Your trusted source

Special event dedicated to the UN International Day of Holocaust Victims Memory was held on January 27 in Yerevan. The event took place at the Holocaust victims memorial in Yerevan and was attended by members of the Jewish community, the director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, Lieutenant General Hayk Kotanjian, residents of the capital Yerevan. The participants laid flowers at the monument and lit candles in memory of the victims.

In an interview with Panorama.am, the chairwoman of the Jewish community of Armenia Rima Varzhapetyan noted that the key message of the event is to prevent future genocides through remembering the past crimes. Varzhapetyan, however, voices her surprise that no representative from the UN Office in Armenia was present at the event despite the invitation that had earlier been sent to them.

“Despite the fact that the Remembrance Day is designated by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution, the UN representatives in Armenia have not attended the Remembrance Day event for the second year. Couple of years ago, they were the initiators of the memorial events,” she said.

At a remark that Israel who people suffered Holocaust has not recognized the Armenian Genocide, Varzhapetyan said that as a civil state Israel acknowledges the fact of the Armenian Genocide, studies the Yeghern and many publications and films are released over the topic.

“Those activities are very important. I have an arrangement with a Knesset member about screening Manvel Saribekyan’s film about the Armenian Genocide right in the Israeli parliament, once it is formed. The film was screened last year at one of the largest cinema houses of Tel-Aviv. As you understand, the Israeli non-recognition is conditioned with economic and security factors. Turkey is a strong state and any controversy with it always contains major risks especially for Israel for which Turkey is the only Muslim state it holds relations. Therefore, I would not concentrate on Israeli recognition too much as the fact of the Armenian Genocide is recognized by the world, including by Israel,” our interlocutor said.

To note, the Holocaust, also referred to as the Shoah, was a genocide during World War II in which Nazi Germany, aided by its collaborators, systematically murdered some six million European Jews, around two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, between 1941 and 1945.

January 27 marks the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 1939, Adolf Hitler referenced the Armenian Genocide as justification for the Holocaust saying, “Who, after all, today speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?" The creator of the word “genocide,” Holocaust survivor and lawyer Raphael Lemkin, said he conceived the word to describe the pattern of ethnic cleansing seen in WWI with the Armenians and WWII with the Jewish people.