Mihran Dabagh was born in 1944 in the city of Tigranakert, Western Armenia. Professor, Director of the Faculty of History at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, Director of the Institute for Exile and Genocide Studies. Prof. Dr. Dabagh has written numerous books on violence, genocide, and colonization.

Here are some excerpts from an interview with Professor Dabagh․

“Tigranakert was actually a very difficult place for us Armenians. Armenians and Assyrians took to the streets in fear. My father and I used to have different names inside and outside. My name was Orhan outside, Mihran at home; “My father was Kemal outside, Garnik at home.”

Mihran Dabagh never told his own testimony, the story of his family’s genocide.

His father survived the genocide and remained the only member of his family, and Mihran Dabagh continues to live as the last bearer of this story.

In the first part of the interview, Mihran Hoja (this is how they address the respected pedagogue, teacher, lecturer) remembers the genocide against Armenians. “I was born in Tigranakert in 1944. I am a child of a real Tigranakert family. My paternal grandfather had many villages near Tigranakert, if I remember correctly, my father mentioned 13 villages. My father’s name was Garnik, but our real last name was not Dabagh, but Bidushyan. Registered by a state official with the surname Dabagh.

My father did not talk to me about what happened to them during the genocide, he did not describe what he lived and saw. When a topic came up, he had a big key, picked it up and left the house. He was pointing to a church and saying: “One day we will bring this church back, even if it is too big for us.”

This church was the warehouse of Sumerbank at that time, and we, the children, were afraid to even look inside. When we played with the ball, we threw the ball so that we could go in and see what the inside of the building looked like.

We are talking about St. Kirakos Church ․․․