2012 (2 days ago) at 11:31 pm in News
Though the USC Shoah Foundation Institute is already renowned for its
collection of testimonies from Holocaust survivors, it now hopes to
broaden its archives to include the Armenian genocide.
More than 400 testimonies from survivors of the Armenian genocide
recorded on 16mm film by Armenian-American filmmaker Dr. J. Michael
Hagopian will soon be added to the foundation's nearly 52,000
testimonies from around the globe.
An estimated 1.5 million people died between 1915 and 1923 in the
Armenian genocide.
Hagopian met survivors of the massacre while traveling internationally
to film documentaries and interviewed them to preserve their stories.
The Shoah Foundation Institute hopes adding the Armenian genocide to
its archives will be the first step in expanding its collection to
include all genocides. Researchers are also working to track down
testimonies from genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia.
Stephen Smith, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation
Institute, said discovering similarities across genocide records
allows scholars to find their origin.
`Having testimonies from different genocides is not about comparing
human suffering, because that's not possible, but about comparing the
causes and the consequences [of the genocide],' Smith said. `It's in
understanding the causes and consequences that we understand how we
might prevent genocide in the future and also how it affects the
individuals who have been through it.'
The diversity in the survivors Hagopian interviewed only makes the
collection more interesting, Smith said. The tapes include interviews
from survivors not only in Armenia, but also from locations as far
flung as North America, the Mediterranean basin and India.
`We are getting both a very personal and a very broadly based
geographical understanding of what those individuals went through,'
Smith said.
Smith said the personal nature of these interviews also makes
Hagopian's collection stand out.
`Most of what we have on the Armenian genocide so far is documentary
information, but these testimonies will lend a tremendously valuable
insight into understanding personally what these individuals went
through,' Smith said.
Members of the Armenian community also see the addition of these
testimonies as a key step in the preservation of the history of this
genocide.
Jerry Papazian, a board member of the USC Institute of Armenian
Studies' Leadership Council and chairman of the Armenian Film
Foundation, has even loftier goals for the institute.
`The goal is to start collecting other collections of Armenian
genocide victim's accounts to add to the collection and make this the
largest collection of Armenian genocide testimonies side by side with
those of the Holocaust survivors,' Papazian said.
Making the stories of these survivors available to the public is also
a key motivator behind the project, Papazian said.
`Right now, when the interviews are sitting in a vault someplace, they
are not available,' Papazian said. `We were originally able to salvage
their testimonies on film, but now with better technology available,
why not share them with more people?'
Combining records of the two genocides could also make the archive a
much better learning tool, supporters said.
`We hope by learning about genocide through the archive at USC, our
students will be better off as citizens of the world to understand
genocide and address it,' Smith said. `Genocide is not something we
want or anticipate, but it is a fact of human existence and something
that we want to understand better.'
The USC Institute of Armenian Studies' Leadership Council will hold a
fundraising gala April 15 to raise money to digitize the testimonies.
The Shoah Foundation Institute expects to complete the project by the
end of 2012.
http://dailytrojan.com/2012/04/05/shoah-to-add-armenian-genocide-witness-videos/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress