The Politics of Naming the Armenian Genocide by Vartan Matiossian

Author:Vartan Matiossian [Matiossian, Vartan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Minority Studies, History, Middle East, Turkey & Ottoman Empire, Political Science, Genocide & War Crimes, General
ISBN: 9780755641093
Google: -j9DEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-09-23T04:25:41+00:00

Appendix B

Yeghern and “Genocide” in Memorial Inscriptions

The first memorials to the annihilation appeared as early as the 1930s in the courtyards of the Armenian school of Plovdiv (Bulgaria) in 1930 and the Armenian church of the Virgin Mary (Nicosia, Cyprus) in 1932; the latter remained non-operational after falling within the Turkish zone of Nicosia in 1963. The Martyrs’ Chapel at the monastery of Antelias, Lebanon (1938) and the stele at the Armenian Catholic Patriarchate in Beirut (1939) followed suit. After a long hiatus, the first memorial outside Eastern Europe and the Middle East was built in South America, more specifically in the courtyard of the St. Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral in Buenos Aires (1961).

“Finally, why each Armenian community should not have its memorial? Each town, each village that has its school and church, why should not have its memorial for April 24?,” writer Dikran Varjabedian asked in 1953.1 Their construction would start non-stop with the fiftieth anniversary in 1965, when the word yeghern appeared for the first time in commemorative inscriptions. The first memorial unofficially erected in Soviet Armenia was dedicated by the residents of the neighborhood of Erebuni (Yerevan) to the victims of Sepastia “in memory of the fiftieth anniversary of the Medz Yeghern.” A composite series of khachkars (stone crosses) inaugurated on October 16, 1965, in the courtyard of the monastery of Holy Echmiadzin was inscribed “to the memory of the Armenian martyrs of the 1915 April Yeghern [Abrilean Yeghern].” A marble monolith was erected in the courtyard of the St. Paul and St. Peter Armenian Apostolic Church (Alexandria, Egypt), including the name Medz Yeghern in the Armenian inscription.

The ARF Central Committee of North America launched a worldwide fundraiser in 1965 to build a memorial on Soghomon Tehlirian’s tomb at the Masis-Ararat Cemetery of Fresno, California, “on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Armenian massacres [Abrilean Yeghern],” with the aim to show “that the Armenian people, 50 years after the Aprilian Massacres [Abrilean Yeghern]” had recovered and paid tribute to their heroes.2 The stele was dedicated on August 31, 1969, displaying the first bilingual inscription including yeghern and its translation as “Armenian genocide.” The Armenian text cites Talat as genocidaire, executioner, and responsible for the crime:

This monument has been erected by the donation of the Armenian people in memory of national hero Soghomon Tehlirian who, on March 15, 1921, liquidated the genocidaire [tseghasban] of the Armenian people, Taleat Pasha, Turkish executioner and individual mainly responsible for the one and a half million Armenian martyrs of the April Yeghern [Abrilean Yeghern] of 1915.

The English version translates “April Yeghern of 1915” as “Armenian genocide of 1915,” subsuming Talaat’s triple role under the word “perpetrator”:

This monument has been erected by the Armenian people in memory of Soghomon Tehlerian [sic], the national hero who, on March 15, 1921, brought justice upon Talaat Pasha, a principal Turkish perpetrator of the Armenian genocide of 1915 which claimed the lives of 1,500,000 Armenian martyrs.

The first memorial dedicated to the annihilation in the United

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