Face to Face with the Survivors of the Armenian Genocide

armgensurvivors.jpgToday is April 24, the international day of remembrance for the Armenian Genocide. As an heir of that tragic history, I can’t think of a better way to learn and grow from that historic trauma than by watching the dozen or so Armenian Genocide survivor testimonials on YouTube.

Most of the speakers are now dead, which makes their online testaments more extraordinary. Some of the notables that survived to tell their tale:

  • Rev. Vahan Hartunian: human rights activist who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, Alabama (video)
  • Armine Dedekian, humanitarian who helped dozens of immigrant Armenians on their path to the American dream, the Boston Globe featured her in an article when she died last year (video) (article)
  • Hagop Asadourian: Armenian American writer recognized for his writing in the Armenian language (video)
  • Sam Kadorian, plaintiff in the New York Life Insurance case, who remembered when his parents bought a policy from the door-to-door salesman before the genocide. I interviewed him for an article in 2004 (video) (article)

I hope there will be a survivor left on the day Turkey admits that what it did to the Armenians in 1915 was genocide.

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