The USC Shoah Foundation’s First Armenian Genocide Education—Keep the Promise Teacher Fellow Uses Testimony to Humanize History

Wed, 11/05/2025

Levon Ghanimian, an Armenian American educator, researcher, and PhD student from Northridge, California, has long felt a personal connection to the history of the Armenian Genocide.

Levon’s great-grandparents, who survived, passed down first-hand accounts of their personal experiences to their families. They shared the great losses they suffered and the tragedies they witnessed; despite these hardships, they held on to the hope of a better future. These memories endured through generations, shaping Ghanimian’s perspective on the importance of testimony, especially in regards to teaching and learning about genocide history.

“Growing up Armenian, we learned about the genocide, but our teachers had seldom used primary source accounts–like testimony of survivors–to teach us about it,” he said.

LEFT: Levon’s great-grandfather (on his father’s side), Levon Ghanimian, in the United States, 1914. RIGHT: Levon’s great-grandfather (on his mother’s side), Andranik Tashchian, (top row, middle) with his parents and siblings. After the death of their parents, Andranik and his brothers moved to Aleppo, Syria, post-genocide. Later, they moved to Soviet Armenia during the repatriation movement in the 1940s.

Today, Ghanimian teaches world history at an Armenian private school in California. When he first began teaching the Armenian Genocide, he recognized that many of his high school students lacked a deep understanding of how the genocide unfolded in the Ottoman Empire or how many Armenians resisted the Ottoman Turkish government’s oppression against them. Faced with this challenge, he turned to firsthand accounts, resources that could help students connect personally with the history.

“Using primary source accounts and testimony to learn about the Armenian Genocide,” Ghanimian said, “helps to contextualize the systematic nature in which it happened—which makes it easier to understand the lasting impacts it has today.”

The Keep the Promise—Armenian Genocide Education program on the USC Shoah Foundation’s educational platform, IWitness, grants educators access to a variety of testimony-based resources for K-12 classrooms that contextualize and humanize this history for students. Using these resources across the curriculum deepens students’ knowledge and further develops critical thinking skills and social emotional aptitudes. The program’s Armenian Genocide Education—Keep the Promise Teacher Fellowship provided the opportunity for one educator to leverage the power of survivor accounts and innovative technologies on IWitness to build new testimony-based resources.

As the program’s first teacher fellow, Ghanimian worked alongside Dr. Sedda Antekelian, the Senior Learning and Development Specialist at the USC Shoah Foundation, who leads the Keep the Promise program. “To keep the promise is a call not only to remember the past but to also hold ourselves accountable to our actions each day and build a world grounded in love and respect,” said Antekelian, “and when choosing a fellow for this opportunity, we looked for an educator with the passion to carry out this message."

As a fellow, Ghanimian developed four interactive activities, which are now available on IWitness. These include: Resistance during the Armenian Genocide, “I Am Armenian!” Cultural Preservation in the Armenian Diaspora, Memory and Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, and The Events of April 24, 1915.

Through the testimonies featured in each activity, Ghanimian aimed to challenge misconceptions and misunderstandings regarding this period in history and offer a deeper perspective on memory, commemoration, and preservation in the Armenian Diaspora.

Levon's authored activity, Resistance during the Armenian Genocide.

Testimony from survivors featured in the Information Quest Resistance During the Armenian Genocide details how Armenians resisted forced deportation, forced conversion, and other brutal systems designed to dehumanize them. These accounts provide a closer understanding of the power of individuals and communities.

“It’s hard to parse it into day-to-day experiences, but knowing about these small acts of resistance helped solidify my appreciation for my own ancestors and what they had to do to survive,” Ghanimian said. “It helped me understand the multi-dimensional nature of what it means to survive a genocide.”

“Working with Levon was a truly meaningful experience,” said Antekelian. “I congratulate him on the publication of these important activities, which add great value to the program and the resources it provides to educators.”

Learn more about Keep the Promise—Armenian Genocide Education.

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