06.08.2022


Hasmik Martirosyan, senior guide and PhD student of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, gave an open lecture titled “Presentation of the Holocaust theme through exhibitions and memorial sites of various museums” in the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute’s conference hall on August 6.

She had, from June 24 to July 19 of this year, visited New York, then several cities in Poland within the framework of a programme organised by the Auschwitz Jewish Centre Foundation and the Holocaust Heritage Museum in New York. Her object was to study the presentation of the Holocaust theme in various museum exhibitions, through ghettos and concentration camps, monuments and other memorials. Ten graduate students and applicants participate in this programme each year. Hasmik Martirosyan was the first participant in the programme, that has been held for twenty years, from Armenia.

She presented, at the beginning of the lecture, some details of the programme itself, told of her experiences, meetings with witnesses and about the various lectures that were held during that month.

The actual lecture consisted of three parts. The first part was dedicated to Holocaust museums, their exhibits and clear directions. In the second part, the speaker related how they try to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and the commemoration tradition through former ghettos and concentration camps. In the third part, she referred to individual monuments and other places of remembrance dedicated to the Holocaust. During her lecture, Hasmik Martirosyan tried to compare the activities and policies of the museums she visited with those of the Armenian Genocide Museum. She emphasized that she had participated in the programme in order to study the international experience so to use it in the future in the presentation and preservation of the memory of the Armenian Genocide.

At the end of the lecture, Hasmik Martirosyan quoted the words of the American philosopher George Santayana, which are written on a wall in the Auschwitz concentration camp: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. She concluded her speech with the idea that mentioning genocides is important in preventing them happening in the future.