By Edmond Y. Azadian
The Jews have come up with the definition of the “Righteous Gentile” to honor those non-Jews who have saved Jews during the Holocaust. One such towering person was Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish humanitarian, stationed at the Swedish embassy in Hungary, who extended protection to hundreds of thousands of Jews marked to be dispatched to the concentration camps in Auschwitz, and thus he saved tens of thousands among them. Continue reading
LONDON (The Telegraph) — Being a virtuoso art, jazz produces prodigies just as miraculous as those in classical music. The Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan is one of them. At the age of 3, he was picking out his father’s favorite rock songs at the piano and at 9 had moved on to his uncle’s passion for Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. By the age of 19, he had moved with his family to California, won the Thelonious Monk competition and inspired awe in senior pianists such as Chick Corea.
A scene from “The Birthday Gift”
By Aram Arkun
Mirror-Spectator Staff
RICHMOND, Va. — For the first time ever, the Hovhannes Tumanyan State Puppet Theater of Yerevan visited the United States this January. Its East Coast performance tour began on January 20 at St. James Armenian Church here and continued to various Armenian churches and communities in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Fair Lawn, NJ, New York City and White Plains, NY, as well as Boston and Providence. A five-member ensemble of the group, including its artistic director, performed Robert Arakelian’s short story, “The Birthday Gift,” in Armenian, and Hovhannes Tumanyan’s “The Foolish Man” in English with floor puppets. The initial presentation was directed in particular at younger children. The four actors of the ensemble also sang a medley of lively Armenian traditional and folk songs. Continue reading
By Alan Whitehorn
After almost a century since the 1915 state-sponsored mass slaughter of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, one would think there would be few new pioneering books on the subject of the Armenian Genocide. That, however, is not the case. At least four important new reference volumes on the Armenian Genocide have appeared in English within the past year: Verjine Svazlian, The Armenian Genocide: Testimonies of the Eyewitness Survivors, Vahakn Dadrian & Taner Akçam, Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials, Raymond Kevorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History, and Shahen Khachaturian, The Color of Pain: The Reflection of the Armenian Genocide in Armenian Painting. Each book is an important work that has been years in the preparation. Collectively, these works will have an enduring impact, as we approach the 100th memorial year.
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BELMONT — Dr. Taner Akçam, the Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Professor of Modern Armenian History and Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University, will give a lecture titled, “Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials,” on Thursday, February 16, at 8 p.m., at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) Center, 395 Concord Ave. The lecture is co-sponsored by the Zoryan Institute for Contemporary Armenian Research and Documentation, the Mashtots Chair in Armenian Studies at Harvard University and NAASR. Continue reading
PARIS (AFP) — French senators have passed a bill outlawing the denial of the Armenian Genocide in 1915, with a seething Turkey slamming the move and warning of consequences while Armenia hailed a day “written in gold.” Continue reading
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Tens of thousands of protesters marked the fifth anniversary of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink’s murder on Thursday, January 19 as outrage continues to grow over a trial that failed to shed light on alleged official negligence or even collusion. Continue reading
BOSTON — Samuel Maserejian, a longtime supporter of the Armenian Mirror-Spectator and the paper’s contact person with the central post office, died on January 19, at Massachusetts General Hospital, after experiencing health complications. Continue reading
