Speakers Help Sharon High Seniors Understand Genocide

On a screen in a classroom, an elderly woman described how her grandmother was shot.

And she described how her family was tortured and killed "for no reason (other than) to be an Armenian."

Last Wednesday, nearly 100 years after the Armenian Genocide, about 20 seniors in Sharon High's Genocide and Human Nature - The Horror and The Hope class watched a film about it.

"It's hard to talk after watching this," Roger Hagopian, who made this documentary and others about Armenian history, told the students.

Hagopian and Dr. Pamela Steiner were the latest guest speakers to visit the class this fall. Steiner is project director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative's Intercommunal Violence and Reconciliation Project, currently seeking to improve Turkish-Armenian relations. Her great-grandfather was Henry Morganthau, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey during the Armenian Genocide.

The Armenian Genocide was "the atrocities committed against the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire" during World War I, according to the Armenian National Institute website.

Sharon High social studies teacher Jennifer Koltov said the speakers give "students the sense that these are real issues that are relevant."

A Sharon Education Foundation grant allowed her to bring in not only Hagopian and Steiner, but also, earlier this fall, two speakers regarding helping the Sudanese Civil War victims: Sarah Rial of My Sister's Keeper and Sister Bridget Haase.

"I think it inspires the kids to see that individuals can make a difference," Koltov said.

"And I think it reflects that these are ongoing issues as well. Just because a genocide is technically over, it doesn't mean that the societies are done dealing with it."