99 - all you should know about the Genocide April, 2014 | Page 33

two parts—a large spire and a small one—which
symbolize the concepts of continuity of life and
rebirth of a nation. The vault-shrine of eternity
is made of 12 massive walls of stone slanted
towards the inner center. The 12 large stones,
arranged in a circle 30 meters in diameter have
nothing to do with the 12 vilayets in Turkey. They
could have been fewer in number – say 6, or 9.
Architect

Sashur

Kalashyan

notes

that

the

number was simply an esthetic solution. “We
tried options with 4, 6, 8, 12 and 16 stones in our
design. We picked the one with 12, because it was
a better solution from an architectural point of
view. As it were, we did not consider these stones
to be bowing – instead, they were an opening. It
was an open wound on the heart, which would
not close. The large spire was simply a sapling
that had broken through the soil and rock.”
The Memorial Complex was Constructed and Inaugurated
without the Relief on the Wall of Mourning

“We proposed a number of options, but Kochinyan
would reject each one, saying that we needed
the relief to show a reborn Armenian nation. I
decided not to tell a story with the sculpture,”
narrates Van Khachatur, “That is, not to use a
row of sculptures to show what happened, what
things are like now and what they will become.
I used the motifs of Ravel’s "Bolero" to prepare
a single sculpture, repeated 111 times across the
wall. I had to sculpt the mother, bowing over her
child, in the negative—etched into the rock, as if
a shadow of herself, she was not present—while
the child had to be the symbol of a living nation.
111 is a special number that symbolizes infinity –
it does not have a beginning or an end.”
The sculptor showed this version to Kochinyan
and explained that the child was the reborn
Armenia that he wanted to see. They finally
came to an agreement. This version of the relief

As a surgeon, I was
concerned by the disgusting
experiments conducted
by Nazi doctors during
the Second World War.
I discovered that they were
closely connected with the
phenomenon of Genocide
– the Holocaust of the
Jews. I began to study that
issue. After working with
my friend Socrates Helman
for 10 years, I expanded
my research and moved
into the Armenian issue.
I say “issue” because I was
not sure at the time that
this was a genocide. I then
tried to place the issue of
defining a genocide in the
context of the carnage of
the 20 th century. It was clear
that these two incidents
(involving the Jews and
the Armenians), as well as
the occurrences involving
the Tutsis of Rwanda, are
immediately and inarguably
defined as genocide.

on the Wall of Mourning was approved finally
in a decision taken on August 19, 1971 by the
Architectural Committee of the Yerevan City
Council Planning Department.
Van Khachatur first created a real-size clay model
of the Mother and Child sculpture, 3.60 x 0.90

Yves Ternon
Politician, Member of Mouvement
Reformateur