Vanessa Kachadurian and the Congressional recognition of Peter Balakian

Vanessa Kachadurian giving Congressman Jeff Denham's Congressional Recognition to author Peter Balakian. Author, Humanitarian, and Historian Peter Balakian was honored at UC Merced and at CSUF Fresno. What do a Turk, a Kurd, a Polish War hero and some Assyrians have in common? They all showed up at the event in Merced and Fresno to honor Peter Balakian and his quest for the world to understand the Armenian Genocide. There were several honors beside the Spendlove Prize, my friends at Congressman Sal Cannella's office, Dennis Cardoza, several state honors and local government. My buddies at Hye Riders, an international Armenian motorcycle club sent me a Hye Rider motorcylce shirt for Peter, and he was more jazzed about being an honorary Hye Rider. The Hye Riders have expanded to Armenia and Lebanon, they have gathered over 1,000 toys for children in orphanages in Armenia and over 1 ton of blankets for seniors. http://hyeriders.com/ Dr. Balakian was also given a bottle of Ararat Brandy in a sabre shaped bottle. He had a great time and met some outstanding people from very diverse backgrounds.

Peter Balakian with Dr. Bryzla a Polish resistance fighter, who reminded Peter about Hitler's infamous speech before he marched into Poland "Who after all today remembers the Armenians?"

Turkish professor who is seeking more dialogue with Armenians and other indigenous groups of the Republic of Turkey. She is a classy and delightful woman with a handsome husband who talked about his Greek lineage. We discussed the Turkish education on the Armenian Genocide as justified homocide against a nation as the Turkish government portrays the Armenians as "traitors" so apparently women, children, elderly, and our intellectuals had to be punished as well. Today, the Republic of Turkey still bares the darkness of their many Ottoman era genocides throughout the Ottoman Empire.

This is a group of Assyrian men who came to the UC Merced talk, Larry Piro's son George is a high level FBI agent who was in charge of Saddam Hussein. George was also on "60 Minutes" talking about his assignment with the late Saddam Hussein. Assyrians were the indigenous people of Iraq (formerly called Assyria) and are now being forced to close their churches and organizations. Saddam Hussein had no issues with his Christian population and in fact, his right hand man Tariq Aziz is a Christian Chaldean Assyrian. After the Turkish Ottoman cleansing of the Assyrian populations there was barely 1 million left in the world.