Aram Andonian (1875-1951) was among the 200 Armenian intellectuals who were arrested in Constantinople on April 24, 1915.

On the way to the killing fields, he broke his hip and was sent to a hospital, while his friends were moved on and killed near Ankara. By the time WWI was over, he had escaped and been arrested more than 20 times. He even survived the Syrian death camps.

After 1918, he dedicated himself to transcribing stories of the survivors of the Genocide. In 1919 he published the first ever literary work on the Armenian genocide. In Those Dark Days was acclaimed by literray critic Hagop Oshagan as the most perceptive account of life in Ottoman concentration camps, with its filth, cruelty, hunger and death. In 1919 Andonian published The Great Crime, the first systematic portrayal of the events of 1915-1918 as a great crime against humanity.

In 1919 Andonian was the secretary of the Armenian National Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. Andonian also became the first curator of the AGBU Nubarian library in Paris.
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The other two titles of "Trilogy - April 24, 1915" are Aram Andonian, Exile, Trauma and Death: On the road to Chankiri with Komitas Vartabed (vol. 1), and Rita Soulahian Kuyumjian, Teotig: Biography by Rita Soulahian Kuyumjian (vol. 2).

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Last modified on 31 August 2010.