On April 23, the Armenian Genocide Museum and Institute (AGMI) hosted a temporary exhibition titled “The Book as a Witness of the Genocide”, organized on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Armenian printing and proclamation of Yerevan as 2012 World Book Capital City by UNESCO.

Author of the book “Was there an Armenian Genocide?” Geoffrey Robertson, Jussi Biørn, the grandchild of Norwegian missionary Bodil Catharine, who reported on Bodil Biørn’s recently discovered handwritten memoirs describing the 1915 Mush massacres were invited to the event.

The books represented at the exhibition were grouped under different headings: traveling notes, text-books and publications referring to the social, cultural and business life of the Western Armenians. Separate tables presented publications of the pro-Armenian movements that followed the Hamidian and Adana massacres, unique publications printed in Germany, U.S.A, Great Britain, Sweden, France, Russia and other countries, which represent undeniable evidence of the crimes committed by the Turkish political regimes against humanity and civilization. The great part of the exhibited books was published during the Genocide perpetrated against the Armenians by the Ottoman government and is the solid evidence against the Turkish denial.

In 2012, AGMI plans to publish about 25 volumes of books and monographs in Armenian, French and Russian shedding light on the little-studied episodes of the Armenian Genocide.

2012 envisages launch of construction works of AGMI’s new building and reconstruction of the old one.