The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem

Salutes the Memory of the Great Researcher

of the Armenian Genocide,

Professor VAHAKN DADRIAN

We celebrate the masterful significance of Vahakn Dadrian’s numerous researches of the Armenian Genocide.  He was a brilliant and resolute authenticator of the validity of the documentation of the genocide at a time when denials of the Armenian Genocide were not only numerous but also seemed to be earning measures of popular recognition and a belief in their being possibly a legitimate “other side of the issue” that in all fairness were to be considered.

There is also a personal side to our mourning and honor of Professor Dadrian.  We first met when he arrived to participate in the groundbreaking 1982 First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide in Tel Aviv.  I remember poignantly the day of his arrival. We stood together on the steps outside the Tel Aviv Hilton and Vahakn inquired anxiously why he did not see a contingent of police protection around us.  He and all of us indeed were daring to take a never before step of recognizing the Armenian Genocide in an international academic conference, and he was indeed correct that the Turks would show up and make an effort to disrupt proceedings – but not to an extent that we needed police protection.

I also had the pleasure of any number of personal contacts with Vahakn over the years, and remember in particular how he sweetly and caringly extended himself to take care of me and my wife on our first visit to Yerevan in 1990.

It has been a regret to see his productivity weaken in his aging years and it is personally and professionally so sad to mourn the passing of a wonderfully great man who loved his people deeply and who was a champion of truth and justice.

-Israel W. Charny