The Diarist as Witness to Catastrophe - Vahé Tachjian

In 1915, two Armenian families - the Bogharians and the Tavukjians - were deported from Ayntab, together with many other Armenian inhabitants of the town. They were forcibly resettled, first, in Hama, and then in the nearby town of Salamiyya (today in Syria). Two diaries written by members of these families have come down to us: one by Father Nerses Tavukjian, the other by Krikor Bogharian. Based on the daily jottings of the diarists we can follow how a whole social structure had collapsed and how normal human relations had disappeared during the Armenian genocide.

Vahé Tachjian is the chief editor of the houshamdyan website (based in Berlin), a scientific project, whose aim is to reconstruct the Ottoman Armenians’ local history and the memory. Born in Lebanon, he earned his Ph.D. in History and Civilization at the Ecole desHautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. His research covers the period of the French occupation of Cilicia, Syria and Lebanon between the two World Wars, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and refugee problems in the Middle East.