The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research has received one of the most significant archives of documents relating to the Armenian Genocide—the archive collected by the late Fr. Krikor Guerguerian—for research and study in NAASR’s Mardigian Library. These materials are considered “priceless” by noted scholar Prof. Taner Akçam, who relied on them heavily for his book “Killing Orders: Talat Pasha’s Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide” (Palgrave, 2018). Akçam holds the Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Among the important items in the Guerguerian archive are photographic copies of numerous official Ottoman telegrams which were used in the 1919-20 Military Tribunals but had since vanished, including one from Behaeddin Shakir, one of the founders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), inquiring about details from the field on the deportations and killings of Armenians. Akçam considers this document as a clear expression of the CUP leadership’s genocidal intentions. The archive also contains photographic images of the now lost “Memoir of Naim Bey” published by Aram Andonian around 1920.
Among the important items in the Guerguerian archive are photographic copies of numerous official Ottoman telegrams which were used in the 1919-20 Military Tribunals but had since vanished, including one from Behaeddin Shakir, one of the founders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), inquiring about details from the field on the deportations and killings of Armenians. Akçam considers this document as a clear expression of the CUP leadership’s genocidal intentions. The archive also contains photographic images of the now lost “Memoir of Naim Bey” published by Aram Andonian around 1920.
