19 07 2008 - A Memorial Ceremony in Honor of the Norwegian missionary

http://www.genocide-museum.am/ and Armenia Advocate Bodil Biørn
At 10.40am, on July 22nd of 2008, the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute is sponsoring a memorial plaque dedication ceremony in honor of the famous Norwegian missionary Bodil Biørn. Press Release
July 19, 2008
A Memorial Ceremony in Honor of the Norwegian
Missionary
The ceremony will begin at the AGMI’s Gomidas Hall with the presentation of the film “They call me mother”; a featured movie at the 2008 “Golden Apricot” Film Festival. Attending the ceremony are the members of Bodil Biørn’s family traveling from Norway to Armenia.
The ceremony will also feature the presentation of a photo album of Eastern Armenia captured by Bodil Biørn. This greatly preserved album includes photos of the Armenian Genocide and images of life after the genocide. The presentation will also introduce letters, journals and other testimonial documents that authenticate the genocide of 1915.
At 12am, the ceremony will be concluded with the placement of a piece of soil bringing from the tomb of Biørn in the “Memorial Wall” of the Tsisernakaberd Memorial Complex.

* Bodil Biørn was born in 1987 in the Norwegian city of Kragerø. In 1905, while working for the “Women Missionary Workers” organization, she was sent to the Ottoman Empire, first at the city of Mezereh, and later in Mush, where her primary interaction was with widows and orphans. Biørn became an eyewitness of the Armenian Genocide and documented the developments of massacres through her photography.
In 1917, she returned to Norway for a short amount of time, before she left to the newly formed Armenian Republic where she established an orphanage and took care of Armenian refugees from the genocide. Furthermore, after establishing an orphanage in Armenia she moved to Syria and engaged in a successful effort of establishing an orphanage for the survivors. Up until 1934, she continued her services to the Armenian people and her engagement in the life of the orphan survivors.
Bodil Biørn past away in 1960, but her memory and her work remains alive in the heart of Armenians today.

Arm. National Museum