PRESS RELEASE
University of Southern California Libraries
Contact: Tyson Gaskill, 213.740.2070 or gaskill@usc.edu
Susan L. Wampler 213.821.1639 or wampler@usc.edu

October 22, 2004

Exhibition Documents Armenian Relief Efforts

LOS ANGELES – Decades before the Holocaust, the genocide of the Armenian
people effectively destroyed an entire nation, leaving more than 1.5
million dead and millions displaced from a homeland they had occupied
for nearly 3,000 years. A new exhibition at the University of Southern
California’s Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library documents the massive
relief efforts of the Near East Foundation to help survivors of the
atrocities.

In conjunction with the opening of the display, the USC Libraries, the
Institute of Armenian Studies and the Armenian Student Association will
host a reception and book signing in Doheny Library on Friday, November
11, at 11 a.m., featuring Professor Peter Balakian (Colgate University),
author of the recent bestselling book The Burning Tigris. The reception
is free and open to the public.

The genocide of the Armenian people, perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish
government while most other nations were occupied by the events of World
War I, has been condemned as a crime against humanity yet remains a
largely forgotten part of history.

On the night of April 24, 1915, Armenian political, religious,
educational, and intellectual leaders in Constantinople (now, Istanbul)
were arrested and murdered when a triumvirate of extremist Turkish
nationals took control of the region in an effort to eliminate the
Armenian people and create a Pan-Turkic empire that spread to Central
Asia.

In the years that followed, the Turkish government ordered the deaths or
deportation of Armenians to `relocation centers’ in the barren deserts
of Syria and Mesopotamia. The greatest torment was reserved for women
and children run ragged for months over mountains and across deserts.
Hundreds of thousands died of starvation and exposure to the elements.

In the decade following the genocide, the New York-based Near East
Relief (since renamed the Near East Foundation) raised more than $100
million to help the surviving Armenians, Assyrians, Syrians, Greeks and
other victims of the Ottoman Turks’ depredations. The Near East
Foundation has since grown into a major international development
organization with projects in dozens of countries.

This exhibition documents the relief efforts of the foundation through
letters, posters, books and other rare artifacts, along with a
multimedia presentation showing some of the few known photographs of the
Armenian genocide, taken by the German army officer Armin T. Wegner.

The exhibition continues in the ground floor rotunda of Doheny Library
through Sunday, January 30, 2005; admission is free.

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