BELMONT, Mass. — The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) will host an online program marking the publication of the first English translation of Soghomon Tehlirian’s memoir, Remembrances: The Assassination of Talaat Pasha (Gomidas Institute, 2022), on Wednesday, March 15, 2023, at 1 pm Eastern / 10 am Pacific. This program is co-sponsored by NAASR, the Armenian Film Foundation, and the Ararat-Eskijian Museum.
The webinar will be accessible live on Zoom (registration required) and on NAASR’s YouTube Channel.
Dr. Carla Garapedian, who wrote the preface to this new edition, will provide a general introduction and Bedo Demirdjian, translator of the memoir, will talk about the challenges of working with this manuscript.
Marking the 102nd anniversary of the shooting of Talaat Pasha in Berlin, this program will focus on the process and the complexities of translating Tehlirian’s memoir, originally published in Armenian in Cairo in 1953 as Soghomon Tehlirean: Verhishumner, and its repercussions. The assassination and Tehlirian’s trial had far-reaching consequences, including a direct impact on Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word “genocide” and worked for the adoption of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948.
Demirdjian was born in Beirut. He is a graduate of Melkonian Educational Institute in Nicosia, Cyprus, and studied Economics and European Union Integration at the University of Peiraeus in Greece. He has worked as a journalist, as Communications and Public Relations Director at the ANC Europe, and as the office coordinator of the Artsakh Republic permanent representative to the Middle East. In 2020, he settled in Armenia, in the province of Lori, where he headed the COAF SMART Center.
For more information contact NAASR at hq@naasr.org.
