Armenian Gencoide Memorial

Let me just say I am glad the facts were not all new to me when I visited the Armenian Genocide Memorial and Museum today in Yerevan. Not that I am an expert on the subject. But at least I have read one memoir (Black Dog of Fate) and one novel (The Sandcastle Girls). In truth, there is only one story. And it is thoroughly documented by disinterested (not uninterested) observers from many nations, including our own Ambassador to Turkey at the time, Henry Morganthau.

And it is a horror story of unbridled and mostly uncensured murder of nearly 2 million ethnic Armenians between the 1890s and 1923 by Turkey, and shamefully a reality that remains officially denied by Turkey. Even now, the Turkish government is talking about getting some 30,000 ethnic Armenians, who miraculously still survive within its borders, out of Turkey. They also passed a law this year prohibiting Armenians, Cubans, and North Koreans from buying property in Turkey. Armenian churches, towns, and people were all obliterated -- intellectuals, doctors, regular people, children, women. They were killed outright or tortured first or left to starve or die of thirst on the deserts of Mesopotamia. The U.S. Government has yet to acknowledge the Genocide by the Turks (a resolution passed the House but stalled in the Senate several years ago).

Really, that's Mt Ararat in the distance!

The Memorial sits high on a bluff overlooking Yerevan, with a clear view of Mt. Ararat, or as clear a view as one can usually get.

The obelisk points us to a strong future for Armenians.

Architecturally, the Memorial portion of the Center conveys strength and hope, with its eternal flame installed down from surface level and the very sharp obelisk rising toward the sky to symbolize the rising of the Armenian people from this disaster. On April 24, Genocide Memorial Day, I am told over one million people make a pilgrimage to this site and lay flowers at the edge of the eternal flame.

The eternal flame with flowers from Germany, an ally of the Turks during the time of the Genocide.

In the Museum portion of the center, we were fortunate to have the services of Asya, a young curator who completed her PhD in a study of the Genocide. Her commentary helped us to understand what we were looking at in the particular. It is difficult to select something to highlight,because the overall effect is overwhelming.

The Tree of Life adorns many Armenian crosses and memorials.

But I think two things stood out for me. First, there is a collection of original oils by a French-Armenian who painted them based on his mother's memories of deportation and survival. He is still alive at 95 in Paris. His paintings have titles like "Desolation" and "Violence." Most are portrayals of naked or nearly naked women and young girls experiencing starvation and worse. Some of them undoubtedly were among those who threw themselves into the Euphrates rather than continue walking without food or water through the desert or being raped by the criminals Turkey let out of jail especially to help with the Armenian solution.

The other single thing that I will remember is a huge wall poster of the faces of people who lived in Armenia in 1995 and who had survived the genocide. All of them were very old at the time of the photographs and their faces each tell a story. The caption on the poster says, "These eyes have seen genocide." Indeed, these are the faces of a tragedy.



In an odd gracenote to our visit, Evgeny Kissin (see post for 9/27) was visiting the center today and graciously signed his autograph to a stack of programs one of the museum staff had accumulated. Our guide Asya, one of his biggest fans, was ecstatic and even I took the chance to tell him how much I enjoyed his Schubert Impromptus on Thursday.