Boris Adjemian

The meaning or archiving for a survivor-historian of the Armenian genocide

A former journalist and author from Constantinople, a survivor of the Armenian genocide, Aram Andonian is generally referred to only because of the controversies that arose after his publication of a series of ciphered Ottoman telegrams ordering the extermination of Armenian deportees. Nevertheless, Andonian has devoted the second half of his life in Paris, from1919 to 1951, to tireless accumulation of written materials from the former Ottoman Armenian world in particular, hundreds of genocide survivors’ testimonies. These testimonies, which have long remained ignored by historians, deserve to be examined not merely as a reservoir of facts, but as an act of resistance against oblivion and disappearance.The purpose of this lecture will be to rassess the historical significance of writing and archiving in the post-genocide era, through the experience of a survivor-historian.