Buenos Aires city authorities officially transfered a property for the construction of an Armenian Genocide museum on Tuesday, June 10, in a ceremony attended by the City’s Chief of Staff Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, Undersecretary for Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism Claudio Avruj and various representatives of the Armenian community in the country, as well as the Armenian Ambassador Vahagn Melikian, Asbarez reports quoting Agencia Prensa Armenia.
Rodriguez Larreta stressed that this museum is “a way to ensure that humanity will not commit atrocities like those committed almost 100 years ago in Armenia” and highlighted the “pride” that Armenians had to “emerge with such force” after having suffered the Genocide.
Avruj said that “the Armenian Genocide, as well as the Holocaust or the genocide in Rwanda represents absolute evil” and stated that “the recognition of those facts allow us and the next generations to have a better society.”
The property for the Armenian Genocide Museum was transfered to the Memory of the Armenian Genocide Foundation, an organization led by Professor Nelida Boulgourdjian and architect Juan Carlos Toufeksian, the same institution that organized the International Congress on Armenian Genocide in Buenos Aires last April.
Toufeksian gave some details of the project: the Museum will have a memorial on the ground floor and a screen with testimonies of the survivors. The first floor there would have the Museum of Genocide itself, while the second floor will be devoted to the cultural heritage of the Armenians in Argentina and temporary exhibitions. The third floor will contain a library.
“The laws and judgments of justice, along with the recent decisions to build museums in Montevideo and Buenos Aires are an example of the conviction to overcome the discourse and the pressures of the states that continue to deny the existence of the Armenian Genocide, like Turkey and Azerbaijan,” said Alfonso Tabakian, director of the Armenian National Committee of South America.
