Jebejian-Ayvazian Family Foundation Awards Major Gift to ArmenianNational Institute

Washington, D.C. - The Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly) announces the award of a major donation from the Jebejian-Ayvazian Family Foundation Endowment directed to the benefit of the Armenian National Institute (ANI).

The $100,000 gift was made to support the expansion of ANI services and of the AGMA online museum site expressly related to the latest tragedies that saw the ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh.

Chair of the ANI Board of Governors and Chair Emeritus of the Armenian Assembly Van Z. Krikorian welcomed the gift: “I want to express our deep gratitude for this significant endorsement of the methods and projects of the Armenian National Institute, with very special thanks to Ms. Shake Jebejian, who approved our plans and proposals. This meaningful investment by Shake and her family exemplifies the value of teaching our past to protect our future.”

“The events surrounding the destruction of Nagorno-Karabakh are well documented but are being actively denied. Much of the most damning evidence comes from Azeri and Turkish sources, including admissions of genocidal intent before, during, and after September 2023. If there were any reasonable doubts before, today it is clear from their own words and deeds that the perpetrators’ ultimate objective has always been the eventual elimination of the Armenian people, our Christian presence, and culture in Artsakh as a precursor to moving against the current Republic of Armenia,” Krikorian added. “Having achieved their material objectives, genocidal regimes immediately resort to distorting the evidence and manufacturing a denial industry. This site and our ongoing, fact-based work pre-empt the crude denial efforts to date and the more sophisticated denials and false narratives we expect over time from the authoritarian Aliyev and Erdogan governments.”

Ms. Shake Jebejian, age 93, is the sole surviving member of her branch of the Jebejian and Ayvazian families. In 1915, her grandparents and their young children fled the genocide, settling in British controlled north Africa, where her parents met. Shake was born in 1932 and her sister, Azniv, followed shortly thereafter. The Jebejian sisters’ story is a testament to the initiative and tenacity of the Armenian diaspora. Shake and Azniv attended a school organized by the Armenian community in a rural area of what is now Sudan. Because she was an excellent student, Shake transferred to a British mission school in Khartoum, where she came under the guidance of a British Christian minister who helped her become fluent in English. In the early 1950s, Shake immigrated to the United Kingdom as a refugee. She eventually immigrated to the United States in 1957. Alone in the US, Shake settled into the Armenian community in suburban Philadelphia. She found work as the administrative assistant to a senior partner in a prestigious law firm, where she worked until retirement in the late 1980s. After she became an American citizen, Shake sponsored the immigration of her mother and sister. In America, Azniv continued her work for British Airways. Neither sister ever married, and both were life-long humble Christians and staunch supporters of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

In 2024, ANI announced the launch of a new webpage documenting the unfolding of the genocidal process that resulted in the destruction of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Housed on the main ANI website, which in over 25 years has become a preeminent authority documenting international affirmation of the World War I era Armenian Genocide, the new site is based entirely on formal records attesting to the genocidal nature of the events that resulted in the complete expulsion of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The new section of the ANI website is titled The Ethnic Cleansing and Destruction of Nagorno-Karabakh: The Latest Chapter of the Armenian Genocide, and contains thousands of pages, photos, and more than 370 formal records from official, international, and public entities that observed or reported about the course of events. A wide array of documents is offered, ranging from UN and OSCE records to United States, European, and other countries’ legislative and executive documents, human rights organizations’ reports, American universities’ research documentation projects, and other vetted, relevant material.

With the focus on the final compulsive exodus of the Armenian people in September 2023, the records cover a wide array of documents attesting to the consequences of the 44-Day War in 2020 and the succeeding stage by stage complete blockading and threatened starvation of the Armenian population, through the final genocidal ethnic cleansing in September 2023 by Azerbaijan and Turkey, and continuing desecration and destruction of historic Armenian churches and Christian presence.

A wide-ranging compilation of official records from across many international institutions and human rights organizations attest to the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh, including seven rulings from the International Court of Justice. A joint October 11, 2023, statement by the United States and 33 other countries submitted to the United Nations stated: “According to the report of the UN Mission to the region, nearly the entire ethnic Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh has fled to Armenia – more than 100,000 people. Their report rightly notes the suffering this experience must have caused. This massive displacement of ethnic Armenians from their homes stems from Azerbaijan’s military operation launched on September 19th and a nine-month long blockade of the Lachin corridor leading to dire humanitarian conditions.” And in November 2024, Freedom House reported: “The Azerbaijani state’s actions constitute ethnic cleansing using forced displacement as a means. It acted upon a comprehensive, methodically implemented strategy to empty Nagorno-Karabakh of its ethnic Armenian population and historical and cultural presence. The documented evidence meets the criteria for ethnic cleansing as defined by a UN commission of experts…The September 2023 displacement of 100,000 ethnic Armenians was the culmination of an intensive, yearslong campaign.”

Despite the abundant international record, Azerbaijan has followed up its genocidal campaign against the Armenians with an equally aggressive campaign of denials paralleling the now century-long Turkish government’s distortions of the 1915 genocide in the Ottoman Empire. As part of this perverse strategy to rewrite history, Azerbaijan has been holding a series of unlawful trials of the Armenian leadership of Nagorno Karabakh that was taken captive by Baku’s forces when they overran the region. These methods of deliberate falsification mirror the denialist program of the Turkish government, whose consequential lessons of genocide denial have become emblematic of the behavior of repressive governments that commit gross human rights violations.

The Nagorno-Karabakh Genocide webpage complements the premier Internet resource on the Armenian Genocide that already contains extensive information on the events of 1915 and their consequences, including historic records, an extensive database of affirmation statements from around the world, another database of Armenian Genocide memorials across the continents, freely downloadable exhibits based on authenticated photographic evidence from U.S. archives, an interactive museum component as an introduction to the Armenian Genocide, an entire set of instructional resources for educators to rely upon depending on the needs of their schools and students, as well as an introductory bibliography to the extensive scholarly literature on the subject of human rights and genocide as related to the Armenian Genocide, among many other useful components. The ANI website is also available in Turkish, Arabic, and Spanish, and is constantly expanded as more records are translated.

Founded in 1997, the Armenian National Institute (ANI) is a 501(c)(3) educational charity based in Washington, D.C., and is dedicated to the study, research, and affirmation of the Armenian Genocide. The ANI website can be consulted in English, Turkish, Spanish, and Arabic. ANI also maintains the online Armenian Genocide Museum of America (AGMA).

Established in 1972, the Armenian Assembly of America is the largest Washington-based nationwide organization promoting public understanding and awareness of Armenian issues. The Assembly is a non-partisan, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt membership organization. 

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