Armenian Genocide museum to be built in Buenos Aires

June 12, 2014 - 09:17 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Buenos Aires city authorities officially provided a property for the construction of an Armenian Genocide museum on Tuesday, June 10, in a ceremony attended by the City’s Chief of Staff Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, Undersecretary for Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism Claudio Avruj and various representatives of the Armenian community in the country, as well as the Armenian Ambassador Vahagn Melikian, according to Asbarez.

Rodriguez Larreta said that this museum is “a way to ensure that humanity will not commit atrocities like those committed almost 100 years ago in Armenia” and highlighted the “pride” that Armenians had to “emerge with such force” after having suffered the Genocide.

Avruj said that “the Armenian Genocide, as well as the Holocaust or the genocide in Rwanda represents absolute evil” and stated that “the recognition of those facts allow us and the next generations to have a better society.”

The property for the Armenian Genocide Museum was transferred to the Memory of the Armenian Genocide Foundation, an organization led by Professor Nelida Boulgourdjian and architect Juan Carlos Toufeksian, the same institution that organized the International Congress on Armenian Genocide in Buenos Aires last April.

Toufeksian gave some details of the project: the Museum will have a memorial on the ground floor and a screen with testimonies of the survivors. The first floor there would have the Museum of Genocide itself, while the second floor will be dedicated to the cultural heritage of the Armenians in Argentina and temporary exhibitions. The third floor will host a library.

“The laws and judgments of justice, along with the recent decisions to build museums in Montevideo and Buenos Aires are an example of the conviction to overcome the discourse and the pressures of the states that continue to deny the existence of the Armenian Genocide, like Turkey and Azerbaijan,” said Alfonso Tabakian, director of the Armenian National Committee of South America.

The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres and deportations, involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.

Present-day Turkey denies the fact of the Armenian Genocide, justifying the atrocities as “deportation to secure Armenians”. Only a few Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and scholar Taner Akcam, speak openly about the necessity to recognize this crime against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide was recognized by Uruguay, Russia, France, Lithuania, Italy, 45 U.S. states, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Argentina, Belgium, Austria, Wales, Switzerland, Canada, Poland, Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia, the Vatican, Luxembourg, Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, Paraguay, Sweden, Venezuela, Slovakia, Syria, Vatican, as well as the European Parliament and the World Council of Churches.