PRESS RELEASE
The Armenian Studies Program
Phone: +972-2-588-3651
Fax: +972-2-588-3658
E-mail: r [email protected]
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Contact: Michael E. Stone
April 2005
BREAKING THE SILENCE
HEBREW U. COMMEMORATES ARMENIAN GENOCIDE WITH SPECIAL EVENT
JERUSALEM — The Hebrew University of Jerusalem will host on May 2 an
emotional evening of reflection and introspection in commemoration
of the Armenian Genocide. Ninety years after the massacre of about
1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks, the event will feature
an insightful lecture by Professor Israel Charney, Executive Director
of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, and His
Beatitude Patriarch Torkom Manoogian will be joining the ceremony.
His Excellency Mr. Tsolag Momjian, Honorary Consul of the Republic
of Armenia, and Professor Michael E. Stone, Professor of the Armenian
Studies at HU, will also offer inspiring speeches. Reception at Beit
Belgia on the Hebrew University Givat Ram campus begins at 6:30pm
and the event commences at 7:00.
Charney will speak out against the denial of genocides, with a focus
on much of the world’s refusal to recognize the Armenian massacre.
He will praise those who have recently been willing to devote some of
their energies to caring about the murder of other peoples alongside
their major focus on their own situations.
“We have an absolute moral responsibility to recognize the Armenian
Genocide,” said Charney. “Respecting and honoring the memory and
history of each and every genocide is the first essential step towards
creating new means of preventing genocide to all people in the future.”
With only around 100,000 survivors of the Armenian Genocide alive
today, Mr. Momjian, the Honorary Consul of Armenia, expressed hopes
that such an evening would “open the minds of young people” to the
concept of the Armenian Genocide.
“For 90 years the Armenians have been living with the tragic memory
of the family they lost,” he said. “To deny the genocide is to deny
a very important part of Armenian culture, history and life.”