After being introcude by Dr. Arda Ekmekji, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Haigazian University, Prof. Tamcke first gave an introduction to the life of Armin Wegner, a German man born in 1886 who was most famous for being a witness to the Armenian Genocide. Wegner worked with the Red Cross in Russia and then in Turkey during the World War I. It was in 1915, while living in Constantinople, that he first encountered the Armenian people. Wegner wrote about what he saw, collected letters and other documents and took hundreds of photographs of refugees, and Armenian deportation camps.
While Wegner enriched the literature of the Armenian Genocide with his writings that provide first-hand accounts, it was his photographs that provided key evidence for the atrocities of the Armenian Genocide. Prof. Tamcke shared some of the shocking images that Wegner captured, which included scenes of deportation, concentration camps, Armenian refugees and children being tortured.
In addition to these images, Prof. Tamcke also read moving selections of testimonies from Wegner’s unpublished manuscripts, providing detailed accounts of the suffering of the Armenian people. He concluded by saying that Armin Wegner was a key eyewitness of the genocide who deserves to be heard.