99 - all you should know about the Genocide April, 2014 | Page 23

Memorial to the Fallen Victims, or Monument to the Reborn
Armenian People

In April 1965, a nationwide competition was
announced for the best monument design.
The announcement said the following – “The
monument must embody the life of the creative
Armenian

people,

rife

with

struggle,

their

inexhaustible vitality and desire to survive and
progress, their present and future through the
immortalization of the memory of the millions
of martyrs who sacrificed their lives in the Metz
Yeghern of 1915.”
Architect Van Khachatur says, “It was 1964.
I was working on issues of synthesizing art
and architecture. I was at the design institutes
often. One day, the academician and director
of the architectural workshop Samvel Safaryan
called me and said that a design competition
for the Genocide memorial had been announced
in secret. He proposed that I work with young
architects

Arthur

Tarkhanyan

and

Sashur

Kalashyan from his workshop, and enter the
competition with a joint design proposal. We got
together and started to work.”
The members of the participating groups were
called and provided top secret photographs
taken during the days of the Genocide, so that
the architects could design the monument.
“Our first option was like a cemetery. In the same
spot, on the platform, there was a huge cross
with a depth of 9 meters – the people had to go
down some stairs and descend into the cross. We
imagined a huge grave, with a bell tower on top.
Near the entrance, as a symbol of revenge, we
put the statue of Vardan Mamikonyan,” narrates
Sashur Kalashyan, one of the architects of the
memorial monument.
Van Khachatur adds that they also aimed to

The Armenian Genocide,
considering the effective
use of the implementation
methods as well as the
bureaucratic apparatus, is
the first modern genocide.
The Armenian Genocide
issue is a problem for
Ankara today, which
considers it better to
deny than to solve it. It is
promising that discussions
have begun in Turkish
society on the topic of
the Armenian Genocide.
The Turkish government
refuses to recognize the
annihilation of the 1.5
million Armenians who
lived in their historic
Fatherland and censors
the history of the
Armenian Genocide, doing
everything to prevent its
recognition. They want to
blame the victims for the
past, while they fake that
same past.

imitate the desert at Der Zor. “We had proposed
that the whole surface of the monument should
be covered in oil, so that no plants would grow
later, and then rusty shards of stone should be
filled on the hill of Tsitsernakaberd, to emphasize
the feeling of solitude and terror in the DerZor desert. We had decided to dig the main
element—the cross—into the ground. The walls

Peter Balakian
American author, co-founder of
the Graham House Review journal,
author of Burning Tigris: The
Armenian Genocide and America's
Response.