Southern Maryland Online, MD
March 8 2007
SMCM To Host 13th Annual Holocaust & Genocide Lecture Series March
26, 28
Posted on March 08, 2007:
13th Annual Holocaust & Genocide Lecture Series: "Armenia: The
Forgotten Genocide" March 26 and 28
ST. MARY’S CITY, Md. – The 13th Annual Holocaust & Genocide Lecture
Series at St. Mary’s College of Maryland (SMCM) explores "Armenia:
The Forgotten Genocide" with two lectures, on Monday, March 26 and
Wednesday, March 28 at 8 p.m. At the beginning of the twentieth
century, the government of the Ottoman Empire (present day Turkey)
massacred and forcibly removed an estimated one million Armenians.
Both events are free and open to the public.
The series begins on Monday, March 26 at 8 p.m. in Daugherty-Palmer
Commons, with Susan Vartanian Barba’s "Still Alive: The Story of My
Father, a Survivor." Vartanian will talk about her father’s fate as a
survivor of the Armenian genocide and also about their relationship.
Vartanian currently lives in New Jersey and is active in the Armenian
community. Her talk will be accompanied by a brief segment of a film
made about her father. This event will be introduced by Kate Norlock,
professor of philosophy.
On Wednesday, March 28 in the Campus Center’s Cole Cinema, Richard
Hovannisian, an international expert on Armenian history, will speak
on the political and historical context of the genocide. Hovannisian
is professor of Armenian and Near Eastern History at UCLA. Author of
multiple books on Armenian history and the genocide, he has also
recently served as consultant for National Geographic on a feature
article on Armenia. The talk is accompanied by a short video.
The deportations and massacres of the Armenian population in Turkey
mark the beginning of modern genocidal policies at the beginning of
the twentieth century. Responding to the decline of the Ottoman
Empire, a nationalist revolutionary group called the Young Turks
seized power in 1908 and followed a political ideology of an
exclusively Turkish state, in which Armenians were denied a place. An
estimated one million Armenians perished through brutal massacres,
killings, and death marches disguised as resettlement programs.
Hundreds of thousands became homeless and stateless refugees. By
1923, almost the entire Armenian population of Anatolian Turkey had
disappeared.