Celá interview, ze kterých tyto úryvky pocházejí, můžete shlédnout v Centru vizuální historie Malach, http://malach-centrum.cz.

Celá interview, ze kterých tyto úryvky pocházejí, můžete shlédnout v Centru vizuální historie Malach, http://malach-centrum.cz.

“Get angry about it”, the conclusion of this clip, presents one of Israel Charny’s most important messages.

In the spring of 1915, the Young Turk regime of the Ottoman began a genocide against its Armenian population under the cover of World War I. This minute-long excerpt features survivor Haroutune Aivazian.  He describes the horror his mother faced when a town crier in Marash, a city in Cilcia in South West Anatolia, called for the Armenians of the community to gather in a square just outside of the town for deportation. As his mother prepared for the journey, a local Turkish man warned the family that deportation meant death.

In 1968, filmmaker J. Michael Hagopian received a phone call as he describes in this clip, from a German, who had apparently been stationed in a medical corps in the Ottoman Empire in 1915/1916 and witnessed what happened to Armenians. Michael had not heard of this person before, but knew right away that this could be an important interview. Why?

Dr. Ugur Ümit Üngör, Professor of History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, lectured on the involvement of Kurdish people in the Armenian Genocide as both perpetrators and resistors of the mass violence.

In this brief clip Father Krikor Guerguerian is faced with a theological question that has challenged many survivors of the Armenian Genocide. The perpetrator confesses to him that he killed his father, three brothers and confiscated their house and garden and asks Guerguerian for forgiveness.

In this short clip Harry Kurkjian recalls Armenians who were about to be killed crying out in despair, “Where are you God?”  “Why are you punishing us?”  As the first nation to convert to Christianity in 301 AD, the events of 1915 raised a fundamental theological problem for Armenians.  If God is good and all-powerful, why was he not intervening on their behalf?  The problem of theodicy, as theologians refer to it, is an issue that surfaces in nearly every genocide, driving some people to completely abandon faith in God.  Indeed, the “God is Dead” movement arose after the Holocaust as Jewis

In some ways, the one minute we spend with Elsie Hagopian Taft – 56 seconds, to be precise – is a wrenching primer on the Armenian Genocide. It is a poignant and powerful evocation of an innermost ring of Dante’s inferno, and a courageous explanation of why the Armenian Genocide matters today.

Michael Hagopian conducted almost all of the interviews in the Armenian Genocide Testimony collection.  After he died in December 2010, the Armenian Film Foundation received a request to interview Almas Boghosian, in Whitinsville, Massachusetts. Her granddaughter Taline had interviewed her in 2000, but her family wanted Almas to be interviewed again for this collection. I called a cameraman I knew from my previous work with the BBC and we went to Almas’ house, and met Almas’ grandson Bruce Boghosian and his wife, Laura.  

100 Days to Inspire Respect In every genocide, in spite of the horror of human killing and the danger that poses, there are remarkable people that come to the fore.  Armin T. Wegner was in the German Sanitary Corps and was posted to Eastern Turkey during WWI.  There he was witness to the genocide of the Armenian people. Seeing the devastating consequences of the deportations he documented the genocide in photographs, keeping meticulous notes at great personal risk.

Jona Goldrich’s family evaded roundups deportation by hiding in an attic. Jona describes how he and his young brother escaped Nazi occupied Poland after his father decided it was no longer safe for his sons to remain in the country.

Gertrude Englander describes the liberation of Mauthausen concentration camp in May 1945.

Wolf Deane plays the song composed and sang by Jews in the Lodz ghetto in Poland. This testimony clip and melody is featured in the short film Melodies of Auschwitz.   

Chaim Borenstein remembers the brutality of the SS guards while imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto in Nazi occupied Poland.

Herman Cohn recalls watching the parade in Nazi Germany for Hitler’s birthday in 1933 and how terrified he felt as a young boy.  

Melanie Wallis recalls how she settled in Detroit, Michigan after immigrating to the United States in 1947.

Stefan recalls the evening of November 4, 1941, when leaving the theater where he worked in Torun, Poland, he encounters a German soldier who turns out to be a man named Willi, his first real romance.Foreign words in this video clip:Ersatzkaffee (German): substitute coffee

After several months together, Willi must break the news to Stefan that he is being transferred to the Eastern front.

On the way to show his friend Zygmund the shed where Stefan and Willi would regularly meet, the two encounter three men who had just escaped the Stutthof concentration camp.Foreign words in this video clip:pedo (Polish): derogatory word for a gay person

After time goes by without receiving a letter from Willi, Stefan decides to write the German soldier himself. His decision to put down his return address on the envelope seals his fate. Not long after, September 19, 1942, the Gestapo bring Stefan in for questioning.Foreign words in this clip:Haftbefehl (German): arrest warrantHandschenkel (meant to say Handschellen) (German): handcuffsVerhöre (German): police interrogations

After his arrest in September 1942, Stefan Kosinski was incarcerated while awaiting his trial. In this clip, he recounts the conditions in the jail and his memory of seeing his mother out the window of his jail cell keeping vigil. She is also present during his trial before the Nazi court, which sentences Stefan to five years hard labor. Foreign words in this clip:pedo (Polish): derogatory term for a gay personschwul (German): gay, homosexualZuchthaus (German): penitentiary

Hannah Altbush describes the horrible experience of being expelled from her school in Nazi Germany simply because she was Jewish.

As a young girl Hedy Epstein returned home from school in Nazi Germany to find her house empty, locked and her parents nowhere to be found. She describes the terrifying confrontation with a Nazi when looking for her parents.

John K. Roth Professor of History and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College, and 2015 USC Shoah Foundation Yom Hashoah Scholar in Residence Dr. Wendy Lower discusses the role of German women in the Nazi killing fields.  

Three women tell their stories of struggle, courage, and resilience, and share their vision of rebuilding societies broken by genocide. 

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research Center Fellow Peg Levine, PhD, EdD, discusses her term Ritualcide and its application during the Cambodian Genocide.

Yehuda Danzing remembers the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by British Armed Forces in April 1945. He describes the confusion of liberation since he didn’t understand English and he thought the British soldiers announcing his freedom were Nazi soldiers giving more orders.

Max Iland reflects on personal struggles with faith and suffering. He is brought to tears at the thought of how much his mother and brother must have suffered on their way to the concentration camp and when they were sent to the gas chambers.

Dr. Bertram Schaffner, who served as a military psychiatrist during World War 2, recounts how he dealt with the military's anti-gay policy while evaluating draftees.