On April 6, 1994, an aircraft carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down by a surface-to-air missile as it was about to land in Kigali airport. Everyone aboard the plane was killed: Habyarimana; president of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira; and a three-man French crew. While it remains unclear who fired the missile, the event is viewed as having ignited the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide.

Live Wesige remembers hearing the news about the president’s death and describes the violence that ensued in his neighborhood the next day, April 7, 1994.

Rose Burizihiza describes how the Hutu leaders in her town met to plan how they would kill the local Tutsis.

Roméo Dallaire describes how quickly violence escalated in Rwanda in 1994 and his disappointment in the lack of support from the international community.

Valerie Nyirarudodo says she has forgiven the perpetrators of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda who have asked for it, and encourages others to follow the same path.

Alphonse Kabalisa recalls listening to anti-Tutsi propaganda on the radio with his father, after the death of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana. Alphonse’s testimony is featured in the IWitness activity, Information Quest: The Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda

Carl Wilkens, an aid provider during the Rwandan Tutsi Genocide, describes the courageous acts of his neighbors. 

Rwandan Tutsi Genocide survivor Kizito Kalima shares his hope that people take action to prevent future genocides. He vows  to do anything necessary to ensure the world is a safe, peaceful place.

Rwandan Tutsi Genocide survivor Edith Umugiraneza describes her first contact with the Interahamwe militia, which was threatening violence against Tutsis.

Holocaust survivor George Papanek encourages people to "think globally, act locally," and work together to create a better world.

Esther Bem desires future generations to know there were some virtuous individuals during the Holocaust, who sacrificed their security and life, in order to help others.

Rwandan Tutsi Genocide survivor Kizito Kalima shares his hope that people take action to prevent future genocides. He vows  to do anything necessary to ensure the world is a safe, peaceful place.

Armenian Genocide survivor Yevnige Salibian speaks about forgiveness and current genocide denial.

Henny Paritzky speaks on how her family escaped deportation with the help of a nun and a policeman in a hospital in Lyon, France.

Roman Kent acknowledges the contribution of the “Righteous Gentiles” who put their own lives on the line in order to save Jews during the Holocaust.  Kent’s testimony is featured in Testimony – The Legacy of Schindler’s List and the USC Shoah Foundation.

Richard Rozen remembers hiding with his family in an attic of a small cabin on a farm in Poland for over two years. At night when everyone was sleeping Richard’s father gave him writing and reading lessons. Richard’s testimony is featured in the book, Testimony – The Legacy of Schindler’s List and the USC Shoah Foundation.

Johtje Vos reflects on her decision to help hide Jews during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Throughout the war Johtje and her husband, Aart, housed 32 Jews, although never more than 14 at the same time. In 1982 both Johtje and Aart were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for risking their own lives to save the lives of others.

Dora Goldberg remembers when her mother never returned due to roundups by German soldiers in France. Dora describes being sent to her aunt's house and hiding in the bathroom from Nazis who were searching for her and her brother.

Lusia Haberfeld recalls how her family evaded deportation by hiding in an attic within the Warsaw ghetto.  This clip from Lusia’s testimony is featured in the IWitness Activity: Chance & Choice: A survivor's story.

Syrt Wolters speaks admirably of the Spainers, a Jewish family he and his wife hid in their home in the Netherlands during World War II.  

Arie Van Mansum was only in his early 20’s when he helped rescue Jews in the Netherlands. He describes why he chose to risk in life in order to hide and rescue Jews. Arie was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

Liliane Bentitou reflects on hiding in Lyon, France and how she was able to conceal her identity with false papers.

Leon Gersten and some of his family escaped the Frystak ghetto in Poland and hid with a Polish family for almost two years. Leon remembers when police officials entered the home of the Polish family looking for Jews and he recalls how much the family sacrificed.

Rose Toren’s father told her to leave the family to go hide with a friend from school in Nazi occupied Poland. Rose recalls the night she fled to her friend’s house and evaded beatings by the Gestapo.  

Kizito Kalima, a survivor of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, recalls the negative effects of labeling in the classroom before the genocide.

Charlotte Manaster reflects on returning to her home in Vienna after being liberated. Charlotte recalls asking her old friend, Greta, why she participated in anti-Jewish actions including throwing rocks into Charlotte’s family home during Kristallnacht.

Ruth Brand remembers how the non-Jewish people in her neighborhood taunted her family while they were being forced out of their home in Romania. She also describes how members of her family tried to reclaim their property after the war.

David Faber recalls the anti-Semitism he experienced as a child in pre-WWII Poland. He describes numerous instances where he was abused physically and emotionally by non-Jewish children on his way to and from school.

Michael Banhidi recalls how anti-Semitism and racial discrimination spread throughout his neighborhood in Hungary.  

Floyd Dade explains the racial segregation of battalions during World War II. He also describes his relations with white soldiers on the battlefield.

Eva Bergmann remembers when she was forced to leave her job at a public kindergarten school in Berlin because of Nazi enforced anti-Jewish restrictions. Eva also reflects that her gentile friends remained loyal and friendly to her even after she was labeled as “non-Aryan.”

Agnes Adachi remembers attending the Olympic Games in Berlin 1936; and describes what it was like to watch Jesse Owens compete and win the gold medal. She recalls that the anti-Jewish restrictions and propaganda had been eased at the time because of the international presence in Germany.

In preparation for the start of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the Nazis in power decided to minimize the presence of anti-Semitism in the city. Hugo Beckerman recalls how he was able to identify the Jewish businesses that were still allowed to run at that time.

Ernest Uiberall remembers hearing about the burning of the German parliament (Reichstag) building on February 27 1933. Uiberall also reflects on how the Austrian newspapers reported on the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party.

George Weiss was seven years old when the Germans invaded his home country of Belgium. He reflects on the shame he felt when he was forced to wear the yellow star of David to school.

Margaret Lambert recalls her experience as an athlete on the Olympic team in Nazi Germany in 1936. Lambert's testimony is featured in the IWitness Activity, 1936 Olympics: Race, Politics & Civil Rights.

Erno Abelesz remembers when German forces occupied his home country of Hungary on March 19, 1944.

Walter Absil reflects on living in Vienna, Austria during the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party in the 1930’s. He also recalls on returning back to Vienna to retrieve his belongings from his family home after the war. 

Judy Lysy speaks how Jewish restrictions and antisemitism increased in her hometown in then Czechoslovakia.

Georgette Banks describes when her father was arrested in Paris, France in 1941. She remembers begging the policeman not to take her father, who was later deported to the Drancy concentration camp.

Sam Kadorian speaks on being an eyewitness to the Armenian Genocide. Kadorian’s testimony is part of the new Armenian Genocide collection.

Betty Gerard shows and describes the Yellow Star of David she was forced to wear as a child in the Westerbork concentration camp in the Netherlands.

Alphonse Kabalisa recalls listening to anti-Tutsi propaganda on the radio with his father, after the death of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana. Alphonse’s testimony is featured in the IWitness activity, Information Quest: The Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda

Stefan speaks of his arrest by the Gestapo in his place of birth, Torun, Poland. Stefan relates how he was interrogated, brutally beaten and subsequently imprisoned as a result of an intimate letter he wrote to an Austrian soldier in German uniform. View his entire testimony at http://vhaonline.usc.edu/login.aspx

Rose Burizhiza speaks on the discrimination she faced in school before the genocide began in Rwanda. Rose’s testimony is featured in the IWitness activity, Information Quest: The Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Judith Agular describes anti-Jewish restrictions including being forced to live in a “Yellow-star House,” in Budapest, Hungary.

Emmanuel Muhinda describes the persecution of Tutsi and anti-Tutsi propaganda he witnessed before the genocide started in April 1994. His testimony is featured in the IWitness activity, Information Quest: The Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Beatrice Becker speaks of the dangerous conditions facing the Jews of Iasi, Romania in late June 1941 when Romania entered the war as an ally of Germany. Days later, on Jun 29th, the Jews of Iasi were rounded up by Romanian and German military units. Beatrice heard screams and shooting coming from the direction of the main police headquarters. Beatrice and her parents were rounded up and  were marched toward the police station’s courtyard, where German soldiers concentrated the Jews of Iasi. The family saw many corpses along the way.  Beatrice and her mother were allowed to return home. Thousands of Jewish men were deported from Iasi by train and most died during deportation, including her father. Beatrice relates she soon learned that thousands of Jews had been executed or deported from the city during the Iasi Pogrom on June 29, 1941.

From July 25 to July 26, 1941, 3,800 Jews were killed during a pogrom by Lithuanians in Kaunas, Lithuania. As a child Masha Loen witnessed the pogrom in her hometown after her family tried to escape to Russia and were sent back to Kaunas by Russian soldiers.

Hank Schwab describes the structure of his primary and high school in Germany. He also reflects on the close relationships he formed with his Jewish and gentile classmates. Schwab and fellow survivors returned to Germany for the first time since WWII, for their 50th high school reunion.

In August 1942 was the start of deportation of Jews from Croatia to concentration camps. Edmund Berger remembers when the Germans started to control the Croatian government and implemented restrictions against Jews and eventually the killings of young Jewish men.

On August 8, 1940, before the Nazis entered Romania, the government started to restrict Romanian Jews from employment and education, which later turned into the Romanization of Jewish businesses. Bellina Aronovich remembers the anti-Semitism and violence against Jews had even started the year before, in 1939.

Rita Feder was a young girl during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and remembers how desperately she wanted to attend the games but was unable to because she was Jewish. Feder recalls how dangerous it was for Jews during that time even though there was an international audience in Berlin.

Joseph Steiner remembers when Nazi Germany invaded his home country, Hungary. He speaks on the anti-Semitism he experienced from neighbors, which he said was influenced by Nazi propaganda and hatred.

Marga Randall describes how life changed for her family and the Jewish population in Germany following the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws on September 15, 1935.

Trudy Coppel describes how Jews were forced to wear the Yellow Star on their clothing in Nazi Germany. Trudy’s was considered Aryan, however her father was born Jewish and according to Nazi laws, Trudy and her brothers were Jewish and were forced to wear the Yellow Star beginning in September 1941.

Henry Laurant remembers the first time he experienced antisemitism in Nazi Germany. He was targeted by other children who were influenced by Nazi rhetoric. His testimony is featured in the multimedia professional development program, Echoes and Reflections.

In 1941 more anti- Jewish measures were implemented and intensified in Nazi Germany including ration cards, forbidding Jews to emigrate and deportations of Jews to ghettos and concentration camps. Gerda Haas was a nurse at a hospital in Berlin  when her mother was deported to the Riga ghetto in Latvia in late 1941.

Elizabeth Bader remembers her grade school in Nazi Germany and recalls her first teacher being relieved of his duties because he was too friendly with Jewish families. Elizabeth also reflects on how the Nazi’s ideologies were taught in the classroom.

Elena Nightingale speaks how life changed for her family in the late 1930’s when anti-Jewish laws were enforced in Italy. She describes how her father was forced out of his job and she felt like a second class citizen.

In November 1938 a pogrom broke out throughout Germany and across the Sudetenland. Tom Tugend remembers hearing the mob and the breaking of glass outside his family’s home in Berlin during Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass.”

Norbert Bikales remembers the day he was excluded from attending a non-Jewish German school in Berlin, Germany, shortly after the November Pogrom (Kristallnacht) in November 1938. He reflects on how this event changed his life.

Abbie Akst remembers when the Nazis occupied his hometown in Poland in 1939. Abbie reflects on the restrictions imposed onto Polish Jews by the Nazis including wearing a yellow patch.

Ellen Brandt recalls the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws in Berlin and her participation in a Jewish youth movement BDJJ or Bund Deutsch-Jüdischer Jugend. She also reflects how the organization helped her connect with her Jewish identity.

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.

Francoise Muteteli describes how her work at a Rwandan Genocide memorial is helping preserve the memory of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Marion Pritchard recalls bringing up the topic of homosexuality at the dinner table and how her father took her aside to discuss the importance of tolerance.

She passed away in 2016 at the age of 96. Read our tribute to her.

Daisy Biro describes life in Budapest during WWII and how grateful she is that her entire immediate family survived.

Vera Gissing remembers her parents decision to send her and her sister Eva on the Kindertransport from Czechoslovakia to England in May 1939. She also describes their farewell at the train station in Prague and the journey to England. Vera’s testimony is featured in Testimony – The Legacy of Schindler’s List and the USC Shoah Foundation.

Dave Lux survived the Holocaust as a child because of Nicholas Winton, who orchestrated the Czech Kindertransport, saving hundreds of Jewish children by transporting them to England. Lux remembers leaving his parents and thinking he’s going on a field trip.

Alice Masters recalls meeting Sir Nicholas for the first time in London at the 50th reunion of the Kindertransport children.

Eva Hayman remembers when her family found out about the Kindertransport orchestrated by Sir Nicholas Winton. Eva and her sister were a part of the 669 children who were rescued by Winton from Czechoslovakia in 1939.

Herbert Holden describes Nicholas Winton's lifesaving efforts to bring 669 Czech children to Britain during the Holocaust, and how he called up a television program to reveal himself as one of the children Winton saved.

100 Days to Inspire Respect

Sir Nicholas Winton, responsible for organizing the Kindertransport that saved the lives of 669 Jewish children, passed away at the age of 106. Here is his message to the future.

Professor Richard Hovannisian explains the emotion expressed in the eyewitness testimonies to the Armenian Genocide is what sets the Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection at USC Shoah Foundation apart from other written and audio testimony collections.

Professor Richard Hovannisian provides commentary for the testimony clip of Jirair Suchiasian.

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. I always found him to be a man of conviction – a courageous individual who wanted to expose the world to the truth.

Mr. Lemyel Amirian touches on the power of courage. The Armenians of Van and the surrounding regions took extraordinary measures to defend themselves – and, like Mr. Amirian, fortunately, many survived to share their stories. Now, these interviews will be made publically available online all across the globe, and I am hopeful that it will be a source of courage for all those who view them.  Sadly, a hundred years after the fact, denial and distortion is still commonplace. However, with a little bit of courage, I am certain that the Republic of Turkey can take steps towards coming to terms with the historical record and correcting the wrongs of the past.  It is only then that healing will occur.

Hrag Yedalian, program administrator of Audiovisual Collections, oversees the USC Shoah Foundation’s Armenian Genocide collection. He has previously worked in state and local government and for various nonprofit groups. Hrag graduated with high honors from UC Berkeley with a BA in History and then went on to study film and video editing at the American Film Institute Conservatory (AFI).

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. It is in this context that the massacres in the province of Van, which were an early phase in the Armenian Genocide of 1915 can be understood.

The war on the Russian front started badly for the Turks. Led by Enver Pasha, the Minister of War, and one of the three major leaders of the Young Turks, they suffered a major defeat at Sarikamish in the winter of 1915. The Turks blamed their defeat on Armenian irregulars who were active on the Russian front.  For their part, the Russians pushed on into Anatolia, making their way to the province of Van. The province and the town of Van—both were majority Armenian--were strategically important because they were gateways to Russia, Persia, and the rest of Anatolia.

In Van, Cevdet Bey, brother-in-law of Enver Pasha, had been governor since February 1915.  He was known for being ruthless with Armenians and other Christians since the start of the war. Fearing the Russian advance and an Armenian rising, he initiated a search for weapons and demanded that Armenian leaders produce 4000 recruits for the Army.  The Armenians demurred, fearing for the lives of the men. In the winter and early spring of 1915 Cevdet took increasingly violent measures against Armenians throughout the province. Then on April 19, 1915, following an incident, the Turks attacked the Armenian quarter of the city. 

Fearing the worst, and encouraged by the advance of Russian forces, the Armenians had prepared to resist. Although outnumbered and outgunned, they fought with courage born out of desperation. They were able to hold off the Turkish seizure of their quarter until Russian and Russian Armenian forces liberated the district on May 21, 1915. But this was a false dawn because by July 30 Russian forces were forced to retreat and Van was once again occupied by the Turks. Many of the Armenian inhabitants of Van fled to Transcaucasia, the rest were deported and massacred as the area was re-occupied by Ottoman forces.

Author: Robert Melson, Professor Emeritus Political Science Purdue University

Suggestions for Futher Reading:

Bloxham, Donald. The Great Game of Genocide. Oxford: 2005

Dadrian,  Vahakn N. The History of the Armenian Genocide. Oxford: Beghahn Books, 1995

Hovannisian, Richard G. Armenia on the Road to Independence. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967

Kévorkian, Raymond. The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011

Melson, Robert. Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992.

Hyperlinks:  Balkan wars, Cevdet Bey, Enver Pasha, Muslim Refugees, war and genocide.

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.

Arra Avakian was a long-time resident of Fresno and one of the founders of the Armenian Assembly. He has written numerous articles on Armenian history and culture.

Author: Barlow Der Mugrdechian is the Coordinator of the Armenian Studies Program and Director of the Center for Armenian Studies at Fresno State. He was appointed to the position in August of 2008.

Additional Resources: General Andranik and the Armenian Revolutionary Movement

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.

This interview considers German culpability for the Armenian Genocide by claiming that states always act in their own interests and not out of any moral obligation to defend human rights. Therefore, Germany did not do anything to stop the Genocide because it went against the more important goal of winning the war. Historian Donald Bloxham has argued that although Germany did play a significant role in the massacres that “the German role should still be seen in a comparative, interactive context with those of the other Great Powers.” Rather than focus on Germany, Bloxham suggests, scholars should understand German culpability alongside the ultimate failure of American and European Powers to stop the Genocide.

Author: Michelle Tusan is Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and author of Smyrna’s Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide and the Birth of the Middle East

Further reading:

Margaret Anderson, “Down in Turkey Far Away’: Human Rights, the Armenian Massacres in

Germany,” Journal of Modern History, (March 2007), 79:1, pp. 80-111.

Donald Bloxham, Great Game of Genocide (Oxford UP, 2005)

Isabel Hull, Absolute Destruction (Cornell UP 2005).

Ronald Suny, et. al. A Question of Genocide (Oxford UP, 2012)

Michelle Tusan, Smyrna’s Ashes (UC Press, 2012)

Michella Tusan,“Crimes against Humanity": Human Rights, the British Empire, and the Origins of the Response to the Armenian Genocide. The American Historical Review 2014 119: 47-77

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. The families of the other boys were not as fortunate as they were forced to dig graves to bury their children and grandchildren, or ended up just pushing them into the Euphrates River, where their bodies floated away.

I met Sam years ago and remember him fondly, as my maternal great grandparents came from Hussenig. My great grandfather Krekor Vaznaian had 10 brothers and sisters, some of whom left Hussenig for the dream of the New World, while others remained. In 1896, he married Kohar Movsesian of Hussenig and traveled alone to Boston where he hoped to make his fortune and return to his new bride. Instead, Kohar joined him in the United States and the two eventually settled in Los Angeles in the late 1920s, after short stays in St. Paul, Minnesota, Fresno and Sacramento.  Krekor never learned the details of the fate of the members of his family who stayed in Hussenig, though none were as fortunate as Sam Kadorian.

Author: Jerry Papazian Chairman, Armenian Film Foundation
 

For more information about Hussenig, I recommend the book Hussenig – The origin, history and destruction of an Armenian town, by Marderos Deranian

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).

The clubfooted paperboy was shouting victories of the Turkish army, and it only meant that Turkish soldiers, following Armenian conscripts out of the city, forced them to dig trenches and then killed the boys and threw them there. This was the beginning of the grand scheme: the Armenian soldiers were being disarmed, put to hard labor, tortured, and murdered. The paperboy came shouting again, Alice remembers in her memoir. Thousands of weapons have been confiscated, he shouted, and the Armenian plot of uprising against the government have been aborted. This next stage of the plan, perfidiously accomplished, aimed at disarming the populace with the most brutal means to paralyze any attempt of self-defense. Then the Armenian notables of Harpout, as Alice describes, were arrested and murdered. This stage of the annihilation of Armenian leadership and intelligentsia had begun in Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) to spread all over the Empire.

With the Armenian leadership gone and the able bodied men liquidated, the caravans of deportees consisted mainly of women, children, and old men. Alice witnessed the brutality by which the gendarmes were treating the deportees who left their houses to the Turkish mob to loot or move in. Armenian deportees walked for weeks in the most deplorable conditions. Very few reached the Syrian Desert, the camps of final solution. The rest had perished on the road. The Turkish plan of extermination was successfully implemented.

Alice’s family survived what is defined today the Armenian Genocide. Not very many did.

Further reading: Alice Muggerditchian Shipley, We Walked then Ran (1983).

Author: Rubina Peroomian holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from UCLA. She has been a lecturer of Armenian language and literature as well as Armenian history and the Armenian Question at UCLA, University of La Verne, and Glendale College. Currently, she is an Associate Researcher at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA.  

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. Though he did not have any formal training as a diplomat and even initially rejected the position, Morgenthau came around to the idea after speaking with Rabbi Stephen Wise, who encouraged him to accept the post in the belief that he could help see to the welfare of the empire’s Jewish community. His early reservations notwithstanding, Morgenthau, once settled, showed a keen interest in Ottoman affairs and devoted considerable attention to the plight of the Christian Armenian population, whose status as an oppressed minority in the empire resonated with and reminded him much of the conditions Jews faced in Eastern Europe.

It was perhaps through no small coincidence, then, that Ambassador Morgenthau emerged during the height of World War I to become the Armenians’ most prominent and passionate defender. As reports containing accounts of atrocities, forced marches, and mass looting of Armenians began to accumulate at the embassy during the spring of 1915, Morgenthau moved to intercede on the Armenians’ behalf. He remonstrated and held numerous meetings with the Turkish officials responsible for the genocide, including its foremost architect, Interior Minister Talât Pasha. Faced with stonewall denial and indifference, Morgenthau was led to the inescapable conclusion that what was unfolding was nothing short of “a campaign of race extermination.” Undaunted and despite a lack of support from his government, he attempted to save as many Armenian lives as was possible at the time, promoted awareness of the events in the press back home and helped to raise tens of millions of dollars in relief for Armenian victims. “Our people will never forget these massacres,” he vowed to Talât. Despite his resignation from his post in 1916, the indefatigable Morgenthau continued in his relief efforts and activism, giving a powerful voice to those who had none.

Authors: Vartkes Yeghiayan, Esq. and Armen Manuk-Khaloyan, Yeghiayan Associates office historian.

Works

Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1918; repr. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003).

The Murder of a Nation (New York: Armenian General Benevolent Union of America, 1974).

United States Diplomacy on the Bosphorus: The Diaries of Ambassador Morgenthau, 1913-1916, ed. Ara Sarafian (Princeton, N.J.: Gomidas Institute, 2004).

Further Reading

Peter Balakian, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).

Henry Morgenthau, III, Mostly Morgenthaus: A Family History (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1991).

Michael B. Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007).

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 destroy the remainder of the victim population proceeded, village by village, town by town across Turkey during the summer of 1915.  Armenians were force-marched under dire conditions, for weeks and months, toward Der-Zor in the Syrian Desert, where most of those surviving the caravans were killed outright or died of starvation, thirst, or disease. 

As in many cases, Armenians were given very little notice before they were deported, and had their possessions taken.  An interesting difference is that Mr. Morookian’s father was also deported, because typically men and “military age” boys, that is, boys from about 12 up, were separated from the other Armenians prior to the march and killed, often out of sight so that their families would believe that they were being taken to be reunited with them and thus be more likely to accept being deported.  That his father survived three months appears quite exceptional.  Mr. Morookian’s other experiences also resonate with countless accounts by eyewitnesses and other survivors.  Horrible physical and mental conditions were imposed through the deportation marches – lack of adequate food, water, clothing, and shelter, as well as great anxiety and trauma at witnessing murders and other deaths, rapes, and so on.   Sexual violence against and kidnapping of girls and women was pervasive, and Mr. Morookian’s sister was one of tens of thousands of girls and women who suffered this fate. His narrative suggests he never saw her again, so we cannot be sure about what happened to her, but one of the following outcomes is likely:  She was abused and killed in the months after being abducted, she was held by her captors or sold by them as a slave for domestic service or sexual exploitation, or she was forcibly Islamicized into the family of her captors or compelled to become a wife in the family. 

Of special note is Mr. Morookian’s satisfaction that he has managed to build a good life for himself, with a family, despite the fact that the genocide perpetrators tried to prevent any Armenian victims ever again from having such a life.  Not so much revenge, this is a kind of celebration of survival.

Author: Henry Theriault is Professor in and Chair of the Philosophy Department of Worcester State University, in Massachusetts.  His research and teaching specialty is genocide and human rights, especially reparative justice for genocide, victim-perpetrator relations, genocide denial, and mass violence against women and girls.

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. Working with Near East Relief and with the support of the wealthiest and the most prominent members of New York society, Aurora and her film helped raise some $117 million (the equivalent of $2 billion today) for the relief of Armenian suffering.

Andy Warhol promises us all fifteen minutes of fame. For Aurora such altruistic glory lasted somewhat longer — some two years. And then she was forgotten. She died alone, a lost Armenian soul, her mortal reminds unclaimed by either relative or friend (of which she should have had millions in the Armenian community), and she is buried in Los Angeles in an unmarked grave.

Her memory lives on today thanks to various projects that do not benefit Aurora herself. To a large extent, she represents the hundreds of thousands of dead and lost Armenian victims of the Genocide. She also is a victim. She sacrificed herself for a charitable cause and for the profit of others. She survives as a reminder of just how easy it is to be forgotten and tossed aside as the world moves on and forgets the horrors and tragedies of the past.

As a non-Armenian, I am proud that I was able to meet and talk to Aurora about her film, and that I have been able to discuss her work, to reprint the original book, and, for the first time, publish the entire film script in Ravished Armenia and the Story of Aurora Mardiganian (University Press of Mississippi, 2014).

Author and film historian Anthony Slide, who has been described by Lillian Gish as “our pre-eminent historian of the silent film.”

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. Even though the Armenian Genocide is now studied by scholars, researchers and students around the world there are still challenges and problems that must be confronted head on including the lack of recognition within the international community. The Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection at USC Shoah Foundation is an important milestone in the long journey and will help to close the circle that Michael Hapogian started in 1975. The hundreds of video testimonies including Nium Sukkar’s, an Arab eyewitness to the atrocities at Deir ez-Zor, will continue to inform the world on what happened 100 years ago.

In addition to the eyewitness testimonies they are many informative web-sites, valuable books and other documentation on this subject, which all play a vital role in curtailing denial. Any reference to the topic should start with publications by Vahakn Dadrian, who deserved to be called the founder of our research field, and Richard Hovannisian, a leading expert on the Armenian Genocide. Their contributions must be respected especially. For more information on the history of the Armenian Genocide, I suggest starting with Raymond Kevorkian’s The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History and my two books A Shameful Act and The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity.

Author: Taner Akçam, Kaloosdian/Mugar Professor, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University

Suggested Websites: http://www.armenian-genocide.org/; http://www.armenocide.de/ and http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/index.php 

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.

Patterns of violence and persecution in the Armenian Genocide differed according to gender and age. While Ottoman Armenian men were initially conscripted into the Ottoman army, they were disarmed and placed in labor battalions in March 1915. After some time, most of these men were massacred. When the deportations began, Armenian men who had not been conscripted, along with boys older than about age twelve, were typically killed before the remaining Armenian population of a town or village was deported. Consequently, most of the deportees were women and children. Along the deportation routes, many groups of deportees were massacred at specific points, while others died from violence, starvation, and disease. In addition, many girls and women were raped, and perhaps as many as 200,000 Armenian women and children were forcibly Islamized and incorporated into Muslim families. Finally, although several hundred thousand Armenians managed to survive the deportation marches, most of which ended in the Syrian Desert; many subsequently died from starvation, disease, exposure to the elements, and a second wave of organized massacres in 1916.

After the war, international and Armenian efforts attempted to locate Islamized Armenians and orphans, reunite surviving family members, and reconstruct the Armenian nation. In spite of these efforts, the fates of many children who were left behind, given away, or abducted are unknown, and many Islamized Armenian women remained with their Muslim children and families. As a result, it is estimated that in Turkey today, there could be two to three million descendants of these Islamized Armenians. In the past decade, scholars have begun to explore these gendered aspects of the genocide, while the descendants of these Islamized Armenians in Turkey today has become a topic of discussion and research.

Author: Jennifer M. Dixon, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Villanova University

Academic website: https://sites.google.com/site/jennifermargaretdixon/

Suggestions for further reading

Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleaning in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012).

Ayşe Gül Altınay, “Gendered silences, gendered memories: New memory work on Islamized Armenians in Turkey,” Eurozine (February 2014)

Ayşe Gül Altınay and Fethiye Çetin, The Grandchildren: The Hidden Legacy of “Lost” Armenians in Turkey, Maureen Freely, trans. (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2014).

Matthias Bjørnlund, “‘A Fate Worse than Dying’: Sexual Violence during the Armenian Genocide,” in Dagmar Herzog, ed., Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 16-58.

Donald Bloxham, “The Armenian Genocide of 1915-1916: Cumulative Radicalization and the Development of a Destruction Policy,” Past & Present, no. 181 (November 2003), pp. 141-91.

Fethiye Çetin, My Grandmother: A Memoir, Maureen Freely, trans. (London: Verso, 2008).

Katharine Derderian, “Common Fate, Different Experience: Gender-Specific Aspects of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 19, no. 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 1-25.

Lerna Ekmekcioglu, “A Climate for Abduction, a Climate for Redemption: The Politics of Inclusion during and after the Armenian Genocide,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 55, no. 3 (2013), pp. 522-53.

Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I.B. Tauris & Co., Ltd., 2011).

Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 111-79.

Eliz Sanasarian, “Gender Discrimination in the Genocidal Process: A Preliminary Study of the Armenian Genocide,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 4, no. 4 (1989), pp. 449-61.

Ara Sarafian, “The Absorption of Armenian Women and Children into Muslim Households as a Structural Component of the Armenian Genocide,” in Omer Bartov and Phyllis Mack, eds., In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), pp. 209-21.

Vahram L. Shemmassian, “The Reclamation of Captive Armenian Genocide Survivors in Syria and Lebanon at the End of World War I,” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, vol. 15 (2006), pp. 113-40.

Vahé Tachjian, “Gender, Nationalism, Exclusion: The Reintegration Process of Female Survivors of the Armenian Genocide,” Nations and Nationalisms, vol. 15, no. 1 (2009), pp. 60-80.

Uğur Ümit Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

Uğur Ümit Üngör, “Orphans, Converts, and Prostitutes: Social Consequences of War and Persecution in the Ottoman Empire, 1914-1923,” War in History, vol. 19, no. 2 (2012), pp. 173-92.

Keith David Watenpaugh, “The League of Nations’ Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, 1920-1927,” American Historical Review, vol. 115, no. 5 (December 2010), pp. 1315-39.

Keith David Watenpaugh, “‘Are There Any Children For Sale?’: Genocide and the Transfer of Armenian Children (1915-1922),” Journal of Human Rights, vol. 12, no. 3 (2013), pp. 283-95.

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. In the middle of a Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1915, church bells rang out unexpectedly, calling Armenians to the church square, where they were told that they were to be deported within the next two weeks and allowed to take with them only what they could carry. Soon after, the family was forced to leave their ancestral home, never to return.

Dirouhi’s experience was similar to that of most of the 1.5 Armenian victims of the Armenian Genocide. The difference is that Konya is located in the center of Anatolia, far from the war zone to the east where most of the Turkish Armenians lived and where the Turkish Government claimed the exigencies of war as an excuse for their actions. There was no fighting in the Konya area, the Armenians posed no threat, and the deportations were clearly part of the Turkish Government’s brutal policy to eliminate its Armenian population.

Author: Barbara Merguerian, PhD, Director of the Armenian Women’s Archives of the Armenian International Women’s Association. www.aiwainternational.org

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.

Mr. Bonapart also underscores the power of a single voice when he describes a pharmacist from his community. This man managed to survive a massacre and bring both witness and warning to other Armenians who had been told that their fate would be deportation, not death.  Survival is in itself a form of resistance. It is through the memories of survivors and their willingness to share stories of their trauma that the historical record is given detail, credibility, and humanity.

The origins of the term “genocide” rest, in part, in the events of 1915-16 in Anatolia. Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin highlighted early exposure to the history of Ottoman attacks against Armenians, anti-Semitic pogroms, and other cases of targeted violence as key to his beliefs about the need for the protection of groups under international law. Inspired by the murder of his own family during the Holocaust, Lemkin tirelessly championed this legal concept until it was codified in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948.

Author: Edna Friedberg, Ph.D., ­­Historian, Levine Institute for Holocaust Education United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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.

As Armenians sought greater civil rights and security in the rapidly declining Ottoman Empire, they came to be regarded as a threat by the ruling sultan and dominant Muslim society, which regarded Christians and Jews as second-class citizens. Tensions grew in the 1890s, leading to widespread massacres of Armenians, beginning in the port city of Trabzon in October 1895 and then spreading to numerous Armenian towns and villages for the next several months, claiming the lives of more than 100,000 Armenians and causing enormous economic losses through plunder and intentional destruction.

Levon Giridlian recounts the massacre in Kesaria in November 1895 and cites it as the cause for leaving his home and family and immigrating to the United States. He confirms what many other survivors have written or stated; that is, that the massacres began after Friday prayers and sermons in the mosques, whereupon the mob burst into the Armenian quarters, killing and looting.  The violence lasted from a few hours to several days and is regarded as one of the ominous precursors to the Armenian Genocide twenty years later, in 1915.

Author: Richard Hovannisian is one of the leading experts on the Armenian Genocide who founded the Armenian Studies program at UCLA and is now an adjunct professor at USC, advising USC Shoah Foundation on its Armenian Genocide testimony collection.

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. Secondly, he adds that Germany and Austria-Hungary exercised very limited pressure on their Ottoman allies so as to force the latter to abandon their murderous policies. The reason, says Bihl, were the military, economic and strategic connections Germany and Austria-Hungary had with the Ottomans. Realizing that the extermination of Armenians was a high priority for the wartime Ottoman government, both Germany and Austria-Hungary were not prepared to anger the Ottomans to the extent that the latter might abandon their wartime alliance. The Germans and Austro-Hungarians also reasoned that the Ottoman ministers, Enver and Talât, two of the chief architects of the Armenian Genocide, were at the same time the only ‘true friends’ of Germany and Austria-Hungary in the upper echelons of the Ottoman political hierarchy. Therefore, the German and Austro-Hungarian intervention with the Ottoman authorities was confined to raising the issue mildly during internal discussions and to assisting in some of the relief efforts of that period.

Author: Ara Sanjian is Associate Professor of Armenian and Modern Middle Eastern History and the Director of the Armenian Research Center at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

For a select bibliography (up to the year 2011) on the German involvement in the Armenian Genocide, see: <http://www.zoryaninstitute.org/bibliographies/Select%20Bibliography%20on%20German%20Involvement.pdf>. See also Wolfgang Gust, The Armenian Genocide: Evidences from the German Foreign Office Archives (2014). The Armenia-related Austrian documentation of the period 1872-1936 was published in twelve volumes in 1995 by Artem Ohandjanian. He also the author of 1915: Irrefutable Evidence: The Austrian Documents on the Armenian Genocide (2004).

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. Consequently, they tended to submit and to believe what they were told—that they were being temporarily moved and that their goods and properties would be safeguarded until their return.  The fact that almost all of the able-bodied men had been drafted into military service or otherwise separated from their families facilitated this process as women, children, and the elderly were left vulnerable.

The second point is that among the local Turks who were part of the process there was widespread awareness that what was presented as “merely” deportation was in fact genocidal. This is reflected in the Turkish muleteer’s remark to Haroutune Ayvazian’s mother that she and her children would be going to a “certain death.”  What motivated this man to defy orders, to risk his own safety, and tell an Armenian woman what was likely to befall her and her family?  A sense of honor, or altruism, or shame?  One can never know, but it was thanks to such actions that many Armenians were able to escape the “certain death” that more than a million would meet during the Armenian Genocide.

Author: Marc A. Mamigonian is the Director of Academic Affairs of the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR).

Additional Reading: http://www.massviolence.org/the-extermination-of-ottoman-armenians-by-the-young-turk-regime

Mihran Andonian is describing an experience that was common during the Armenian Genocide.  Some Armenian mothers, certain that they would not survive the death marches into the desert, let their children be taken by Muslims (Turks, Arabs, Kurds), hoping to guarantee survival. Other Armenian mothers on the caravans died while still with their children leaving these orphans to fend for themselves. Indeed, thousands of Armenian children were left homeless by the end of World War I and were either taken in by locals or rounded up by missionaries and brought to orphanages. In addition, thousands of children, boys and girls, were forcibly kidnapped from the deportation caravans and incorporated into Muslim society as slaves, adoptees, child brides or concubines.  When the war ended, missionaries and others made it their duty to locate and retrieve these children and return them to their extended families or to orphanages. Some of the children, particularly females, having born children of their own to their Muslim captors, refused to leave their new families. Thus it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the Republic of Turkey have grandmothers [or great-grandmothers] who were born Christian Armenian. 

Mihran Andonian is an example of boy who was taken in as slave labor (by an Arab) only to be freed by an Armenian who understood the situation.

Author: Eric Bogosian author of “Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide” https://www.facebook.com/OperationNemesis

“Get angry about it”, the conclusion of this clip, presents one of Israel Charny’s most important messages. In his book, How can we commit the unthinkable?, Charny, born in 1931 in Brooklyn, New York, psychologist and one of the early genocide scholars, had warned that most events of genocide are marked by massive indifference and inactivity of the people.[i] But he does not call for a state intervention to stop mass murder, rather for every individual to intervene with much earlier forms of persecution and discrimination against certain groups, as those might lead to genocide as the ultimate antidemocratic, human rights crime, as Charny calls it. For the scholar, the political, economic and social process of genocide starts with what he calls the “cultural genocide.” This idea can be traced back to first and broad definition of genocide provided by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. While the UN Genocide Convention adopted in 1948 did not include such terms, both, Lemkin and Charny equally saw the destruction of the historical tradition, religious expression and/or cultural cohesion of a group as an important step on the path to mass murder. Charny as a scholar, who most of his life taught in Israel, has openly made a stand against the denial of the Holocaust, but equally against the Armenian genocide. He cofounded the International Association of Genocide Scholars in 1994 and authored and coedited influential books on the topic of genocide.

Author: Wolf Gruner, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History and Director, USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

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. He advised them to tell any soldiers that came looking for them that they should explain that they could not leave because Aivazian’s father was serving in the Turkish military. Aivazian credits his survival to that intervention.

After heading the townsman’s advice, Aivazian sought the protection of German missionaries who sheltered him in their orphanage.

Author: Adam Strom, Chief Officer for Content Development, Facing History and Ourselves

Additional Resources:

Facing History and Ourselves has created a resource book on the Armenian Genocide called Crimes Against Humanity and Civilization: The Genocide of the Armenians it is available for a purchase or a free download.

Additional classroom resources including video, readings for the classroom, and lesson plans can be found at www.facinghistory.org/armeniangenocide

There is also a mini documentary of the Armenian Genocide with Armenian Genocide scholar Richard Hovannisian that provides an overview of this important history.

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? For Michael, it was because the caller said that he was German, and Germany was allied with the Ottoman Empire at the time, and thus could turn out to be an important witness to the events. And so Michael went out to rent a good camera with sound, and interviewed Armin T. Wegner in the same Hagopian living room 42 years prior to USC Shoah Foundation interviewing Michael in 2010.

The testimony that Wegner gave, ignited Michael’s interest to find out more from survivors of the genocide; Wegner became Michael’s first filmed genocide eyewitness interview. He followed it up with nearly 400 more interviews filmed on 16 mm film in 10 different countries and several languages over the next thirty years. The testimonies became part of the Armenian Film Foundation’s collection and 60 of these testimonies have been made viewable and searchable as of this week in the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

Author: Karen Jungblut, USC Shoah Foundation Director of Research and Documentation

April 24, 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

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.

Father Guerguerian survived the deportation, or death marches, became orphaned and was cared for in an orphanage in Damascus, Syria.  His experience of the genocide compelled him to devote his life to gathering documentary evidence of the Genocide from multiple countries in their original Ottoman Turkish language.  In order to do this, he taught himself Turkish and translated original documents with their official government seal.

With this first hand evidence, he is later faced personally with the theological question of forgiveness when the person who killed his family members acknowledges his guilt.  As a clergyman he has to weigh his personal feelings with his belief in a God who forgives. 

My father who was a Protestant minister also wrestled throughout his life with the issue of whether to forgive those who killed seven of his nine family members.  He frequently would say, “As a Christian I must forgive but as a human being it is difficult.”

Father Guerguerian brilliantly gives the priestly response to his perpetrator.  Rather than saying, “I forgive you,” he says to this man, “God bless you, God forgive you,” go to Mecca and ask God to forgive you, thereby placing the initiative on the person who killed his family. 

Author: Lorna Touryan Miller is the child of two survivors of the Armenian Genocide.  She has spent many years interviewing Armenian and later Rwandan Genocide survivors.  She is co-author with her husband, Professor Donald E. Miller of two books on Armenian-related topics: Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (University of California Press, 1993) and Armenia: Portraits of Survival and Hope (University of California Press, 2003).  She and Don are currently writing a book on the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda.

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 Jewish theologians struggled with this problem of God’s goodness and the deaths of six million Jews. 

Genocide raises profound philosophical questions of meaning and these are echoed in Harry Kurkjian’s memory that Armenians were also asking if God was punishing them for some reason.  How else could a Christian reconcile the slaughter of Armenians with belief in God?  Nevertheless, in the face of seeming theological contradictions, Kurkjian says that he witnessed a priest offering potential victims the Eucharist (communion) before they were to be killed.  While Kurkjian does not explore this issue in his interview, subsequent generations of Armenians have referred to victims of the genocide as “martyrs” since in some instances they had the option of not being deported if they were willing to convert to Islam.  Currently, the identity of Armenians continues to be enmeshed with the Church and, especially, the Apostolic or Orthodox wing of Christianity.  

Author: Donald E. Miller is Professor of Religion at USC and Director of USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture.  He is the author with his wife, Lorna Touryan Miller, of two books on Armenian-related topics:  Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (University of California Press, 1993) and Armenia: Portraits of Survival and Hope (University of California Press, 2003).  Donald and Lorna are currently writing a book on the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda.

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.

There is the chilling foreshadow of the Holocaust: “The worst place I can remember. The people were separated into two groups,” Elsie recalls. The Armenian Auschwitz, Der-el-Zor, is the final destination for those who can’t work. There is the dehumanization and the cavalier disregard for human life. There are the burning bodies.

As we know, there is a direct link between the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the Cambodian killing fields, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur. (As I once heard a scholar observe, impunity begets impunity.)

Elise’s story matters because Turkey does not acknowledge the Genocide.

Her story matters because – to quote Pope Francis in his April 2015 Mass in which he courageously called the slaughter “genocide” – “concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding.” It is a psychic trauma, and the cure begins with recognition.

And her story matters because the world is a better place when we stand up against violence and villainy; when we put righteousness before realpolitik; and when we honor our ancestors whose voices were forever stilled. As Elie Wiesel said, “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”

Author: Chris Bohjalian, New York Times Bestselling Author of "The Sandcastle Girls” http://www.chrisbohjalian.com/

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.  

Almas was in good spirits, although she had a cough and her hearing aid battery was weak.  So I had to speak loudly during the interview.  Afterwards, Bruce and Laura told me the 2000 interview was more complete, although in comparing the two interview transcripts, the story is essentially the same.

Almas was born in Hussenig, a village in the Kharpert region of Turkey in either 1906 or 1907. In 1915 Almas, her mother and two sisters, were marched towards the Syrian Desert.  When her mother was very weak, she gave Almas to a Turkish shopkeeper, who lived in Suar, not far from Der Zoir city. Almas says she lived a couple of years with this family.  

Almas had a two-year old sister who died on her mother’s back, on the death march. Another sister, Maritza, begged to survive.  She visited Almas while she was living with the Turkish family. Maritza told Almas that their mother died within a day of giving Almas away to the Turkish family.   

In the 2000 interview, Almas says, “Every day my sister was sitting there looking at our house, hungry, nothing to eat.  Once in a while I took her something to eat.  One morning, I got up.  I didn’t see her.  I asked a kid, ‘was there a girl there?’  They say that they put about 10 to 20 kids in a boat, and right in the middle of the river they turned the boat over.  And one was my sister, my older sister.”

The government decreed that anyone who had an Armenian child had to give that child to the state.  Almas was taken to Aleppo (Halebo). Any child who wasn’t adopted would be taken out in a boat, Almas said, and thrown in the water and Almas saw this actually happen. “They tipped the thing and they all die there.”  

She says that the older son of her adopted father came to the house one day and saw a five-year-old Armenian child begging near the house.  “He carried the kid in his hand and throw him in the water.”

She describes the knives and daggers used by the Turks.  “Most of the time those daggers that that they have it, long daggers, knife …. when massacre go, they start killing with that dagger.  The women saying, ‘please kill me with bullet.’  Bullet.  ‘Bullet cost money, this is free.’”  That was the Turkish answer.

I asked her about a comment she made in her 2000 interview, that while in Der Zor, “We were playing with heads, as balls.”  “Yeah, well, as I say, I could make bigger story of my life.  And the orphanage and the Turkish house and the massacre.”

While Almas was at the orphanage, a woman recognized her because of a scar on her face, which many Hussenig children had.   It’s possible that this was a mark left behind by disease – we don’t know.  She contacted Almas’ aunt in America.  Money was sent -- and Almas came to America in 1922, on the ship Britannica, landing in Providence, Rhode Island.

When the interview finished, Mark told me he didn’t know anything like this had happened.  He was very moved by Almas’ story.   He thanked me for being a part of recording it.  I was grateful, too – that Almas could share her story with us, and that I could hear it.  She died one year later, in July 9, 2012.

Author: Dr. Carla Garapedian has led the project to digitize the Armenian genocide testimonies from

The Armenian Film Foundation.  She is a filmmaker and former anchor for BBC World news. 

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.

Wegner was arrested for his covert documentation, but was able to smuggle his photographs back to Germany. These photographs were later used in German Court as evidence that genocide had indeed taken place in Eastern Anatolia against the Armenian people.

Wegner became a tireless advocate for human rights and was one of the first, and only, German citizens to be outspoken against the Nazi persecution of the Jews as early as April 1933, when he wrote an open letter to Adolf Hitler. He spent time in seven concentration camps for his outspoken opposition to the Nazis.  He was awarded Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1967.

Armin T. Wegner continued his work advocating for the Armenian people until his death.  A friend of J Michael Hagopian, he encouraged Hagopian to use his art as a documentary film maker to ensure the witnesses of the Armenian Genocide were documented on film. The interview recorded in 1967 with Armin T. Wegner, was one of the first that Hagopian collected and documents one of the twentieth century’s greatest advocates for genocide prevention. Wegner demonstrated that it was possible to be an ordinary citizen and at the same time be an effective voice for the benefit of humanity.

Armin T. Wegner has been my role model for much of my career.  It is an honor to be able to introduce this clip, which places his voice in the public domain for the very first time, Exactly 100 years after he began his life's work as a witness to genocide.

Author: Stephen Smith, Andrew J. and Erna Finci Viterbi Executive Director at USC Shoah Foundation.

Day 1 of the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. Ben Sonnenschein reflects on the construction of Auschwitz concentration camp in his hometown of Oświęcim, Poland. Sonnenschein also explains he was forced by the Germans to carry lumber and complete other carpentry work during the building of the camp in the beginning of 1940.

The first transport of Jewish women to Auschwitz arrived from Poprad, Slovakia in March 1942. Margaret Kulik was the 19th female prisoner to enter Auschwitz and she describes the camp intake procedures including being tattooed with the number 1019.  This is the second testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Ellis Lewin describes the horror of arriving at Auschwitz; he remembers stepping out of the cattle car and witnessing barking dogs, chaos, separation of women from men, and beatings by Nazis. This is the third testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Erna Anolik recalls the intake procedures at Auschwitz, including shaving off her hair, undressing in front of soldiers, and only being given a grey dress and wooden shoes. This is the fourth testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Sinti and Roma survivor, Ella Davis speaks about arriving to Auschwitz and how SS guards took all her possessions and cut off her hair. This is the fifth testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Jehovah's Witness Survivor, Victor Schnell recalls arriving to Auschwitz and the camp intake procedures including being stripped of his clothing and forced to wear a striped uniform. This is the sixth testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Political prisoner, Tadeusz Debski describes the chaos of arriving to Auschwitz in 1941. This is the seventh testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Leo Bach describes arriving to Auschwitz, the separation of the men and women and the camp selection process. This is the eighth testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.  

On November 25, 1944 SS Chief Henrich Himmler ordered the destruction of crematoriums and gas chambers in Auschwitz as Soviet forces continued to approach the camp complex. Michael Zylberberg remembers being part of the group of prisoners who were forced by SS to destroy the crematoriums. This is the ninth testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Lilli Weismann describes the hardship she faced in Auschwitz and how hopeless she felt. Lilli remembers how one her sisters inspired to keep living as the girls gathered as much food as possible. This is the 10th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Jewish survivor, Roman Kent and his family were deported from the Lodz ghetto to Auschwitz, a journey that took several days in crowded and dark cattle cars. Roman describes the moment the cattle car door’s opened and the utter chaos of arriving to Auschwitz. This is the 11th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

 Fred Agar describes the camp selections and intake procedures at Auschwitz, specifically about the painful process of getting a number tattooed on his arm. This is the 12th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Dennis Urstein was a Kanada Kommando in Auschwitz who collected inmates' belongings they were forced to leave behind. He reflects on witnessing the arrivals of new inmates to Auschwitz II-Birkenau. This is the 13th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Agnes Kun worked in the hospital at Auschwitz II-Birkenau as an assistant nurse. She recalls Josef Mengele, particularly his presence at the hospital.This is the 14th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Hana Gruna became sick and exhausted during the deportation from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. She remembers when a friend told her to not tell anyone that she was sick and to act healthy, which helped saved her life during the camp selection process. This is the 15th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Linda Breder was a Kanada Kommando in Auschwitz who collected inmates' belongings they were forced to leave behind. Linda remembers how a Nazi soldier disciplined inmates complaining of thirst. Years later Breder testified at that soldier’s war crime trial. This is the 16th testimony clip in the series 70 days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.  

Iby Amaratji speaks about being randomly selected for the forced labor in the kitchen, which she feels ended up saving her life. This is the 17th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Livia Bitton-Jackson remembers arriving to Auschwitz as a young girl with her mother and an aunt. Before they entered the camp Livia was stopped by infamous SS physician Josef Mengele.This is the 18th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Elsa Breuer describes the discipline she had to adopt in order not to starve to death while interned in Auschwitz. Including saving food in the morning so she had something to nibble on throughout the day. This is the 19th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Lilly Cash remembers when she was caught stealing food in Auschwitz and how her sister, Esther, saved her life. This is the 20th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Herman Gottesman describes the forced labor, living conditions and lack of food in Auschwitz-III. Auschwitz III-Monowitz, also called Buna, was located near the Polish town of Monowice and was the last of three Auschwitz camps established in the vicinity of Oswiecim. This is the 21st testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Louis Micheels describes working as a nurse and treating for tuberculosis patients in Auschwitz. Micheels remembers how brutality of SS doctors including selecting patients at random to be sent to the gas chambers. This is the 22nd testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Adora Okun describes being fed once every 24 hours while having to complete grueling hard labor while interned in Auschwitz. This is the 23rd testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Dario Gabbai recalls his experiences as a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. He was forced to usher people into gas chambers, and then haul out the bodies, take them to the crematorium, and clean up the room for the next group of victims.This is the 24th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Itka Zygmuntowicz reflects on the camp orchestra within Auschwitz that was forced to play music while inmates were sent to the crematoria. This is the 25th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Political prisoner Teofil Modeslski describes when he witnesses an execution at the ‘death wall,’ which was wall between Blocks 10 and 11 in the main Auschwitz-I where prisoners were executed by firing squad. This is the 26th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Josef Baumgarten describes the medical experimentation performed on him as well as 14 other Jewish boys in Auschwitz. He not only describes the horrifying surgery but also the psychological impact. This is the 27th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Clare Winter recalls how she was separated from her mother and brother, who were sent immediately to the gas chambers upon arrival to Auschwitz. She also describes the dehumanization procedures including having to undress in front of other prisoners and SS guards. This is the 28th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Tema Cukier describes the barracks, forced labor and hunger she experience in Auschwitz. Tema also remembers becoming close friends with a young girl who demonstrated a small act of kindness. This is the 29th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Menachem Rubin remembers when a fellow prisoner lit one candle in recognition of the Jewish holiday, Hanukkah Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Even though it was just one second, the moment was significant for Menachem in restoring hope. This is the 30th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Jewish survivor, Anna Zaryn describes being forced to clean up the remnants of Zigeunerlager (Sinti- Roma camp) in Auschwitz-Birkenau after it was liquidated on August 2, 1944. Anna’s testimony is featured in the multimedia resource Giving Memory a Future. This is the 31st testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Noémi Ban remembers the very first time she saw members of the SS, right before she and her family were deported to Auschwitz. She recalls the terrifying journey in the cattle cars from Hungary to Poland and also her first impressions of the concentration and extermination camp. This clip reel of Noémi’s testimony is featured in the IWitness activity My Story Matters. This is the 32nd testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Mihaly Templer describes observing Jewish High Holy days as a form of resistance within Auschwitz. This is the 33rd testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Frieda Aaron describes the trauma of being sick with Typhus in the camp and shares details of her experience in the camp hospital. This is the 34th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Lola Berliner remembers when she and her fellow female inmates fell extremely ill to typhus and how her cousin hid Lola during work hours, evading selection to the gas chambers. This act from her cousin saved Lola’s life. This is the 35th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Roma Sinti survivor Julia Lentini describes the diseases that spread through Auschwitz including when her mother fell very ill. Overall, she reflects on how witnessing all of these traumatic events have impacted her psychologically and emotionally. This is the 36th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Edith Kaufman says how impressed she was of her fellow female prisoners who were able to observe Jewish traditions and High Holy Days including Hanukkah in Auschwitz. This is the 37th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

William Abraham recalls Christmas day in Auschwitz and how the non-Jewish prisoners were given cigarettes. Since cigarettes were a valuable bartering tool he risked his life in order to receive the cigarettes. This is the 38th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Dina Gottliebova-Babbitt remembers painting a mural based on "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" on a wall in one of the children's barracks at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Poland. This is the 39th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Shirly Berger remembers the camp orchestra in Auschwitz. This is the 40th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Hansi Keating remembers seeing young boys sent to see the camp doctor who would sterilize them as part of their experimentation. She also talks about how she and few girls from the barrack made escape plans, which ultimately failed. This is the 41st testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Benjamin Jacobs discusses how his forced labor assignment was to serve as a dentist in Auschwitz. This is the 42nd testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Zalman Finkelstein remembers seeing the crematoriums in Auschwitz and the remnants of the victims murdered in the gas chambers. He also recalls his forced labor assignment and how important it was to work, which meant survival. This is the 43rd testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Kaz Wolff-Zdzienicki remembers his role in the resistance and how he communicated with the fighters outside of Auschwitz. This is the 44th testimony clip of 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Rena Finder remembers arriving at Oskar Schindler’s factory after spending weeks in Auschwitz. Rena recalls how the Schindlers risked their lives to save so many Jews during the Holocaust. This is the 45th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Celina Biniaz describes how she and her parents were selected to be on Schindler’ List. She also recalls when the women transport from Plaszow was sent to Auschwitz instead of to the Schindler factory in Brünnlitz. This is the 46th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Annetta Able describes her experiences with medical experimentation in Auschwitz. She recalls receiving a transfusion and becoming extremely sick afterwards. This is the 47th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Louis Bannet describes being selected for the camp orchestra in which he performed as the conductor in Auschwitz. This is the 48th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Roma Sinti survivor Wellesina McCray remembers the terrible living conditions in Auschwitz especially how quickly lice spread throughout the camp. This is the 49th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Eugene Zinn recounts how he was forced to dig up mass graves because of the stench and his attempt to burn the bodies with wood and kerosene. This is the 50th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Herschel Balter reflects on how important music was to him while imprisoned in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. He sings the same lullaby he used to sing while in the camp. This is the 51st testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Anna Heilman remembers helping her sister, Ester Wajcblum, smuggle gunpowder to aid in the Sonderkommando Uprising at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. This is the 52nd testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Huguette Frank describes the horrific treatment of prisoners by the SS in Auschwitz including executions, selections and beatings. This is the 53rd testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Rachel Amit remembers when her friend was pregnant in Auschwitz and the horrific events after she gave birth. This is the 54th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Sientje Backer recalls the living conditions in Block 10 in Auschwitz. This is the 55th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Branko Lustig remembers hearing constant gunshots coming from the barrack next to his where many Polish political prisoners were killed. This is the 56th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Moses Kantorowitz describes stealing rotten potatoes from the kitchen in Auschwitz - I and then he describes the camp punishment he received. This is the 57th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

Henry Kress remembers hearing that his sister was imprisoned in the women barracks in Auschwitz II-Birkenau and how he was able to see her despite being in a different sub camp of the Auschwitz camp complex. This is the 58th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Erwin Herling describes how he used his resources to bribe SS officers to help him leave Auschwitz when the camp was being evacuated. This is the 59th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Lina Jackson recalls the spontaneity and confusion she experienced as she prepared for a death march out of Auschwitz. This is the 60th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

John Bergeisen recounts the task of dismantling the camp's gas chambers before Russian soldiers arrived at Auschwitz. This is the 61st testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Helena Silvers recounts how she escaped death in the camp's hospital. Additionally, she recalls how she became a worker in the camp, an action she believes saved her life. This is the 62nd testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Tova Friedman recounts how she and her mother hid in the camp's hospital during the camp's liquidation. The two were liberated a week later. This is the 63rd testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Miriam Ziegler describes her experiences with her family in the camp. She recounts a joyous reunion with her grandmother as well as an escape from execution with her great aunt. This is the 64th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Eva Kor describes her first encounter with death in the camp and how the event ignited her self-promise to never let the same fate fall upon her or her sister. This is the 65th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Marta Wise remembers how she escaped from Josef Mengele’s grim selection, as Russian planes flew overhead and prisoners were forced to scatter. This is the 66th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Eva Slonim recalls undergoing medical camp experiments including painful blood tests. This is the 67th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Paula Lebovics remembers a selection by Josef Mengele before the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945. Paula recalls a quick decision, which ended up saving her life. This is the 68th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Kitty Hart-Moxon recalls being able to see Crematorium 4 from her barrack window at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.This is the 69th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Adrienne Friede Krausz recounts testifying against Viktor Capesius, the chief pharmacist at the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, in the Auschwitz trials of 1961. This is the 70th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

George and Giselle Weiss are both child survivors and natives of Belgium. George describes when he first met Giselle after he returned to Belgium from his military service in the Israel. Giselle explains how her grandmother disapproved of their romance because George was not orthodox.  Two years later George and Giselle married in Belgium and then moved to the United States.