Richard Hovannisian to Lecture on Smyrna Catastrophe at Western Diocese

BURBANK — Professor Richard G. Hovannisian will present an illustrated lecture, “The Smyrna Catastrophe, 1922-2012,” on Thursday, January 31, 2013, at 7:00 p.m., in the Zorayan Museum at the Western Diocese of the Armenian Church, 3325 N. Glenoaks Blvd., Burbank, CA 91504. The program will be held under the auspices of the Western Diocese, His Eminence Abp. Hovnan Derderian, Primate, and with the co-sponsorship of The Ararat-Eskijian Museum and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR).
The month of September 2012 marked the 90th anniversary of the Smyrna Catastrophe when much of the city, the second largest in the Ottoman Empire, was destroyed by fire during the final phase of the Greco-Turkish War. The calamity marked the end of a strong Christian presence in the historic Aegean coastal regions and turned hundreds of thousands of Greeks and Armenians into refugees.
In this illustrated lecture, Prof. Richard Hovannisian will discuss the important role of Smyrna (Izmir) in modern Armenian history and the inferno that engulfed the city in September 1922. Hovannisian is the editor of the recently published Armenian Smyrna/Izmir, the eleventh volume of proceedings from the UCLA conference series “Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces.”