The Fund for the Support of Historical Research, created with the initiative and support of Dr. Alper Öktem in 2010, aims to encourage the research of conscientious acts carried out in 1915, to find people who with their behaviour at the time have set examples for humanity and to share these acts with today's society, to support and encourage research aimed at exposing a different facade of history. As of 2013, the scope of this fund has been extended and it has been renamed "History and Memory Research Fund". The book contains studies which have been funded until 2014.

It  is very important in many ways to unearth and honour those Muslims who saved Armenians during the genocide. First of all, the Turkish governments' denial politics can best and most accurately be refuted with these stories. Second, it provides a means for those whose thinking capacity has been atrophied through years of ideological brainwashing to more easily face their pasts. Trying to understand and discuss history through conscientious people carries an extremely powerful democratization dynamic. Third, these stories may help re-build Armenian-Turkish relations which were ruined by genocide. They can help build a bridge to bring together two estranged but close peoples. Based on reciprocal respect, they strengthen the idea of peaceful co-existence. The future can be built on conscientious people; without forgetting the past, without diminishing the true tragedies, by strengthening the feeling of broken justice in the hearts and conscience.

Owning conscientious people is not only a means for certain other ends, it is also a test of our own conscience. These conscientious people were not that many in the past, had they been the massacre would not have taken place. But their scarceness in the past reminds us of the necessity to create an abundance for the future.
Taner Akçam, Introduction

Authors: Ayşe Gül Altınay, Ishkhan Chiftjian, Adnan Çelik, Namık Kemal Dinç, Burçin Gerçek, Öykü Gürpınar, Armen Marsoobian, George N. Shirinian