Armenian
News Network / Groong
Raphael Lemkin And The Coining
Of The Word “Genocide”:
Miscellanea: Odds and Ends from Our Armenian-related
Notes
Armenian News Network / Groong
July 5, 2022
by Abraham D. Krikorian and Eugene L. Taylor
Probing the Photographic
Record
LONG ISLAND, NY
PrÉcis
What we have covered in this extended essay is essentially a
prospectus on the Armenian genocide. Rafał Lemkin, a
Polish Jewish jurist and lawyer coined the word genocide and circumscribed what it was and was not. He made it very clear that he knew the
Armenians were victims of genocide. We
maintain in this essay that all victims of genocide should be supportive of one
another. It is the evil genius of those who commit genocide to foster denial
and make the victims of these various persecuted groups see each other as
rivals to pity, and thus easy to dismiss as malcontents, exaggerators, and
subversives. News management and control
of media narrative have become fine arts among genocide deniers. We believe the arguments and imagery we
present are persuasive, grounded in historical fact and detail, and should
dispel the deniers. It is not a matter of
“We were the most victimized,”
rather, it is a matter of much greater general import. Not only those peoples who have been
victimized by genocide should be a matter for our concern, but of all
victimized peoples who deserve our interest and recognition in history. Names and definitions are important but not
the all-important element.
Introduction
One of the
objectives of this presentation is to fill in a few gaps of knowledge about the
life and work of Rafał Lemkin (Raphael Lemkin). Some emphasis is also given in the latter
part of this essay to how he came up with phrases like “the Armenian genocide” (spelled with a lower-case g or capital G) or “the Genocide committed against the
Armenians,” “the Turkish Genocide of the Armenians.”
One must state at the outset that it took
many years for the word ‘genocide’ to
come into being as a 20th century construct. The word was totally due to the initiative
and labors of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish jurist, and has unfortunately
evolved to the status of being accepted or used today without much serious
concern or introspection. In the early
period, the word or concept was barely known or bothered with by the public at
large, even the educated and professional public. The word has now become a matter of
international law, but to be frank, international law generally speaking has
few teeth and this ends up being a Godsend to specialist attorneys who can
argue the cases forever.[1]
What Can Be Said
About Raphael Lemkin
that is important
but has not been said before?
The answer is “Unfortunately, not much
that would be described as super-important.”
But there is ample opportunity to add bits and pieces to the story. There is a fair amount of general
biographical and bibliographical information on Raphael Lemkin available
online, so little need be repeated here in the body of this essay based on that
information. There are, however, many
Lemkin materials that are scattered throughout various print archives that are
still largely inadequately used or even essentially understudied or even
unstudied. One certainly wishes that
they were available for examination in a more ordered fashion. The fact that they are available at all is a
miracle in itself. Steven Schur relates
the dramatic story of the recovery of the Lemkin Archival materials that are
now in the New York Public Library.[2]
We ourselves have done some research in
most of the archives where Raphael Lemkin’s papers are preserved, but we have
always felt that the materials were by no means easy to study in the most
rational of manners. For one thing, his
handwriting is not very easy to read.
The typed pages are of course better, but they are often undated or
missing. It is also important to say
that there are points in the papers which cannot be substantiated by
corroborative research, or they may even be inconsistent and contradictory.
In one place, for example, to be found in
the New York Public Library papers, there is a biographical statement relating
to his experience coming to the USA and teaching. It says that he “proceeded to the United
States which he reached just before Pearl Harbor.” Now, every school child of our generation has
hopefully learned Roosevelt’s statement that December 7, 1941, was “a date which will live in infamy.” Archival records at Duke University Law
School indicate that Lemkin was in Durham, North Carolina in late April
1941. Just how the phrase “just before Pearl Harbor” got into the
record will have to await someone coming across it by chance. Perhaps in the grand scheme of things “just before” could be April and it is
thus a totally negligible point.
This quibble is but one trivial example of
how challenging it is to not slavishly follow what one encounters in
archives. One cannot always easily
decide what is important and what is not.
The Lemkin materials are voluminous, and it is one thing to admit that
many topics entail a complex narrative that must be elicited from the various
sources. Even so, it would seem that at
least some basic, verifiable, and verified information about a person who is
often so eulogized and applauded today would be well settled by now. Apparently, for Raphael Lemkin, that is not
necessarily the case. We spent more time
than we should like to admit tracking down the ship’s manifest for Lemkin’s
immigration. We were finally able to do
it at the Family History Library at Salt Lake City. Prior to that we had run into a number of
stumbling blocks. At least that is now
done and should put to rest the range of largely incorrect stories of his immigration.
(See below.)
Also, there are on occasion, multiple
copies, versions, and drafts, some in different locations. For us, getting only a few of them into some
sort of chronological order has been a major task despite “Finding Aids.” Some years back it was reported that there
was an ambitious plan to publish a catalog of Raphael Lemkin’s unpublished
works and correspondence as part of a comprehensive project. This was to be accompanied by a full-length
biography. Rabbi Dr. Steven Leonard
Jacobs of Tuscaloosa, Alabama undertook this herculean task. Even a cursory examination of a volume
published in 1992 by Rabbi Jacobs that derives from an untitled Lemkin manuscript, but titled and edited by Jacobs as “Raphael Lemkin’s Thoughts on Nazi Genocide.
Not Guilty?” (Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, ME.)
shows what an enormous undertaking such a project involves.
Before
continuing in our attempt to give at least some fresh perspective on Lemkin’s
life, we should perhaps start off with the point that the Polish spelling of his first name is Rafał, that is an l with a stroke through it.
This renders the pronunciation as “Raff’ow”
[as in ow that hurts!]. Raphael is the Anglicized form of his name
and is mostly used.[3] We have encountered only a couple of times in
correspondence where he is addressed as Rafal (no line through the l as ł).
Not unexpectedly, most of the coverage
that one finds on the Internet is largely derivative and some of it inexact,
sometimes totally wrong. Such basic
pieces of information as Raphael Lemkin’s year and ‘country’ of birth etc.
present inconsistencies, just as the period when he first entered America, and
traveled to North Carolina. His year of
birth is sometimes wrongly given as 1901 rather than the correct date of 24
June 1900 (See Fig. 8.). He died 24
August 1959 in New York City — he did not have a heart attack in his apartment,
by the way, as has been said more than once.
To our annoyance, the full medical record
dealing with his death is not accessible in NY State to non-relatives. That shows how silly these things can
get. The hypocritical pretense that
privacy is all-important is a joke. Some
individuals who are dead may not have living relatives. No one seems to have worried about that. ADK raised such a stink that we would be glad
to hear that policy is no longer in place and has exceptions.
Raphael Lemkin wrote himself that he was
born in 1900 in Bezwodne, district of Bialystok,
Poland.[4]
To be a bit more informative one might
today say that Lemkin was born in what was once referred by some Old Country
residents of the area as the “North-West,” that is, in what was referred to as
the ‘Pale of Settlement’ in the old Russian Empire. On some period maps,
the international boundaries of the region are referred to as “Russian Poland” with ‘White Russia’ being a significant but
not all-embracing element. The Kresy (from the
Polish word for frontier or borderland) is another expression that one
encounters, but the location and composition of the Kresy
varied as well over time. So much for
frontiers and the vicissitudes of geography.
Today the place that
Lemkin spelled Bezwodne and which he allocated to Poland when
he was writing his curriculum vitae for use in America, is given as Bezwodna in
Belarus, roughly speaking near to where Poland and Lithuania now meet. In the time of the Polish Republic
following 1920 Bezwodne was in the Białystok district.
As of January 1939, the Grodno oblast [administrative region] was part
of Poland.[5]
Part of a curriculum vitae produced by
Raphael Lemkin himself, emphasizing his broad experience and professional
activities is given below. Readers will excuse some repetition of what has
already been said.
He
was born in what was historically known as Lithuania or White Russia. He attended the University of Lwów and then the University of Heidelberg studying
philology and languages – ending up mastering nine languages. He was a member of the faculty of the Free
University of Warsaw, Public Prosecutor of the City of Warsaw, member of the
House of Governors of the Bar of Poland, a member of the Polish Board for
Codification of Legal Codes, a member of the International Committee for the
Unification of Penal laws of the United Nations (Fifth Committee) 1931-39;
representative of Poland on the Board of Governors of the International
Association of Penal Law, Paris, 1932-1938; representative of Poland at the
International Juridical Congress in Brussels, Paris, Copenhagen, Rome, Palermo,
Prague, Cairo, Amsterdam, and Budapest.
He was author in Polish: The Polish Penal Code (with Justices Janusz Jamont and Emil Stanisław Rappaport (2 volumes, Warsaw, 1932; The Judge
Confronted by The Modern Criminal Law and Criminology (Warsaw, 1933); Amnesty
(Warsaw, 1933); Financial Law (Warsaw, 1937); The Russian Penal Code (Warsaw,
1928); The Italian Penal Code (Warsaw,
1929); in French: The Regulation of International Payments with preface by von
Zeeland (Paris, 1939); in Swedish: Exchange Control and Clearing (University of
Stockholm Lectures, 1940-1941). Author
of numerous monographs, papers, and articles on criminal law, penology, and
international monetary problems in Polish, French, German, Italian, and
English. He taught for one year at the University of Stockholm and from there,
via Eurasia and Japan proceeded to the United States.
This brief accounting gives a broad
perspective of a man with a great deal of experience, especially for someone so
young. Would-be detractors who suggest
that he was ‘a nobody’ are very misinformed.[6]
For our more immediate purposes here, many
might say that it would suffice to say that Raphael Lemkin was a jurist, a
Polish Jew who immigrated into the U.S.A. in 1941 through a series of rather
amazing events, assumed an appointment in mid-April 1941 at Duke University
School of Law in Durham, North Carolina that had been pre-arranged by a friend
on the Law faculty, and by the time of the 1949 TV broadcast “UN Casebook XXI: Genocide” through
which he became better known and recognized as a public figure, he held a
teaching post at Yale University.
It seems appropriate to now present some more relevant details
on his personal history. Raphael was the
second of three sons. His older brother
was named Elias and his younger brother was Samuel. His father was a tenant farmer, said to be
somewhat unusual at that time for a Jew.
His mother (née Bella Pomeranz)
has been described as a cultured, highly intelligent woman.
Professor
Ryszard Szawłowski has
pointed out a number of nonsensical statements [see endnote 6 cited above] that
exist in various biographical accounts, and we ourselves know that these errors
have been sustained more than a few times both in print and in lectures. For example, any notion that Raphael Lemkin
lived under Nazi occupation is just that, a baseless notion. Lemkin never lived under German
occupation. (Fair to say that the Polish
administration was sympathetic to Hitler, even pro-Hitler, from 1933 right up
to the time of invasion in 1939.) Lemkin
practiced and taught law. The mentality
was that the Nazis were anti-Russian, and that suited more than a few
Poles. He lost his job when he returned
to Warsaw in 1933 after trying to get the League of Nations interested
seriously in crimes of “barbarity.”
(That was a lost cause.) Neither
was Lemkin part of the Polish underground movement. His family was apparently murdered by the
Nazis in 1942, at a time after which Lemkin had been and was in the United
States, that is after April 1941.
So
far as we can determine, the ‘only’ atrocities that Lemkin saw with his own
eyes (and they were certainly barbaric enough for anyone to witness) entailed
the following which we quote from a magazine article by well-known journalist
Herbert C. Yahraes Jr., published in Collier’s magazine in March 1951pg. 29:
“With the Nazi invasion of Poland in
1939, Lemkin took refuge with hundreds of other Poles in a vast forest. There he saw the Germans bomb a refugee train
drawn up at a nearby village. Several
hundred children who had packed the train had tumbled out and were eating
breakfast. Telling about it, Lemkin rubs
his hand nervously over the arm of his chair.
“Then as the planes came over,” he says quietly, “and destroyed
them.” He looks up. “Is it any wonder I couldn’t forget my idea?”
[of developing and putting in place
legislation against the crime of barbarity.]
For
us, this indeed qualifies as his ‘personal experience’ but does not reflect
personal experience so far as ‘The Holocaust’ is concerned, as some have
claimed, not unless one wants to recast dramatically when ‘The Holocaust’
against the Jews and Slavs and Roma and Sinti etc. began.
Loss Of Raphael Lemkin’s Family During The Nazi Horrors
An
important piece of information about Raphael Lemkin learning of the death of
his relatives as a result of the Nazi horrors may be found showcased in the Collier’s magazine article by Yahraes, referred to above entitled “He gave a name to the world’s most horrible crime.” The article clearly seems to have relied on
an interview or interviews, and portrays Raphael Lemkin in a very human light,
rather than in the more usual serious, even stolid way in which he is
characterized in most other articles.
See below.
Here
we will attempt to visit anew and very briefly the matter of what motivated
Raphael Lemkin to coin the word “genocide.” This has been approached, or at least touched
on by a number of writers in various and sundry incarnations of the whole. However, we should strive towards a
perspective that is as accurate as possible a perspective and get some timing
of events into a proper time sequence.
There are, of course, as in any attempts of synthesis of the sort under
consideration here, many pitfalls that confront one. Methodological complexity is the order of the
day.
Figs. 1 and 2 below are from Herbert Yahraes “He Gave A Name To The World’s Most Horrible Crime.” Raphael
Lemkin called it “genocide” ̶
the mass killing of people, and personally made it into an international
crime, Collier’s magazine March 3,
1951 pgs. 29, 56-57.
Fig. 1.
Double-page spread that opens journalist Herbert Yahraes’ excellent article.
Fig. 2.
Enlargement of what we think is an attractive color
photograph by Hans Knopf of Raphael Lemkin in a somewhat pensive mood.
Raphael
Lemkin speaks quite directly on the matter about the murder of his relatives to
the journalist Yahraes. He asks, for instance, “If you mean do I know which went into the gas chambers, and which the
Germans starved to death someplace else, no, I don’t know that” (Yahraes 1951 pg. 56).
It
has been related that Lemkin needed to be hospitalized 20-26 July 1946 at the
U.S. Army Medical Hospital in Paris as a result of hypertension related
ostensibly to stress. We have not yet
checked the records in the United States National Archives of the Paris
hospital, but it has also been stated outright, or at least implied, that his
hospitalization was in Nuremberg. Cooper
(2008 pg. 72) says “Distraught at being
unable to trace any members of his family from Poland and suffering from high
blood pressure, Lemkin was confined to a military hospital.”[7]
Whatever
the sad specifics, it seems quite safe to say that it was considerably after
his release from hospital in Paris that Raphael Lemkin learned about the fate
of his family. This is, therefore, well
after Lemkin’s “Axis Rule…” appeared
in print. Accordingly, because the
hospital stay was in 1946 and “Axis
Rule…” was published considerably earlier in late 1944, it would appear
wrong to try to make the case that Raphael Lemkin’s coining of the word “genocide” is directly related to his
learning about that personal tragedy.
Moreover, coining the word certainly had nothing to do with “The Holocaust” in the strict use of
that expression. “The Catastrophe” or sometimes “The
Great Catastrophe,” Yiddish speakers and writers use “umkum” or khurbn
-sometimes pronounced as if it ended with an “m.” ” Umkum means
‘catastrophe’ or ‘destruction,’ ‘total destruction’ or even ‘war’ etc.,
depending on the context. (We thank Dr.
Agi Legutko, Director of the Yiddish Language
Program, Columbia University.) The
almost universally known expression “The
“Shoah” (‘Calamity’ in Hebrew) was eventually replaced, in America
especially, by “The Holocaust” only
considerably later.[8]
No
clear-cut information on any decision to annihilate all European Jewry had yet
been made, certainly known about at large when Lemkin was cogitating or
struggling with a name for the ‘crime
without a name.’ The point should be
made here, however, that Raphael Lemkin may well have believed that he ‘saw the writing on the wall’ rather
early. He recalled the pogroms he heard
of as a kid growing up. Litvak (1991)
pg. 68 says “It should also be remembered
that during the first half of 1940 there were only a few extreme pessimists who
foresaw the “final solution” as it was revealed in 1942.” There is little doubt in our minds Raphael
Lemkin was one of these.[9]
Recall
also that Raphael Lemkin’s emerging (and ultimate) definition of genocide was
broad. It is not insignificant that he later wrote considerably afterwards, that he “started to collect decrees of occupation
which had reached Sweden by way of occupied Europe. Some of these decrees, like that of the
German military commander in Serbia which had already in April 1941 established
a death penalty for hiding Jews and Gypsies, foretold the plan of committing
genocide.”[10]
Readers of our postings on Groong, the Armenian News Network will
see that we ourselves have always tried to be quite specific in our
wording. As a jurist Raphael Lemkin
necessarily saw things as legal issues, not from the perspective of a
historian, and certainly not as one working in today’s environment, either academic
or political.
Raphael Lemkin’s compilation of “Key Laws, Decrees and Regulations Issued
by the Axis in Occupied Europe,”
dated December, 1942 produced for the “Board of Economic Warfare, Blockage and
Supply Branch, Reoccupation Division” under The locator “RR-8 RESTRICTED COPY
No. (in our case seen as “no 88”) and stamped in red “From War Dept. Liaison
Office, Board of Economic Warfare” says: “This
collection was compiled by Dr. Raphael Lemkin partly when serving on the
faculties of the Universities of Stockholm, Sweden, and of Duke University,
North Carolina, and partly when serving as a consultant with the Board of
Economic Warfare.”
His preface begins: “The laws and decrees promulgated by Germany in the subjugated
countries of Europe, vary according to the policy which Germany has sought to
impose, and the problems which Germany has been forced to meet.” Lemkin’s work gives an excellent, brief
overview of the anticipated perspective on Nazi-generated legal frameworks for
persecutions in their occupied territories.
The worst of the ordinances in Lemkin’s compilation is in Serbia where
the death penalty is to be imposed on anyone who hides Jews or accepts material
goods for safekeeping etc.[11]
Putting
aside for the moment the nascent horrors as they were developing in
Nazi-controlled territories, we will continue with our sketch of Raphael
Lemkin’s biography as derived largely from the article by Professor Szawłowski and pieces of Raphael Lemkin’s own writings.
[see endnote 6 for full reference.]
When
Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Lemkin left (escaped is perhaps more accurate) Warsaw on 6/7 September as did
thousands of other men. This was in
response to an order for able-bodied men to head East, where they would join
the army. There
Lemkin “encountered the Soviet aggression against Poland that took place on 17
September.” (That was only 16 days after
Hitler invaded Poland. The invasion by
the Soviets did not last long however because the Germans took over
completely.) Lemkin was detained by the
Bolsheviks but was subsequently released.
Had they known his real identity they would have arrested him and sent
him to a gulag for his hostility and vilification of the Soviet criminal legal
system in the course of his professional work.
After this, Lemkin stayed with his parents for a short while and got to
Wilno [Vilna] (in Poland but which was then occupied by Lithuanians, today
Vilnius, Lithuania). He escaped from
Lithuania to Sweden as a refugee in February 1940, remained there for more than
a year and even lectured at the Stockholms Högskola. His
Swedish became good enough to publish a book based on his lectures entitled “Foreign Exchange and Clearing.”
Exactly
when he left Sweden is not certain, but it seems reasonable that it was early
in 1941.
Raphael
Lemkin managed to get into America through his connections with Professor
Malcolm McDermott of the School of Law, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. (They had met in Warsaw in 1936 and had
collaborated in publishing in 1939 an English version of a small book on the Polish Penal Code of 1932 and Law of Minor
Offences.) Raphael Lemkin is said to
have been “welcomed on 18 April 1941” at Duke.
(This exact date seems not to be formally confirmable, but it must be
very close, if not exact, since there is a news release found at Duke
University Law School Archives dated 24 April of his being engaged to teach
Roman and International Law.) Lemkin’s
long journey from Sweden had entailed coming to America by going clear across
the Soviet Union (Trans-Siberian Railway), eventually to Yokohama, Japan and
entering the U.S.A. via Seattle, Washington on 18 April 1941.[12]
We
shall now take the liberty to jump ahead in the broad scheme of things and give
some coverage to a marker in Warsaw and glean what we can from it.
A Plaque For RafaŁ Lemkin In
Warsaw
As so often happens, markers are put up in
places with which a particularly important or well-known person was
associated. Some of these are very
simple, others are quite elaborate. If
one goes to Warsaw, Poland one can find a building complex which survived World
War II that bears a plaque honoring Raphael Lemkin. See Figs. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 below.
We were fortunate enough to see the plaque
in Warsaw when we visited this city as part of a trip as tourists to the Baltic
Capitals. If one is unable to make a
personal visit, one can amazingly see through the miracle of Google Earth the
bilingual commemorative plaque placed on the outside of the then fairly upscale
apartment house that Lemkin lived in at 6 Kredytowa
Street for several years until 6/7 September 1939. His name is spelled in Polish and English as Rafał Lemkin. [It is
a common first name for boys and derives from the Hebrew “God heals” or some such.] Wikipedia shows another close-up of the
plaque see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rafal_Lemkin_plaque_PISM.jpg.]
Fig. 3.
Building on Kredytowa Street where Lemkin lived in Warsaw, Poland. Fig. 8 shows plaque in some detail.
The awning on
the right indicates a ‘travel’ agency.
Fig. 4.
Eugene L. Taylor
(6 ft. tall) standing by Lemkin plaque on
the building where Lemkin lived.
Fig. 5.
Closer view of
Lemkin plaque on the front of the building.
Fig. 6.
Lemkin plaque in
Polish and in English on the front of his residence in Warsaw.
Fig. 7.
Close-up of the
English text on the Lemkin plaque.
It might be a
bit optimistic to suppose that many people will know that the Genocide
Convention
was adopted on
December 9, 1948, and that the 60th anniversary
would be marked
on December 9, 2008.
Fig. 8.
Close-up of the
Introduction in Polish on the Lemkin plaque.
It was noteworthy to us that no one in the
area or in the shops in the building complex knew anything about Lemkin, its
one-time resident, who eventually became “famous” for instigating and
initiating the Genocide Convention. Indeed, “No
one is a prophet in his own land.” (Holy Bible Luke 4:24).
Lemkin’s Burial
Place
We encountered the same situation a dozen
years ago when we undertook a visit to Lemkin’s gravesite in the USA at the Mt.
Hebron Cemetery in Flushing Queens, on Long Island. It was as if we were seeking the grave of
someone who mattered very little or nothing to the world at large. (Apparently that has changed slightly in
recent years.) When we visited Mt. Hebron
Cemetery 2010 it was a major project to locate the gravesite, and bird droppings
soiled the stone and site in general.
Fortunately, we had some water and cleaning tools available to clean off
the grave marker a bit before we took photographs.[13]
Fig. 9.
Fig. 10.
Note especially
Block 101 at around 8 o’clock on the left side of the locator map.
(See enlargement Fig. 11.)
Fig. 11.
Fig. 12.
Shows what a
challenge it would be to seek out a gravesite at Mount Hebron Cemetery without
specifics.
There are an
immense number of graves.
Fig. 13.
The Lemkin Plot,
Block 101, Lot ½ 238 & 239.
There are 10
individuals buried in the plot - 6 Lemkins, 2 Desfors, 2 others.
Even though
Raphael Lemkin was the first to be buried there, he was not one of the four
original owners of the Plot, but
a family member
was. (We thank Cedar Grove Cemetery Association for this information.)
Fig. 14.
Fig. 15.
The Hebrew at
the top translates as “Raphael son of Yosef HaLevy.” Our thanks to Dr. Ann Kent Witztum for the translation from Hebrew.
Lemkin’s
Immigration Into The United States
Lemkin’s immigration record detailing his
travel to the USA exists only on microfilm.
We were told by authorities in Seattle that originals no longer
exist. The ship manifest (Fig. 16a.)
shows that Lemkin left Yokohama, Japan on April 5, 1941, on the M.S. Hein Maru,
a Japanese ocean liner, and arrived in Seattle on April 18, 1941, where he was
medically examined at the port of entry and admitted.
Fig. 16a.
Copy of Ship
Manifest. (See Line 14 especially for Rafael Lemkin.)
Fig. 16b.
Cut-out showing
Line 14 from the Ship Manifest.
Fig. 17.
Raphael Lemkin’s
Declaration of Intention for American citizenship.
Note that
Lemkin’s first name has become ‘Americanized’ to Raphael.
We believe this is the first time it was formalized legally.
Lemkin And The
Armenians
Lemkin’s concern with the Armenians and
the crime that was inflicted on them by the Ottoman Turks under cover of World
War I and even earlier in the late 1890s and again in 1909, did not emanate
from a superficial interest gained later in his life. The Armenians of Turkey were very important
in the context of Lemkin’s idealistic struggles with framing appropriate legal
concepts on how one might punish perpetrators of such crimes. These concerns dated from 1921.
Lemkin relates that even as a youngster he
posed questions to his mother about the reasons for the persecutions of
Christians in the days of Emperor Nero’s Rome.
He had read about these dramatic torments and tortures in the novel Quo Vadis written by the immensely
popular Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz.
Later in life, Raphael Lemkin described Quo Vadis as his favorite book when he
was a child. It appears that he was what
we would nowadays call a youngster with a potential for developing a deep
social conscience.
We learn from a brief but very telling
biographical sketch of Raphael Lemkin that “In 1921 he was profoundly upset by
a news item.” A young Armenian man named Soghomon Teilierian [the more usual and accurate anglicized spelling
of the surname is Telirian], had confronted the
Turkish Minister of the Interior, Talaat Pasha [Fig. 18], on the street near
his residence in Berlin, drawn a revolver, and killed him, shouting: “This is to avenge the death of my family!”[14].
Fig. 18.
This late in life photo
of Talaat Pasha (1874-1921) shows the cover of a fairly recent volume (2006, Kaymak Yayinlari Press Istanbul]
with Talaat’s image entitled in Turkish that translates to English as “My Memories and My Defense.” Some plastic surgery is said to have been
performed on him and thus his eyes look a bit different from other photographs.
[15]
After
studying the assassination case of Talaat Pasha in greater detail, Raphael
Lemkin found that Tehlirian’s family had been part of
the more than 1,200,000 Armenians who had been eliminated starting in 1915 by
the Turks, when Talaat had been head of the Turkish police, and later when he
was Minister of the Interior.
Raphael Lemkin took what he saw as a problem to
one of his law professors at Lwów University.
“Did the Armenian try to
have the Turk arrested for the massacre?”
The professor shook his head. “There is no law under which he could be
arrested.” “But Talaat was responsible
for the death of those people,” Raphael retorted. His professor in the Law faculty responded: “Consider the case of a farmer who owns a
flock of chickens. He kills them and
this is his business. If you interfere,
you are trespassing.” Lemkin retorted:
“But the Armenians are not chickens.
Certainly –ˮ the professor continued: “You cannot interfere with the internal affairs of a nation without
infringing on that nation’s sovereignty.”
Raphael stood his ground. “It is a crime for Teilierian
(sic) to kill a man, but it is not a crime for his oppressor to kill more than
a million men? This is most inconsistent.”
The
final bit of advice offered to Lemkin was “You
are young and inexperienced, Lemkin, and tend to oversimplify. You should learn more about international
law.”
So Raphael entered law school at the University of Lwów.[16] For six years he searched ancient and modern
law to discover some written code against the crime of murdering national,
racial, and religious groups.[17]
All
this led to Lemkin
becoming even more preoccupied with the entire
problem. Figs. 19, 20, 21, and 22 are
images selected by us to tell some of the story connected with avenging the
deaths of Armenian genocide victims through assassination of Young Turk
leaders.
The
first Turkish target (Fig. 19a.) was Talaat Pasha, widely regarded as the
arch-assassin and prime initiator of the scheme to carry out the genocide.[18]
Fig. 19a. and 19b.
Fig. 19a. Talaat Pasha at
his ‘desk.’ From an undated photograph
in the Library of Congress, Bain News Service Collection [19];
Fig. 19b. The bloodied
shirt worn by Talaat when he was assassinated.
The shirt was in an Istanbul museum when this photograph was taken through a
glass case.[20]
The item has apparently
long been removed from public view.
Fig. 20a. and Fig. 20b.
Fig. 20a. Title page of the German trial transcript. The booklet is some 132 pages long and
consists of the transcript of the two-day trial (Julian calendar June 22/21)
from 2 and 3 June 1921 in Berlin of the student accused of assassinating Talaat
Pasha Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire.
Armin T. Wegner wrote a preface and an appendix for the volume. Soghomon Teilirian (1896–1960), was the defendant. Teilirian, was
acquitted and deported virtually straightaway.
Fig. 20b. front page
article in the 4 June 1921 issue of the New
York Tribune reporting the acquittal of Salomon Teilirian
(sic) for Talaat’s assassination on the grounds of insanity.[21]
Fig. 21.
Dr. Behaeddin Sakir was yet another of the Young Turk criminals
assassinated for their roles in planning and implementing the Armenian
Genocide. Sakir was a member of the Young Turk Central Committee (in
Turkish, Ittihad ve Terakki Jemiyeti)
and a leader of the “Special Organization'' (in Turkish, Teşkilat-I Mahsusa) that had a major responsibility in organizing the
massacres.[22]
We
shall see in the course of our summary presentation here that even today one is
not sure by any means of the year, much less the exact date, and the precise
circumstances under which the invention of the word “genocide”
occurred. Whatever the particulars,
Raphael Lemkin was responsible for directly linking − several years before the
drafting of the Genocide Convention − his new word with what happened to
the Armenians. As a legal scholar and
practicing attorney Lemkin had struggled for many years with defining and
codifying the concept of punishment for the kinds of crimes committed by the
Turks. The small volume “Lemkin’s Dossier on the Armenian Genocide,” Lemkin, Raphael, 1900-1959, American Jewish
Historical Society, and Center for Armenian Remembrance. [Manuscript from
Raphael Lemkin's Collection, American Jewish Historical Society].
Glendale, Calif.: Center for Armenian Remembrance, 2008 provides as good as any
overview of Lemkin’s thoughts on the Armenians and their victimhood. [23]
Immediate Recognition Of
The Historical Importance Of
The UN Casebook XXI:
Genocide Film Footage
We had come upon a mention of this film on one
occasion in our reading and eventually learned that it included Raphael Lemkin
as one of the guests. Viewers are told
abundantly clearly in Lemkin’s own words that in his view what happened to the
Armenians was genocide. Locating the film was not an easy task, but
we believe it was worth all the effort we made in meeting the challenge.
With
that brief introduction we will now direct our attention to our work on
elaborating upon the film footage in a paper published some years ago by the
present writers, Taylor and Krikorian.
It showcased a full transcript of this unique 1949 television program
entitled “UN Casebook XXI:
Genocide.” It included a detailed
introduction so as to place this exceptional program in proper context.[24]
A
brief excerpt of that unique TV broadcast with its authoritative ‘notable’
guests presented leisurely before one’s eyes, was first shown in a powerful
documentary film produced and directed by Andrew Goldberg called “The Armenian Genocide” (2006).[25]
Like
many others, on 17 April 2006, we first saw on Channel 13, the PBS station
serving the greater New York City area, an hour-long documentary film
produced-for-TV entitled “The Armenian
Genocide.” It was written, produced and directed by Andrew Goldberg, founder and owner
of Two Cats Productions in New York
City. The documentary was put out in
association with Oregon Public Broadcasting.
We later learned that even before this documentary was shown publicly,
indeed some six weeks before the scheduled airdate, a complaint against the
anticipated broadcast had been lodged by one David Saltzman, Counsel to the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATTA).
In the end, the ATAA was given an opportunity to voice their reaction to
the documentary in the form of a post-program ‘roundtable’ discussion. We have read that ANCA (Armenian National
Committee of America) lobbied to have the ‘roundtable’ cancelled. The outcome allowed approximately 348
PBS-affiliate TV stations to show the program “The Armenian Genocide,” with or without the subsequent
‘roundtable.’ Apparently relatively few
stations ended up showing the post-program half-hour “roundtable” segment. The ‘roundtable’ discussion, advertised ahead
of time in a few places as “Armenian
Genocide: Exploring the Issues,” aired immediately post-program and was
skillfully moderated by noted National Public Radio commentator and journalist
Scott Simons.
The
New York-area broadcast that we ourselves watched did not include the follow-up
‘roundtable’ discussion/debate. A friend
in Austin, Texas sent us a copy of the program complete with the discussion
that was shown on their PBS station KLRU.
Professor Justin McCarthy of the University of Louisville, and Associate
Professor of History at Omer Turan University, then
at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara and now Professor at Bilgi
University in Istanbul, represented the Turkish Point of View. Professors Peter Balakian
of Colgate University and Taner Akçam,
then a visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota (later at Clark
University in Worcester, Massachusetts and now serving as Armenian Genocide
Research Director at the Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA in Los Angeles),
represented the perspective that what happened to the Armenians was a genocide.
The
marketing activities for the Goldberg film included the claim that the
documentary “featured never-before-seen footage.” This is a bit of an exaggeration of course
but there is indeed very important footage that few people had known about – at
least in the more modern context of genocide studies.[26]
Since
that time, brief excerpts from the same ‘original’ UN Casebook XXI film [27]
have been presented with increasing frequency on such modern communal platforms
as YouTube. In the majority of cases,
what is posted derives from the same ‘original.’ The excerpts from the broadcast selected for
showing inevitably give special emphasis to Raphael Lemkin, the originator of
the word “genocide,” and features him
talking about the Armenian massacres and discriminatory attitudes culminating
in Hitler’s Nazi actions.
Because
the well-intentioned and commendably promising ‘open [free]’ journal War Crimes, Genocide & Crimes against
Humanity above referenced was unfortunately very short-lived, we decided to
post the entire UN Casebook XXI
television program with our transcription as it was originally print
published. We added additional
commentary on our YouTube Conscience Films
site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXliPhsI530. Our decision to post the entire paper online
was primarily due to wanting to maintain and sustain access to our painstaking
work transcribing and publishing the broadcast in what had become an
essentially defunct journal. The YouTube
Posting allowed a decidedly fuller connection to this important broadcast along
with text added to enhance the broadcast.
The intended objective was to make students and researchers alike aware
of the many specifics.
Using
the contents of this United Nations
Casebook XXI film as a point of departure, we delved into the life and work
of Raphael Lemkin. In everything we read
he was featured both as a private individual and as a highly educated,
experienced jurist driven to introduce internationally recognized legislation
against this ‘crime of crimes.’ He was, one could say, truly obsessed with
this task.[28]
Much
of the 20,000 page plus Lemkin archive is now on
positive microfilm, and is available for research at various archives. Needless to say, the sheer volume presents challenges
(see Irvin-Erickson, Douglas, 2014). [29]
Lemkin
himself admitted on several occasions that he coined the word genocide as a result of hearing a radio
broadcast by Winston Churchill on 24 August 1941 wherein the British Prime
Minister spoke of a “crime without a
name.” [Gilbert, Martin 2007, Churchill and the
Jews: a lifelong friendship, Henry Holt & Co., New York pg. 186].
Many have taken to hearing this typically
Churchillian phrase and language to be the prime incentive for someone, indeed anyone, to rise up and provide a name
for the “crime without a name,” this
crime of crimes. Because of the
timeframe during which the comment was made by Churchill, it is assumed that
the genocide committed against European Jewry was foremost, if not the only
thing on his mind. It was not. Lemkin
had been struggling with the entire concept for years! [30]
Lemkin certainly listened to Churchill’s
speech, and we might speculate that he even hung on every word.
As mentioned earlier, prior to coming to
America, Lemkin lived in neutral Sweden where he closely monitored German
occupation policies in his native Poland where his parents and family remained,
as well as policies in neighboring Norway and all of occupied Europe. Swedish travelers coming and going from
Stockholm helped Lemkin assemble a collection of publicly available German
occupation laws and decrees, which Lemkin analyzed in an effort to understand
the pattern of the policies being implemented in Hitler's New Order in Europe.
From these
documents, Lemkin concluded that alongside the traditional war of armies,
Germany was engaged in a war against peoples.
To Lemkin the collection of occupation decrees demonstrated a Nazi
policy aimed at nothing less than a demographic restructuring of the European
population. Following the design set out
in Hitler’s Mein Kampf
published in 1925, some groups would be encouraged to thrive, others to
decline through depopulation over time, and others would be targeted for
destruction.
In Lemkin's
native Poland, for example, the German occupiers had created a racial hierarchy
in which so-called and in reality, scientifically indefensible "Aryan" peoples (ethnic German
Volkesdeutsche)
received the full food rations and were encouraged to have more children, even
out of wedlock. Ethnic Poles and other
Slavic groups were forcefully subjugated, their leadership and intellectuals
sent to concentration camps or killed outright.
The remainder of the Slavic population was to survive on minimal rations
only to the extent that their labor was needed by the dominant "Aryan" population group. The Jewish population, consisting of two
million people including Lemkin's own family, was being exterminated. Extermination was accomplished by forcibly
resettling the population in ghettos or camps where people died rapidly through
slave labor, starvation, exposure and contagious
diseases such as typhus - living conditions designed to cause their destruction
through attrition.[31]
The Polish Institute of
International Affairs convened a conference on 18-19 September 2008 in Warsaw on the 60th
anniversary of the adoption of the Genocide
Convention. The conference was aimed
at appreciating the life and elaborating on perpetuating the legacy of the work
of Raphael Lemkin.[32]
Professor
Ryszard Szawłowski,
a contributor to that volume, has ventured to say that “the term genocide was probably already conceived by Lemkin in the
first half of 1943, if not somewhat earlier” (Szawłowski,
2005 pg. 120.) [Endnote 6 has the exact
citation.]
Given
the apparent importance for many of the word “genocide” in the overall narrative, it seems imperative to
understand the neologism - the new word - as coined by Raphael Lemkin in as
much detail as possible. (Some academics
have complained that he used unorthodox mixing of Greek and Latin in coining
the single word, genocide.) Such people would have probably complained
that Lemkin did not walk on water!
Towards this end it becomes clear why we have thought it most necessary
to delve into this issue in as much detail as we can.
‘Parenthetically,’ rather we should say
‘non-parenthetically,’ we would emphasize that the United Nations Genocide Convention has been reproduced in a great
many places on the Internet. That does
not mean, of course, that all or any of those who use the words have taken
advantage of the opportunity to read them, much less study them. Nevertheless, to facilitate the possibility
of changing that situation, we provide the following URL from the United
Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library website.
It provides direct access to the full UN document in English and
French.
UN Digital Library E/794:
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/604195?In-en
[Full original report]
[1 page Corrigendum to the original
report]at /794/Corr.1
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/604196?ln=en
Sadly,
Raphael Lemkin’s original concept and desired definition of “genocide” did not fully prevail in the
final Genocide Convention that he
‘fathered’ and promoted so energetically, but he did adhere faithfully to his
original concepts throughout his relatively short life, even though he
recognized and even admitted that some compromises would have to be acceded to.
We
will refrain from comparing and contrasting the ‘draft(s)’ and the final
version of the Convention.[33]
We
provide in Endnote [34]
part of the account written by Raphael Lemkin in the Preface of his book “Axis
Rule in Occupied Europe” as it relates to genocide. These pages are
the very first place where the word “genocide”
appeared in print (Lemkin, 1944 pgs. xi-xii).
We’ll see later that Raphael Lemkin was even
able, when the occasion arose, to put on in public a rather positive if not
bright face concerning things that he knew to be severely flawed. He had done all that was humanly possible,
and he was forced to believe in compromise.
However, the fact that his own adopted country, the U.S.A., could not be
induced to ratify the Convention troubled and hurt him deeply. It is worth repeating that he died in
complete poverty − a morose, disheartened, broken and broke man. One could say that it was merciful that he
died suddenly of a heart attack.
“The Armenian Genocide” –
A Documentary Film Broadcast On PBS
It was both annoying and disappointing that we
had to spend so much time tracking down a recording of the Casebook XXI
program. We knew one had to exist since
we had seen the excerpt from it in Goldberg’s film but requests on our part
went unanswered. Happily, it was eventually found at the National Jewish
Archives (NJA) on 92nd Street and 5th Avenue in
Manhattan. This was made possible through the generous help of Ms. Leshu Torchin, then a Doctoral
Candidate at New York University. Dr. Torchin (earned her Ph.D. back in 2007) has made
significant contributions to visual communications as they relate to the
Armenian and other genocides (see e.g. (Torchin
2007).[35] We would have been at a total loss had we not
been told about Jeffrey Shandler’s book “While America Watches” (Shandler, 1999). We
bring this up since what could have been an easy task turned out to be a major
project until Ms. Torchin put us on the right track.
The
film footage featuring Raphael Lemkin and Quincy Howe used by Andrew Goldberg’s
“Two Cats Productions,” and since
then by the proverbial ‘everybody and his cousin’ derives from a 13 February
1949 joint CBS/United Nations Casebook
XXI broadcast in New York City.[36]
Much
of the material written or stated by Raphael Lemkin in connection with the
Armenians and the Armenian Genocide, has today become fairly well-known – at
least in a very general way—and at least by Armenians and their
sympathizers.
In
fact, a popular exhibit at the Jewish Historical Society Center for Jewish
History, ran an award-winning program from Nov. 15, 2009, to May 2, 2010. The name of the exhibit was “Letters of Conscience: Raphael Lemkin and
the Quest to End Genocide.” It
started off by saying “Almost 90 years
ago, a young student in Poland became intrigued – and deeply troubled – about
the case of an Armenian youth accused of murdering the Turkish official
responsible for the 1915 genocide of the Armenian community in the Ottoman
Empire.” That clearcut statement
reached quite a few museum goers. Only a
very short notice of the exhibit was retained online.
Over
the years, a number of Raphael Lemkin’s hitherto unpublished papers and
manuscripts have appeared in print. Of
special interest are Lemkin’s essays by Rabbi Jacobs, which have been written
as well on the nature of exactly what Lemkin had to say about the Armenian
Genocide.[37] These have been very important in bringing
Lemkin to the attention of many Armenians in considerably greater detail, as
well as to those purportedly interested in comparative genocide studies.
Nevertheless,
despite the printed word, be it in articles or books, seeing Lemkin on film has
brought his feelings on what had happened to the Armenians into full relief and
in an unequalled fashion. There is
nothing like seeing him talk in a straightforward way and hearing “genocide” and “Armenians” right from his own lips! Raphael Lemkin talking about the Armenians
and the genocide perpetrated against them, provides us with an important
symbolic image. See Fig. 22a. and 22b. below, clipped
from “UN Casebook XXI: Genocide.”
Fig. 22a. and Fig. 22b.
Fig. 22a. Raphael Lemkin
with moderator Quincy Howe;
Fig 22b. Raphael Lemkin
talking about the Armenian Genocide.
Still photographs
captured from UN Casebook XXI: Genocide – at approximately 17 minutes.
There
can be little doubt that the Raphael Lemkin segment of Andrew Goldberg’s
documentary perked up many a viewer’s ears and widened many a viewer’s
eyes. Goodness! “Armenian Genocide” voiced
by the man who coined the word!
Professor Peter Balakian made a special point
in the post-program ‘roundtable’ discussion of Andrew Goldberg’s documentary
that “Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined
the word genocide spoke in no uncertain terms about the genocide against the
Armenians.”[38]
The
clear-cut pronouncement by Raphael Lemkin was understandably very much welcomed
by the American community with Armenian roots or connections and their
supporters. Here was still another piece
of unambiguous evidence for all the world to see, that there is full
justification for the position that what happened to the Armenians under cover
of World War I qualifies to be called a genocide. Statements often used by Turks when referring
to what happened to the Armenians like “an issue which its proponents call the
Armenian Genocide” have no place in our opinion in honest discussions and are
long past beyond insulting.
The
upshot is this. There was initially, and
continues to be, enthusiastic reception of Goldberg’s film “The Armenian Genocide.” It
is a very well-executed film from a number of perspectives. But for many, the appearance of Raphael
Lemkin was a particularly noteworthy feature of the film. Since that initial screening, a point has
been made by many for showing Raphael Lemkin talking about the Armenian
Genocide for commemorative reasons, for purposes of affirmation of the Armenian
Genocide and for what might be, for lack of a better term, pure and simple
congratulatory reasons. Journalist Harut
Sassounian in his California Courier wrote
a good article on the documentary being shown on the occasion of the
presentation of the Lemkin Prize to Peter Balakian in
2005. This prize, a biennial recognition
made by the Institute for the Study of Genocide, is given in recognition of the
best non-fiction book − excluding memoirs, poetry, and drama – in the previous
two years.[39] Showing Lemkin on film on such an occasion
seems very appropriate indeed.
There
can be little doubt that locating the film featuring “Quincy Howe, the CBS News
Commentator” and “Raphael Lemkin,” by Two Cats and its subsequent integration
into “The Armenian Genocide” documentary was an important accomplishment.
However,
and not surprisingly, because of the imposed format for presenting the clip,
and its necessary brevity in the context of Goldberg’s documentary, it is fair
to say that there are many unjustified assumptions, even misconceptions,
concerning this ‘Lemkin film footage’ that have since arisen. This is mostly due to people not having the
means to look into it, or equally accurately, any interest in analyzing it in
any depth. Many of these issues persist
on the Internet and in the traditional print media alike. For example, the exact origin of the ‘Lemkin
genocide film footage’ is never provided.
Our paper published in War Crimes, Genocide & Crimes against Humanity appears
to a be “a first” in that regard.
Unavailability of a complete transcript of the 1949 broadcast, the
extant film of it a rarity unto itself, up until now limited any study.
One
can see that having the opportunity to examine and study the ‘original’ film
footage of the broadcast, before
editing and integration into the “The Armenian Genocide” documentary, revealed
some points that would have been missed.
Few would disagree that no study of history can
remain definitive for any great length of time, and it follows that mostly everything
can profit by re-examination. ‘Data
mining,’ a term normally used in computer science but also used in other
fields, that is the attempt to glean as much information by repetitive analysis
from different perspectives, can indeed yield new information and open up new
avenues for further study. Certainly,
there is a lot of room for more careful analysis and fresh research.
What Motivated Raphael
Lemkin To Coin The Word Genocide?
Like everything else, this is not as easy to
answer in as concise a way as one should like.
There are at least a few places that we know of wherein Raphael Lemkin
mentions how he felt obliged to come up with a name that adequately reflected
what the crime was all about. But we
want to emphasize that in the course of delving further into the matter, we
have come across more than a few inconsistencies. We shall attempt to develop this situation in
a sort of sequence and draw attention to a few of them.
Several
years ago, we found a document of considerable interest to us while going
through Lemkin materials (on microfilm; with hard copies at the New York Public
Library Manuscripts and Archives Division) bearing the caption “Text of statement by Dr. Raphael Lemkin at
Testimonial Luncheon in his honor by New York Region of the American Jewish
Congress at the Hotel Pierre, Thursday, January 18th”
[1951]. If we read the part of the text
that is relevant to us here, there are a number of things that enable one to
gain a better perspective vis à vis Lemkin and the Armenians. First of all, Lemkin has said that he was
moved to come up with a name for “a crime
without a name” – a phrase used by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
in a speech on BBC radio on 24 August 1941.
We have decided to include the full text. It is very interesting, and we believe you
will agree that it is useful for us to have included it despite its length.
According to the transcript of the address made before the audience at the American
Jewish Congress testimonial luncheon in his honor, Lemkin related:
“At the beginning of the
last war, I heard a radio broadcast by Winston Churchill. He was denouncing the Nazi atrocities, and he
said: “The Nazis commit a crime without a
name.” This statement struck my
imagination. For some 18 years I had
been working for an international law which would prohibit the destruction of
nations, races and religious groups. I had submitted a draft of such a law to a
League of Nations Conference in 1933. It
was tabled because I was told that such a crime very seldom occurs, and it is
not worthwhile to make a special law for such rare occasions.”
One
will notice that Raphael Lemkin made no mention on the UN Casebook XXI broadcast about the victimization of the Greeks of
the Ottoman Empire. The probable reason
was that experienced moderator Quincy Howe had established a strict timetable
to follow and may well have thought that encouraging Lemkin to include it in his
interview and commentary might detract from the intended general focus. It has only been relatively recently that the
details of the Ottoman Greek genocide have been publicized broadly and promoted
for educational use in understanding the genocide process in general.[40]
There
is no reason to adopt the notion that the Armenian Genocide never occurred, see
e.g. the brazen stances taken by Turkish spokespeople
in Pea Holmquist’s pioneer film “Back to
Ararat” 2015 (ISBN9782399243176).
These liars are quite unconvincing, and their body language inevitably
betrays them.
The defense made by the Turkish Government
regarding the Armenian massacres reminds one very much of a popular story about
Jews that was circulated at the German Reichstag. Two Jewish women brought their dispute before
an old rabbi about a kettle which the plaintiff could not get back from the
defendant. The defendant said, first she
knew of no such kettle, second she had returned it
long ago, and third, the kettle was not worth speaking about since it was
broken.
The Turkish Government claims: first, there were
no such things as Armenian massacres; second, the massacres had in every
place only a local and unofficial character, no orders having been issued by
the Government; and third, the Government orders were issued only in
self-defense and had the approval of their enlightened Ally, the Germans. To which the innocent Germans retort that
they had no share whatever in the scheme and they were mere horrified powerless
lookers on.
Officiously the Germans put the whole blame of
the Armenian massacre on the Turkish Government and wanted to shake from
themselves any parcel of participation or responsibility in the Crime. A good deal of propaganda has been done in
this respect, the most important piece of work to our knowledge being the painstaking document full of American and German
statements privately printed and circulated as strictly Confidential by Dr.
Lepsius, head of the German Missionary works [Deutsche Orient Mission]. It may be granted that Dr. Lepsius is fairly
sincere in his indignation to see malevolent people charging the Germans with
participation in the massacres of 650,000 Christians by the hands of the
Heathen. He brings good proof of the
Massacre being planned quite carefully by the Central Government in
Constantinople. He goes even further and
discloses that the Armenian massacres were only a “coup d’essai” [a first
attempt] though a “coup de maître” [masterstroke] and were the so- called
civilized World to accept it with not too loud displeasure, the Greeks, and
other Christians and the Jews would have followed.
But just like all the most honest and sincere
German productions, Dr. Lepsius’ work has to be taken cum grano
salis [with a grain of salt]. He fully admits the Turkish cruelty, the
Turkish deep-laid plot, and supplements proof and witnesses to the
facts, that far we may follow him. His
whitewashing of the German Government involvement may be argued. It would probably be unfair to suspect Dr.
Lepsius of having written his apologia by order, but like all law-abiding
Germans he submitted his apologia to the Authorities. Dr. Bethmann-Hollweg has allowed one of his
letters to be published in the “Introduction", a letter in which he
assures he will do his Christian duty “in the future", by straining all
means to prevent a repetition of the disgraceful massacres. Therefore, the document takes on a wholly,
official character which makes it disingenuous.
If the German Government had reasons to approve (without approving) the
massacres, they have probably not found it fit to take Dr. Lepsius into their
confidence.
Lepsius had spoken to dozens of German officers,
physicians, etc., who had been in the thick of the massacres, and this is what
he found out. Each and every German was
individually horrified at what he had witnessed. Trained with a superstitious respect of
property, order, etc., a German cannot be expected to look in cold blood
placidly at the robbery, massacres, etc.
To say, therefore, that the Germans were leading the massacres, or even
taking a direct hand in them, as it has often been repeated, is doing them a
wrong or at least advancing things which can never be proved. The Germans will always be able to prove by
testimonials, diaries, protocols, etc. that in each case their soul revolted.
But slaves to discipline, and having given up
every individual thought or movement, the Germans who were ordered to duty in
the massacre-area, saw the outrage, and felt indignant, but made no move to
stop it. That is certainly from a higher
moral ground participation, even if not direct.
Officially the German Government has not entirely
repudiated the recognition of the supposed necessity of the massacres by
the Turks. Official inquiries have been
made, and no smaller man than Ernst Basserman, whose
words carry weight as the leader of the National
Liberals, and member of the Reichstag,
had openly and un-mistakenly given the Turkish Government absolution for what
they did - invoking of course the higher Raison d’ Etat. In a word, German official approval was not
entirely withheld from the Turks.
The German mentality is even today always
puzzling. The Armenian Question was a safe question to tackle with official
Germans. Pastor Lepsius never failed to
bring up the topic of the massacres when talking with the officials and
military populace, so he had plenty of opportunity to hear hundreds of stories
proving the cruelty and the useless and shameless barbarity of the Turks. But just about every clean minded person
would certainly shrink at the idea of making any profit from the situation the
Armenians were in. Not so the
Germans. They made bargains. It would be unfair to say they robbed the
Armenians - those poor souls being compelled to abandon their things without compensation, or give them away for mere
consideration. The Germans took
advantage of conditions and bought carpets, jewelry, trinkets for a tenth of
their real value. Germany became the
richest country in ‘oriental’ carpets.
Now, one more thing has to be considered. For some time, the Germans realized for
political reasons it would be good to colonize the Kilimanjaro, in arid,
relatively un-fertile East Africa, and other colonies which are not a
white-man's Country blessed by favorable geographical, climatical, agricultural
and mineral conditions. More than 75
years ago Von Moltke pointed to that area as a future colonization ground for
the Germans, and more and more Germans agreed.
Looking at it from this light, no one who knows
anything about Germans and the law, and the crooked way they can go to get
their high ambitions realized, would deny their methods which became divine
missions. They would not hesitate to wipe out the thriftiest element in these
countries. It would not have displeased or hurt German politics. And would not the Germans, themselves who
were better fed at that time, and in more boisterous spirits than today ask the
question: A crime? Answer: That is arguable, but it is not bad, far sighted German
Real Politik.
The
bare fact remains that the Armenian massacres were carefully planned acts by
the Turks, and the Germans will certainly be made to share the odium of this
forever.”[41]
A Fair Amount Has Been
Said About How The Armenians Used The Word “Genocide”
As Far Back As 1945
We believe that the best way to cover all the
points of greatest importance, and the context in which these important points
were made, is to reproduce all the pages from an article that we think is very
telling. While it calls for the support
of the Genocide Convention, it makes
it clear that one should not avoid calling “a spade a spade.” It also makes clear that it did not endorse
the ‘blind endorsement’ given by the Armenian Revolutionary Foundation of the Convention in its Hairenik publication. Clearly, there had to be some nuance to it.
Whether
one agrees or disagrees with the viewpoint taken in the Armenian Affairs
article, it underscores the view that some of the Armenians saw that the
Genocide Convention was not going to be a panacea and inevitably provide a
means of punishing those who carried out such crimes. The Armenians had been there “before.” An
elderly Armenian immigrant and survivor once told a youthful ADK that “Menk ahl khelk oonick!” [We too have brains!] Indeed. How right he was.
Fig. 23.
Fig. 24.
Fig. 25.
Fig. 26.
Fig. 27.
Fig. 28.
Fig. 29.
Fig. 30.
What Do ‘The Armenians’
Want From ‘The Turks’?
Non-Armenian friends, both in the U.S.A. and
abroad, have often asked us “What do the
Armenians want from the Turks?” “Why
is it so important that the word “genocide”
enter into any consideration of the ongoing antagonisms between the ‘Armenians’
and ‘Turks’?” Those who advocate the ‘Turkish Point of View’ − that there was no genocide − claim
not to have a clue as to why the use of the word “genocide” is insisted upon in
connection with the ‘Armenian Point of
View’. After all, are words like
“tragedy,” “catastrophe,” “disaster” etc. not adequate to describe what
happened? [42] To be brief and to the point, for us writing
this essay and apparently many others, “No!”
It not only does dishonor to the truth, and violence to the facts, but
adds insult to injury to those who were murdered and lost their lives through genocide.[43] It should also be underscored that it has
long been recognized by non-Armenians that “The
Armenians…whose outstanding characteristic is stubborn determination of
purpose…” (see for example Corbyn 1932 pg. 600). Stubborn or tenacious or perseverant? [44]
More
often than not, many will have a very personal answer to the question, “What do the Armenians want from the Turks?” For example, psychologists and psychiatrists
have given the transmittal of pain and its many permutations from generation to
generation, the designation “transgenerational
trauma.” There are few Armenian families anywhere who
were not touched directly by the Genocide. One author, we forget who, said that this
lingering or residual trauma prevents genocide
from “receding into the cold storage of
history” – presumably implying that is where memories of genocide
belong? Be that as it may, there should
be no doubt that what has come to be tritely and casually (and offensively to
us) referred to as the “G” word (sometimes with a lower case “g”) seems to
encapsulate for many descendants of Armenian
Genocide survivors, the ‘all’ and ‘end-all’ of what happened at the hands
of the Young Turks and their government beginning in 1915. (We will only mention here in passing the
Hamidian massacres of the 1890s, and the Cilician massacres of 1909.)
A
very important part of the answer to the question “What do the Armenians want?” is understandably connected with
preserving memory. Some have described
this need to remember, as nothing less than a sort of moral as well as
emotional pact between the dead and the living.
It
has always struck us as a sign of a rather significant ‘disconnect’, when we
hear or read that the Armenian Genocide
is ‘a’ or ‘the’ ‘forgotten’ or ‘unremembered’
etc. genocide. It is certainly not forgotten by Armenians or
many others. Neither is it forgotten by
the Turkish government. This reminder of
the facts constantly shows up as a thorn in the side of ‘Turks’, who are
spending immense amounts of money denying the Armenian Genocide. The
popular TV program “60 Minutes” first aired on 28 February 2010, a segment
entitled “Battle over history” by
Michael H. Gavshon and Drew Margatten. It has been estimated that some 13.4 million
people worldwide watched “60 Minutes” each week. It has been in the Nielsen ratings top ten
for quite a few years. One can therefore
be reasonably certain that many know about the Armenian Genocide. But the
message has to be repeatedly repeated since so much gets erased, supplanted, or
superseded with other priorities on the internet.
It is certainly true, however, that since much of
the world is living day by day, there is no doubt that most non-Armenians have
long since forgotten about the phrase ‘the
starving Armenians.’ Sad to say there have been extreme elements
among the Armenians, who out of frustration, resorted to terrorism and violence
against Turkish diplomats in the early 1980s, to bring attention to what they
called the Armenian Cause and
political recognition of the Armenian
Genocide. Happily, this strategy for
airing grievances and achieving essentially impossible dreams was abandoned,
but only after a number of tragedies.
Curiously or not, it has been admitted that this senseless violence did
bring attention, more precisely notoriety, to the ‘forgotten’ Armenian Genocide. [45]
The Mount Davidson Cross
One particularly moving memorial to the Armenian Genocide in the USA is the
impressive Mount Davidson Cross
overlooking San Francisco and the Bay area.
It is 103 ft./31.4 m. high, comprising many tons of steel and poured
concrete, and has a history dating from the 1920s and early 1930s. The huge cross is indeed an imposing memorial
to the Armenian Genocide. After much litigation instigated by the ‘Turkish side’ against its being used as
a remembrance to the victims of the Armenian
Genocide, arguments were overcome, and it was finally dedicated in
1997. The exhortation on the bronze
plaque at the base of the cross, quoted from Avedis Aharonian (1866-1948), Armenian writer, critic, poet and politician on remembrance of what the Armenians in
Ottoman Turkey underwent, is very appropriate and revealing (see Figs. 31, 32,
33, 34 and 35). It reads in English
translation:
“If evil of this
magnitude can be ignored, if our own children forget, then we deserve oblivion
and earn the world’s scorn.” (The poetess Diana
Der Hovanessian was responsible for the translation
from the Armenian original which is shown in Fig. 34. (personal
communication.)[46]
Fig. 31.
Fig. 32.
Fig. 33.
Fig. 34.
Fig. 35.
Avedis Aharonian
(1866-1948.)
Some
have suggested that there has been much too little closure of the very old but
still festering wounds dating back to the period of the Genocide and even considerably earlier. Proper mourning to lay the matter of murdered
ancestors and tormented grandparents, parents and
relatives to rest once and for all, has clearly not yet taken place. This is well reflected in Armenian
literature.[47] Like many others we believe it is impossible
to forgive if there is no admission of the reality of a genocide committed,
much less acceptance of some responsibility.
It is well to recall the quotation on forgiveness from Alice Walker, and
what has been voiced in an important encyclical from Pope John Paul II.[48] Walker wrote “All we can do is attempt to understand their causes and do everything
in our power to prevent them from happening, to anyone, ever again.” (Alice
Walker Overcoming Speechlessness
(2010).
More
abstract responses to the question of ‘What
do the Armenians want from the Turks’? could be offered by others. These might well be difficult to understand
by those who have no personal connections.
In that case, “Justice” is the
word that frequently enters into the reasoning.
Most
would agree that the word “justice”
is a politically pregnant word as well.
Justice for whom? Justice for
what? There is a phrase chiseled in
stone on the façade of the old Worcester County Massachusetts Court House
building “Life under Just Law is
Liberty.” A very lofty and noble
sentiment indeed. It would be enhanced
considerably if “and Uniformly Enforced”
were placed before “Law.” [49]
Then
there are a number of more pragmatic aspects of the matter of genocide
recognition that many on the Armenian side still insist must be resolved. This includes a full apology from Turkey. Not an apology of course for today’s
Government of Turkey having initiated and committed the genocide. All those involved
in planning and executing the genocides in Ottoman times have long since been
dead. The apology from the so-called
Republic of Turkey is demanded because successive Turkish governments, bar
none, from the early republic to the present day, have denied the reality
of the Genocide; hence in their eyes
there is no need to apologize. [50]
Few,
other than the descendants of Armenians and massacred Christian groups, have
even surmised, much less noticed, that the Republic of Turkey was built on the
bones, ashes, property and wealth, of the murdered
Christian subjects of the long moribund and decaying Ottoman Empire. Many a Turkish or Kurdish bourgeois, and even
peasant families, enriched themselves at the expense of the Armenians (and
Greeks and Assyrians). It was an
unprecedented period of opportunistic gain. [51]
Every Turk, and every Turk in the large Turkish
diaspora, and Europeans and Americans with Turkish-born wives, and Americans
with one or more parent with Turkish roots with whom we have discussed this
matter, has freely expressed the view that successive governments of Turkey
have feared having to make financial reparations, even territorial concessions,
should the Genocide finally be
acknowledged. It is not only the money
and land considerations, but also immensely substantial psychological
components, which are vastly more overwhelming than either money or land. [52]
We
venture to say that all Americans feel tremendous patriotism when they go to
places like the awe-inspiring Mount
Rushmore National Memorial.
Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt stand out larger than life in
the full meaning of the word, for their heads are some 6 stories high, and
these four collectively symbolize all that is perceived as good about America.[53] They are important symbols of American
democracy and have long since become living icons of America, much like the
Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World National Monument on Liberty (Beddloe’s) Island in New York harbor.
Even
so, many Americans generally recognize that these great leaders, rendered
immortal as national icons on Mount Rushmore, were also human beings, and if
they think about them a bit more, they will acknowledge them as icons of our
political values, and as part of our political culture as well. The public has slowly but surely become fully
aware that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slave owners, and that
Teddy Roosevelt was more than a bit of a war monger and so on. Each of these men has been invoked in support
of every known cause imaginable.[54]
‘The
Turks,’ on the other hand, seem absolutely determined to stick doggedly to
their government-created myths, and anyone seeking to tamper with them, much
less destroy them, is in for a battle.
They seem to need earnestly to believe that their ‘founding father(s)’
were virtually all “heroes” – no qualifications allowed. Kemal Atatürk, “Father Turk” is still very much revered. The very name Mustafa Kemal Atatürk literally
translates as “the Chosen, the Perfect,
the Father of the Turks.” Many would
say that he is probably as much a cult hero today, even as he was in his own
time. A Turkish acquaintance said years
ago “Well, he should be revered. He saved Turkey from going down the drain
after the Ottoman Empire was on the losing side of World War I, using whatever
methods it took” [including ordering mass murders.] In Turkey, statues honoring the Turkish
dictator are endless, and portrait photographs of all sizes are still to be
found all over Turkey, not just on postage stamps and currency.
One
might perhaps somehow understand, if not appreciate, that following the
absolute nadir of Turkey at the end of the First World War, it was very
important to regain some self-respect and stature – especially at the expense
of truth. Whatever it took seems to have
been the order of the day. Turkey’s
leaders, indeed its first and foremost savior in the
person of Mustapha Kemal, Ataturk, and later ‘lesser saviors’, needed to
be idealized above and beyond the pale.
This attitude of Turkish superiority grew to encompass the fundamental
belief that the long-standing image of the ‘Unspeakable’
or ‘Terrible Turk’ had somehow had to
be actively counter acted.[55] No place like starting with the next
generation? It was drilled into young school
children that they were to be proud to be Turks, a
people like no other.
There
is a poignant scene in the emotion-ridden film Waiting for the Clouds [“Bulutları Bekleren”] that clearly speaks to this strategy of
brainwashing youngsters in Turkish schools.[56]
In
it there are Turkish school children, cute as buttons like all youngsters, who
are shown reciting in a parrot-like manner in the schoolroom and outside in the
school yard, a litany in unison of nationalistic boastings of Turkish virtues
like “Turks never give up!”[57]
This is of course
brainwashing − no more no less.
Salvaging their imagined lost integrity was rather effectively done by
the Turkish leaders, at least domestically.
How far they have gone to rehabilitate their image elsewhere is a very
open question. Apparently, there is
still a major need seen to counteract the negative image of the Turk that is
still being promulgated here and there.[58]
Turkey’s
ongoing and vigorous denial of the Armenian Genocide reflects an incapacity to
express regret or remorse over the past behavior of their ancestors.[59] Having said this, there is a major element
that has to do with the psychology of
national leadership. This just might
hold potential for the ultimate recognition by Turkey of the Armenian Genocide. All cultures have traditionally tended to
place great importance on outward appearances.
The Armenian word ‘amot’, signifying shame or shamefulness, is a case in
point which is applicable. Vigorously
hiding or denying unpleasant realities or historical truths have apparently,
inevitably (?) been seen as critical to the overall good of the Turkish people
and nation. Most Turks avert their eyes
from issues that might compel them to face facts that could be considered
challenging or destabilizing to their perception of Turkish honor, and how
Turks behaved in the past and still do today.
Difficult to see this attitude change.
That does not mean, of course, that it cannot change. We all have blind spots and see what we want
to see.[60]
The
period of outright physical massacres has supposedly since passed in Turkey
(notice that we do not say long since passed, witness what has been done to the
Kurds in Turkey) but the mentality which was extant then is still alive and
well. For example, there was a terrible “row” to quote BBC News, that broke out
over reports that a Turkish national heroine, an adopted daughter of Kemal
Ataturk named Sabiha Gökçen,
pioneer aviatrix and fighter plane flyer, might in fact have been an Armenian
by birth.
The
notorious Penal Code law 301 that has
enabled a number of Turkish intellectuals, including a Nobel Prizewinner in
Literature, to be brought to trial for the crime of “Insulting Turkishness” is a case in point. The wording of this Code was apparently modified under European pressure in 2008 and “Turkishness” was changed to the “Turkish Nation.” Apparently even lip-service to free speech
did not come into the picture when this change was made. This sort of use of legislation to enforce a
governmental decree or viewpoint or desire is nothing new. As an example, rather innocent in and of
itself, but nonetheless conscious and deliberate, when the decision was made in
1928 to adopt a new Romanized Turkish alphabet in place of the old
Arabic-Turkish one, it was made illegal to write in the old script after
November 1928. What the penalty was is
something we have not tried to look up.[61] The direct access to YouTube, the video-sharing
site, has frequently been banned in Turkey for posts that insult Kemal Ataturk.[62]
All
this is excessively nationalistic and pro-Turk.
No? Of course! Fantasies still held by some that the Turks have
traditionally been very tolerant, liberal, progressive, and non-racist, have
been around for many years.[63] The fact is that even those wishing to
support the view that the Tanzimat reforms
were progressive, ultimately must admit that they were not successful. In everyday parlance, they were not what they
were or have been ‘cracked up to be.’[64]
By
the time we come down to the period of the Genocide
that began in 1915, and immediately thereafter, we read that
things were very different, indeed even that they had nominally
temporarily changed for the better. Even
in an early biography of the exalted Kemal Ataturk, one reads repeatedly the
oft quoted and pervasive statement “Turkey
for the Turks.” It is stated that it
was Ataturk’s guiding principle throughout his life, just as it was with all
the earlier, notorious Young Turk leaders.[65] In a word, one need not harken back to the
period of the Armenian Genocide to
see the erstwhile objective of the Turks to wipe the slate clean of
non-Muslims. Turks, not being the most
efficient of peoples, certainly not like the Germans, continued the Genocide(s) for some years. Some complained that they had not been thorough enough earlier and were determined to do a better
job next time around.[66]
For
a particularly interesting example: “In November,
1929, as reported in the [London] Times and Manchester Guardian, there was an
exodus of 6,000 Armenian refugees who crossed the Syrian border. Here is a quote from the report of a British
lady living in Aleppo:
“I expect you will have heard from other sources of the
influx of refugees which began a short time ago, and
is growing from day to day. It seems
that the Turks have been rounding up all the Armenians remaining in the
outlying mountain districts, after robbing them of all their property and money
(by such means as demanding all arrears in taxation) they let them go. They are arriving here literally destitute, and are being housed in the most wretched and
insanitary unfinished building which was occupies for four or five years by
refugees who came in 1922. The Armenian
Benevolent Union is starting a soup kitchen, but it will take nearly £5 a day,
and more people are coming every day.
These
particular people had come from the region of Kharput
and Diarbekir.
The majority of the refugees, however, crossed the border further north
in the neighborhood of Kameschli, the frontier town
near Nisibin” (quoted from Corbin 1932 pg. 606).
Similarly,
the infamous Varlik Vergisi Kanunu [Capital tax law or levy, No. 4305] passed by
the Turkish National Assembly on 11 November 1942, was motivated in large
measure by nationalism and racism. Later
there were many outpourings of predictable protestations that they were nothing
of the sort. A major objective
supposedly was to tax the wealthy so heavily that it would aid Turkey’s
faltering economy, literally saving it from bankruptcy. Yet another stated goal was to combat
inflation and to tax the immense profits made by war-time profiteers. The way it was selectively administered was,
however, to deliberately economically weaken, even
hopefully get rid of wealthy Greeks, Jews and Armenians. In the very least it was appreciated that the
minorities would be reduced, financially speaking, to non-entities.
Rifat
Bali directly states in his The Varlki Vergesi Affair that “It is now clear that the intent of the
Capital Tax Law was not only to obtain badly-needed government revenue, but, more essentially, to erode the great power
of the minority merchants in the market, and to replace them with Turkish
Muslims” (emphasis ours) – see Bali, 2005 pg. 55.[67]
Faik Ökte’s authoritative The Tragedy of the Turkish Capital Tax
(1987). goes into considerable detail on the matter from the perspective of an
insider. Also, it is of some interest
that during that period some rather virulent anti-semitic
cartoons, some originating from publications out of Nazi Germany and textually
modified for Turkish consumption, and others fully generated locally in Turkey,
were run in a number of newspapers and Journals (see for example several
reproduced in Rifat Bali’s “The Varlik Vergisi Affair” and
for a larger sampling see Salomon und Rebecca.[68]
For
additional perspectives, one should also read chapter 2 of Ayan Aktar’s book Varlik Vergisi: Ve Turklestirme
Politiklari [Wealth Tax and Turkification
Politics] (İletişm Yayınları,
Istanbul, 2004) entitled “The Jewish
Events in Thrace and Turkish nationalism – 1934” in which Jews are clearly described as “an
undesirable element” by the government, see pg. 83. In Frank Weber’s The Evasive Neutral: Germany, Britain and the
Quest for a Turkish Alliance in the Second World War (University of
Missouri Press, 1979) we read of “astronomical assessments imposed on Jews
wishing to emigrate from Axis countries in a desire to curry favor with Nazi
Germany by following anti-Semitic policies.”
Turkey
waited until 1 March 1945 to have an effective declaration of war on Germany
and Japan. This was some three months
before the Armistice. Just why Turkey
decided to do so is not totally clear.
An endnote in Christian Leitz’s Sympathy for the Devil [69]…mentions
that “For having declared war on Germany
before 1 March 1945, the deadline set by the Allies, Turkey was permitted to
participate in the founding session of the United Nations in San Francisco.” Be it said, however, that Turkey knew very
well, indeed has always known, how to look after her own interests. Maneuvering for the return of the sanjak of Alexandretta from France is but
one example of being wily enough to extract major benefits in exchange for
entering into various agreements.[70]
Christian
Leitz’s analysis of the neutral nations of World War
II in his very interesting book mentioned above, gives Turkey slightly better
grades than say the Swiss and Swedes in their pro-Nazi actions, but also for
being adroit enough to keep out of the war by sitting on the fence.
Turkey
did indeed sell Nazi Germany much needed chromite (chrome ore used in steel
manufacture to render it harder and more corrosion resistant). The title of Leitz’s
book “Sympathy for the Devil…”
indicates very well that there really was more than passing sympathy for the
Nazis in more than a few quarters in Turkey.
One
British Foreign Office official put it this way: “Turkey’s hope is to take material from both sides and sell to both
sides and to remain neutral throughout the war, and be
rich and powerful at the end of the war.”[71]
Corry
Guttstadt, an expert on the Turkish minority in
Germany as well as other areas, has written an immensely interesting and
impressively documented book on the Turks, Jews, and the Holocaust.[72]
One
will recall from above that a major stated motive for imposing the Varlik Vergisi ‘tax’
was nominally to counteract war profiteering.
It makes one wonder just how much money was made, and equally, even more
interestingly, who made it. Are we to
believe that it was still the remnant Christians and Jews, who were an absolute
minority in Turkey, who were still responsible for carrying out critical
business more than twenty years after the genocides, and expulsions and
exchanges of populations?
Despite
all the above, we still encounter today various and sundry proclamations of
Turkey’s undying tolerance and beneficence, especially towards its Jews, indeed
all Jews dating back to the time when Europeans were inevitably being
intolerant and very hostile to them. No
one has as yet so far as we are aware, devoted much space to trying to
understand the mentality behind accommodating religious differences in
Turkey. From time to time there have
been veiled and not-so-veiled threats that the
safety of the Jewish population of today’s Turkey cannot be guaranteed in the
event Israel should recognize the Armenian Genocide. It is difficult to interpret this in any way
other than to say that the accommodation of Jews is a very superficial façade and is
essentially exploitative.
In
1992 a Turkish coin was issued to commemorate 500 years of peace and harmony
between Turkey and Jews.[73] A postage stamp was issued as well. Since there are so few Jews left in Turkey
one can only assume that the issuance of a coin and stamp was a studied
political gesture to Israel, even as it helped disseminate, underscore,
politicize and rehabilitate the notion of Ottoman
tolerance. After all, the Turks have
been quite good at public relations (see Selim Deringil
and references there cited).[74]
It
might well be an ‘eye-opener’ for those who prefer to espouse the view of
Ottoman tolerance to read the great detail presented in Malcolm MacColl’s The Sultan
and the Powers Longmans, Green & Co., London and New York (1896) See:
http://www.archive.org/details/sultanpowers00macciala
Excerpts
were re-printed from this book in The New
Armenia (New York) vol. 9 no. 9 May 1, 1917 pgs.
133-135 and it has become very clear that hypocrisy and Realpolitik control the
entire madness.[75]
One
may ask whether the day will ever come when any of the many Armenians of the
Ottoman Empire will be recognized on stamps and coins not for their ‘mere’
presence in “Turkey”, but for their long-standing contributions and
achievements? There are many examples
that could be drawn upon.[76]
In
the interest of at least trying to draw attention to, if not present, a fair
and balanced perspective on Turkey and the Jews, see Stanford Shaw’s The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the
Turkish Republic (1991). Few readers
with any background knowledge or understanding of the realities would deny that
it is a highly biased, and even a revisionist description of the supposed love
affair between Turks and Jews.[77]
A
reviewer of Shaw’s 1991 volume (written when she was a young Assistant
Professor and now an acknowledged and highly esteemed expert of Professorial
rank specializing in the Ottoman period covered by Shaw) is most diplomatic and
professional when she says:
‘Stanford Shaw’s book is
a weighty work reflecting the author’s distinct perceptions. Rather than conceding the varied
interpretations that the study of Ottoman Jewish history inevitably yields,
Shaw offers a black and white history in which the Ottomans and their Jewish
friends battle villainous indigenous and foreign Christians. Shaw idealistically terms the empire’s
acceptance of the Spanish emigrés “the ingathering of
exiles,” downplaying any purely pragmatic motives on the sultans’ part and
skirting the fact that many Sephardim settled elsewhere before entering Ottoman
territory”
(see Jane Hathaway in Middle East Journal
vol. 49 no. 1, winter, 1995 pgs. 165-167, esp. at 166.)[78]
To
guarantee that we not be accused of selective use of
references, cherry picking as it were, and selection of isolated reviews for
our focus, we draw attention to the comments of yet another expert reviewer of
the Shaw’s volume.
“During the 1930s and World
War II, it was again Christians who brought anti-Semitism to Turkey, while
neutral Turkey quietly assisted Jewish refugees seeking entry to Turkey,
impeding German efforts to have them deported to death camps. Although many poorer Turkish Jews emigrated
to Israel after the war, over 20,000 remain in Turkey today [1993], fully
integrated into society. In Shaw’s
opinion the largest problem facing Turkish Jewry today is assimilation, the
same as in other countries where Jews reside.
This appealing view of the history of Ottoman and Turkish Jewry may be
fitting for Turkey’s celebration of the quincentennial year, but it does not
tally with much of the excellent scholarship on Ottoman Jewry in the last few
decades. The author makes numerous generalizations and questionable assertions
that are not supported by references […].
Had Shaw attempted to analyze the many works found in his lengthy
(forty-two page) bibliography, a more balanced and credible picture might have emerged.”[79]
Attention
should also be brought to a very interesting article by Marcy Brink-Danan in American
Anthropologist vol. 112 no.3, pgs. 384-396 (2010) entitled “Names that show time: Turkish Jews as
“Strangers” and semiotics of reclassification.” In it she describes in considerable detail
how even today Jews are ‘othered’ and
made not to fit into Turkish society.
This exclusion is a good indication of the reality of Turkey’s attitudes
towards non-Muslims. Bora Isyar has devoted a paper to the analysis of “racialized citizenship in the Ottoman
Empire: the displacement and elimination of Armenian citizens” and
emergence of a dominant racialized Turkish citizenship in the Republic (see
Bora Isyar “The
origins of Turkish Republican citizenship: the birth of race,” Nations and Nationalism vol. 11 no. 3 pgs. 343-360, 2005.) [80]
In
view of all this invented selfless generosity towards Jews on the part of Turks
and by Turkey, supposedly even today, one therefore might well ask how long
will this infatuation with Israel using the long history of Jews in the Ottoman
Empire and shared values angle last? Has
it really been a subservient alliance as has sometimes been claimed? Or has it been, as always, the realpolitik of
one hand washing the other?[81]
All
this leads us to ask from a non-Turkophile
perspective “What would the honest, educated and informed Turks of today really say about early
modern period Turkish leaders like Enver Pasha,
Talaat Pasha, Djemal Pasha, Kemal Ataturk, Ismet Inönü etc.?”
Would being absolutely honest necessarily be the equivalent of ‘fouling
the nest that reared you!?’[82]
Are not all nations basically built on
relatively recently fabricated myths and partially fraudulent histories - the
only differences being that some are considerably more extreme than others? [83] One of the more recently revived
controversies has to do with the flight of the Israelites from Egypt. In a paper provocatively entitled “The use and abuse of the Exodus story”,
Erich S. Gruen adds considerable insight to the long-contested Biblical account
of Exodus - that indeed much of the Exodus story is based on myth, and
according to how one scholar said it, “was
reshaped by the Jews.” [84]
Coming down to more modern times, we see
that there are those who revise and doctor history so as to leave Palestinians
out of the story of Palestine, making them interlopers largely after Israel was
made to flourish and the deserts were made green so to say. Joan Peters book which gained so much praise
in the USA, by an agency called by the late Edward W. Said a virtual “conspiracy of praise” was shown by
Norman Finkelstein to be based on fraudulent scholarship. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Time_Immemorial
Others in
Europe and Israel itself referred to the Peters volume as a perversion of history. This is all pretty incredible in view of the
conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.
‘All’ one needs is to have the history of the problem rewritten. One reviewer, Anthony Lewis, entitled his
book review of the Peters volume for the New York Times 13 Jan. 1986 pg. A15 “There were no Indians.” He asked the question “Has the life of the mind been so politicized in this country that
intellectuals who welcome a book’s political conclusion will shrug off challenges
to its truth? The answer is in the main
“Yes!”[85] “Don’t
confuse me with facts.” But the late
liberal Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan from New York State, an intellectual
and scholar (rare for his breed) once quipped “You are entitled to your own opinions but not to your own facts.” Facts can indeed be uncomfortable and
disquieting. No one has given an
explanation on how, what is best forgotten turns into forbidden? Nationalism (perhaps better rendered as
‘tribalism’) bears an enormous amount of blame for all kinds of atrocities,
even genocides.[86]
Closing
Comments
How one
deals with those many historical truths that anyone in control of his or her
full senses would certainly prefer to ignore and forget about, is what
ultimately matters for the moral and psychological health of any country. There is much room for improvement on that
front as well for all countries, including (some might even say especially) the
United States of America.[87]
Whether
any of this aspect of Armenians insisting that Turkey face up to its genocidal
past can go anywhere is not for us to comment on. Speculation is of little value.[88] It has been said on more than one occasion
that Armenians are never loath to espouse lost causes.
Some even say that
Turkey continues, from time to time, to try to carry out genocide against the
Kurds of Turkey. The Armenian side
sometimes voices aspirations to reclaim territory in eastern Asia Minor that
was lost in the very remote past − well before the Armenian Genocide.[89] They claim to be ready to forge new alliances
with the Kurds who now occupy much of what was historic western Armenia. We bring this matter up only because such
aspirations have definitely persisted in various, usually exaggerated in our
opinion, forms in the minds of more than a few Armenians, especially those in
the diaspora. The notion of
reconstituting an Armenia based on old boundaries was raised prior to the Treaty of Sevres and once again in the
late 1940s, more than 20 years after the Treaty
of Sevres. It was still-born, and
one wonders if the hope of land acquisition for Armenia was only a trial
balloon that no one thought would fly.[90]
Finally,
and perhaps most importantly and definitely more relevant to the present and
for the future, “What can be learned
about achieving ‘justice’ and whether such knowledge and understanding of
justice in the Armenian ‘case’ can be harnessed to prevent future genocides?”
Given
the apparent importance for many, of the word “genocide” in the narrative, it seems imperative to understand the
neologism[91]
as coined by Raphael Lemkin in as much detail as possible. Towards this end, it necessarily becomes
important to know and understand a fair amount about Raphael Lemkin. We have not made any attempt to relitigate
the past but we have
tried to make compelling arguments that the Young Turk leadership largely based
their plan to annihilate the Armenians and other Christians based on
opportunism. The Armenian Question was of tremendous ideological significance
and it was worth their while to wait until the right moment. One thing we inevitably will have failed to
achieve is that a proper case can never be made for the lives of the survivors
of the Armenian Genocide which were impaired and disrupted forever.
Despite our appreciation of this reality, we have
attempted to achieve some degree of justice by giving an accurate history of
the events and its far-reaching consequences.
Many have said and we concur, we can best honor the past by facing it
squarely, honestly, and above all, openly.
Endnotes
[1] In the last sentence in his Foreword to “The Politics of Genocide” by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson,
2010 (Monthly Review Press, New York), scholar, public activist, and pioneer in
linguistic studies Noam Chomsky provided this incredibly honest assessment of
things.
“As for the term “genocide,” perhaps the
most honorable course would be to expunge it from the vocabulary until the day,
if it ever comes, when honesty and integrity can become an “emerging norm.” pg. 12.
We should also like to point out right at
the outset of this essay that we have not rigorously followed any exact format
or style in citing references. This
would have been for us a major editorial challenge that we have chosen to avoid
and openly admit here our adoption of a “free style.” We hope this is not an annoyance to the
reader. Our point is to get the
references before the reading public. We
hope that our ignoring of the usual ‘niceties’ of consistency will be
forgiven. Also, the reader should be
apprised that we have not made diligent attempts to refer to the very latest
papers and coverage. We have chosen
instead what we believe are the references most likely best able to address the
point(s) we wish to defend or underscore. We have tested each of the URLs
provided. The last check was just before final submission of this essay for
posting. We have elected not to add the
tedious statement after the URL “last tested” on such and such a date. We know the Internet can be fickle and things
can disappear or be blocked in a flash. We have practiced due diligence.
[2] Schnur, Steven (1982) “‘Unofficial
Man”: The rise and fall of Raphael Lemkin.
Reform Judaism vol. 11, no 1,
Fall, 9-11;45. Older issues of this
magazine are not very common but this very short
article is exceptionally informative about his papers. Copies of this genre of magazine are
frequently read, and then discarded. This
ought to be a collector’s item.
[3] We were fortunate enough to see and
photograph the plaque in Warsaw when we visited Warsaw as tourists on part of a
trip to the Baltic Capitals. If one is
unable to make a personal visit, one can amazingly see through the miracle of
Google Earth the bilingual commemorative plaque placed on the outside of the
then fairly upscale apartment house that Lemkin lived in for several years
until 6/7 September 1939 at 6 Kredytowa Street in
Warsaw. His name is spelled in Polish
and English as Rafał Lemkin. For a close-up of the plaque see Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rafal_Lemkin_plaque_PISM.jpg.
Mention should be made as well that the proceedings of a conference
commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Genocide Convention
designates Raphael Lemkin by his name in proper Polish spelling. See Agnieszka Bienczyk-Missala
and Sławomir Debski, eds., Rafał Lemkin: A Hero of Mankind (Warsaw: The
Polish Institute of International Affairs, 2010).
[4] His application for citizenship gives his own statements on where
and when he was born. As transplanted
New Yorkers of sorts, we never gave much thought to the availability of
so-called ‘bialys” in baked good shops in the ‘Old Days’ when we visited places
like Brooklyn or the lower East Side until we learned Lemkin was from
Bialystok. These onion-stuffed, or
poppyseed stuffed hole-free chewy, larger-than-bagels breadstuffs, and are
merely baked, unlike bagels which have a hole of course, are not stuffed, and
are first boiled and then baked.
[5] The main town of the region was Białystok
and is nowadays reported as being located some 192 kilometers, or about 120 miles northeast of
Warsaw. It is not for us to
examine this in too much detail, not having ready access to historic and modern
road maps, but it goes far to explain why one today finds on the Internet
various places given as Lemkin’s country of birth. Everything we have seen leads us to conclude
with confidence that Raphael Lemkin grew up with a dual identity as a Pole and
a Jew. It would perhaps be inaccurate to
refer to him as a Polish-assimilated Jew, but we suspect that ‘partly
assimilated’ would be fairly close to the truth.
[6] Should one want to consult a more detailed treatment
of Raphael Lemkin’s career and efforts in a single volume we can perhaps do no
better than to recommend William Korey’s “An Epitaph for Raphael Lemkin”
(2001). That 152 page
work is fully accessible online through the American Jewish Committee Archives
(165 East 56th Street New York City 10022).
Go to http://www.ajcarchives.org/ajcarchive/DigitalArchive.aspx enter “Korey or
Lemkin” and the complete book
appears, albeit in 5 sequential parts. A
less frequently cited but quite detailed treatment of Raphael Lemkin’s early
legal work from a Polish and European perspective, is written by Prof. Ryszard
Szawłowski with the collaboration of Mr. Krzysztof
Pol, who is especially acknowledged for his role in the ‘bibliographical’
work. The study is entitled “Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959), the Polish
lawyer who created the concept of genocide” The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs no. 2 (2005) pgs.
98-132. In addition to providing some
important details on Lemkin’s early legal training and experience, and his many
(and scattered) publications, these Polish authors also draw attention to the
errors that abound in the biographical literature. Specific examples are presented, and better
yet, corrections are provided. Prof. Szawłowski is very precise as to what remains to be firmly
established. We recommend the paper to
all interested in Lemkin and the foundations of the concepts of the intended
legal aspects of genocide.
[7] See John Cooper, "Raphael Lemkin and the Struggle for the Genocide
Convention." (New York, 2008).
There is more than a little inconsistency in Lemkin’s writings. For example we are
told that there are three versions/drafts of his autobiography (cf. pg. 382 of Steven Leonard Jacobs
and Samuel Totten’s edited version of “Totally
Unofficial Man” by Steven Leonard Jacobs and Samuel Totten in Pioneers of Genocide Studies, ed. Samuel
Totten and Steven Leonard Jacobs (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers,
2002, pgs. 365-397). One draft intimates that [their murder] “happened more than a year prior to moving my parents, together with
others, [Editors’ note: illegible word] “to
be gassed.” Another rendering of
that terrible situation is by the late Dr. William Korey in his book “Epitaph…”
pg. 27 wherein he relates on pg. 27 that “Lemkin’s
emotional torment was immeasurably deepened when he learned from his brother,
Elias, who had come to meet him in Berlin, that his mother and father and
forty-seven other members of the Lemkin family – aunts, uncles, and cousins –
had perished in the Holocaust.” One
encounters still another perspective or at least a different portrayal as to
when Lemkin learned of the loss of his family in Aviva Cantor’s summary account
of “A landmark conference explores Dr.
Lemkin’s relentless work against genocide” held November 2009 at the Center
for Jewish History co-sponsored with the American Jewish Historical Society and
Yeshiva University Museum. Here we read
that Lemkin traveled in “DP [Displaced
Persons] camps in Europe and met people, including former colleagues, and heard
their horrific stories. In September his
distress worsened when he learned that 49 members of his family, including his
parents, had been murdered, wrote the late William Korey, former director of
International Policy Research of B’nai Brith”
(quoted from Cantor 2010 pg. 13).
Garber, Zev and Bruce Zuckerman
(1989) Why do we call the Holocaust “The
Holocaust?” An inquiry into the psychology of labels. Modern Judaism vol. 9, No. 2 (May), pgs. 197-211; Berman, Sanford
(1998) Whose Holocaust is it, anyway? The
“H” word in the Library of Congress.
The Holocaust Memories, Research Conference, pgs. 213-225. New York and
London, Haworth Press; Stein, Stuart D. (2005) Conceptions and terms: templates for the analysis of holocaust and
genocides. Journal of Genocide
Research 7, no.2, pgs. 171-203; Mennecke, Martin
(2007) What’s in a Name? Reflections on Using, not Using, and Overusing the
“G-Word.” Genocide Studies and
Prevention vol. 2, no.1, spring, pgs. 57-72.
[9] Yosef Litvak, "The
Plight of the Refugees from the German-Occupied Territories," in
The Soviet Takeover of the Polish Eastern
Provinces, 1939-41 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991). It is interesting that major pogroms had
taken place in Bialystok in 1906. How
much Raphael Lemkin knew or had heard about them is not something we have
looked into.
Cyrus Adler compiled an extensive and detailed ‘Table of Pogroms’ in an article “From Kishineff to Bialystok. a table of pogroms from 1903 to 1906” in American Jewish Year Book vol. 8 (1906-1907) pgs. 34-89; see
especially 70-89 for Bialystok.
[10] Quoted with permission Raphael Lemkin papers,
Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, and also found on pgs. 245-246
of “Axis Rule….” (We will return to point again but we will
say here that the timing of events and atrocities as they became known in no
ways allow us to conclude that Raphael Lemkin knew what came to be named by him
a genocide was in process—see e.g. Pinchuk, 1977 and refs. cited
therein for some details on reports, or lack thereof.)
[11] From Raphael Lemkin, “Key Laws, Decrees and Regulations Issued by
the Axis in Occupied Europe,” dated December, 1942
produced for the “Board of Economic Warfare, Blockage and Supply Branch,
Reoccupation Division” under The locator “RR-8 RESTRICTED COPY No. (in our case
seen as “no 88”) and stamped in red “From War Dept. Liaison Office, Board of
Economic Warfare”.
“Preface
The laws and decrees promulgated by
Germany in the subjugated
countries of Europe, vary according to
the policy which Germany has
sought to impose and the problems which
Germany has been forced to meet.
In countries where Germany has sought to
obtain collaboration--
Belgium, Holland, Norway
and France—the typical laws and decrees
promulgated concern economic and
financial matters and the prevention
of sabotage. In these countries both the German and the
local author-
ities issue such
legislation.
In countries where Germany has adopted a
policy of economic
spoiliation and open
subjugation—Poland, Russia, some parts of
Czechoslovakia and of Jugoslavia—typical subjects of German legis-
lation are labor,
agriculture, industry and the confiscation of
Property.
In the areas which were incorporated
into Germany (Greater Reich)
--e.g., the western provinces of Poland,
the districts of Eupen, Mal-
medy and Moresnet in Belgium, Alsace and Lorraine, and Luxemburg--
the
representative subject of legislation is
Germanization in the fields
of culture, demography, economics, and
administration.
In all occupied areas, however, Germany
has introduced certain
standard decrees, such as those relating
to the sequestration of raw
materials, the supervision of factories,
and the introduction of such
institutions as the Reich Credit
Institutes to provide the German Army
with legal tender. Since those decrees are in general the same
for
every area occupied by the Germans, they
are quoted only once in this
compilation, unless variations occur in
the case of particular countries.
The collection of laws for each country
is preceded by a sum in
my introduction describing sources,
types of military government,
and special problems. Some texts which are peculiar from the point
of
view of Anglo-Saxon conceptions or
American legislative techniques
are given explanatory footnotes.
This collection is intended to be kept
in the form of a loose
leaf book with additional texts to be
added periodically.”
[12] Bliwise, Robert J.
(2013) “The Man Who Criminalized
Genocide”. Duke Magazine Winter vol. 99, no.5, winter, pgs. 36-41. Bliwise is the
editor of the magazine and has done a very informative, beautifully illustrated
job. Mention
should be made as well that the proceedings of a conference commemorating the
60th anniversary of the Genocide Convention designates Raphael
Lemkin by his name in proper Polish spelling.
It is up to date and has several beautiful photographs. See Agnieszka Bienczyk-Missala
and Sławomir Debski, eds., Rafał Lemkin: A Hero of Mankind (Warsaw: The
Polish Institute of International Affairs, 2010).
[13] See https://www.mounthebroncemetery.com/interment/?id=124139#details It gives the location of the burial site as Block 101.Lot ½ 238&239, Grave 16. This is at the northeast corner of the cemetery within the square formed if 134th street and 62 Ave.
See Salomon Teilirian, defendant, Der
Prozess Talaat Pascha; Stenographischer
Prozessbericht (Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft für Politik
und Geschichte, 1921); George R. Montgomery, "Why Talaat's Assassin Was Acquitted,"
Current History. A monthly magazine of
the New York Times 14 (1921) pgs. 551-555 [for the article refer to a
digital version of the appropriate months in http://www.archive.org/stream/currenthistoryfo14newyuoft#page/n571/mode/2up/search/Talaat]; Soghomon Tehlirean and Tessa Hofmann, Der Völkermord an Den Armeniern
Vor Gericht : Der Prozess Talaat Pascha, 3, erg. und überarbeitete
Ausg. ed., Reihe Pogrom;
(Göttingen: Die Gesellschaft, 1985); Tessa Hofmann, "New Aspects of the Talat Pasha Court Case," The Armenian
Review 42, no. 4/168 (1989): 41-53; Edward Alexander, A Crime of Vengeance (New York Toronto: The Free Press A Division
of Macmillan, Inc. Collier Macmillan Canada, 1991); Robert Merrill Bartlett, "Challenger of an Ancient
Crime...Raphael Lemkin," especially pgs. 96-97 in They Stand Invincible. Men Who
Are Reshaping Our World, ed. Robert Merrill Bartlett (New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell Company, 1959). One can forgive
Bartlett for distilling the essence of what Raphael Lemkin seems to have told
him in an interview. There are a few
trifling inaccuracies that we need not concern ourselves with here. According to Dr. Tessa Hofmann of Berlin who
went through considerable effort to analyze meticulously the archival materials
associated with the murder and trial, Talaat
was shot dead 15 March 1921 at 11 p.m. on Hardenberg Street. The trial by jury took place in Berlin’s
Charlottenburg’s Third District Court on 2-3 July 1921. On 3 June, after only one and a half hours of
deliberation, the verdict of not guilty was brought in, and on 5 July he was
set free. The American news account
describing Teilirian as a “boy” is hardly accurate as he was 25 years old. See also Tessa Hofmann, "New Aspects of the Talat Pasha Court Case," Armenian Review 42, no. 4/168 (1989):
41-53. An enormous amount has been
written on the Teilirian trail and in the ways it affected Lemkin’s thinking. Douglas Irvin-Erickson (2014) The Life and Works of Raphael Lemkin: a
political history of genocide in theory and law. Ph.D. Dissertation,
Rutgers, the State University, Graduate School, Newark. 467 pages. This dissertation can be read at: https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/45631/PDF/1/play The views of Raphael Lemkin on the
assassination of Turkish Grand Vizier Mehmed Talaat Pasha in Berlin on 15 March
1921 by Armenian student Soghomon Tehlirian (1896-1960) to
take revenge for Talaat’s role in the attempt to eliminate the Armenians of the
Ottoman Empire are paid little attention to in Erickson’s
dissertation. In fact. it is a pivotal
component of getting Lemkin interested in the general area of genocide in
general. The writer, whose wife is
clearly of Turkish origin, may pardonably be viewed as at least slightly
instrumental in the ultimate framing of that portion of the dissertation. Irvin-Erickson is now affiliated with the
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Center at George Mason University in Virginia. The Center for Conflict Resolution at that
university is generally viewed as a conservative place, and we admit that we have
no quarrel with the interpretation that its outlook is more
right wing than progressive or left.
[15] Over the years the documentation against Talaat as an arch criminal has done nothing but become more extensive and iron clad. See Vahakn N. Dadrian and Taner Akçam, Judgment at Istanbul : The Armenian Genocide Trials, English language ed. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011). For a detailed version of Talaat Pasha’s “Black Book” readers should refer to Ara Sarafian, ed. Talaat Pasha's Report on the Armenian Genocide 1917, Gomidas Institute Studies Series (London: Gomidas Institute, 2011). (For a free download of the book go to http://www.gomidas.org/books/TalaatPasha1917.htm). In the introduction to this small (70 pgs.) but very important volume, editor Ara Sarafian says on pg. 10 that “This is the closest “official view” we have of the Armenian Genocide according to Ottoman records;” Dr. Hans-Lukas Kieser’s work entitled Talaat Pasha; father of modern Turkey, architect of genocide, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 532 pp. is highly commendable, although that author has been criticized by some establishment writers for what they call his overreaching views and interpretations. Be that as it may, we do not subscribe to that view; we admire him and his work tremendously. In our opinion, his critics often turn out to be ‘second string’ potboilers, not respected but ‘self-respected authorities’ who have not done original research. One particularly appreciative reviewer, a Turkish historian Candan Badem (with a British Ph.D.), ends his review of Kieser’s volume by saying “Kieser’s work is a most welcome contribution to the literature on the history of late Ottoman and modern Turkey. It will be a must-read book for students of Turkish history for years to come.” Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 6 (no.1, 237-239. See also Taner Akçam (2019) “When was the decision to annihilate the Armenians taken?” Journal of Genocide Research vol. 4, no. 4 pgs. 454-480.
[16] Now located in the Ukraine. It is interesting that there was an early
Armenian presence in Lviv of some consequence, and
with disproportionate economic influence.
In the period after 1630 we are told that there was a break on the part
of the elite from Etchmiadzin, and many Armenians
converted to Roman Catholicism. Further
difficulties led to the emigration of substantial numbers to Moldavia and
Transylvania. For an interesting
rendition of this history with detailed corroborating literature see Yaroslav Dashkevych, "Armenians in the Ukraine at the Time
of Hetman Bohdan Xmel'nyc'kyj (1648-1657),"
in Eucharisterion: Essays Presented to Omeljan
Pritsak on His Sixtieth Birthday by His Colleagues
and Students, ed. Ihor Ševčenko,
Frank E. Sysn, and with the assistance of Uliana M. Pacicznyk (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, 1980). Attention has also been given to the rich
manuscript collections in Armenian found in Lviv,
many of which found their way into the Mechitarist
Library in Vienna, but some are in the National Library of Warsaw and at the
University of Lviv (see Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, "Lviv Manuscript Collections and Their Fate," in Eucharisterion: Essays Presented to Omeljan
Pritsak on His Sixtieth Birthday by His Colleagues
and His Students, ed. Ihor Ševčenko,
Frank E. Sysn, and with the assistance of Uliana M. Pacicznyk (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, 1980) esp. pgs.
350, 361 and 370. Whether Raphael Lemkin
knew any of this is a moot point, but it nevertheless remains of interest that
the city in which he went to Law School had Armenian connections.
[17] See Salomon Teilirian,
defendant, Der Prozess
Talaat Pascha; Stenographischer Prozessbericht
(Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft für Politik und Geschichte, 1921);
George R. Montgomery, "Why Talaat's
Assassin Was Acquitted," Current
History. A monthly magazine of the New
York Times 14 (1921) pgs. 551-555 [for the aratcle
refer to a digital version of the appropriate months in http://www.archive.org/stream/currenthistoryfo14newyuoft#page/n571/mode/2up/search/Talaat]; Soghomon
Tehlirean and Tessa Hofmann, Der Völkermord an Den Armeniern
Vor Gericht : Der Prozess Talaat Pascha, 3, erg. und überarbeitete
Ausg. ed., Reihe Pogrom;
(Göttingen: Die Gesellschaft, 1985); Tessa Hofmann, "New Aspects of the Talat Pasha Court Case," The Armenian
Review 42, no. 4/168 (1989): 41-53; Edward Alexander, A Crime of Vengeance (New York Toronto: The Free Press A Division
of Macmillan, Inc. Collier Macmillan Canada, 1991); Robert Merrill Bartlett, "Chalenger of
an Ancient Crime...Raphael Lemkin," especially pgs. 96-97 in They Stand Invincible. Men Who Are Reshaping Our World, ed.
Robert Merrill Bartlett (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1959). One can forgive Bartlett for distilling the
essence of what Raphael Lemkin seems to have told him in interview. There are a few trifling inaccuracies that we
need not concern ourselves with here.
[18] Perhaps the easiest way to defend this statement is to bring the reader’s attention to Talaat Pasha's “Killing Orders, Talat Pasha’s Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide” by Taner Akçam, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2018.
[19] Talaat Pacha [sic]; see Library of
Congress, Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. Reproduction Number LC-B2-5301-7 [P&P]
LC-DIG-ggbain-31323. For details on the Bain News service photographs see
Barbara Orbach Natanson, "Worth a Billion Words? Library of Congress Pictures Online,"
Journal of American History 94, no. 1
(2007): 99-111. 2007.
[20]
Be aware that errors in presenting misidentified photographs can be made
in media that should be more sensitive to the need for accuracy, e.g. in the 18 October 2008 issue of Massis Weekly (vol. 28, no. 37, pg. 3) is an article written by Toros Sarian entitled “The
consequences of the Young Turk Revolution” there is a photograph
supposedly of Dr. Bahaeddin Sakir. It is in fact of Talaat.
Another photograph in the brief article is similarly misidentified. How such errors creep in is anyone’s
guess. There is no excuse for it. The caption in German gothic type indicates
that the photograph was intended to represent the Grand Vizier. He had been living in Berlin under the
assumed name of Mehmed Sâid Bey.
[21] According to Dr. Tessa Hofmann of
Berlin who went through considerable effort to analyze the archival materials
associated with the murder and trial, Talaat was shot dead 15 March 1921 at 11
p.m. on Hardenberg Street. The trial by
jury took place in Berlin’s Charlottenburg’s Third District Court on 2-3 July
1921. On 3 June, after only one and a
half hours of deliberation, the verdict of not guilty was brought in, and on 5
July he was set free. The American news account
describing Teilirian as a “boy” is hardly accurate as
he was 25 years old; Tessa
Hofmann, "New Aspects
of the Talat Pasha Court Case," Armenian Review 42, no. 4/168 (1989):
41-53.
[22] Nowadays the name is spelled Bahaddin Şakir. He was shot dead in Berlin by Aram Yerganian on 17 April 1922.
Djemal [Cemal] Azmi Bey, vali or
governor-general of the province or vilayet of Trebizond, who sent women and
children to be drowned in the Black Sea etc., and was
shot dead at the same time by Arshavir Shirakian. Both
were, of course, in
the Dashnag Revolutionary
Party-sponsored ‘Nemesis’ network of avengers.
Bahaddin Şakir was
high up in the Secret Organization [Teşkilat-I Mahsusa] of the Committee of the Union and Progress Party
[CUP] that implemented many of the brutal mass killings (see Arslan Terzioglu, Yerli Ve Yabanci Kaynaklar
Isiginda Dr. Bahaddin Sâkir'in Berlin'de Öldürülmesi Ve Ermeni Tehciri Meselesi = the Assassination of Dr. Bahaddin
Sakir in Berlin and the Armenian Deportation Based on
National and Foreign Sources of Information (Istanbul: Istanbul Universitesi Tip Fakültesi Mecmuasi, 2001). See
also Arshavir Shiragian, "The Assassination of Dr. Behaeddin Shakir," The Armenian Review 19, no. autumn (1966) pgs. 17-31. Arshawir Shirakian, The Legacy : Memoirs of an Armenian Patriot (Boston: Hairenik Press, 1976); Arshavir Shirakian, Ktakn Er Nahataknerun (Peyrut`: Hamazgayini Vahe Mshakut`ayin Enkerakts`ut`ean,
1965) with many photographs of great interest but unfortunately not well
reproduced. See also Yücel
Yiğit (2014) “The Teşkilat
-ı- Mahsusa and World War I.” Middle East Critique 23, no. 2, 157-214.
[23]
“Raphael Lemkin’s dossier on the Armenian genocide: Turkish massacres of
Armenians (manuscript from Raphael Lemkin’s collection, American Jewish
Historical Society). With a Foreword by Dr. Michael J. Bazler.
Glendale, Ca.; Center for Armenian Remembrance, Vartkes
Yeghiayan; Mouradian, Khatchig
(2021) “With the ink of their blood:
Lemkin’s Armenian Collaborators and the Genocide Convention.” Armenian Weekly April 29, 2021.
Matossian, Lou Ann (2009) Armenians started using
the word ‘genocide’ in 1945, Khatchig Mouradian shows. Armenian Reporter, Friday, June 26, 2009.
[24] See Taylor, Eugene L. and Krikorian, Abraham D. (2011) “Educating the public and mustering support for the ratification of the Genocide Convention: Transcript of United Nations Casebook Chapter XXI: Genocide, a 13 February 1949 Television program hosted by Quincy Howe with Raphael Lemkin, Emanuel Celler and Ivan Kerno”, War Crimes, Genocide & Crimes against Humanity 5, 91-124.]. https://youtu.be/CXliPhsI530
[25] Goldberg, Andrew, 2006, The Armenian Genocide. DVD. Two Cats
Productions, New York, 60 minutes.
[26] Readers may wish to consult an article by Sarkissian, H. S. (2001, Jul 31). “Telling the story of another: Armenians on
US public television,” again. Aim
(Armenian International Magazine) 12, 18.
[27] We place ‘original’ in single quotes since only one videorecording
or a copy of a videorecording of an early broadcast seems to exist. That copy in the form of a VHS tape is at the
National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting at the Jewish Museum on Fifth Avenue in
New York City. Even CBS does not own a
copy of the broadcast, despite its unabashed claim of copyright for it. It would appear that the initial date of the
broadcast and/or preparation for it, coupled with the technology and procedures
then routinely employed, preservation of a proper copy by the standards of
today seems not to have occurred. A brief mention of the film is made by
Jeffrey Shandler (1999) in his While America Watches: televising the Holocaust, Oxford University
Press, pgs.24 and 25. We want to make it
clear that Shandler watched the film and carried out
an analysis and noted several aspects that made the broadcast distinctive. He
even cites the Archive call number for the film although it has been updated.
No mention of Lemkin’s commentary on Armenians specifically is drawn attention
to in Shandler’s text.
[28] The New York Public Library, Rare Books
and Manuscript Division owns a large number of Raphael Lemkin materials
obtained from a friend of Lemkin’s after his death. The accession sheet to that collection points
out that materials were received quite late, actually 31 August 1982, long
after Lemkin’s death in 1959. One of the
difficulties presented by Raphael Lemkin’s legacy is that his papers etc. are
scattered and not assembled in a single place.
They are, moreover, not totally consistent either within themselves or
among themselves (see Elder, 2005). This
is not unexpected of course because of how manuscript papers routinely come
into being, and how the various sometimes disparate “accretions” become
incorporated or appended to the collection at large. Cf. Elder, Tanya, 2005, What you see before your eyes: documenting
Raphael Lemkin’s life by exploring his archival Papers, 1900-1959. Journal
of Genocide Research 7 no. 4, 469-499.
[29] Douglas Irvin-Erickson (2014) The Life and Works of Raphael Lemkin: a political history of genocide in theory and law. Ph.D. Dissertation, Rutgers, the State University, Graduate School, Newark. 467 pages. This dissertation can be read at: https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/45631/PDF/1/play The views of Raphael Lemkin on the assassination of Turkish Grand Vizier Mehmed Talaat Pasha in Berlin on 15 March 1921 by Armenian student Soghomon Tehlirian (1896-1960) to take revenge for Talaat’s role in the attempt to eliminate the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire are paid little attention to in this specific dissertation. In fact. it is a pivotal component of getting Lemkin interested in the general area of genocide in general. The writer, whose wife is clearly of Turkish origin, may pardonably be viewed as at least slightly instrumental in the ultimate framing of that portion of the dissertation. Irvin-Erickson is now affiliated with the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Center at George Mason University in Virginia. The Center for Conflict Resolution at that university is generally viewed as being a conservative place, and we admit that we have no quarrel with the interpretation that its outlook is more right wing than progressive or left.
[30] "A crime without a name" Winston Churchill, Raphael Lemkin and the World War II origins of the
word "genocide" See James T. Fussell
at http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/crimewithoutaname.htm Churchill's information about the mass executions which
followed the German invasion came directly from a German source. Six weeks before on July 9 British
cryptographers broke the "enigma" code used by Berlin to communicate
with the Eastern Front, regular reports from mobile killing squads (the Einsatzgruppen which Churchill called
"Police-troops") gave detailed accounts and specific numbers of
'Jews' and 'Jewish Bolshevists' killed in mass at locations throughout the
occupied territory of the Soviet Union.
Therefore, when Churchill spoke of whole districts being exterminated
and "methodical, merciless butchery," it would appear that he had
specific detailed knowledge of locations and magnitude of the ongoing crime
being committed by Germany in Ukraine and Russia. Churchill could not reveal the extent of his
detailed knowledge without undermining British intelligence, yet he had to say
something about a crime being committed.
We have included the entire transcript of the speech. The following excerpt of the speech by
Winston Churchill is taken from pgs. 60-61 of “The meeting with President
Roosevelt. A world broadcast, August 24, 1941, pgs. 59-66 of The War Speeches of The Rt Honorable Winston
S. Churchill, O.M., C.H., P.C., M.P.
Compiled by Charles Eade in three volumes,
volume two, Cassell & Company Ltd, London (first published 1952, second
edition 1965.)
Reproduced with permission of Curtis
Brown, London on behalf of the Estate of Sir Winston Churchill. Copyright © Winston S. Churchill
That notice
and summary account starts with a prelude drawing attention to the meeting in
which Churchill “spent 3 days in comradeship” with President Roosevelt.
We quote
liberally to allow a broader perspective of the context for the phrase “crime without a name.” This should give a fuller understanding of
the broad sweep of what Churchill was saying.
The entire broadcast emphasizes his political savvy, eloquence, persuasiveness and forcefulness as a speaker, but it is of
course, the phrase “crime without a name”
with which we are here concerned. The
speech was said to be made from Chequers, a country
estate for use by the British Prime Ministers but that needs confirmation. Martin Gilbert in his Winston S. Churchill Volume VI entitled “Finest Hour 1939-1941) 1983 gives the broadcast as from Chequers on his pg. 1173 citing the Churchill papers 9/152,
but on further enquiry to confirm what we had been told it, was at BBC in
London.
Churchill says:
“This was a meeting which marks for
ever in the pages of history the taking-up by the English-speaking nations,
amid all this peril, tumult and confusion, of the
guidance of the fortunes of the broad toiling masses in all the continents; and
our loyal effort without any clog of selfish interest to lead them forward out
of the miseries into which they have been plunged back to the highroad of
freedom and justice. This is the highest
honour and the most glorious opportunity which could
ever have come to any branch of the human race.
“When one beholds how many currents
of extraordinary and terrible events have flowed together to make this harmony,
even the most sceptical person must have the feeling
that we all have the chance to play our part and do our duty in some great
design, the end of which no mortal can foresee.
Awful and horrible things are happening in these days. The whole of Europe has been wrecked and
trampled down by the mechanical weapons and barbaric fury of the Nazis; the
most deadly instruments of war science had been joined to the extreme refinements
of treachery and the most brutal exhibitions of ruthlessness, and thus have
formed a confine of aggression the like of which has never been known, before
which the rights, the traditions, the characteristics and the structure of many
ancient honoured states and peoples have been laid
prostrate and are now ground down under the heel of a monster. The Austrians, the Czechs, the Poles, the
Norwegians, the Danes, the Belgians, the Dutch, the Greeks, the Croats and the Serbs, above all the great French nation,
have been stunned and pinioned. Italy,
Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria have bought a shameful respite by becoming the
jackals of the tiger, but their situation is very little different and will
presently be indistinguishable from that of his victims. Sweden, Spain, and Turkey stand appalled,
wondering which would be struck down next.
“Here, then, is the vast pit into which all the
most famous states and races of Europe have been flung and from which unaided
they can never climb. But all this did not
satiate Hitler; he made a treaty with Soviet Russia, just as he made one with
Turkey, in order to keep them quiet till he was ready to attack them, and nine
weeks ago today, without a vestige of provocation, he hurled millions of
soldiers, with all their apparatus, upon the neighbor he called his friend,
with the avowed object of destroying Russia and tearing her in pieces. This
frightful business is now unfolding day by day before our eyes. Here is a devil who, in a mere spasm of his
pride and lust for domination, can condemn two or three millions,
perhaps it may be many more, of human beings to speedy and violent death. “Let Russia be blotted out−Let Russia be
destroyed. Order the armies to advance.’ Such were his decrees. Accordingly from the Arctic Ocean to the Black
Sea, six or seven millions of soldiers are locked in mortal struggle. Ah, but
this time it was not so easy.
“This time it was not all one
way. The Russian armies and all the
peoples of the Russian Republic have rallied to the defense of their hearths
and homes. For the first time Nazi blood
flowed in a fearful torrent. Certainly
1,500,000, perhaps 2,000,000 of Nazi cannon-fodder had bit the dust of the endless
plains of Russia. The tremendous battle
rages along nearly 2,000 miles of front.
The Russians fight with magnificent devotion; not only that, our generals who have visited the Russian front line report
with admiration the efficiency of their military organization and the
excellence of their equipment. The
aggressor is surprised, startled, staggered.
For the first time in his experience mass murder has become
unprofitable. He retaliates by the most
frightful cruelties. As his armies advance, whole districts are being exterminated. Scores of thousands – literally scores of
thousands – of executions in cold blood are being perpetrated by the German
police-troops [here he means the Einzatsgruppen] upon
the Russian patriots who defend their native soil. Since the Mongol invasions of Europe in the
sixteenth century there has never been methodical, merciless butchery on such a
scale, or approaching such a scale. And
this is but the beginning. Famine and
pestilence have yet to follow in the bloody ruts of Hitler’s tanks. We are
in presence of a crime without a name”. [Emphasis ours]
[31] It
is quite clear from his collection of documents that Lemkin did not have
evidence of mobile killing squads or death camps. But he did not need such evidence to reach
his conclusion. Direct killing as a
method of causing mass death only began to be practiced by the Nazi occupiers
in the latter half of 1941. At that time
Lemkin was already beginning to understand that extermination was occurring
through policies of systematic attrition.
Nazi mass killing by means of gas chambers would only be a more rapid
way of accomplishing what they had already been doing through such policies as
forcible resettlement and discriminatory food rationing.
[32] The volume was edited by Agnieszka Bieńczyk-Missala
and Sławomir Dębski (2010) Rafał Lemkin: a hero of humankind emerged
from that conference. It was published
by the Polish Institute of International Affairs, Warsaw and is not readily
available or very easy to access online, we are sorry to report.
[33] Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide (5 April-10
May 1948). Report of the Committee and
Draft Convention drawn up by the Commission. Economic and Social Council,
E/794, dated 19480524 [24 May 1948] https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/604195?In-en [Full original report]
[1 page
Corrigendum to the original report]at /794/Corr.1 https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/604196?ln=en.
It is of no little interest that a
significant 1 page correction to the wording of the
Draft was required to suit the United States – see Corrigendum to the Report of
the Committee E/794/Corr.1, dated 1948 06 10.
[34] Details from Lemkin’s Preface on dates are below. Chapter IX is available through the Website “Prevent Genocide International” http://www.preventgenocide.org/.
For direct access to Chapter IX go to: http://www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin/AxisRule1944-1.htm.
The Preface to “Axis Rule…” is
dated November 15, 1943, almost a full year to the day before the work was
officially published or made available.
Chapter IX of the text is dedicated to Genocide (Lemkin, 1944 pgs. 79-95).
The Foreword by George A. Finch, Director of the Division of
International Law of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is dated
August 18, 1944. “Axis Rule…” was officially published (at a price of $7.50) on
Wednesday 15 November (and was distributed by Columbia University Press, see
New York Times Nov. 17, 1944 pg. 17). (A presentation copy of “Axis Rule…” inscribed “To
His Excellency Dr. Ricardo Alfaro [President of Panama] with high esteem and
appreciation” signed by Raphael Lemkin at Yale” and dated “May 15, 1949”
was offered for sale not so long ago on Abebooks for
$ 1,097.08. Site last checked on 25 May
2022.)
Professor Ryszard Szawłowski
has ventured to say that “the term
genocide was probably already conceived by Lemkin in the first half of 1943, if
not somewhat earlier” (Szawłowski, 2005 pg. 120).
[See endnote 6 above for exact citation].
[35] Torchin, L.
(2007), Since we forgot: remembrance and recognition of
the Armenian genocide in virtual archives. The image and the witness: trauma, memory and visual culture. F. Guerin and R. Hallas. New
York, London, Wallflower Press: 82-97.
[36] It is interesting that neither CBS
nor the United Nations has a copy in their archives of the CBS/United Nations Casebook XXI broadcast.
[37] See for instance Steven L. Jacobs, “Raphael Lemkin’s Thoughts on Nazi Genocide,
Not Guilty?”. The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter (1992); Steven L. Jacobs, "Raphael Lemkin and the Armenian
Genocide," in Looking Backward,
Moving Forward; Confronting the Armenian Genocide, ed. Richard G.
Hovannisian (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2003)
pgs.125-135; Steven Leonard Jacobs, "The
Journey of Death": Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide," Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies
17 (2008) pgs. 7-18 and Raphael Lemkin, Raphael
Lemkin's Dossier on the Armenian Genocide : Turkish Massacres of Armenians :
(Manuscript from Raphael Lemkin's Collection, American Jewish Historical
Society) / Uniform Title: Dossier on the Armenian Genocide ([Glendale,
Calif.]: Vartkes Yeghiayan
et al. at Center for Armenian Remembrance, 2008).
[38] Many viewers, of course, were spared
witnessing the awkward ‘Turkish
perspective’ of absolute rejection of the use of the word “genocide” in the TV ‘roundtable’
following the broadcast. It seems
bizarre that one of the professors who represented the ‘Turkish Point of View’ would be a Turk who spoke halting English
at best.
[39] For details see Harut Sassounian’s “Lemkin discusses Armenian Genocide in
newly-found 1949 CBS Interview” The
California Courier 8 December 2005.
Today, the film segment from the Goldberg documentary with
Raphael Lemkin, shows up so many times and in so many places on the Internet
that it would be a challenge for anyone to keep track. See for example You Tube under the title “The Genocide Word by Raphael Lemkin” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Genocide_Word_by_Raphael_Lemkin.ogv
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Lemkin and
Journalist Christiane Amanpour’s two hour
documentary shown on CNN “Scream Bloody
Murder” uses the film footage as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLT-BpV9c8g.
As an aside, on seeing these programs one cannot help but
wonder how matters of copyright of the “UN
Casebook XXI: Genocide” excerpts are handled. One sometimes sees that statement that the
original film footage from that program is in the public domain. Possibly, but
we doubt it. In any case, one would
think that the Goldberg film copyright dating from 2005, 2006 and including the
clip and commentary would be yet another matter.
[40] Hofmann, Tessa, Bjørnlund,
Matthias, and Meichanetsidis, Vasileos
(Eds.), 2010. The Genocide of the Ottoman
Greeks. Studies on the State-Sponsored Campaign of Extermination of the
Christians of Asia Minor, 1912-1922 and its Aftermath: History, Law, Memory. Published
by Aristide D. Caratzas, New York and Athens; Meichanetsidis, Vasileos Th.,
2015. The Genocide of the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire. 1913-1923: a
comprehensive overview. Genocide Studies International
9, no. 1, 104-173;Faltais, Kostas, 2016. The Genocide of the Greeks in Turkey.
Survivor testimonies from the Nicomedia (Izmit) massacres of 1920-1921.
Translated and edited by Ellene S. Phufas-Jousma and Aris Tsiltfidis.
Cosmos Publishing, River Vale, New Jersey;Sjöberg,
Erik, 2017. The Making of the Greek
Genocides: contested memories of the Ottoman Greek catastrophe. Berghahn, New York and Oxford; Shrinian,
George N., ed., 2017. Genocide in the
Ottoman Empire: Armenians, Assyrians and Greek,
1913-1923. Berghahn, New York and Oxford; Ioannnidou, Theodora, 2016/2018. The Holocaust of the Pontian Greeks: still an open wound.
Translated from the original Greek. ISBN
978-960-93-8443-8; Hosoi den gelasen pote: atein’
pou ‘k’ egelasan kammian, 11 martyres gia ton Golgotha tou pontiakou hellelnismou. Ekdoseis: Athens. (2014).
[41] In a special supplement to Foreign Affairs (London) published in 1920 vol. 2, no.4, ii-iii, there is a very interesting book review by Major Cyprian Bridge , a British Royal Navy Officer, of Dr. Johannes Lepsius’ book “Deutschland und Armenien: Sammlung diplomatischer Aktenstücke”, [“Germany and the Armenians.”], 1919, Tempelverlag Pottsdam. The review ends with the telling statement “In his introductory pages he states he leaves it to his readers to form their own conclusions from the evidence which he lays before them, and the unprejudiced mind can only gather from that whereas he confirms the worst that has been said regarding the Turkish government, he clears his own fellow-countrymen of any responsibility for the horrible treatment to which the Armenians were subjected during the war.” One can also ask and argue just what is meant by sharing the odium.
[42] A full paper might well be written in
connection with the range of euphemisms, distortions and obfuscations that have
been used. The “messy end” of the
Ottoman Empire is particularly evasive.
We will refrain from giving a list of all the alternative words for genocide, massacre etc., that have been
trundled out over the years by the Turks, their supporters, and even in
connection with other “genocides”, “tragedies” and “disasters” in the course of war or whatever. One especially imaginative and fairly recent
label is the expression “violent
migrations.” According to the author
who has come up with this pithy designation, the motivation for the nuance has
been to “broaden conceptual categories rather than to narrow them.” See Joshua Sanborn, "Unsettling the Empire: Violent Migrations and Social Disaster in
Russia During World War I," The Journal of Modern History
77, no. 2 (2005): 290-324, pg. 291.
[43] We do not propose to examine in
depth exactly what “murdered” means
in the context of the genocide. In the case of the Armenians, most but not
all of the men and youth were killed, slaughtered outright (sometimes but not
always after arrest) or after ‘drafting’ them nominally to serve in the army
(often working them in labor battalions, even like pack animals) and afterwards
murdering them (sometimes having forced them to dig their own burial
ditches). The murdering was frequently
done by very violent means - with knives, swords, axes, farm tools etc., so as
some accounts say to save bullets. Some
women and children were killed outright as well; others were taken off as
servants in Muslim homes, married off to Turks or Kurds and/or for ‘service’ in
harems, even as young girls. (We want to
emphasize that we do not try to suggest that the ‘harems’ in question were like
those imagined by many westerners and were like those filled with odalisques in
the French style of painting, who lay about languishing or relaxing and smoking
water pipes etc. (see e.g. Mildred Mortimer “Re-representing
the Orient: a new instructional approach” in The French Review vol. 79 no.2, Dec. 2005) 296-312 for that would
take us still more off the track.) Those
Armenians, mostly women and children and a very few old men, who were not
dispatched more or less straightaway, were reduced by sickness, starvation and dehydration as they were ‘deported’ and
subjected to intermittent abuses of all kinds, including forced abandonment,
rape and abduction. The nominal areas to
which the Armenians were to be deported (and settled) were the stony deserts of
northern Syria. (Again, when one hears
the word “desert” one usually thinks of the sandy deserts of Arabia as seen in
movies like “Lawrence of Arabia.” That
is not generally speaking the kind of deserts to which the Armenians were
driven.) In the region of Der Zor and the Khabur River area especially, survivors who had
lived through the atrocities of the massacres and deportations, were subjected
to murder by being shot, drowned or even by being forced into a cave complex,
the mouth of which was deliberately subjected to smoke and fire so that the
inmates would be burned or suffocated to death (see Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilization (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). And so on
and so on. Early on, especially in
communiques and the ‘western’ Press, what was happening to the Armenians was
covered with the blanket term “massacres.” That is probably because “massacre” had entered into the vocabulary of the history of man’s inhumanity
to man (Ralph J. Hartley, "To
Massacre: A Perspective on Demographic Competition," Anthropological Quarterly 80, no. 1
(2007): 237-251;.David Gaunt, Jan Bet-Sawoce, and Racho Donef, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors : Muslim-Christian Relations in
Eastern Anatolia During World War I, 1st Gorgias Press ed. (Piscataway,
N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2006). The word “massacre” usually connotes a few things
depending on the reader and the context.
We will not get into that here.
Even some of the great libraries of the world who are responsible for
cataloguing new books etc. are so timid in their cataloging, apparently not
wishing to stir up a hornet’s nest, have ended up trying every conceivable
tactic to avoid cataloguing books under the rubric of Armenian genocide. We see
such labels as Armenian massacres, Armenian question etc. That too is yet another dimension and
consequence of addressing issues of the Armenian
Genocide.
[44] F.C. Corbyn, "The Present Position of the Armenian Nation," Journal of the Royal Central Asia Society
19, no. 4 (1932): 587-616. Persistence
is indeed one of the qualities of the Armenians, but at the risk of
stereotyping, it need be said that frequently the “Armenians cannot agree among themselves” [Haik voch
miapan]. This
shortcoming has been voiced by Armenians and non-Armenian alike. Dr. James D. Barton wrote in 1896 in his
chapter “The Armenians who are they?
Their religion, occupation. Habits of
life, intelligence, strength and weknesses” in
Rev. James Wilson Pierce’s Story of
Turkey and Armenia. With a full and
accurate account of the recent massacres written by eyewitnesses, Baltimore: R.H. Woodward Company (1896) Chapter 6 pgs.
220-230. The volume is accessible
online at http://books.google.com/books?id=s80NAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI#v=onepage&q&f=false
[45] Paul Wilkinson, "Armenian Terrorism," The
World Today 39, no. 9 (1983): 344-350.
The now late Erich Feigl has made much out of this sad period in
Armenian history. See Erich Feigl, A Myth of Terror; Armenian Extremism: Its
Causes and Its Historical Context, English ed. (Freilassing,
Salzburg: EZG Edition Zeitgeschichte, 1988); Erich Feigl,
Armenian Mythomania : Armenian Extremism
: Its Causes and Historical Context (Wien: Amalthea Signum, 2006); Justin
McCarthy, "Armenian Terrorism:
History as Poison and Antidote," in Armenian Terrorism, its supporters, the narcotic connection, the distortion
of history, ed. Ankara Universitesi (Ankara
University, Rectorate Conference Hall, 17-18 April 1984: Press, Information,
and Public relations Office, Ankara University, 1984) pgs. 85-102.
[46] For the interesting history and details
of the Mount Davidson Cross see https://mtdavidson.org/mount-davidson-cross/
Note: this is a sluggish site and may require that you try to enter it
several times before it opens!
[47] Rubina Peroomian,
Literary Responses to Catastrophe: A
Comparison of the Armenian and the Jewish Experience, Studies in near
Eastern Culture and Society (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993); Rubina Peroomian, "The
Armenian Genocide through Art and Literature," in Anatomy of Genocide,State-Sponsored
Mass-Killings in the Twentieth Century, ed. Alexandre Kimenyi
and Otis L. Scott (Lewiston, New YorkQueenston, OntarioLampeter, wales: The Edwin
Mellen Press, 1997); Rubina Peroomian,
And Those Who Continued Living in Turkey
after 1915 : The Metamorphosis of the Post-Genocide Armenian Identity as
Reflected in Artistic Literature, Research and Studies in Armenian Genocide
Series (Yerevan: Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, 2008); Samuel Totten, ed. Plight and Fate of Women During and Following
Genocide, Genocide (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2009); Marc Nichanian, Writers of
Disaster Armenian Literature in the Twentieth Century, vol. 1 (Princeton,
New Jersey London, England: Gomidas Institute, 2002);
Marc Nichanian, "Catastrophic
Mourning," in Loss, the Politics
of Mourning, ed. David L. Eng and David Kazanjian
(Berkeley Los Angeles London: University of California Press, 2003); Marc Nichanian, The
Historiographic Perversion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009);
David Kazanjian and Marc Nichanian, "Between Genocide and
Catastrophe," in Loss, the
Politics of Mourning, ed. David L. Eng and David
Kazanjian (Berkeley Los Angeles London: University of California Press,
2003). On a very personal level it has
been hurtful for one of us (ADK) to be asked in medical interviews for general
health histories relating to one’s ancestors.
It is not very helpful to say that grandparents and aunts and uncles
were victims of genocide, and therefore one cannot say anything very useful about
how long they may have lived in the course of a normal lifetime.
[48] Much has been written about
forgiveness. One of our opening quotes
from Alice Walker reflects her view that “Some
crimes against humanity are so heinous nothing will ever rectify them. All we can do is attempt to understand their
causes and do everything in our power to prevent them from happening, to
anyone, ever again.” (Alice Walker Overcoming
Speechlessness (2010 pgs. 69-70.)
Equally to the point of forgiveness for such crimes as genocide is voiced in Pope John Paul
II’s encyclical “Dives in Misercordia” [Rich in Mercy] (30 November 1980,
14). “In no passage of the Gospel
message does forgiveness, or mercy appear as its source, mean indulgence
towards evil, towards scandals, towards injury or insult. In any case, reparation for evil and scandal,
compensation for injury, and satisfaction for insult are conditions for
forgiveness” (see http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30111980_dives-in-misericordia_en.html).
[49] Glenn Greenwald, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy
Equality and Protect the Powerful, 1st ed. (New York: Metropolitan
Books/Henry Holt and Co., 2011).
[50] Kemal H. Karpat,
"The Transformation of the Ottoman
State, 1789-1908," International
Journal of Middle East Studies 3 no. 3 (1972) pgs. 243-281 ends with the
statement that “The culminating point in
the transformation of the Ottoman state was the establishment of the Republic
of Turkey in 1923. But the republic
carried with it the Ottoman legacy. Its
social structure, leadership, and patterns of transformation followed a certain
sequence and regularity which can be fathomed only by understanding the
socio-political history of the Ottoman state…” pg. 281. From this quoted statement we conclude that
the Turks ‘cannot have their cake and eat it too.’ They apparently can be proud of their Ottoman
legacy when it suits them; likewise, they can reject it when it does not. No matter what there has long been a culture
of violence in Turkey: cf. e.g. George W. Gawrych “The culture
and politics of violence in Turkish society, 1908-14” Middle Eastern Studies vol. 22 no.3 (1986) pgs. 307-330.
We will not take space to discuss this in
detail, but many years ago it was clearly enunciated that “After the enforced deportation of the Armenians in 1915, their bank
accounts, both current and deposit, were transferred by order to the State
Treasury in Constantinople. This fact
enabled the Turks to send 5 million sterling to the Reichsbank, Berlin, in
exchange for a new issue of notes.” Corbyn 1932 pg. 597. On a more local level and as only a single
example, see the description by Leslie A. Davis, the last United States Consul
in Harput, Turkey, a province heavily populated with
Armenians. He describes the near-festival like atmosphere that obtained when the
Armenians were served notice of their ‘deportation’. Household items such as sewing machines and
valuable rugs sold for nearly nothing.
Some were impudent enough to say if you do not take our offer, we will
be able to get the material after you go, in any case for free! See Leslie A.
Davis and Susan K. Blair, The
Slaughterhouse Province : An American Diplomat's
Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917 (New Rochelle, N.Y.: A.D. Caratzas, Orpheus Pub, 1989).
[52] Journalists Sabrina Tavernise
and Sebnem Arsu wrote a
pretty good summary on the psychological component in a 12 October 2007 “News
Analysis” published in the New York Times pg. A12 entitled “Inside the Turkish Psyche: traumatic issues trouble a nation’s sense
of identity.” They quote a
university sociologist in Istanbul as saying: […] “Turkish state and society have both have traumatic pasts, and it’s not
easy to face them” […] “compared
Turkey’s beginnings to a tenant who realizes that the house he has just rented
is not new, but instead “has all kinds of rubbish and dirt underneath. Would you shout it out loud at the risk of
being shamed by your neighbors,” […] “or
try to hide it and deal with it as you keep living in your only home?” …[“The word
‘genocide’, as cold as it is, causes a deep reaction in the Turkish society’[….
] “Having
been taught about its glorious and spotless past by the state rhetoric for
decades, people feel they could not have possibly done such a terrible thing.” For the entire article online see http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/turkey/armenian_genocide/index.html.
We would be led to believe the standard
line that America’s Incirlik ‘Air Base’ near Adana is a strategic benefit to
the United States and NATO. For us it
verges on being a scandal if not a joke.
The American taxpayer paid to build it, pays for use of it, also pays
for the Turkish Air Force’s use of it, the servicing of the Turkish airplanes,
in addition to employing and training Turkish personnel etc. ‘Not so hidden costs’ of base maintenance and foreign aid to Turkey
are only among the devices to get American taxpayer money into the hands of
American contractors through immense multimillion dollar contracts to perform
Turkey base maintenance, contracts which could be said are essentially ‘washed’
through various and sundry channels.
Without the United States the base would not be maintained for the
proverbial ten minutes. Turkish pride
and skill in diplomacy, even blackmail, makes it “Turkish” in reality while
America pays the bills and the American Military-Industrial Complex and
contractor greed keep it going. See e.g.
Frank Hyland in U.S. Air Base at Incirlik faces political and security threats,
Terrorism Focus (Jamestown
Foundation) Vol. 4 no. 42 December 19, 2007 http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=4619 It
would probably take an army of accountants to figure out what is what and who
pays for what, see http://militarybases.com/overseas/turkey/incirlik/.
It is also worthwhile to point out that the Turkish Air Force has been
helped by western Powers in very material ways for many years (see Gary Leiser “The Turkish
Air Force, 1939-45: the rise to power of a minor power” Middle Eastern Studies vol. 26 no. 3
(July) pgs. 383-395 (1990).
[53] A now deceased dear friend, and
academic in Vancouver, Canada, pointed out many years ago that Canadians and
others were “Americans” as well, be they North, Central or South Americans, not
just those residing in the United States of America. He was right of course. It is a bit like the French raging at the
English for arrogantly calling “La Manche” [‘the Sleeve’] their channel! Old habits die hard? So far as Mount Rushmore is concerned,
digging a bit deeper gets one into a totally different perspective on how this
national icon came into being. On Mount
Rushmore in general let it be said that some have attempted to be more
realistic as to its intent and design, and the politics behind it. If it turns out to be less patriotic so be it. The New Yorker, famous for its cartoons,
published one by P. Steiner captioned “Your
face in stone”, 12 November 1990) see pg. 145 of Albert Boime’s
Patriarchy fixed in Stone. Gutzon Borglum’s Mount Rushmore. American
Art vol 5, no. 2, pgs. 142-167 (1991).
Also, James W. Loewen’s Lies
across America: what our historic sites get wrong (2000, New Press, Norton, New
York. is an excellent call for patriotic iconoclasm in a nationalist
era. He asks for an end to “chauvinistic
and jingoistic nationalism” […] capacity to identify with peoples outside our
own class, ethnic affiliation, tribe, community, and country”—when wars “will
no longer be considered a “viable alternative” and memorials to wars will
cease. In short, he hopes that what has
been called “the landscapes of pilgrimage” will become rather different
venues. ‘Dark Tourism’ will have to be
cast in a different light see John Lennon and Malcolm Foley (2000) Dark Tourism. The attraction of death and disaster.
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
[54] One need only think for a moment
what politicians in America are capable of saying in terms of campaigning. As long as it ‘sounds good’ they do not
hesitate to invoke the nominally ‘understood by all’ principles of every Tom, Dick and Harry.] See the cartooning Teddy Roosevelt http://www.archive.org/details/trincartoongros00raymrich Note: start reading on page 8. Pgs. 2-7 are
blank.
[55] Concerning the image of the Turk, we
have found it noteworthy, even somewhat amusing, that the now late Professor
Stanford J. Shaw (1930-2006) of UCLA and his Turkish-born wife and co-author Ezel Kural Shaw, felt constrained to bring the matter of
the ‘Terrible Turk’ up in response to
a critique of their "History of the
Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey” by Richard G. Hovannisian, Richard G.
Hovannisian, "The Critic's View:
Beyond Revisionism," International
Journal of Middle East Studies 9 (1978): 379-400. “Does Dr. Hovannisian really wish to perpetuate the biased image of the
‘Terrible Turk’ that has its roots in the age of the Crusades?” (see
Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, "[the Critic's View" Beyond
Revisionism]”:The Authors Respond," International Journal of Middle East Studies
9 (1978): 388-400.) Nowhere that we are
aware of has Professor Hovannisian ever used the expression ‘Terrible
Turk.’ By way of contrast, we certainly
have (see Eugene L. Taylor and Abraham D. Krikorian, "Ravished Armenia Revisted:'' Some
Additions to "a Brief Assessment of
the Ravished Armenia Marquee Poster," Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 19, no. 2 (2010):
179-215.) To show just how politicized
things can become, indeed have become in some quarters at least, and how
obfuscation at various levels from the Turkish side can render all kinds of
matters relating to Armenians, one need only read a book review by University
of Wisconsin professor Kemal Karpat. He acclaims the Shaw’s history and apparently
felt constrained to emphasizes (non-gratuitously one can suspect) that “the Shaws studied
the national movements among various ethnic groups, including the Armenians,
using new statistical (emphasis
ours) and documentary sources and found no evidence to back the stories of
organized massacres or atrocities allegedly carried out by the Ottoman
government in order to stem these national aspirations'' Kemal H. Karpat, "[Untitled]," The American Historical Review 83, no. 1 (1978): 242-243. Just why in a short book review Karpat felt that he had to bring up that matter is of
interest since the Shaws themselves emphasized in
their ‘rejoinder’ that Richard Hovannisian’s
criticism of their work entailed only some seven out of a total of nearly a
thousand pages (Shaw and Shaw pg. 389).
One aspect of the entire situation of ‘Turk versus Armenian’ that we
have never fully understood, is that in all instances of Turkish persecutions
of the Armenians, why the Turkish government was unable to deal with supposed
insurrections etc. without resorting to mass violence upon a largely innocent
populace. After all, according to people
like Dr. Justin McCarthy, there were “not enough Armenians in the Empire to
matter” (our phraseology). If we are to
accept McCarthy’s very low population numbers as real, which they are not, it
then becomes a matter of the tail wagging the dog, does it not? Either that, or the ‘cowardly’ Armenians must
be imbued with great efficiency and prowess so that a few Armenian
revolutionaries could seriously threaten the overwhelmingly dominant Muslim
population and government? Are we to
believe that the Turk becomes the victim at the hands of so few? Of course, cherry picking of perspectives
depending on perceived need allows anything.
It is of no little interest that Speros Vryonis, Balkan
Studies volume 24, pp 163-286 (1983), gives a scathing critical review of
the work. He draws attention to the
quality of Shaw’s alleged archival work that they so proudly highlight in their
‘Response’ to Hovannisian (cf. Speros Vryonis, Jr., "Stanford J. Shaw, History of the
Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Volume 1: Empire of the Gazis:
The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280-1808. Cambridge University
Press (Cambridge, London, New York, Melbourne, 1976)." Balkan Studies 24, no. number 1 (1983):
163-286.) Finally, and as an aside that
is not really intended here as an aside, we know non-Armenian biased veterans
who served with the American Armed Forces in Korea. These are men of high integrity and
honesty. They have related that the
Turks earned such a terrible reputation that they were feared to a man. Why?
It was common, especially on night missions, to make their way into
enemy foxholes etc. and to slit the throats of all but one. The survivor, of course, made sure that the
word got out. The Turks were so
emboldened, we were told by men on the spot, that what would normally be ‘night
missions’ were carried out in broad daylight since they encountered little
opposition. This sort of story was
related by two elder brothers of one of us (ADK) who served in Korea, but we
shall not mention that since it would obviously and unabashedly be biased. We could add to this but will not. We are not saying that ‘all’ Turks are
capable of this. The reputation of the
‘Terrible Turk’ has been earned, and does not merely harken back to the
histrionics of the Crusades era, Amander Wunder 2003 Cirakman 2001; An
editorial from the The London Times “The clean-fighting Turk''
in The New Armenia (New York) vol. 9
no. 6 March 15, 1917 pgs. 94-95 ends with the sentence “His success we must acknowledge; he has massacred, pillaged, outrages;
for two years and a half he has broken every convention, maltreated our
prisoners, killed our wounded, held our women
hostages, but he remains the “clean fighting Turk.” Sarga Moussa
has given some interesting insights on how the view of the ‘despotic, violent
and cruel Turk’ evolved and reversed in travel literature in particular
according to the perceptions of European governments and realpolitik. In other words, like everything it is
complicated. Where there is smoke there
usually is fire? Few would brand an
entire nation on account of its past misdeeds.
Or would they? See M. Hakan Yavuz (2014) “Orientalism, the ‘Terrible Turk’ and
Genocide.” Middle East Critique 23,
no. 2, 111-126.
[56] This film, which incidentally has some
very interesting footage of the population exchange period, deals with the
emotions of an elderly woman from a rural area in northeastern Turkey [probably
somewhere in the Pontus region] who, along with her older sister, have long
hidden their Greek blood from Turkish neighbors. After the death of the older sister, she is
determined to travel to Greece so as to seek out a brother from whom they were
separated during the deportations of the Ottoman Greeks, and the population
exchange.]
[57] One of the better treatments of the
psychology of group identification that a non-expert can intuitively identify
with and feel that he or she is on the right track, is given by Clark McCauley,
"The Psychology of Group
Identification and the Power of Ethnic Nationalism," in Ethnopolitical Warfare: Causes,
Consequences, and Possible Solutions, ed. Daniel Chirot
and Martin E.P. Seligman (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association,
2001). The idea that Turks in places
like Germany do not integrate well into German society is largely due to the
feeling that there are fundamental reasons associated with their desire to
retain their deep-seated Turkishness.
The fact is that poor assimilation is due to many complicated reasons,
not the least of which is seeking German citizenship, because once they abandon
Turkish citizenship, they are no longer able to inherit anything in Turkey. (see e.g. Claus Mueller, "Integrating Turkish Communities:
A German Dilemma," Population
Research and Policy Review 25, no. 5/6 (2006): 419-441. For the film in question see Rüçhan Çaliskur et al., Waiting for the Clouds (Chicago, IL : Facets Video, 2009), at some 18 minutes or so into the
film. Nikolaos Hlamides
of London first brought our attention to this sensitive film. One of the film’s producers is Behrooz Hashemian, clearly a man
with Armenian roots.
[58] Justin McCarthy has seemingly taken
the tack of attributing to American missionaries the promulgation of the bad
image of the Turk in America (see Justin McCarthy, The Turk in America : Creation of an Enduring
Prejudice, Utah Series in Turkish and Islamic Studies (Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press, 2010). More
recently, and in a vastly more subtle way, the image of the sexually profligate
Turk supposedly with at least some harem experience and versed in adet was viewed
as scandalous if not titillating to the prudish Britons in Victorian and
Edwardian days. In the very well
received British television series Downton
Abbey there is an episode in which a handsome young Turkish diplomat dies
in Lady Mary’s bed. It is unclear from
the script whether there was any penetration but if we are to take the dashing
Mr. Pamuk at his word, lady Mary would still be a virgin after their sexual
encounter. We can do little but conclude
that cunnilingus entered into the equation?. After all, it was alleged to be common among
the women in the harems of the Turkish elites, but also in the bed chambers.
[59] In fact, most believe that this is
completely out of character for Turks.
They would say “We would never do such a thing etc.” This is part of the universal feature of
virtually everyone that has been called “the will not to know.” Bernard Lewis in his "History Writing
and National Revival in Turkey," Middle
Eastern Affairs 4 (1953): 218-227 gives little attention to why there was a
perceived need to do what was in essence, selective rewriting of history. Are we to believe that Adolph Hitler’s oath
to revindicate the humiliating defeat of Germany at the end of World War I can
justify incredible violence in the name of national honor? Clive Foss gives a number of concrete
examples of the pernicious consequences of nationalism as it obtains in
(re)writing history by Turks in his “Armenian History as Seen by Twentieth
Century Turkish Historians," Armenian
Review 45, no. 1-2/177-178 (1992): 1-52.
Some 50 years ago when in the great covered market of Istanbul
we encountered an Armenian carpet dealer and entered into a lengthy
conversation with him. He was an
especially cordial and engaging fellow, quite unlike the stereotypic ‘Oriental’
rug salesman that one normally hears or reads about. When we asked in Armenian how the Turks felt
towards Armenians in present-day Turkey, his answer was the simple and
time-honored “meyuvnyun kak
nehn” [they are the same old sh_t]. In a very different but still similar
context, and certainly much more recent as to time frame, we encounter many
examples of deep-seated sensitivities to any perceived insult to
Turkishness. Violence can be elicited
with relatively little instigation. One
can imagine what can be elicited with a bit of planning. Balca Ergener has provided an interesting overview and analysis
of the events surrounding an exhibition of photographs entitled (in
translation) “From the Archives of Rear Admiral Fahri
Çoker: the events of September 6-7 on their fiftieth
anniversary” displayed in connection with the 50th anniversary of
the Istanbul [and Izmir?] riots against the Greeks, Jews, and Armenians. Ergener’s paper is
entitled ‘On the Exhibition “Incidents of September 6-7 on their Fiftieth
Anniversary” and the Attack on the Exhibition.’
Indeed, the attack was very real and many
photographs were for Ergener destroyed.
Just before
finalizing this posting we checked all URLs to see if
they worked. [We outlined our view on this in Endnote 1 above.] We tested the previously functioning URL and
learned that it has been blocked! For direct access to Ms. Ergener’s
article go to: http://www.red-thread.org/en/article.asp?a=25.
(We thank Matthias Bjørnlund for telling us
about Ergener’s article.) No mention is made in her article of the
exhaustive and illustrated volume by Speros Vryonis, The
Mechanism of Catastrophe : The Turkish Pogrom of
September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul
(New York, N.Y.: greekworks.com, 2005).
It has xxxv, 659 pages of text, and 90 pages of plates. Would that one could
have compared the images in the exhibit with those in Vryonis’s
book. International newspapers of the
day dealt largely with the anti-Greek actions, but
gave minimal attention to the actions against Jews and Armenians (cf. New York
Times 7 September 1955 pg. 1, ‘Anti-Greek riots flare in Turkey. Istanbul mobs wreck shops, threaten Church –
British offer a freer Cyprus’; 9 September pg. 1 ‘Anti-Greek riots in Turkey
studies by NATO Council’; 17 September pg 14,
editorial by C.L. Suzlberger ‘Disastrous effects of
the Turkish riots’ in which the statement “And
all the latent Turkish prejudices against national and religious minorities are
again released. The spirit that led to
Ankara’s persecution of Greeks, Armenians and Jew in 1942 and 1943 under the
so-called Varlik Vergisi
Law has been revived….Vandalism in Istanbul and Izmir
was much worse than the American public seems to realize…. And the Greeks are almost as offended by what
they consider our indifference as they are enraged with the Turks. Dozens of Orthodox churches were
pillaged. Thousands of shops were
rifled. Priests were beaten. Graveyards were desecrated. The homes of Greek officers stationed at
NATO’s Southeast Europe Headquarters in Izmir were looted.” We will not attempt an analysis here of what
started the 6-7 September 1955 riots.
Had they taken place in early 20th century Russia and against
the Jews, they would have been labeled pogromy,
(pogroms in English). The supposed
immediate trigger for the Istanbul riots were the reports of damage by dynamite
at the hands of Greek ‘communists’ to the birthplace of Kemal Ataturk in
Salonika. The reports were of course
false; one version was that a stick of dynamite placed by unknown persons(s)
nearby the Turkish Consulate had caused some damage. Interested readers may refer to Vryonis’ book for many details and photographs For more generalized imagery covering a span
of many years, including the 1955 pogroms, reference may be made to The Turkish
Crime of Our Century 1982 (Asia Minor Refugees Coordination Committee, The Turkish Crime of Our Century (Nicosia,
Cyprus?: Asia Minor Refugees Coordination Committee, 1982); Speros
Vryonis, The
Mechanism of Catastrophe : The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the
Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul (New York, N.Y., 2005).
[60] We have given substantial commentary
on ‘seeing’ versus ‘seeing’ so far as photographs are concerned in our article
entitled “Saga surrounding a forged photograph…”posted
22 February 2010 and which may be accessed at
https://groong.org/orig/ak-20100222.html.
[61] Uriel Heyd,
"Language Reform in Turkey," Middle
Eastern Affairs 4(1953): 402-409.
For the nationalistic basis for language reform see İlker
Aytürk “Turkish linguists against the West: the
origin of linguistic nationalism in Atatûrk’s Turkey,
Middle Eastern Studies 40, no. 6 pgs.
1-25 (2004).
[62] See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzxI14MxHo0.
No one can deny that these posts are offensive and tasteless, but the
Internet offers bad with the good. Take
it or leave it. Better yet, learn to
separate the wheat from the chaff.
[63] See Ussama
Makdisi, "Ottoman Orientalism," The American Historical Review 107, no.
3 (2002): 768-96.for an interesting perspective on the history of deliberate
promulgation of a modern image of the Ottoman state.
[64] See Carter V. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire : The Sublime Porte, 1789-1922, Princeton Studies
on the Near East; (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980).. It is amusing, yet telling, to understand
that the Turks themselves knew that the Gulhane
decree was essentially useless in promulgating reforms We read in Harold Temperley,
"British Policy Towards Parliamentary Rule and Constitutionalism in Turkey
(1830-1914)," Cambridge Historical
Journal 4, no. no.2 (1933): 156-191. pg. 159 the following:
“As long as Mahmud [Sultan Mahmud II,
1808-1839, who in the name of modernization orchestrated the slaughter of 7 or
8 thousand Janisarries in 1826] lived he was the best
proof of the argument that the Sultan was the best reformer. But he died in 1839 and was succeeded by a
weak son of sixteen, Abdul Mejid, who was quite
incapable of vigorous or independent action.
But a policy of reform was proclaimed by Reschid
Pasha in the famous Gulhané decree [Hatt-i Humayun of Gulhane]. The Edict was issued, and
named from a chamber of roses. It smelt
as sweet and withered as quickly as the flowers. The Turks who love a play on words, surnamed
it the decree of the Khulhané,
i.e. of the dust hole.” [emphasis ours].
Later writers have on occasion sought
to make more of the attempts at modernization than reality permits, but for a
much more deliberate evaluation of the principles of representation in the
Empire (see for example Roderic H. Davison, "The
Advent of the Principle of Representation in the Government of the Ottoman
Empire," in Beginnings of
Modernization in the Middle East, ed. William R. Polk and Richard L.
Chambers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
[65] Hanns Froembgen
and Kenneth tr Kirkness, Kemal Ataturk; a Biography (New York: Hillman-Curl, 1937) is not a
very satisfactory volume for any number of reasons. It certainly cannot be characterized as being
pro-Armenian, and that is its significance for us. He states in one place in his text that the
Armenians “as a reward for treacherous
conduct in the War, the eastern Provinces were to form a state” pg. 88. Froembgen unabashedly states that Kemal’s attitude was
dominated by “Turkey for the Turks” and that the minorities were liquidated or
exchanged. Winston Churchill described
the outcome of the policy of the Young Turks and their successors in this way: “Three or four hundred thousand men, women, and children escaped into
Russian territory and others into Persia or Mesopotamia; but the clearance of
the race from Asia Minor was about as complete as such an act, on a scale so
great, could well be” Winston
Churchill, The World Crisis vol. 5,
"The Aftermath" (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929).
[66] The next time around was initially the
Armenian Genocide. Some complained that
the early Turcic conquerors had not forced conversion
to Islam or put people to the sword.
Later, some complained that Sultan Abdul Hamid II had not done as
effective a job as he might have, or more precisely, should have. See Hannibal Travis, Genocide in the Middle East : The Ottoman
Empire, Iraq, and Sudan (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2010) for
the long history of violence.
[67] Rifat N. Bali, The "Varlik Vergisi"
Affair : A Study of Its Legacy : Selected Documents,
(Istanbul: Isis Press, 2005).
[68] Rifat N. Bali, The "Varlik Vergisi''
Affair: A Study of Its Legac : Selected Documents, (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2005) see
especially pgs. 235-252 for “Articles and
caricatures published during and after implementation of the Capital Tax.” See also Hatice Bayraktar, Salamon Und Rabeka : Judenstereotype in Karikaturen Der Türkischen Zeitschriften "Akbaba",
"Karikatür" Und "Milli Inkilap" 1933-1945, Islamkundliche
Untersuchungen,; Bd. 273; (K. Schwarz, 2006) and also
Arnold Reisman, "Turkey's
Invitations to Nazi-Persecuted Intellectuals Circa 1933" a
Bibliographic Essay on History's Blind Spot," Covenant, the Global Jewish magazine 3, no. 1 (2009): pgs. 31-46
and his “Shoah, Turkey, the US and the
UK'' (privately printed, 2009. This
latter includes one especially offensive cartoon on pg. 33).
[69] See Christian Leitz,
Sympathy for the Devil
: Neutral Europe and Nazi Germany in World War II (New York: New
York University Press, 2001). A
quotation on pg. 86 from this very interesting work reflecting what a British
Foreign Office official “lamented”, ‘enables the neutral power to preserve its
preference for one belligerent or the other.
There is something Ghandi-esque and positively
immoral in this policy, but it is, I fear, typically Turkish and its astuteness
and cleverness cannot be denied.’ On pg. 103 the expression ‘a Janus-faced
Turkish Government’ is used.
[70] See for example Majid Khadduri,
"The Alexandretta Dispute,"
The American Journal of International Law
39, no. 3 (1945): 406-425. Satloff 1986, among other things, explains that both France and Turkey
did their best “to legitimize an illegitimate
act.”[…] “It
was “an unconscionable and an illegal deal struck between two governments who
showed little concern for the integrity of
international law or the wishes of the local residents.” pg. 147.
See
also Lynn H. Curtright, "Great Britain, the Balkans, and Turkey in the Autumn of
1939," The International History
Review 10, no. 3 (1988): 433-455, pg. 438 in particular.
[71] See Leitz
as cited above in Endnote 55 pg. 85 (quoting a British Foreign Office
document).
[72] Because it is in German it will
unfortunately not be read by many Americans.
See Corry Guttstadt, Die Türkei, Die Juden
Und Der Holocaust (Berlin: Assoziation
A, 2008). If ever there was a volume
that merited translation to English it is this, since it covers a range of
topics. In her first chapter “Juden im Osmanischen
Reich: 500 Jahre Toleranz und Wohlstand?
pgs. 13-47 [Jews in the Ottoman Empire: 500 years of prosperity?]—the word ‘Wohlstand’ implies not so much having lots of money but a
feeling that there is nothing lacking in one’s life---it certainly implies that
prejudice was lacking). She re-examines
the myth of Ottoman multiculturalism, see esp. pgs. 23-24, and dismisses the
myth; Chapter 4, entitled “Die Türkei in den Jahre
1933-1945” pgs. 157-269 [Turkey in the Years 1933-1945”], draws attention to
the fact that relatively few Jews passed through Turkey on the way to
Palestine. Some 4,850 Jews had
certificates, which consisted of travel papers that had been issued before the
war. The rest, some 8,000 [she gives the
figure of 13,240 on pg. 256] were only able to pass through in 1944. Restrictions and bureaucratic hurdles on
Jewish immigration or transit were in effect before the war, and thus were deliberate
policy on the part of the Turks, without any direct Nazi influence (pg.
247). She makes an excellent case that
Turkey actually blocked the way of Jews seeking to emigrate,
and was not a helpful entity as an important country of transit. Stanford Shaw, author of Turkey and the Holocaust, Turkey’s role in rescuing Turkish and
European Jewry from Nazi persecution, 1933-1945 (1993) would not be
pleased. Of course, were he alive one
could certainly tell him to put that in his pipe and smoke it?! Chapter 5 “Türkische
Juden unter dem Nationalsocializmus 1933-39”, pgs. 269-282 [Turkish Jews
under National Socialism 1933-39] deals with Turkish Jews in Nazi Germany;
conclusion, there were few intercessions on behalf of Turkish citizens by the
Turkish Embassy in Nazi Germany. Chapter
6 “Ausbürgerungen von Juden
durch die Türkei”, pgs.
271-282 [The Denaturalization of Jews by Turkey] gives some insights on how
Turkey collaborated with Germany in getting Turkish Jews
disenfranchised/stripped of the citizenship. Chapter 7 is entitled “Die türkischen Juden und der
Holocaust,” pgs. 283-485 [Turkish Jews and the Holocaust]. The bottom line is that the Turkish
government and individual diplomats did relatively little to save Turkish
Jews. Yes, some were saved but
considerably more could have been done. Certainly Shaw overreached the facts of the case, as usual.
[74] Selim Deringil,
The Well-Protected Domains
: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire,
1876-1909 (London: New York, 1998).
[75] Malcolm Canon MacColl,
"The Tolerant Turk," The New
Armenia 9, no. 9 (1917): 133-135.
For an update see Marc D. Baer’s “Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks.
Writing Ottoman Jewish history, denying the Armenian genocide.” (2020), Indiana
University Press.
[76] See Mesrob
K. Krikorian, Armenians in the Service of
the Ottoman Empire, 1860-1908, Routledge Direct Editions; (London: Boston,
1977) and the four huge volumes by Pars Tuglaci, Tarih Boyunca Bati Ermenileri Tarihi (Istanbul: Pars Yayin veTic., 2004) which are replete with richly illustrated
history of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, and even Republican
Turkey. See also Tuglaci’s
The Role of the Balian Family in Ottoman
Architecture (Istanbul: Yeni Cigir Bookstore,
1990), as well as his Mehterhane'den Bandoya [Turkish
Bands of Past and Present] (Istanbul:
CEM Yayinevi, 1986).
For a start in who to select for honorific contributions one might focus
on the role of Ohanes Dadian,
of the famous Dadian clan ,
who were much-trusted-by-Sultan Mahmoud II, an amira Armenian who played a
leading role in advancing the industrial revolution in the Ottoman Empire. If ‘they’ don’t like that idea
they can select him with equal justification for the critical role he played as
Chief Powder Maker [Barut Cubaşi] could be
recognized. Sultan Mahmud II is oft
heralded by today’s Turkey for initiating the great and enlightened ‘Reforms’
and ‘Rescripts’ that came into being after his death. He sent the trusted Dadian
to England to look into the possibilities of introducing to Turkey useful arts
and manufactures, especially those involving iron ores. Turkey had large amounts of high quality iron ore and wanted to capitalize on this
natural resource. See: http://www.archive.org/stream/lifeofsirwilliam00fairiala#page/172/mode/2up/search/dadian
Reference
may be made to the article by Edward C. Clark "The Ottoman Industrial
Revolution," International Journal
of Middle East Studies 5, no. 1 (1974): 65-76. on Dadian
and his many and far-reaching endeavors on behalf of the Empire. There are a few sites on the Internet that
give an inkling of the Turkish participation, but curiously, there is no
mention as far as we could find of any Armenian presence. http://dergiler.ankara.edu.tr/dergiler/44/671/8542.pdf
In fact, Hohannes T. Pushman, an Armenian, was Secretary of the Ottoman Imperial
Commission. He arranged and edited an
interesting book on the exhibits in Chicago.
(see Hohannes T. Pushman, The Exhibits
of the Ottoman Empire at the World's Columbian Exposition, 1893, Chicago
(Chicago: Imperial Ottoman Commission, 1893).
For a more recent description of the oriental environment at various
World Fair venues see Zeynep Çelik. Displaying of the Orient: Architecture of
Islam at Nineteenth-Century World’s fairs.
University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992)-for a brief overview
see:
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8x0nb62g;chunk.id=d0e354;doc.view=print
[77] To us at least, there seems to be
something more than a bit curious about the fact that some of Turkey’s Jews
kept slaves in the Empire – even till the late Empire. Just how this was rationalized in terms of
Jewish law [the halakah]
and Ottoman Law is something we cannot comment on. Apparently they were
primarily female and had once apparently been Christians from the Balkans and
eastern European regions. Surely this is
a matter on which we must call forth the mysterious East to divulge its
secrets. See Yaron
Ben-Naeh, "Blond,
Tall, with Honey-Colored Eyes: Jewish Ownership of Slaves in the Ottoman
Empire," Jewish History 20,
no. 3/4 (2006): 315-332. The Donme or Jewish converts to Islam, sometimes erroneously
regarded as crypto-Christians, are well-known of course Marc Baer (2007) "Globalization, Cosmopolitanism, and
the Donme in Ottoman Salonica and Turkish
Istanbul," Journal of World
History 8, no. 2 pgs.141-170; Saadia E. Weltmann,
"Germany, Turkey, and the Zionist Movement," The Review of Politics 23, no. 3 (1961): 246-269; Resat Kasaba, "Greek and Turkish Nationalism in
Formation: Western Anatolia 1919-1922," European University Institute,
https://mediterraneanstudies.stanford.edu/events/turkish-studies-initiative/resat-kasaba-migration-and-state-formation-aftermath-ottoman.
Some were extremely fanatic – a bit like the proverbially overzealous
person converted to Roman Catholicism who became ‘more Catholic than the Pope.’
Indeed, Halide Edib was from a Donme
[convert] family, as was Talaat Pasha. Stanford J. Shaw, The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish
Republic (New York: New York University Press, 1991); Stanford J. Shaw, Turkey and the Holocaust: Turkey's Role in
Rescuing Turkish and European Jewry from Nazi Persecution, 1933-1945 (New
York: New York University Press, 1993).
[78] Pragmatism very often enters into the
affairs of men and women. Kemal
Atatürk’s, initial positive response to requests for admittance of refugees
from Nazi Germany, and İsmet İnönü’s virtual denial
of some Jewish scientists and physicians after they gotten pretty much what
they wanted and could absorb, was based purely on self-interest. One would hardly think that this would be the
dearth of the same in Turkey (see e.g. Avigdor Levy, Jews, Turks, Ottomans : A Shared History,
Fifteenth through the Twentieth Century, (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse
University Press, 2002); Arnold Reisman, "Jewish Refugees from Nazism,
Albert Einstein, and the Modernization of Higher Education in Turkey
(1933–1945)," Aleph, no. 7
(2007): 253-81. 2007 and references cited therein.
[79] Daniel J. Schroeter,
"[Untitled]," The American
Historical Review 98, no. 3 (1993): 916-17, Rifat Bali (2014) has written a
candid treatment of the Jews and the Turkish state. “Model Citizens of the
State: The Jews of Turkey during the Multi-party period.” Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, Madison, NJ. It offers
a strong antidote to the ‘party line.’
[80] For a well-documented and direct
analysis on Turkey’s actions and attitudes towards it Jews that demolish any
notions that the Turks were beneficent and tolerance towards its Jewish
minority see Andrew G. Bostom, "The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of
Non-Muslims," Prometheus Books, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGpV_fiMTic.
There is
also an excellent article by Edward C. Clark, “The Turkish Varlik
Vergisi Reconsidered”, Middle Eastern Studies 8, no. 2 (1972): 205-216 for the effects and
nominal intentions of the law. Not
surprisingly, Kemal Karpat, late professor at the
University of Wisconsin challenged that article and dismissed it as having
provided nothing new. The rejoinder by
Dr. Clark is excellent and starts off with “In
reading Dr. Karpat’s interesting if blunt comments I
gather that some of my carefully-marshalled facts
contradict his preferred theory, and that he proposes to resolve the dilemma by
discounting the facts. In my opinion a
re-examination of his theory would be a more rewarding enterprise” Kemal H.
Karpat and Edward C. Clark,
"Correspondence," Middle Eastern
Studies 9, no. 2 (1973): 256-59.
Those who could not pay the levies were forced into labor camps in
Eastern Turkey. There apparently was not
a single Turkish Muslim defaulter who was sent to the Aşkale
labor camp [in Erzerum Ili or province]. In the foreword to Faik
Ökte’s The
Tragedy of the Turkish Capital Tax, Croom Helm, London and Wolfeboro, NH
(1987) by David Brown there are some telling phrases. For example on pg.
xii we read “For the Jewish and
Christian Turkish citizens the tax became nothing less than a small-scale
financial massacre” (emphasis ours). See
also Speros Vryonis, The Mechanism of Catastrophe
: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the
Greek Community of Istanbul (New York, N.Y., 2005 for a carefully
considered and documented presentation of the pogroms which essentially drove
the Greek community from Istanbul.
[81] See as an example published under
the heading ‘Comment’ “Turkey bears brunt
of Israel” by Kamal Kanj [an oft-arrested
by Israel leader in the Druse community, and former member of the Syrian
Parliament who had spoken out unendingly of Israel’s takeover and behavior in
Golan Heights. Peaceful resistance has
been the Druse strategy, even as Israel pretends to be a great wooer of the
Druse. The hypocrisy has been
monumental.] in Gulf Daily News, the
Voice of Bahrain 17 February 2012 vol. 34 no. 2334. (Gulf Daily News carries many articles which
bridge each of these outlooks.)
[82] There are a number of ethnic Turks like History Professor Halil Berktay at Sabanci University in Istanbul, who have been brave enough
to speak out (even in light of death threats) and say that what happened to the
Armenians was genocide. See for instance the write-up in The Times Higher Education Supplement
(London) 17 February 2005 “Genocide
finally gets scholarly inquest” by Dorian Jones. Jones quotes conference organizer Dr. Berktay- “This has
been the most enduring taboo of Turkish nationalist mythology. Five years ago, hardly anyone was speaking
out about this.” It will not
surprise many to read that some 320 of Turkey’s academic community signed a
condemnatory petition against the meeting.
Even so, there may be signs of a miniscule but nonetheless real crack in
the wall of silence. Other ethnic Turks
residing outside Turkey need not be mentioned for they are not at the same kind
of risk as those living and working in Turkey.
[83] See for example re myths being
extant in Armenian history Anthony D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999). In Armenian tradition one reads about Tiridates the Great who was the head of a large unified state of Armenia. When the scholars start digging into the
available ancient sources, however, there are quite a few challenges and
inconsistencies that face them. Robert
H. Hewsen in his "In Search of Tiridates the Great," Journal of the Society of Armenian Studies 2 (1985-1986): 11-49 has
done a sterling job of resolving many of the issues surrounding the historic
figures with the name Trdat but much remains to be
understood. The sad fact is that it may
never be. Similarly, Armenians often
pride themselves on being the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state
religion. This too has been a challenge
to resolve and convincingly presented with all the rigorous documentation
needed to make that tradition come alive.
Nina Garsoian, an expert and meticulous
scholar in ancient Armenian and medieval Armenian studies, has written an
important article “Reality and myth in Armenian history,” published in Studi Orientali dell’ Università di Roma ‘la Sapienza’ 13 =The East and
Meaning of History. International
Conference (23-27 November 1992) pgs.118-145 (Rome, 1994) [reprinted in Church and Culture in early medieval Armenia,
Aldershot, Brookfield, MA.) 1999].
It is a beautiful article that should be read by all professing an
interest in Armenia. But one thing
stands out, in all this scholarship, and this statement inevitably will be seen
as chauvinistic, one inevitably comes away with the feeling that sources are
examined mercilessly without political agenda.
Would that the same could be said of Turkish attempts to unravel their
muddy past but cannot rise to the challenge.
[84] Erich S. Gruen, "The Use and Abuse of the Exodus
Story," Jewish History 12, no. 1 (1998): 93-122.
“Folklore and Nationalism in Turkey'' published in Turkish
Folklore and Oral Literatur: Selected Essays of İlhan
Başgöz (ed.by Kemal Silay,
Indian University Press, 1998) pgs. 41-52 gives an interesting perspective on the recasting
of Turkish history and the issuance of guidelines to achieve this in early
Republican period. Shlomo
Sand’s book “The Invention of the Jewish People''
(translated into English from the original Hebrew in 2009, Verso: London and
New York) is a good example of how the Jews have rewritten their own history, beginning in Germany in the 19th
century, by converting it from an aggregate of varied cultures and ethnicities
albeit importantly sharing one religion, into a nationalist, even racist
narrative of an invented continuity for thousands of years. Not unexpectedly, this volume has not been
well-reviewed by mainstream Israelis, much less Israeli historians.
[85] Joan Peters, “From Time Immemorial : The Origins of the
Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine,” 1st ed. (New York: Harper & Row,
1984); Norman G. Finkelstein, “Image and
Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict”, 2nd ed. (London: New York,
2003). Also, Manfred Gerstenfeld (2007) “The multiple distortions of Holocaust
memory.” Jewish Political Studies
Review 19, 3/4, pgs. 35-55; and Power, politics , and scholarship by Norman
Finkelstein, Margee Little and Jake Hess (April 23,
2008) ZNet, the spirit of resistance lives.
[86]
There is considerable difference between ethnicity and nationalism and
if one is to be able to surmount ancient attitudes and beliefs, much more has
to be done by way of education (see Thomas Hylland
Eriksen, "Ethnicity Versus
Nationalism," Journal of Peace
Research 28, no. 3 (1991): 263-278; Christian P. Scherrer, "Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Violence : Conflict Management, Human Rights, and
Multilateral Regimes." (Burlington, VT, 2003) and references here
cited. Some Armenians seem to have romanticized conceptions of
who the Armenians are, and inevitably emphasize their martyrdom in the name of
their Christian faith. Few seem nowadays
to have thought very deeply as to ‘national’ boundaries, or have contemplated
in depth, much less resolved, the question of “who are we?” This brings to mind an Australian friend
whose mother was Armenian, born in Egypt of parents who fled eastern Turkey
just before the genocide. A daughter
married an Englishman, moved to New Zealand, had children, who in turn married
non-Armenians. Despite a very real
interest in her Armenian roots she has encountered
more than a little prejudice and quasi-distancing in Australia by those who
perceive themselves as ‘real;’ Armenians.
Our answer to this sort of nonsensical behavior is that anyone who feels
that he or she has Armenian interests or connections and who chooses to call
themselves Armenian, are Armenians. The
level of corruption and ridiculously poor leadership in the present-day ‘real’
‘Republic’ of Armenia shows that late 19th and early 20th
century western (some say ‘racist’) views concerning Armenians – especially
those in which Armenians are described as incapable of governing themselves as
an independent nation after World War I, were not too far off the mark. Fighting words? Maybe.
Mind the Armenian Church that stands divided in the Diaspora, wherein
for many years duplicate efforts have been undertaken to sustain power and
identity. One can no longer blame ‘the
Turks’ for all of Armenia’s shortcomings.
Complaints that the Ottomans ruled with heavy boots are absolutely
justified, but today the descendants of the same oppressed people feel free to
be oppressors of their own people. In a
like manner, even though the State of Israel came into being because of the
Nazi holocaust, it apparently feels no compunction in oppressing the
Palestinian Arabs (see Clifford A. Wright, Facts
and Fables : The Arab-Israeli Conflict (London New
York: Keegan Paul, 1989); Samih K. H Farsoun and Christina Zacharia Hawatmeh,
Palestine and the Palestinians
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997) and references there cited.). Many say that Israel’s behavior towards Gaza
is genocidal. We think that Raphael
Lemkin would agree.
[87]
Howard Zinn (2003), A People's
History of the United States : 1492-Present, [New
]. ed. (New York: Harper Collins).
Douglas A. Blackmon, "Slavery
by Another Name the Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil
War to World War II” Books on slavery are too numerous to list. We have a book by David Brion
Davis, "Slavery and Human
Progress" which came out in 1984. It is excellent, but Davis has also
published much more recent material. If
you go to Amazon, you will find listings.
We have not kept up with this scholarship, but in the 1970s and 1980s,
it was accepted that the best scholar on slavery was Eugene Genovese. He was at
the time a Marxist though he never let his politics intervene in his scholarly
work on slavery. His politics have since moved to the right. He wrote two classic volumes on slavery: "Roll Jordan Roll: the
World the Slaves Made" and a sequel, "The World the Slave Owners Made", and more recently, "Slavery by Another Name: The
Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II." If you want material on the dirty deeds of
the U.S. throughout the world, almost any of Noam Chomsky’s books would fit the
bill. We would particularly recommend his 1992 book, “In remembrance of the 500th anniversary of Columbus' landing,
"Year 501: The Conquest Continues." The footnotes in all of
Noam's books are a great index to all of this material. We would also recommend
the work of Michael McClintock, an ex-CIA official. In the 1980s, he published
two volumes on Central America with a general title of "The American
Connection.” Volume one was entitled: "State
Terror and Popular Resistance in El Salvador" and Volume Two was
entitled "State Terror and Popular
Resistance in Guatemala." In
1992, he published "Instruments of
Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counter-Insurgency, Counter-Terrorism,
1940-1960."
You might
also check out the work of Gareth Porter and John Prados
who have produced great amount of material from the Vietnam War through the
Iraq and Afghanistan wars. On the Korean War and the politics of Korea, north
and south, the best English language scholar is Bruce Cummings. John Dower has written brilliantly about
Japan and the U.S. going back to WW II and covering 9/11 and Iraq.
Finally,
there is the work of Alfred McCoy who in the 1960s wrote a book entitled, "The Politics of Heroin in Southeast
Asia." In the 1990s, he brought
together all of his scholarship on the worldwide use of drugs for political
purposes in his book, "The Politics
of Heroin." More recently, he
has focused his attention on torture and terror by the U.S.: "Policing America's Empire: The United
States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State" and "A Question of Torture: CIA
Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror."
[88] Journalist and writer Christopher
Hedges has recalled being in Leipzig, German Democratic Republic on 9 November
1989 just before the Berlin Wall fell.
Apparently, most of the experts and pundits predicted that it would be a
rather long time before there would be free traffic between East and West
Berlin, perhaps longer than a year. In
fact, it turned out to be only a matter of hours before the beginning of the
end had started. See Chris Hedges
addresses “Occupy Harvard Part 2”
November 28 2011 at about 5:44 minutes into the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ugU6ELwbi_o#!
[89] Dickran Kouymjian, "A
Critical Bibliography for the History of Armenia from 1375 to 1605," Armenian Review 41, no. 1-161 (1988):
339-45; Robert H. Hewsen and Christopher C. Salvatico, "Armenia : A Historical Atlas." (University of
Chicago Press, 2001).
[90] It will probably never be known
whether anyone really thought in the 1940s that the notion of land reclamation
would ‘go anywhere’ or will ‘go anywhere’.
In the April 1945 Armenian National Committee’s “A Memorandum Relating to the Armenian Question” ([New York]
Armenian National Committee, 1945).the proposition is put forward that the
United Nations undertake “A solution, alike just and humane, [which] would be
the joining of that part of Armenia, proposed by the Powers and delineated by
President Wilson as the rightful Armenian State which yet remains, unproductive
and desolate, in the hands of the Turks, to the now contiguous Armenian
Republic. Thus, a peaceful and
industrious people, whose manifold and long suffered wrongs have so often led
to international disquiet, would be enabled to return to their homeland and
live and work in peace and tranquility” pg. 12.
The following year another booklet by James Garabed
Mandalian, “What
Do the Armenians Want?” ([New York]: Armenian National Committee, 1946) was
published. In that 15
page document it states “During
World War I, the Turks came near annihilating this people. They murdered one million,
and ejected from their homes another million. They confiscated their property and
lands. Nearly one million of them fought
a last ditch battle and founded their republic. That
is the Soviet Armenia of today…” See
Simon Payaslian, "After Recognition," Armenian Forum 2 (2001): 33-56; Nicolas Tavitian, "The
Fifth Purpose of Recognition, a Response to Simon Payaslian,"
Armenian Forum 2, (2001): 57-62; Khatchik Der Ghougasian, "The Genocide on Armenia's Foreign
Policy. A Response to Simon Payaslian," Armenian Forum 2, (2001): 63-73; Simon Payaslian, "Reply to My Interlocutors," Armenian Forum 2, (2001): 75-76.
[91] The learned word for a new word is a ‘neologism.’
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