Categories: History

The Wreck of the Steamboat “Armenia” – Ordered to be Forgotten

On November 7, 1941, the parade of the Soviet army on the Red Square attracted the attention of the entire world.

At the same time, German troops were approaching Moscow and Leningrad. And no newspaper or periodical mentioned the message that we found in the “Chronicle of the Great Patriotic War at the Black Sea Theater” that has been classified in Soviet years.

This document states that in the very same minutes when the parade was taking place on the Red Square in Moscow, not far from Yalta, as a result of a German air attack, the Soviet hospital ship “Armenia” was destroyed. 5.000 to 7.000 passengers were killed in the attack. Only 8 people survived.

But here is a mystery! We still know almost nothing about one of the biggest and most tragic catastrophes at sea, in which died 4 times as many people as in the sinking of the Titanic.

Soviet hospital ship Armenia

Гибель Армении. Приказано забыть.

Vigen Avetisyan

Recent Posts

The Vilgort Cup: A Silver Masterpiece of Cilician Armenia (c. 1150–1159 A.D.)

A Fragment That Traveled Across Continents The gilt-silver medallion shown above — two richly dressed…

8 hours ago

Hannibal and Artaxias the Great: The Carthaginian General Who Helped Build the “Armenian Carthage”

Few episodes in ancient Armenian history capture the imagination quite like the tradition that Hannibal…

6 days ago

The Priestess of the Kingdom of Van: A 9th-Century BC Bronze Figurine in the British Museum

Five angles of one small bronze figure — and what emerges is not an abstract…

2 weeks ago

The Winged Sun and the Armenian Tiara: Royal Symbolism of the Orontid (Yervanduni) Kingdom of Commagene, 163 BC – 72 AD

Introduction Among the successor states that emerged from the fragmentation of the Achaemenid-derived Orontid (Armenian:…

2 weeks ago

A Bronze Age Vessel from Gardman: Solar Symbolism, the Sun-Cross, and the Sacred Landscape of Ancient Armenia

Article based on the explanations and interpretive observations of Angela Terian, with additional archaeological and…

3 weeks ago

Rewriting the Caucasus: A Documented Look at Azerbaijan’s Historical Revisionism Regarding Armenia

Lenin: Soviet nationalities policy, Azerbaijan SSR founded 1920, Stalin: Constitution and census fix the ethnonym…

3 weeks ago