USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive includes Armenian Genocide testimonies of Armenian Film Foundation (AFF) and the Richard G. Hovannisian Armenian Genocide Oral History Collections.

The Armenian Genocide spanned the years 1915 to 1923, during which the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire enacted genocidal policies against its Armenian population under the cover of World War I. Most of the killings took place in 1915-1916, but even after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by the Allied Powers in 1918, a Turkish nationalist movement continued the process of violent ethnic cleansing in areas such as Cilicia, Smyrna (Izmir) and the Armenian highlands to the east. During this period, the majority of the Ottoman Armenian population - some 1.5 million men, women and children - perished and the Armenian people were uprooted from their native homeland. Other non-Turkish minorities, such as Assyrians, Greeks and Yezidis, were also victimized during this period.

The Armenian Genocide testimony collections include several categories of individuals linked directly or indirectly to the calamity. The vast majority are Armenian Genocide survivors, while others are Armenian descendants (second and third generation), scholars, rescuers and aid providers, foreign witnesses, and Yezidi survivors, as well as Arab and Greek eyewitnesses. The interviews were recorded in 10 languages in 13 countries.

The Armenian Film Foundation’s collection consists of 333 audio-visual interviews with over 380 people. These interviews were filmed internationally by J. Michael Hagopian for documentary film purposes.

The Richard G. Hovannisian Armenian Genocide Oral History Collection is made up of more than 1,000 audio-only interviews. Dr. Hovannisian trained his students at UCLA to conduct full life-histories of Genocide survivors.

USC Shoah Foundation has conducted interviews with both Hagopian and Hovannisian. Only Hagopian’s interview is currently available in Visual History Archive.

Yes