ARARAT-ESKIJIAN MUSEUM

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR ARMENIAN STUDIES AND RESEARCH

 Present

 THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND THE EXTRAORDINARY ROLE OF DEIR ZOR GOVERNOR ZEKI BEY

A Lecture by Prof. Vahakn Dadrian

 In honor of Luther and Anne Eskijian

Sunday, April 1, 2012 4:00-6:00 p.m.

 Ararat-Eskijian Museum—Sheen (Geovkalayjian) Memorial Chapel

15105 Mission Hills Rd. Mission Hills, CA 91343

There will be a musical program by Ani String Quartet and a reception and book signing to follow in the Ararat-Eskijian Museum.

Salih Zeki,

known as Zeki Bey, was born in the city of Samsun on the Black Sea in 1879. By the early 1900s he had entered the Ottoman Civil Service and began to rise through the ranks: kaymakam (county ex-ecutive) of Tirebolu (1906), Vakfýkebir (1909), Ünye (1910), Bafra (1911), Alaþehir (1912), Ýncesu (1914), and Develi (1915). Serving in this last post, near Kayseri/Gesaria, at the outset of the Armenian Genocide, he earned a reputation for extreme cruelty and continued to receive promotions for his work. In summer 1916 Zeki was appointed mutasarrif (deputy governor) of Deir Zor and given the task that his predecessor, Ali Suat Bey, had refused: the liquidation of the vast number of Armenian refugees in the re-gion. Zeki unleashed his genocidal fury against those deportee convoys that had arrived there as destitute survivors of the then-raging empire-wide deportations and massacres of the Armenian people. As such, Zeki is one of the principal perpetrators of this “second phase” of the Armenian Genocide. Prof. Vahakn Dadrian is currently the Director of Research at the Zoryan Institute and a pioneer in the fields of genocide theory and comparative genocide. Dadrian is the author of several books, including The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus and the recently-published Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials (co-authored with Taner Akçam), as well as more than seventy articles in numerous languages around the world. He is the recipient of many honors and awards, including the Khorenatsi Medal, Armenia’s highest cultural award. He was inducted into the ranks of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia in 1998.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information contact the Ararat-Eskijian Museum at 818-838-4862 or [email protected] or NAASR at 617-489-1610 or [email protected].