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German Armenian German Bundestag member said he was happy to have an Armenian mother who taught him Armenian language.

“I am a German, whose mother was born in Armenia, and I am grateful to her for what she taught me Armenian language,” Martin Pätzold, member of CDU/CSU group said during the discussion on the Armenian Genocide recognition on Thursday.

“I am grateful that Germany acknowledges its share of responsibility in this important moral issue, and that resolution will be adopted. It will show how different nations can coexist. I am a German, whose mother was born in Armenia. I grew up, learning Armenian and realizing that the Genocide recognition does not imply pointing at someone with your finger or searching for the perpetrators. It is only about reaching an agreement,” he said.

by Robert Aram Kaloosdian

100 years after the Armenian Genocide, Eyewitness Accounts

Tadem, My Father’s Village

Drawing on accounts from over a dozen witnesses, most never before published, the author recounts the life and death of one village. He follows his father, Boghos Kezerian Kaloosdian, and other townspeople from the first intimations of violence through deportations, separations, massacres, and escapes, to the establishment of diasporal communities. With striking immediacy, the author presents Tadem as a microcosm of the Genocide and argues that the Turks used the outbreak of World War I as a cover for atrocities motivated by religious hatred and greed.

“Tadem’s story mirrors the tale of hundreds of other Armenian towns and villages in the Ottoman Empire. Robert Aram Kaloosdian has made a lasting contribution through his meticulous combination of historical sources, memoirs, and oral histories.” – Richard G. Hovannisian, University of California, Los Angeles and Shoah Foundation Institute

About the Author

The son of a Genocide survivor, Robert Aram Kaloosdian was raised in Watertown, Massachusetts, and graduated from Clark University and the Boston University School of Law. As a leader in Armenian-community affairs, Kaloosdian has devoted much of his life to the recognition and study of the Genocide. He was founding chairman of the Armenian National Institute and a founder of the Armenian Assembly of America. A lawyer for more than fifty years in Greater Boston, he aided the team defending a school curriculum guide against Genocide deniers in federal court. Kaloosdian practices in Watertown and lives in Belmont, Massachusetts, with his wife, Marianne.