Ghazanchetsots Cemetery

CHW initially documented damage to the Ghazanchetsots Armenian cemetery in Shusha/Shushi in Fall of 2023. Subsequent imagery from Spring 2024 indicated that the entire territory of the cemetery had been razed and the surface graded.

The 18th-19th c. cemetery had been severely damaged during the Soviet era. By the 1990s, 45 tombstones remained. One marks the passing of Stepan, a blacksmith from Ghazanchi village in Nakhchivan, who died in 1758. He was one of many Armenian migrants from that village whose name was given to the city’s well-known cathedral. Stepan’s tombstone recalls the destruction of the Armenian cemetery in his native village, the Old Cemetery of Ghazanchi/Shahkert. CHW documented its erasure in our investigation into the recent destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in Nakhchivan. In that investigation, we also documented the destruction of the medieval Armenian monastery in the blacksmith’s native Ghazanchi.