Վկայութիւն (երիզաներկայացում)

3 comments

1. April 24, 1965 in Beirut, what a day it was!

   Dikran,

    

   It’s mid week, Thursday April 7 and I am in our house in Cincinnati, OH. I opted to take off today to be with my mother-in-law who is in a nursing home under hospice care to chat with her a bit. Hearing and chatting in Armenian (western) has become a cherished and memorable experiences for me. After all, there are very few of us here caught in our daily work. It’s then that I listened to your commentary in that soothing and familiar language – western Armenian- that once gave me all the assurance I needed of safety, security growing up in the midst of our extended family. It also carried me to by gone days when we met in the Camille Shamoun stadium in Beirut to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. I was to graduate from high school that June. It was the very first time for me, as well as for most of us I would think, that I found myself in such a multitude of Armenians, well dressed, confident, affluent and conveying an instinctive massage that we have overcome adversity and are ready to come to public and face the world and be visible and vocal. Prior to that my genocide commemoration experiences were indoors, amidst black curtains with the familiar quote of Avedis Aharonian “այսքան չարիք դէ մորանան մեր վորդիք՝, թող վողջ աշխարհ հայուն կարդայ նախատինք” and a rendering of Mother Armenia lamenting over its ruins. It was in 1965, I believe, that we put an end to our grieving. I do not think that the implication of the 1965 Genocide commemoration in Lebanon has been studied well enough yet. I am glad that you used your forum to bring to attention to that milestone and its implication. It was well done both linguistically and in summary. It was a pleasure to hear you.

    

2. The video presentation hit home

   I just came home after attending for the last 4 days the Annual conference of American historians and an endless number of sessions and presentations with much heightened awareness of events that assume a particular importance when seen in the broadest possible perspective provided they are presented in their proper narrative.

   [The] video presentation hit home. I think [it] encapsulates in the assigned 14.5 minutes the two or three important observations that explain the transitional nature of what our generation undertook and the meaning of this transformation. We have to leave it to others to dig through this past and convey its historical perspective for Yeridassart Hay was no accident and it could have assumed another name in another country but with the same result.

   [Prior to] having seen [the] video presentation, I shared my views on this today with Jewish historians who were at the annual conference presenting their recent research in holocaust consciousness and the way it affected the narrative between 1945 and 1962. It was surprising to see how common threads existed in terms of the revolt of the young in both cases against the more cautious, taboo bound and ineffective leadership that tried to keep things under wrap because it enabled them to control the narrative. [This is] a very good job and I hope those who were present understood the importance of looking at that part of the period to understand where we are today.

   After having been in the cauldron for the past four days, I suddenly realized how little we are doing in terms of the needs facing our communities.

   M – USA
   4/10/10

3. Kartsiq
   

   Shnorhakal em Hayoc lezvov Dzer hratarakats, amen Hayin hetaqrqir nyuti hamar:

   MTORUM handesi xmbagir ev hratarakich, Husisapail kayi himnadir xorh’di andam`

   Aslamazyan A. K.

Comments are closed.