It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Professor George A. Bournoutian, who was a member of the Council of the Research Centre for Armenian Culture in Poland (RCACP). Along with his wife, the professor was a guest at the inauguration ceremony for RCACP in 2019. He also advised us on our research projects. That was his second visit to Kraków, where he had already been in 2018 to attend a conference organised by Biblioteka Kraków (Kraków City Libraries) entitled Polish Armenians and the Path to Polish Independence. The conference produced a book of the same name, which included a paper by Professor Bournoutian entitled The Establishment of the Contemporary Armenian State. We had been planning to do further work together. His passing is a profound loss to us and to the entire world of Armenian studies.
Seminar of 25 June 2021
Following a long hiatus caused by the pandemic, the Research Centre for Armenian Culture in Poland held its first ‘normal’, that is, face-to-face, seminar on Friday 25 June at 16.00 on its premises. The discussions were led by Professor Krzysztof Stopka and Dr Marcin Łukasz Majewski, who are the editors of the latest volume in the Testaments of the History of the Polish Armenians series. They reported on the work they have done on the reading, translation into contemporary Polish, and critical appraisal and preparation, of a source important to the history of the Polish Armenians that is now kept in the Mekhitarist Monastery in Vienna.
Kuty and Kutians
To Armenians, Kuty on the Cheremosh River is one of the most important places on the map of the historical Polish lands. Its population is now the subject of a website: www.mykutczanie.pl, which is a genealogical database of those who have lived in Kuty that spans more than two centuries from the town’s foundation in 1715 until the forced exodus of a part of the population after 1945. The website now contains a network of approximately two thousand genealogical profiles. With a photograph where possible, each provides the date of birth, profession, religious affiliation, family relationships, changes of place of residence or dwelling, circumstances of death, and place of burial of the person concerned.
Vahram Mkhitaryan is Interviewed in the Next Episode of My Armenia, My Armenians
You are cordially invited to listen to an interview with Vahram Mkhitaryan, which Monika Agopsowicz conducted on 16 June 2021 in Gdańsk. Vahram Mkhitaryan is an Armenian film director. He was born in 1977 in Yerevan. He graduated in film direction from the Armenian State Pedagogical University and from the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing (now the Wajda School). His first visit to Poland in 2005 was as the holder of a Lane-Kirkland scholarship under the auspices of the Polish-American Freedom Foundation.
Read more Vahram Mkhitaryan is Interviewed in the Next Episode of My Armenia, My Armenians
Professor George Bournoutian – Member of the Council of the Research Centre for Armenian Culture in Poland – Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Armenian Studies in the United States
On 14 May 2021 the Society for Armenian Studies (SAS) held a ceremony to honour Professor George Bournoutian’s contributions to the field of Armenian studies, which was conducted by SAS’s president, Professor Bedross Der Matossian. Professor George Bournoutian was born and raised in Isfahan and is the son of a Polish mother and an Armenian father. His mother reached Iran with the army of General Władysław Anders. As a child he spent eighteen months in Poland with his parents following WWII.
Father vardapet Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski talks about his experiences of Armenia and Armenians
The subject of the latest episode in the “My Armenia, My Armenians” series was born in Kraków in 1956 as Tadeusz Zaleski. His father, Jan Zaleski (1926-1981) was a Pole and a linguist by profession, while his mother, Teresa (née Isakowicz; 1933-2011) was a Polish Armenian and a Polish language specialist. He is related to the penultimate Armenian Catholic archbishop of Lwów, the outstanding preacher and philanthropist Izaak Mikołaj Isakowicz (Fr Tadeusz is the great-great grandson of the archbishop’s brother). His mother’s twin sister joined the Order of the Franciscan Sisters, Servants of the Cross and, as sister Miriam Isakowicz, performed pious and charitable works in Poland and Ukraine.
New volume in the Lehahayer Library series
The fourth volume in the Lehahayer Library series, which makes important source material – History of Armenia by Movses Khorenatsi – available to readers, will be on sale soon. It is published by the Research Centre for Armenian Culture in Poland and was translated by Dr Stanisław Ulaszek (University of Gdańsk) from an edition prepared in Russian by Professor Gagik Sargsyan. It was furnished with additional footnotes, commentaries, an introduction and indexes by Professor Andrzej Pisowicz of the Jagiellonian University. A generous donation from Mr Zbigniew Manugiewicz, who is a member of the RCACP Council, greatly assisted publication. Volume four is published by Księgarnia Akademicka in Kraków – as were all of the previous volumes.