Prof. Richard Hovannisian on the life and testimony of Alice Muggerditchian Shipley. This is the third testimony in the Armenian Genocide Testimony series.

Prof. Richard Hovannisian describes the life of Armenian Genocide survivor Ashrag Dickranian. This is the fourth testimony in the Armenian Genocide Testimony clip series.

Prof. Richard Hovannisian describes the life of Armenian Genocide survivor Elsie Hagopian Taft. This is the fifth testimony in the Armenian Genocide Testimony clip series.  

Over the last several years, I’ve had the distinct privilege to work with the recorded materials collected by the late Dr. J Michael Hagopian. A survivor of the Armenian Genocide himself, Michael had the foresight to capture the voices of those who witnessed the atrocities first hand.  Later this month, the USC Shoah Foundation will make a group of 60 of these interviews available through the Visual History Archive, ensuring that these recollections will be preserved in perpetuity, for future generations.  Michael would have certainly been proud to witness this accomplishment.

After the disastrous Balkan wars of 1912-13, the Turks lost most of their European possessions. To dilute the Armenian presence and create a homogenous Turkish and Muslim population that would unequivocally support the Turkish state, the Young Turks decided on a policy of resettling Muslim refugees from the Balkan wars in Armenian areas and deporting the indigenous population.  These early measures led to the impoverishment and death of thousands; then came the First World War with Turkey taking the side of Germany against Russia and its allies.

The noted Armenian hero General Antranig Ozanian, was born on February 25, 1865, and died on August 31, 1927. He spent the final years of his life living quietly with his wife in Fresno, California. General Antranig was the most well-known of Armenian freedom fighters in the twentieth century, and his exploits are remembered by Armenians throughout the world. General Antranig is buried today at the Yerablur cemetery in Yerevan, Armenia.

Historians continue to debate the extent of German responsibility for the Armenian Genocide in 1915. The Ottoman Empire was an ally of Germany during WWI (1914- 1918). During the war, Germany was blamed for the Armenian Genocide. Historian Arnold Toynbee in his widely read pamphlet Armenian Atrocities published in 1915 “indicted” Germany for what he called a “shameful and terrible page of modern history” in Armenia.

Sam Kadorian was born in 1907 in Hussenig, a small village in the province of Kharpert, in the eastern plains of Anatolia. He survived the Genocide in 1915 at the age of 8 when the Turkish gendarmes grabbed all the young boys of the village ages 5 to 10 and threw them into a pile on the sandy beach of the shores of the Euphrates River and starting jabbing them with their swords and bayonets. Fortunately, they only nipped his cheek and his grandmother later found him and nursed him back to health.

Shony Braun a violnist, recalls being selected to play music for the SS officers at Dachau. He believes that he would’ve been killed if not for his ability to play music. 

Roman Ferber explains why it is so important for him and other Holocaust survivors to speak about their experiences.

Alice Muggerditchian Shipley was 11 years old when in autumn of 1914 Turkey entered the war alongside Germany against the Allied Powers, and the atrocities against Armenians began. The Ottoman government took advantage of the war years to realize its premeditated and systematically implemented annihilation of the Armenian population. In this short clip, Alice describes the horrors of the first few months before her family was forced to take the route of deportation out of Harpout (Kharbert).

Born into an affluent German Jewish family, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. was raised in New York, where he attended school and received his training as an attorney at Columbia. An early supporter of Woodrow Wilson, Morgenthau was tapped by the then newly-elected president to become the United States Ambassador for the Ottoman Empire.

Vahram Morookian describes an experience that in some ways was typical and in at least one way unusual for the Armenian Genocide.  He was from Everek, a town in central Turkey near the well-known center of Kayseri.  The Armenian population of his town was deported, which was the common form the genocide took in the months and years after the early 1915 extermination of the 250,000 Armenian men in the Ottoman army and the national Armenian political, cultural, and religious leadership beginning April 24, 1915.  With most potential defenders and organizers removed, the deportations meant to d

Aurora Mardiganian speaks here as a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. But from 1918-1920, she was also the face of the Genocide to literally millions of Americans and to others throughout the world. Her tragic, horrific story was told through a 1918 semi-autobiographical book, Ravished Armenia, and a 1919 screen adaptation, also known as Auction of Souls. With the immediacy of a newsreel, the human side to the Genocide was brought to the screen.

When Michael Hagopian made his first classic acclaimed documentary on the Armenian Genocide in 1975, nominated for two Emmys, he titled the film “The Forgotten Genocide.” Since then decades have passed and hundreds of publications in a variety of languages have been written on the subject. The Armenian Genocide has now taken its rightfully important place within the field of genocide studies. It is not a “forgotten genocide” anymore, despite the existence of a denialist State - Turkey, which has developed denialism into an Industry.

Haig Baronian’s testimony touches on two important and interrelated dimensions of the Armenian Genocide: the gendered nature of forms and patterns of violence, and the Islamization and incorporation of Armenian women and children into Muslim households and society.

The murder of extended families, the targeting of community leaders, the critical role of eyewitnesses--each of these factors surfaces in Haigas Bonapart’s interview. These tactics are all too familiar to those of us who study the crime of genocide and the strategies employed by its perpetrators. By destroying communal ties and eliminating those individuals who might rally a group in self-defense, civilians under systematic assault are made much more vulnerable to isolation and mass violence.

Dirouhi Haigas was a young Turkish-Armenian girl of 7 when she and her family were abruptly uprooted from their home and deported on foot to the southern desert. A native of Konya, Turkey, she had lived an idyllic life up to that time with her parents, grandparents, aunt, and uncles. Her father was in the family business as a leather merchant, and her uncles were amateur musicians who loved nothing more than to get together with friends and relatives to enjoy folk music and dancing.  This life came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of World War I.

Henry Rosmarin sings a lullaby that his mother would sing to him as a child. He recalls his mother singing around the house a lot during his youth.

Klara Benjamin-Belkin was liberated from Bergen-Belsen in 1945 and after the war she pursued her passion in music and became the principle cellist in a symphony for 20 years. In this testimony clip she plays one of her favorite pieces.

Victor Borge was originally born in Copenhagen, but fled to Sweden once Nazis occupied Denmark during World War II. He managed to escape to the United States in 1940 on one of the last neutral ships leaving Europe. While in the U.S, Borge went on to become a famous comedian, conductor, and pianist. In this clip, he is playing a lullaby written by one of his father’s friends.

Anita Lasker Wallfisch recalls how she came to be the cellist in the female orchestra in Auschwitz. She talks extensively about the orchestra's conductor and music instructor, Alma, painting her in a positive light.

Levon Giridlian was born in Ottoman Empire, in Kayseri (Armenian: Kesaria) in the region of Cappadocia. Kayseri had once been a major Christian center, as attested by the numerous chapels hewn into the mountainous terrain. Although not a part of the historic Armenian highlands to the east, the county of Kayseri at the end of the nineteenth century had about 70,000 Armenian inhabitants, active in agriculture, the crafts and trades, and, among them, a significant number of regional and international merchants.

Wolf Dieter Bihl is a famous Austrian historian, with a number of published works on Austria-Hungary and the First World War. In this clip, he is touching upon two important issues pertaining to the history of the Armenian Genocide. The first is his assertion that representatives of the allies of the Ottoman Empire during the war, i.e. that other Central Powers, and Germany and Austria-Hungary in particular, reported extensively in their internal, confidential correspondence that what the Young Turk government was up to was actually a determined attempt to exterminate the Armenian race.

This brief clip reveals a number of significant points about the early stage of the Armenian Genocide (spring-summer 1915) in many areas. The first is that although one reads in memoirs and accounts of Armenians who were expecting “something bad to happen,” many, if not most, Armenian villagers believed that they were going to be relocated in a peaceful manner.

Judith Goldstein recalls music that was composed in the ghetto. She attended a music conservatory and remembers an older student composing a song. She then performs the Yiddish song on the guitar. She has translated one verse into English.

Alice Herz Sommer recalls life after the Holocaust. She discusses how she reached out to her sisters. In order to prove she was still alive, she wrote asking that they listen to her play the piano on the radio. Her sister would talk about the experience for the rest of her life.

Paula Lebovics remembers arriving to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon arrival she was asked to sing for everyone in her block. She was nervous, but felt obliged to do so. Luckily for Paula, everyone loved her voice and afterwards she was given special privileges. She remembers getting extra rations of food that she would take back to her mother.