The names of more than 300 people, passengers of the "Armenia" ship, have been rescued from obscurity, reports the RGS Underwater Research Center. This became possible thanks to the work in the archives and communication with the relatives of the victims. The hospital ship sank on November 7, 1941 after the Nazis aircrafts. The ship sank in just 4 minutes. According to various sources, there were from 6 thousand to 10 thousand people on board.
Let us remind that the ship "Armenia" was discovered and identified in April 2020 by the forces of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation with the participation of specialists from the RGS Underwater Research Center. The ship was not far from Yalta at a depth of 1.5 km. After that, the RGS Underwater Research Center launched a special information and memorial web portal - teplohodarmenia.ru. Its main goal is to compile a people's list of those died on the "Armenia", since there is no single official list of those.
According to the head of special projects of the RGS, Roman Yevtyukov, the dead, whose names have been established, are doctors, wounded soldiers, sailors, employees of the Artek pioneer camp. Several dozen names are checking by specialists. The work is colossal, but in the Russian Geographical Society it is perceived as a debt of memory and one of its most important projects for the coming years.
Since March 2021, members of the RGS Youth Club and Victory volunteers in Yalta and Sevastopol have been joining the project. Young people will interview the elderly, who may have witnessed the events of 80 years ago, and will help restore the real picture. Due to the fact that the evacuation took place in a hurry, and some of the lists were only on the board, it is not possible to find out the exact number of deaths, but historians want to try at least to get closer to it.
In April, a new expedition to the sunken ship will take place in order to obtain high-quality video material, which will form the basis of two documentaries. One of the films is about the fate of the "Armenia" ship and its passengers. It is filmed by the NTV channel and will be shown to the anniversary of the tragedy. The second is dedicated to the search for the ship, it is filmed by the RGS Underwater Research Center.
The specialists of the RGS emphasize: any resident of the Crimea can help with the search by asking their elderly relatives. It was not used to talk about this tragedy, and many contemporaries do not suspect that their family can be associated with this terrible page in history.