Epress.am News from Armenia
“Don’t Let Their Voices Be Forgotten” is the message that the USC Institute of Armenian Studies’ Leadership Council is sending as it invites a cross section of highly respected community leaders and benefactors to a gala banquet on Apr. 15, in honor of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for championing the Armenian Genocide Digitization Project, Asbarez.com reports.
The USC Shoah Foundation Institute, established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, has nearly 52,000 video testimonies of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust in its Visual History Archive. The Institute is beginning to work with partners around the world to expand its archive with existing and new testimony collections from survivors and witnesses of other genocides. The J. Michael Hagopian/Armenian Film Foundation archive of nearly 400 filmed survivor and eyewitness testimonies will be the first collection in the Armenian Genocide Digitization Project.
The goal of the USC Institute of Armenian Studies’ Leadership Council is to bring together digital copies of all of the collections of interviews with Armenian Genocide survivors and eyewitnesses, essentially creating what may become the largest archive of Armenian Genocide eyewitness interviews.
According to Director of the Yerevan-based Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Hayk Demoyan, the Armenian Genocide Digitization Project was supposed to be implemented last year, but the amount of money needed for the project was not raised and the project was postponed, Yerkir Media reports.
“As for the issue, I have a dual approach: the intention to digitize and save all the documents from destruction is positive, but, on the other hand, we have to approach this issue carefully since we don’t yet know whether all the documents will be digitized and whether after being digitalized they will be accessible to the museum and everyone free of charge,” he said, adding that he is impressed by the Foundation’s technical outfits, which, he said, is the only organization in the world to have such an extent of such modern equipment.