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Dr. Arda Ekmekji Launches 'Towards Golgotha'

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  • Dr. Arda Ekmekji Launches 'Towards Golgotha'

    DR. ARDA EKMEKJI LAUNCHES 'TOWARDS GOLGOTHA'

    asbarez
    Monday, July 30th, 2012

    Dr. Arda Arsenian Ekmekji during her presentation at the Glendale
    Public Library last week

    GLENDALE-The Glendale Central Library buzzed with excitement on
    the evening of July 25, 2012 as the crowd poured into its second
    floor auditorium to hear Dr. Arda Arsenian Ekmekji, Dean of Arts and
    Sciences at Haigazian University. She had traveled more than 7000
    miles to launch the U.S. release of Towards Golgotha, memoirs of her
    grandfather Hagop Arsenian, a pharmacist and survivor of the Armenian
    Genocide of 1915.

    Elizabeth Grigorian, director of Armenian Outreach at the library,
    invited Ardashes Kassakhian, Glendale's City Clerk, to the podium
    to introduce Dr. Ekmekji. Kassakhian is the great grandson of Hagop
    Arsenian and nephew of Dean Ekmekji who had painstakingly translated
    the memoirs from Armenian to English. She revealed that she wasn't
    aware her grandfather's handwritten memoirs even existed until her
    uncle, visiting from Ottowa in 1996, carried them with him to the
    Middle East.

    Hagop Arsenian documented his early life in the suburbs of
    Constantinople and the eventual deportation of his family to Aleppo,
    Syria, then described his life in Palestine from 1919 until 1940. Dr.

    Ekmekji, during her research at the comprehensive Derian Armenological
    Library of Haigazian University, read numerous accounts of other
    survivors and, in comparing their identical descriptions, discovered
    that the authors had been detained in the same encampments, but
    never met.

    The audience hushed when an audio tape was played of her father,
    Noubar, reading a portion of her grandfather's writings in Armenian
    in which he chronicled the atrocities he had witnessed using the terms
    "massacres" and "slaughter house." The word genocide had not yet been
    coined, not until the mid '40s by Raphael Lemkin.

    Dr. Ekmekji, a full professor at Haigazian, holds a Master of Arts
    in Ancient History and Archaeology from the American University of
    Beirut and a Doctorate in Archeology from the University of Paris. Her
    translation is the first book to be published by Haigazian University
    Press. As it came off the presses, Dr. Paul Haidostian, President of
    the University remarked that "all memoirs of genocide survivors or
    stories of the Armenian genocide are considered as a resurrection,
    in the Armenian collective conscience." It is available at Amazon.com
    and the Armenian Missionary Association, [email protected].

    Audience members who were present and recognized during the evening
    were Elise Kalfayan, President of the Friends of the Glendale Library,
    Arno Yeretzian, representing Glendale's Abril Bookstore, Dr. Richard
    Hovannisian, Prof. Emeritus at UCLA, Rev. Father Ghevont Kirazian,
    Pastor of the Crescenta Valley Armenian Apostolic Church, and Frank
    Quintero, the Mayor of Glendale. Also in attendance were members of
    the Haigazian University Board of Trustees, the Haigazian Women's
    Auxiliary of Los Angeles, and the Haigazian Alumni Association.



    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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