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ROCHESTER COUPLE'S EFFORTS ADD ARMENIA TO EXHIBIT ABOUT GENOCIDE
Post-Bulletin, MN
April 24 2013
Christina Killion Valdez
While generations of U.S. children who didn't want to eat their
vegetables were told to "think of the starving Armenians," the warnings
Zara Bezhanyan, of Rochester, heard growing up in Armenia were worse.
Visits with her grandmother were filled with accounts of the suffering
of her fellow countrymen who faced death, starvation and permanent
exile during World War I, she said. Nonetheless, Bezhanyan said,
she didn't believe things were as bad as her grandmother described
until she began researching what happened.
"The stories were word-for-word what the researchers and scholars
have written," she said.
Bezhanyan's research has come to fruition with the creation of a tent
representing Armenia for Tents of Witness: Genocide and Conflict,
a traveling exhibit created by World Without Genocide, a human rights
organization at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul.
The Armenian tent will be exhibited for the first time when Tents of
Witness opens Tuesday in Rochester.
Based on the canvas tents used in refugee camps, each tent in the
exhibit tells a story through photos and information about a culture
and conflict. In addition to Armenia, the tents represent American
Indians, Bosnia, Cambodia, Congo, Darfur, the Holocaust, North Korea
and Rwanda.
"One of the most important outcomes," said Carolyn Franzone, who
teaches English as a second language in Rochester and spearheaded
the effort to bring the exhibit here, "may be fostering a greater
understanding of the cultures and experiences of our Rochester
neighbors who have been impacted by genocide."
For Bezhanyan, who is a Spanish teacher at Lanesboro Public School,
the topic is deeply personal and painful to discuss.
An estimated 1.5 million of the 2 million Armenians living in the
Ottoman Empire died between 1915 and 1923.
Bezhanyan's family was fortunate to escape.
In 1915, a neighbor warned her great-grandfather, a traveling merchant
in Armenia, that he and his family would be deported, she said. Her
grandmother was only 5 years old when the family fled to Imperial
Russia, she said.
When her great grandfather went back to Armenia for their things, he
was pulled off his horse and beaten by Ottoman Turks, but survived,
she said.
The Turkish government is steadfast in its denial that what took
place was genocide, instead attributing the deaths to depredations
of the war, Bezhanyan said.
"When you are told what happened to you did not happen or did not
happen the way you remember, you do not heal," she said.
Finding out that Armenia wasn't initially represented in the Tents
of Witness exhibit, which began traveling around the state last year,
was also a blow, she said. Yet Bezhanyan and her husband, Paul Tronnes,
also an ESL teacher in Rochester, were encouraged to create one.
The couple, who met in 1992 when he traveled to Armenia to teach
English with the Peace Corps, worked with the Armenian Cultural
Association of Minnesota in St. Paul to sponsor and design the tent
that will be permanent addition to the traveling exhibit.
The idea isn't that people view this and take on the guilt, Tronnes
said, but "to be aware so we can heal and move on."
http://www.postbulletin.com/life/lifestyles/rochester-couple-s-efforts-add-armenia-to-exhibit-about-genocide/article_ac83e6e0-639a-5b1e-b1c8-a08c5f18e51b.html
From: A. Papazian
Post-Bulletin, MN
April 24 2013
Christina Killion Valdez
While generations of U.S. children who didn't want to eat their
vegetables were told to "think of the starving Armenians," the warnings
Zara Bezhanyan, of Rochester, heard growing up in Armenia were worse.
Visits with her grandmother were filled with accounts of the suffering
of her fellow countrymen who faced death, starvation and permanent
exile during World War I, she said. Nonetheless, Bezhanyan said,
she didn't believe things were as bad as her grandmother described
until she began researching what happened.
"The stories were word-for-word what the researchers and scholars
have written," she said.
Bezhanyan's research has come to fruition with the creation of a tent
representing Armenia for Tents of Witness: Genocide and Conflict,
a traveling exhibit created by World Without Genocide, a human rights
organization at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul.
The Armenian tent will be exhibited for the first time when Tents of
Witness opens Tuesday in Rochester.
Based on the canvas tents used in refugee camps, each tent in the
exhibit tells a story through photos and information about a culture
and conflict. In addition to Armenia, the tents represent American
Indians, Bosnia, Cambodia, Congo, Darfur, the Holocaust, North Korea
and Rwanda.
"One of the most important outcomes," said Carolyn Franzone, who
teaches English as a second language in Rochester and spearheaded
the effort to bring the exhibit here, "may be fostering a greater
understanding of the cultures and experiences of our Rochester
neighbors who have been impacted by genocide."
For Bezhanyan, who is a Spanish teacher at Lanesboro Public School,
the topic is deeply personal and painful to discuss.
An estimated 1.5 million of the 2 million Armenians living in the
Ottoman Empire died between 1915 and 1923.
Bezhanyan's family was fortunate to escape.
In 1915, a neighbor warned her great-grandfather, a traveling merchant
in Armenia, that he and his family would be deported, she said. Her
grandmother was only 5 years old when the family fled to Imperial
Russia, she said.
When her great grandfather went back to Armenia for their things, he
was pulled off his horse and beaten by Ottoman Turks, but survived,
she said.
The Turkish government is steadfast in its denial that what took
place was genocide, instead attributing the deaths to depredations
of the war, Bezhanyan said.
"When you are told what happened to you did not happen or did not
happen the way you remember, you do not heal," she said.
Finding out that Armenia wasn't initially represented in the Tents
of Witness exhibit, which began traveling around the state last year,
was also a blow, she said. Yet Bezhanyan and her husband, Paul Tronnes,
also an ESL teacher in Rochester, were encouraged to create one.
The couple, who met in 1992 when he traveled to Armenia to teach
English with the Peace Corps, worked with the Armenian Cultural
Association of Minnesota in St. Paul to sponsor and design the tent
that will be permanent addition to the traveling exhibit.
The idea isn't that people view this and take on the guilt, Tronnes
said, but "to be aware so we can heal and move on."
http://www.postbulletin.com/life/lifestyles/rochester-couple-s-efforts-add-armenia-to-exhibit-about-genocide/article_ac83e6e0-639a-5b1e-b1c8-a08c5f18e51b.html
From: A. Papazian