Lemkin, du Fournay names to be engraved on Genocide Memorial wall

PanARMENIAN.Net - The names of Rafael Lemkin and Louis Dartige du Fournay will be added to the memorial wall running along the road to the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in recognition of their efforts to protect the Armenian people during the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire. This was announced by Edita Gzoyan, Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, during a press briefing, reports Sputnik Armenia.

The 100-meter-long basalt memorial wall is engraved with the names of over fifty cities and towns from the Ottoman Empire with significant Armenian populations where massacres and deportations were organized. Since 1996, the rear side of the wall has housed urns containing soil from the graves of foreign political and intellectual figures who spoke out against the genocide carried out by the Ottoman Turkish authorities.

“On June 24, an urn with soil from the grave of Rafael Lemkin, the author of the term ‘genocide,’ will be buried at that section of the wall. There are also plans to permanently honor Vice Admiral Louis Dartige du Fournay, commander of the Third French Naval Squadron in the East, who defied orders to evacuate more than 4,000 Armenian men, women, and children from Musa Dagh—saving them from certain death,” Gzoyan stated.

Other figures already commemorated on the wall include Anatole France, French writer and Nobel laureate; Armin Wegner, German poet and publicist; Johannes Lepsius, German orientalist and theologian; Fridtjof Nansen, Norwegian polar explorer and League of Nations commissioner for refugees; and Maria Jacobsen, Danish missionary and doctor who played a crucial role in Armenian orphanages.