Special Collections: Armenian

This photoarchive collection documents Armenian architecture in areas of Armenian population throughout the world. It gives detailed descriptions and histories of Armenian architecture, along with information about cultural context and location. It is useful for the study of early and late Medieval Christian architechural arts of Transcaucasia and the Middle East. The collection includes 42,000 photographs of churches, monastaries, fortresses, and other monuments.

Created by U.S. Presidential directive during World War II and at first placed under the Federal Communications Commission in 1941, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) was later transferred to the War Department, and then to the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947.

The original mission of FBIS was to monitor, record, transcribe and translate intercepted radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broadcasts from occupied territories. These translations, or transcriptions in the case of English language materials, make up the Daily Reports.

The FBIS Daily Reports collection is divided into two chronological segments: 1941-1974 and 1974-1996. FBIS Daily Reports, 1941-1974, consists of a single Daily Report publication. FBIS Daily Reports, 1974-1996, is comprised of eight separate regional Daily Reports, of which Part 6 pertains to Eastern Europe (EEU), and Part 7 to the Soviet Union and Central Eurasia (SOV). Regional coverage for eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is also included for the years 1968 to 1974.

The reports includes news, interviews, speeches, editorial commentary, and other materials.

Solomon Alexander Nigosian (1932-) served as professor at the Department of Religious Studies, University of Toronto, where he taught courses on world religions, Near Eastern religions, and the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Presently he is a Research Associate at Victoria College and teaches Continuing Education courses at St. Michael's College. Nigosian founded and served as the first minister of the Armenian Evangelical Church of Toronto (1960-1968), and founded and edited the journal Canada-Armenian Press (1963-1968). He has published extensively on the history of religions and Armenian culture and history.

The fonds contain material that documents Nigosian's scholarly and teaching career, as well as his role as a minister of the Armenian Evangelical Church and a member of the Armenian community in Toronto.

A digitized, fully searchable and hyperlinked repository of visual testimonies by almost 52,000 survivors of genocidal wars. The vast majority of the testimonies in the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive are from Jewish survivors of the Holocaust (1939-1945), as well as other Holocaust witnesses, rescuers, and aid providers.

Among the main subjects discussed in the interviews are geographical locations, prominent figures, names of family members and other people, prewar Jewish life, religious practice, cultural life, acts of persecution and prejudice, camps and ghettos, deportations, massacres, means of adaptation or survival, resistance, rescue and aid efforts, and postwar emigration and immigration.