[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 96 (Thursday, June 24, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1193]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      A TRIBUTE TO RICHARD KLOIAN

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. GEORGE MILLER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 24, 2010

  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay 
tribute to Mr. Richard Diran Kloian, who passed away on May 1, 2010. 
Mr. Kloian was founder of the Armenian Genocide Resource Center of 
Richmond, California.
  Richard Kloian and the AGRC were best known for ``The Armenian 
Genocide: News Accounts from the American Press, 1915-1922,'' a 
landmark 1985 collection of articles reproduced from the New York Times 
and other sources. Painstakingly compiled from microfilm in the years 
before digitization and the Internet made historic newspaper stories 
widely accessible, this coverage of what America's newspaper of record 
had once called ``systematic race extermination'' made a powerful 
impact just as denial of the genocide was accelerating. Originally 
published in 1980 and 1981 as ``Armenian Genocide: First 20th Century 
Holocaust,'' the collection's subsequent editions were expanded to 
cover the Hamidian massacres of the 1890s and the Adana massacre of 
1909.
  A fellow scholar called him ``an indispensable bridge'' between 
genocide researchers, historians, educators, and the public. Richard's 
interest in the Genocide was inspired by his discovery of his father 
Zakaria's memoir and the harrowing story of survival of his 
grandmother, Khanum Palootzian, which he recorded in 1972. Realizing 
the effectiveness of personal narratives as a teaching tool, he would 
later encourage others to send family memoirs to Armenian studies 
centers where the stories could be preserved and shared.
  To facilitate the teaching of the Armenian Genocide, Richard compiled 
hundreds of articles from scholarly journals and published scores of 
booklets and readers. He collected, edited, produced, and distributed a 
400-page resource manual of maps, web sites, photographs, news reports, 
primary-source documents, scholarly articles on the genocide and its 
denial, and U.S. state-level curricula that mandated teaching about the 
Armenian Genocide.
  Israel Charney, Executive Director of the Institute on the Holocaust 
and Genocide in Jerusalem wrote, ``I consider him a GIANT on behalf of 
Armenian Genocide recognition and memory. His devotion to his work in 
enabling education and memory about the Armenian Genocide was 
immense.''
  May Richard's life and work live on through the tremendous 
contributions he made to the study and teaching of the first genocide 
of the 20th century.

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