YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. The international three-day seminar titled “Smyrna in the context of the Armenian and Greek Genocides: Annihilation, Arson and Deportation (September 1922)” was opened at the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan.

Genocide scholars, historians, psychologists, legal experts and ethnographers from Armenia, Greece, Lebanon, US, Canada, Netherlands, Italy and Czech Republic are participating.

Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Director Harutyun Marutyan said in his remarks that 100 years ago the massacre of Armenians and Greeks took place in Smyrna, which is considered to be one of the last manifestations of the Armenian Genocide, during which the entire Armenian and Greek cultural heritage was destroyed and large numbers of people were killed.

The President of the Haigazian University of Beirut Rev. Dr. Paul Haidostian said he is present at the seminar by realizing its importance. “This seminar is important for humanity to know the past not only with wealth and good but also with disasters,” he said. “….the studies of this seminar will summarize the literary, historic, church, political and economic life of Smyrna. We will address this all once again and we will see that Armenians lost an important center,” he said.