LECTURE IN LOS ANGELES – "TESTIMONIES OF THE EYEWITNESS SURVIVORS AS IRREFUTABLE DOCUMENTS OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE"
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07.04.2008 11:34
On the occasion of the 93rd memorable anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide, on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at Armenak Der Petrossian Hall of
St. Mary’s Armenian Apostolic Church in Glendale (500 S Central
Ave.), Dr. Prof. Verjine Svazlian, Lead Researcher at the Institute
of Archeology and Ethnography at the National Academy of Sciences in
Armenia, will present a lecture entitled "Testimonies of the Eyewitness
Survivors: Irrefutable Historical Documents of the Armenian Genocide."
The event will take place under the auspices of the Western Prelacy of
the Armenian Church of North America, His Eminence Archbishop Moushegh
Mardirossian, Prelate, the Ararat-Eskijian Museum, Los Angeles,
and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, Boston.
Prof. Verjine Svazlian, has written down (also tape-recorded
and video-recorded), word by word, fragment by fragment, studied
and published, during a period of more than 50 years, the various
relics of the oral tradition (10.000 unit), as well as the documental
testimonies and historical songs – in Armenian and Turkish languages
(700 unit), of the eyewitness survivors of the Armenian Genocide,
who were deported from over 100 localities of Historic Armenia,
Cilicia and Anatolia, and were settled in Armenia and in the Diaspora
(Greece, France, Italy, Germany, USA, Canada, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq,
Egypt, the Balkan countries, Turkey), thus saving from a total loss
the collective historical memory of the Armenian people with a view
to presenting it to the world in various languages (in Armenian,
Russian, English, French, German and Turkish).
Verjine Svazlian, ethnographer and folklorist, was born in Alexandria
(Egypt) in the family of the writer and public man, Garnik Svazlian,
himself an eyewitness survivor of the Armenian Genocide. She had her
elementary education at the local Poghossian Armenian National School,
then her secondary education – at the Armenian Nuns’ Immaculate
Conception School.
In 1947, she was repatriated with her parents to Armenia.
In 1956, she graduated with honors from the Historico-Linguistic
Department of the Yerevan Khachatour Abovian Armenian State Pedagogical
University.
Beginning from 1955, V. Svazlian started, on her own initiative, to
write down and thereby saved from a total loss the various folklore
relics communicated, in different dialects, by the Armenians forcibly
exiled from Western Armenia, Cilicia and Anatolia to the various
countries of the world and finally repatriated to Armenia, as well
as the memoirs and the songs of historical character narrated by the
eyewitness survivors of the Armenian Genocide.
>From 1958, she started to work at the Manouk Abeghian Institute of
Literature of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia. Beginning from
1961 up to the present time she is working at the Institute of
Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of
Armenia and, from 1996 to 2004, also at the Museum-Institute of the
Armenian Genocide of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic
of Armenia (NAS RA). She has maintained her first PhD in 1965 and
second – in 1995.
She has participated in a number of international conferences and
has given reports in the various organizations of Diasporan Armenian
communities (Russia, Greece, France, USA, Canada, Lebanon, Syria,
Egypt, Turkey), discoursing upon folklore, ethnography and the Armenian
Genocide and the Armenian Case.
She is also the author of more than 2000 scientific papers published
in the Armenia and in the Diaspora.