NAASR reçoit les archives “inestimables” du Père Guerguerian sur le génocide des Arméniens
Among the important items in the Guerguerian archive are photographic copies of numerous official Ottoman telegrams which were used in the 1919-20 Military Tribunals but had since vanished, including one from Behaeddin Shakir, one of the founders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), inquiring about details from the field on the deportations and killings of Armenians. Akçam considers this document as a clear expression of the CUP leadership's genocidal intentions. The archive also contains photographic images of the now lost "Memoir of Naim Bey" published by Aram Andonian around 1920.
Fr. Guerguerian's nephew, Dr. Edmund Gergerian of New York, preserved his uncle's materials after his uncle's death in 1988 and recently donated them to NAASR in April upon Akçam's recommendation that the original materials come to NAASR and after meeting with NAASR's Academic Director Marc Mamigonian.
"The Guerguerian archive is a tremendous addition to our rich Mardigian library holdings," said Mamigonian. "Father Guerguerian collected materials from around the world and brought them together in one location. Many of these materials exist nowhere else or, if they do exist, are not accessible to the public."
Fr. Guerguerian's nephew had given Akçam access to the archives in 2015 and allowed him to digitize them. Akçam has plans to launch an online Guerguerian archive, partly through the support of grants from NAASR. "It is important, however, for researchers to have access to Fr. Guerguerian's originals, in addition to the digital copies that Prof. Akçam will be offering online," noted Mamigonian.
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NAASR's headquarters in Belmont, where site work began in May for an all-new, state-of-the-art global center for Armenian Studies, will securely house this very special archive upon completion in 2019.
This donation has brought the Mardigian Library to a new level of importance for scholars and researchers worldwide, as well as recent donations of nearly 3,000 volumes from Prof. George Bournoutian of Iona College on Armenian history with particular attention to interactions with Russia and Persia; the extensive Armenian linguistics collection of the late Prof. John Greppin of Cleveland State University; hundreds of rare Armenian books from Harvard's Widener Library; and thousands of volumes from researchers and Armenian rare-book collectors Abraham Krikorian and Gene Taylor of Long Island. "Many of these books are nearly impossible to find in this area outside of Widener Library at Harvard, and are available to the general public at NAASR," says Mamigonian.
source : NAASR.org
About Fr. Krikor Guerguerian
Fr. Krikor Guerguerian was born in Gürün in the province of Sivas (Sepastia) in 1911. He was the youngest of a large family and lost his parents and many siblings and other family members during the Armenian Genocide. Educated at Bzommar Catholic Monastery