‘ORPHANS OF THE GENOCIDE’ TO BE PRESENTED AT WOODBURY UNIVERSITY

Filmmaker Bared Maronian during the making of “Orphans of the Gencode”

GLENDALE-On September 30 at 4p.m. the documentary film “Orphans of
the Genocide” will be screened at Woodbury University, Fletcher
Jones Foundation Auditorium, at 7500 Glenoaks Blvd., Burbank,
California. Four-time regional Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Bared
Maronian will present the broadcast version of the film to the public
(see ). The event is organized by Ararat-Eskijian
Museum in Mission Hills Calif.

The stories of these genocide orphans are told by the orphans
themselves, backed by expert opinion from such scholars as Deborah
Dwork and Keith Watenpaugh.

“‘Orphans of the Genocide” tells the story of hundreds of thousands
of Armenian Genocide orphans. It is a posthumous tribute to the memory
of those Armenian children victimized by the horrors of a systematic,
concerted process of annihilation, and a celebration of their survival
against all odds.”

Maronian has made use of archival photos and documents from the
Rockefeller Archive Center, Das Bundesarchiv (German National
Archives), Statens Arkiver (Danish National Archives), the
Library of Congress, U.S. National Archives, the Armenian Genocide
Museum-Institute, AGBU Archives, Noubarian Library, Houshamadyan
Archives, ARS Archives, and other private archival collections. In
an exclusive on-camera interview, 105-year-old Almas Boghossian of
Whitensville, Mass., tells how she became a Genocide orphan, walked
from Husseinig to Der Zor on foot, and how she was adopted by an Arab
family, admitted to an Armenian orphanage in Aleppo, and eventually
claimed by a relative in the United States.

Almas’s grandson, Bruce Boghossian, is the current president of
the American University of Armenia. Besides personal accounts, the
documentary also examines one of the largest orphan relief efforts of
mankind that was spearheaded by the American Near East Relief Sociey
(NER). Robert Wirt, a U.S. Special Forces Green Beret, based on his
great grandfather Loyal Lincoln Wirt’s memoirs, describes how Loyal
witnessed NER’s herculean task of establishing 212 orphanages for
200,000 orphans scattered from Constantinople to Aleppo.”

A special segment is dedicated to Alexandrapole, currently Gyumri,
Armenia, where an orphanage once stood that housed 22,000 Genocide
orphans. Another special segment of the documentary deals with the
Antoura Orphanage in Lebanon, where 1,000 Armenian orphans were
stripped of their identity and Turkified. Independent researcher
Missak Kelechian and world-renowned journalist Robert Fisk delve into
the details of this operation masterminded by Jemal Pasha.

This event is a fundraiser to complete the full version documentary.

For more information contact the Ararat-Eskijian Museum at
818-838-4862; Maggie Mangassarian-Goschin (818) 357-1606; or
ararat-eskijan museum.netzero.net.