Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Balakian Launches Illinois Holocaust Museum 2015 Project

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Balakian Launches Illinois Holocaust Museum 2015 Project

    BALAKIAN LAUNCHES ILLINOIS HOLOCAUST MUSEUM 2015 PROJECT

    http://asbarez.com/109676/balakian-launches-illinois-holocaust-museum-2015-project/
    Monday, April 29th, 2013

    Balakian addresses the Illinois Holocaust Museum

    SKOKIE, Ill.-Peter Balakian spoke Sunday, April 20 to an audience of
    more than 250 people at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education
    Center in Skokie, a suburb of Chicago, and a town that is still
    remembered for the controversial march of neo-Nazi groups there
    in 1979. The Museum is the second largest of its kind after the US
    Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Washington, DC.

    Balakian lectured for the occasion of the 98th anniversary of the
    Armenian genocide, traditionally commemorated on April 24th. He
    also commenced his work with the Museum as Senior Scholar for the
    Armenian genocide exhibit it will mount in 2015 for the genocide's
    100th anniversary.

    In his opening remarks, Museum Executive Director Rick Hirschhaut said:
    "Our young people - our future - must be a bridge to the future,
    and ensure that we realize the lessons that were set forth by us,
    by the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and all such terrible
    atrocities. We must speak for those whose voices were silenced and
    for those who survived so we may remember and pledge never to forget.

    Today," Hirschhaut continued, "at this gathering, we are reminded of
    a history that must be recognized, and remembered, and calls to the
    importance of lighting the torch of truth for the world community."

    Nairee Hagopian of the ANCA then introduced Balakian and expressed
    her gratitude to the Museum for initiating such an important and
    timely project.

    Balakian thanked Hirschhaut and the Illinois Holocaust Museum for
    their leadership in partnering with the ANCA to build an Armenian
    genocide exhibit for the 2015 anniversary, "a project," he said,
    "that will serve as a model for others to come."

    Balakian also noted how crucial the ongoing support and intellectual
    work of the Jewish community has been, and continues to be, "from
    Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Franz Werfel, and Raphael Lemkin to the
    work and support of so many superb scholars in our time including
    Elie Wiesel, Deborah Lipstadt, Robert Melson, Robert Jay Lifton,
    Andrew Goldberg, and many others, Jews who have made a decisive
    difference in clarifying our understanding of what happened to the
    Armenians in 1915."

    For the April 24th commemoration of the Armenian genocide, Balakian
    then gave a lecture, "Raphael Lemkin, Cultural Destruction, and the
    Armenian genocide." He discussed Lemkin's deep thinking about what
    happened to the Armenians in 1915 as a seminal case of genocide, noting
    how Lemkin's intellectual commitment to what he came to call genocide
    was heavily influenced by his study of the Turkish mass killing of
    Armenians. It was Lemkin, he said, who first coined the term Armenian
    genocide in the 1940s, and explained the concept on a special CBS
    Television broadcast about the UN Genocide Convention, in February
    1949. Balakian also explored how the destruction of Armenian culture
    (intellectuals and artists, churches, schools, libraries, forced
    conversions to Islam, etc.) constituted a key component of genocide.

    In an extensive PowerPoint presentation, Balakian showed arresting
    images of magnificent, thriving Armenian churches before 1915, and
    those same churches, in Turkey, that are in ruins today. He concluded
    by observing that this kind of cultural destruction still has complex
    reverberations, and impacts on Armenians in Armenia, in the diaspora,
    and in Turkey.

    A reception and book signing followed.

Working...
X