Yerevan

Inside the Museum

Planting a tree in commemoration

This week I have been in Yerevan attending an international conference on the Armenian genocide. Speakers hvae included Yves Ternon, Leandro Despouy, Tanar Akçam, Frank Chalk and Peter Balakian. My paper was on the retroactivity issues, including the validity of using the term 'genocide' to describe events in 1915, three decades before the word was invented and the crime codified in the Convention.
Today, we visited the monument and museum to the Aremenian genocide at Tsitsernakaberd, which is just outside Yerevan. From the hilltop, you can see Mount Ararat in the distance, on the other side of the border with Turkey. We placed flowers around the eternal flame in the memorial and then planted a tree as a sign of commemoration.

Plaque honouring Franz Werfel, who wrote The Forty Days of Musa Dagh about heroic resistance by Armenians