ArmenPress
April 9 2004

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND HISTORICAL MEMORY PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH

YEREVAN, APRIL 9, ARMENPRESS: The Armenian Genocide and Historical
Memory, this the name of a book by Verjine Svazlian, consisting of
650 survivors stories of eye-witnesses of the Armenian genocide,
methodically carried out by the government of Turkey between
1915-1922, published in English earlier this month.
Verjine Svazlian collected most of these testimonies herself
through many years, across Armenia as well as some interviews abroad.
The book also contains folk songs, many of which in Turkish,
depicting the events of the Genocide, “the screams of the unheard
suffering, protest, as well as the heroic resentment of the people
subjected to genocide, undeniable testimonies addressed to the Turk
historians and politicians of today who are denying the Genocide.
This book is a heavy contribution to the history of the Armenian
Genocide. Published in 500 copies it will be distributed to foreign
embassies in Armenia, international organizations, researching in
Armenian history. Its Turkish-language edition will appear soon.
Ethnographer and folklorist, Verjine Svazlian was born in 1934 in
Alexandria (Egypt) in the family of a writer and public man Garnik
Svazlian, himself an eye-witness survivor of Turkish tyranny. In
1947, she was repatriated with her parents to Armenia. In 1956, she
graduated with honors from the Department of the Armenian Language
and Literature of Abovian Pedagogical Institute.
Beginning from 1950-s she started on her own initiative writing
down and thereby saving from a total loss various folklore creations
communicated by the repatriates forcibly deported from Western
Armenia, Cilicia and the Armenian-inhabited provinces of Anatolia, as
well as the narrated memoirs of the eye-witness survivors of the
Genocide.