During the beleaguered years of the First Armenian Republic (1918-1920), two Americans, John Elder and James Arroll, YMCA volunteers, traveled to Armenia and may have saved as many as 100,000 lives and left behind a priceless documentary record of the Genocide.
According to statistics quoted by Rev. Fr. Vazken Movsesian, one woman is physically assaulted every nine seconds in the U.S. and three women die in America each day at the hands of husbands and boyfriends. Movsesian was speaking at the annual Saintly Women’s Day, hosted on March 15 by St. John the Baptist Armenian Church in Milwaukee.
In a talk at St. John Armenian Church of Milwaukee during its Feb. 27 observation of Vartanants, Dr. Levon Saryan provided the battle with its historical context, outlining the events that came before and after Avarayr.
(Greenfield, Wis.) A mother tries to protect her baby from the bitter cold by cradling her tightly. All around are other tired faces registering anxiety. These are among the images of the Armenian Genocide collected by Hilmar Kaiser and shown in a powerpoint presentation at St. John the Baptist Armenian Church, Greenfield, on December 5, 2007.
An independent German scholar, Kaiser has lectured across North America, Europe and the Middle East and published several books and essays on the Genocide. He drew his presentation at St. John from German sources by painstakingly identifying German military officers and consular officials known to have observed the Genocide and likely to have taken photographs. Kaiser approached the families of these men and searched the archives of the Foreign Office, navy and other organizations they were affiliated with.
(Milwaukee, Wis.) Armenian Culture Month was observed on Sunday, Oct. 22, 2006, at St. John the Baptist Armenian Church. The celebrant for holy liturgy, Archbishop Yegishe Gizirian, the former Armenian primate of Great Britain, delivered a powerful homily on love and unselfish giving as the driving force of Armenian Christianity, and spoke at the luncheon afterward of the legacy of Armenia in the arts and spirituality. October, he reminded his listeners, has been proclaimed as Culture Month in the Armenian Church because the Feast of the Holy Translators falls on Oct. 14. Through the efforts of Saints Mesrob, Yeghishe, Moses the Poet, David the Philosopher, Gregory of Narek and Nersess the Graceful, important literary, historical, philosophical and theological texts were translated from Greek into Armenian, and meaningful new works were composed.
