Day: January 29, 2024

FRESNO, Calif.—A book signing event for the recently published book The dignity of being American took place on Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at the Armenian Museum of Fresno located at the University of California Center in Fresno, California.

Co-authored by Varoujan Der Simonian and Sophia Mekhitarian, the book records the previously unpublished stories of 14 displaced persons (DPs) and their families who settled in Fresno after World War II, tracing the DPs’ paths and the trials they endured. The book highlights the extensive involvement of George Mardikian, the founder of ANCHA (American National Committee to Aid Homeless Armenians), Brigadier General Haig Shekerjian and attorney Suren Saroyan.

“It’s been our mission to focus on the accomplishments of our ANCHA leaders and affiliates for their magnanimous undertaking and to preserve our history for future generations. Heroes they were, and so shall remain,” said Mekhitarian, who herself was once labeled as a displaced person.

Extensive coverage of the role of the unsung heroes, including Dr. Artasches Abeghian, Generals Drastamat Kanaian (Dro) and Garegin Nejdeh, Arsen Taplatsian, Misak Torlakian, Vahan Papazian, Garo Kevorkian and others, who saved thousands of POWs and an untold number of Armenians – to some estimation 600,000 Armenians under Nazi-controlled Europe during World War II – are presented in the book.

“This is a significant part of our history that often has been overlooked. It is our duty to recognize the role that these men and women played before, during and following World War II in saving thousands of Armenian lives,” commented Der Simonian of the Armenian Museum of Fresno. “I wonder where we would be now if it weren’t for the unsung heroes’ patriotism, dedication and commitment – their call to serve their own people, who were far away from their homeland.”

Click to view slideshow.

The 260-page book includes over 300 photos highlighting the life of the Armenians at Funkerkaserne DP Camp near Stuttgart, Germany. It covers the ANCHA monument in Fresno, with its six panels placed on the monument’s pedestal, that was appropriately placed next to the Sunday school building entrance at the Holy Trinity Church in Fresno. It also covers an oral history interview with George Mardikian and an essay by Mardikian titled “Three Meals for the Chief” providing detailed explanations of how he would prepare three meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner – for his friend, President Herbert Hoover. The essay is being published for the first time courtesy of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum.

Almost all copies of this limited-edition of the book were sold, and the Museum’s galleries were packed with an enthusiastic crowd well past the event’s conclusion. Contributors to the Fresno ANCHA monument received a complimentary copy.

A photographic exhibition complementing the content of the book, titled The Saga and the Triumph of the Displaced Persons, is currently on display at the Armenian Museum of Fresno.

Copies of the book may be purchased or ordered from the Armenian Museum of Fresno at $60.00 per copy, pending availability.

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South Caucasus News

Norian Youth Connect program announces speaker lineup

Post author By Mike Nova
Post date January 29, 2024

WATERTOWN, Mass.— Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey (co-founder and executive director, Lemkin Institute), Prof. Paul Boghossian (silver professor of philosophy, NYU), Garine Boghossian (architect and urbanist), Dr. Nora Lessersohn (visiting fellow, Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University) and Dr. Khatchig Mouradian (lecturer, Columbia University) will serve as speakers for the Spring 2024 Norian Youth Connect Program.

The event will commence on the evening of Friday, February 23, at Columbia University in New York and conclude on Sunday, February 25 at noon.

“We extend a warm invitation to Armenian university students ages 18-27 to participate in this enriching weekend of workshops, discussions and networking,” said ARS of Eastern USA chairperson Caroline Chamavonian.

To secure a spot, students can register here. The application fee is $50 and covers the program plus breakfast, lunch, dinner and the evening social. Overnight accommodations will be provided exclusively to out-of-town students. The registration deadline is February 15, 2024.

Elisa von Joeden-Forgey is executive director of the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention. She was formerly the endowed chair in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College and director of the Master’s Program in Genocide Prevention and Human Security. Before this, she was the Dr. Marsha Raticoff Grossman Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University in New Jersey, where she also directed the master’s program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and founded the world’s first academic, graduate-level Genocide Prevention Certificate Program. She is the former president of Genocide Watch, former first vice president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and co-founder of the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention. She received her master’s and doctorate in history from the University of Pennsylvania and her bachelor’s degree from Columbia University.

Paul Boghossian is silver professor of philosophy at NYU’s Philosophy Department and distinguished research professor at the University of Birmingham in the UK. He is the director of the New York Institute of Philosophy and the director of NYU’s Global Institute for Advanced Study. He was chair of philosophy from 1994-2004. His research interests are primarily in epistemology, the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language. He has written on a variety of topics, including self-knowledge, a priori knowledge, analytic truth, realism, relativism, the aesthetics of music and the concept of genocide. He has served on the Global Citizenship Commission headed by former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and currently on the University of London’s School of Advanced Study Strategic Advisory Board.

Garine Boghossian is an architect, urbanist and researcher based in New York. She has extensive experience in large-scale urban and regional planning projects worldwide. She is currently working on a decolonial mapping project retracing the Armenian neighborhoods of modern-day Turkey based on mental maps produced by genocide survivors. She was an adjunct lecturer in architecture at Northeastern University and the Boston Architectural College in Massachusetts. Garine received her master’s degree in architecture and urbanism from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her bachelor of architecture with a minor in art history from the American University of Beirut.

Nora Lessersohn is a historian of U.S., Ottoman and Armenian history with a focus on the lives of Armenian Americans. She earned her doctorate in history from University College London in 2023, supported by a Calouste Gulbenkian Armenian Studies Scholarship. In 2021-22, she was a predoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of American History. She earned her bachelor of arts in the study of religion at Harvard College and her master’s in Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, where she is currently a visiting fellow. Dr. Lessersohn has published articles on the memoir of her great-grandfather, Hovhannes Cherishian, and is now preparing a manuscript on the life and work of Christopher Oscanyan, who she will discuss at Norian Youth Connect.

Khatchig Mouradian has served as the director of the ARS Youth Connect Program since 2014. He is a lecturer in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University and the Armenian and Georgian Area Specialist at the Library of Congress. He also serves as co-principal investigator of the project on Armenian Genocide Denial at the Global Institute for Advanced Study at New York University. Dr. Mouradian is the author of the award-winning book The Resistance Network: The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1918 and the co-editor of After the Ottomans: Genocide’s Long Shadow and Armenian Resilience. His co-edited volume The I.B.Tauris Handbook of the Late Ottoman Empire: History and Legacy is forthcoming in 2024.