Not everything in NAASR’s Mardigian Library is a book. There are also, among other things, a huge number of recordings—78s, LPs, tapes, CDs, etc., all with some Armenian connection or another. Some of these will be topics of future installments; most of them are obscure, except to specialists and collectors. For this installment we will go in a totally different direction and focus on a record that was a huge hit in its day, and its Armenian connections.
Fifty-five years ago, April 1965, can truly be seen as,in the words of author (and NAASR Board member) Michael Bobelian, “the birth of the modern campaign of justice” for the Armenian Genocide. 1965 may also be seen as the year of the re-birth of efforts to document the Armenian Genocide, which would lead to the creation, in more recent years, of a growing body of scholarship on the Genocide.
In remembrance of the Armenian Genocide, we wanted to share with you the news that NAASR is offering the public full access to all of the testimonies of witnesses and survivors of the Genocide, recorded in the Visual History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation.
NAASR joins with all Armenians and many others in the worlds and diplomacy, academia, and elsewhere in mourning the untimely death of Amb. Rouben Shougarian on April 20, 2020.
Franz Werfel’s novel Die Vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh (The Forty Days of Musa Dagh), originally published in Berlin by Paul Zsolnay Verlag in 1933, is undoubtedly the most famous work of literature that focuses on the Armenian Genocide. We pause to remember the contribution Werfel (1890-1945) made, in the year 2020 which marks the 130th anniversary of his birth and the 75th anniversary of his death.