PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Karekin Dickran
Hans Broges Gade 45,
8000 Aarhus C. DK
Denmark
Telephone: 45 + 86 13 90 54
e-mail: [email protected]
MARIA JACOBSEN – SYMPOSIUM
Friday 24th April 2009 from 16.30 – 19.00
at: Pensionhighschool
Fredericiagade 84, 1.
Copenhagen
A symposium will be held in memory of Maria Jacobsen to commemorate the
94th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide
The Committee will mark the memory of two Danish missionaries:
Miss Maria Jacobsen [1882-1960] and Miss Karen Jeppe [1876-1935]
Maria Jacobsens wrote a diary during the time she worked as a nurse in the
American hospital in Harpoot [Kharpert] covering the period between
1907-1919. She later moved to the new Annie Tracy Riggs Hospital which
opened in Mezreh, located at Villayet Mamurat-Ul-Aziz in former Ottoman
Empires, Turkey.
Over decades K.M.A [Woman’s Missionary Workers] has raised thousands of
kroner´s and sent dozens of missionaries for Armenian relief. Maria
Jacobsen, who stayed at her post during the Armenian Genocide, recorded her
own eyewitness account on local conditions while the Ottoman government
carried out its programme of annihilating the Armenians under the cover of
World War I.
Until recently the original diary was available only in facsimile form
attached to the Armenian version, translated, edited and introduced in 1979
by Nerses Pakhdikian and Mihran Simonian
The committee has made a fair copy of the diary. The manuscript is almost
finished; it has been edited from old Danish to modern Danish and ready to
be published in a digitized format. The Committee, therefore, is holding a
symposium to introduce a Limited Edition of the diary to the general public.
The book which contains an introduction, some articles of lightning
accessories and annotation, is to be published in September 2009.
You are all welcomed
Kindest greetings
Britta June Claridge Johnsen