Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation To Digitize Memoirs Of Armenian Genocide Survivors


Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation To Digitize Memoirs Of Armenian Genocide Survivors –

Armenian Genocide Testimony Clip Series Begins Today

USC.EDU – To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and the first integration of Armenian Genocide testimonies into the Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation will release one clip from the Armenian Genocide collection on the Institute’s website each day for the next 30 days.

The USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a nonprofit organization established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, one year after completing his oscar winning filmSchindler’s List. The original aim of the Foundation was to record testimonies of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust (which in Hebrew is called the Shoah) as a collection of videotaped interviews. The Institute’s Visual History Archive is expanding its collection to include testimony from survivors and witnesses of other genocides, including the Rwandan Genocide and the Nanjing Massacre. Sixty-four Rwandan testimonies were added in the spring of 2013, and 12 testimonies from survivors of the Nanjing Massacre were added in the spring of 2014. The Institute is currently indexing nearly 400 testimonies from the Armenian Genocide

The clips will showcase some of the more than 400 testimonies from the Armenian Genocide that will be integrated into the Institute’s Visual History Archive, which contains 53,000 testimonies from survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides. The Armenian testimonies were first delivered to the Institute in April 2014 to begin the integration and indexing process.

To help put the clips into perspective, each one will be introduced by experts steeped in knowledge about the Armenian Genocide. The presenters will also recommend additional resources for those who would like to learn more.

The first five clips will be introduced by Professor Richard Hovannisian, one of the world’s leading scholars on the Armenian Genocide. Hovannisian is professor emeritus of History at UCLA and an adjunct professor at USC.

The Armenian testimonies were filmed by J. Michael Hagopian and the Armenian Film Foundation between 1972 and 2004 when most of the survivors were in their 70s and 80s. Testimonies in the collection, the largest archive on film of Armenian Genocide interviews in the world, were recorded in 10 countries and 10 languages, including English, Armenian, Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish.

Hagopian was an Emmy-nominated filmmaker who made 70 educational documentaries – including 17 on Armenian culture and history, including an epic trilogy on the Armenian Genocide comprised of Voices from the LakeGermany and the Secret Genocide, and The River Ran Red.  He was a survivor of the genocide that killed an estimated 1.5 million people in Turkey from 1915–23. In 1979, he founded the Armenian Film Foundation, a Thousand Oaks, California-based nonprofit dedicated to documenting Armenian heritage. Hagopian died in December 2010 at age 97. 


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