This audio-visual presentation, featuring rare archival material, photographs and video clips, sheds light on the massive life-saving impact of the Near East Relief and more specifically, the Kerr family, on a generation of survivors of the Armenian Genocide. Responding to horrific eyewitness accounts and urgent pleas for help, the U.S. mobilized an unprecedented campaign of humanitarian assistance led by the Near East Relief (NER) and given legs by a small army of relief workers who risked their lives to help the destitute survivors in distant, dangerous lands. Among the volunteers was Stanley Kerr, a young biochemist in the U.S. Army who, learning of the opportunity to join the relief effort, in 1919 boarded a ship to the crumbling Ottoman Empire.
Dr. Carla Garapedian, who wrote the preface to this new edition of Remembrances, provides a general introduction and Bedo Demirdjian, translator of the memoir, talks about the challenges of working with this manuscript.
In this webinar, the Promise Armenian Institute marks the launch of a new digital exhibit at the Armenian Image Archive, which explores Kurkdjian’s stereoscopic images of Ani in 1881, taken over a period of five months after he was a photographer for the Russian Army. Dr. Joseph Malikian, curator of this new exhibit, will tell the story of Kurkdjian’s photographic expedition to Ani, and the opposition he encountered from the Russian authorities.
Dr. Artyom Tonoyan's talk focuses on some of the most interesting and critical themes emerging from the decades-long Soviet and Russian press coverage of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.