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`Introductory Books on the Armenian Genocide': Politics, Prose and Poetry
http://massispost.com/?p=5786
Saturday, March 3rd, 2012
By Alan Whitehorn
As we approach the 100th memorial year of the 1915 state-sponsored
mass slaughter of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Armenians all over
the world will be reflecting in an ever more somber fashion about the
deadly fate of so many ancestors. As Armenians continue to seek to
fully understand the causes for the horrific crime of genocide,
non-Armenians will also become more aware of the Genocide. With far
less background on the history and the region, many will inevitably
ask their Armenian friends and colleagues: `Which are the most helpful
introductory books on the Armenian Genocide?'. This is not always an
easy question to answer, but as we approach 2015, it becomes an
increasingly pressing and germane question. This is not only so for
non-Armenians, but even for a younger generation of diaspora
Armenians. Five quite different books come to mind as suggestions:
Facing History, Crimes Against Humanity and Civilization: The Genocide
of the Armenians (Brookline, Massachusetts, 2004, ISBN: 0-9754125-0-7;
198 pages) (Also available in electronic format from
www.facinghistory.org/resources/publications).
Facing History, based in Brookline Massachusetts, is the pre-eminent
educational organization preparing high school instructors on how to
teach about difficult topics such as the Holocaust, genocide, racism
and intolerance and how to foster human rights and democracy.
The book's title reminds us of the birth in May 1915 of the
international legal concept of `crimes against humanity'. The
important new term was used to describe the Young Turk deportations
and massacres of Armenians. This book is used extensively in both
Facing History teacher workshops and by high school classes on
genocide in Canada and the United States. The book explores the
psychological and historical factors that gave rise to genocide and
its devastating consequences. The book is quite effective and well
tested in the classroom. It is broken up into 47 smaller manageable
sections, with good use of pictures, maps, posters, background
information boxes and, at the end of each chapter, thoughtful
discussion questions.
The topic of genocide is an extremely difficult emotional and
intellectual journey to travel in a single volume; hence the
attraction of breaking down the complex subject matter into more
manageable steps. While intended for a senior high school audience,
this is a well-crafted and balanced volume that would be an excellent
introduction for any adult. I continue to use the book with high
school classes. Particularly useful for teachers, an electronic
version can also be downloaded from the Facing History website:
www.facinghistory.org/
Peter Balakian, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and
America's Response (New York, Harper Collins, 2003, ISBN:
0-06-019840-0; 475 pages).
Peter Balakian is a well-known Armenian-American poet, academic and
political history author. Known primarily for three books on the
Armenian Genocide (Black Dog of Fate (1997), The Burning Tigris (2003)
and Armenian Golgotha (2009), the latter by his great uncle Grigoris
Balakian), Peter is a high-profile public figure who speaks eloquently
on the Genocide.
Reflecting his literary training, the writing in The Burning Tigris is
poignant and profoundly moving. Many American readers have been
influenced by this volume. Balakian divides the book into four major
sections, commencing with the 1890s Hamidian Massacres and subsequent
American humanitarian relief efforts. The next section describes the
Young Turks violent revolutionary seizure of power and the impact of
World War I which hastened the draconian sense of urgency, growing
state secrecy and centralized coercive planning for genocide. The
heroic efforts of international witnesses such as American Ambassador
Henry Morgenthau, other diplomatic staff and missionaries are
described in the next section. The final portion notes the seemingly
doomed efforts of Woodrow Wilson for a more just post-war world and
the precedent-setting, but largely ineffective Ottoman Courts-Martial
in Constantinople. The epilogue deals with the problem of continued
Turkish government genocide denial and American complicity in this.
The book is accompanied by a substantial collection of heart-wrenching
black and white photographs.
While other more detailed scholarly works by Vahakn Dadrian, Richard
Hovannisian and Taner Akcam are available on the Armenian Genocide,
The Burning Tigris offers a very readable narrative and can serve as
an effective introductory volume for non-Armenian readers. It is
readily available at many bookstores.
Taner Akcam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of
Turkish Responsibility (New York, Metropolitan Books, 2006; ISBN:
13:978-09050-7932-6; 483 pages)
Taner Akcam is the leading Turkish scholar writing on the Armenian
Genocide. He is a remarkably brave academic who has pioneered in the
use of extensive Ottoman and German archival sources and offered
innovative themes. As a professor of History, he currently occupies
the Kaloosdian/Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark
University. Most recently, he has co-authored with Vahakn Dadrian the
pioneering volume Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials.
The title A Shameful Act is taken from a critical comment by Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk about the treatment of the Armenians during WW I.
Akcam's book commences with the challenges facing the crumbling
Ottoman Empire and the bleak and bloody fate of its non-Muslim
population as the multinational Empire is radically transformed into a
nationalist Turkish Republic. The Empire's loss of its Balkan lands
was a traumatic shock that unleashed a wave of desperate and angry
Muslim refugees. Under the conditions of war, the Armenian question
took on an urgent and dramatic turn.
Akcam's focus is on the centralized decision-making of the
revolutionary Young Turk ruling elite and their draconian decision to
commit genocide. The documentary evidence offered is impressive, with
a great amount from Turkish primary sources. It is meticulous
scholarship updated from a book Akcam originally published in Turkish
in Ankara in 1999. Despite the enormous number of footnotes, this
English translation is well-written and is an important volume on the
Armenian Genocide. The Turkish language version has already had a
major impact in Turkey.
Given the focus on the Turkish political-military decision-making
elite and its genocidal decisions, there is at times less descriptive
account about the enormous suffering of the Armenians. That was not
the primary purpose of this volume. The goal was to document Turkish
malevolent intent, planning and responsibility. This volume achieves
that educational goal resoundingly.
That said, it does raise a question that often arises in books on
genocide. To understand why such terrible events occur, we must look
at the causes. Hence we need to analyze the perceptions, motives,
plans and deeds of the people who commit genocide. However, above all
we need to understand what the victims experienced and the enormous
impact of genocide, both in the past and ongoing. To understand the
cause of genocide we must study the perpetrators, but to really
comprehend what genocide involves, we must first and foremost listen
to the voices and words of the victims. As brave and pioneering as
Akcam is as a scholar, his volume seems more suited as a second, more
advanced book to read, not as an introductory account of the Armenian
Genocide. That said, this is probably the best book for a Turkish
audience to read.
Robert Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian
Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago, University of Chicago Press,
1992; ISBN: 0-226-51990-2; 363 pages)
Robert Melson, a survivor of the Holocaust, is an illustrious,
pioneering genocide scholar. He was a distinguished professor of
political science and co-director of Jewish Studies Program at Purdue
University.
His book was an early major contribution to the literature on the
Armenian Genocide and is still highly cited in academic circles. It is
an impressive comparative volume which looks in depth at both the
Holocaust of World War II and the Armenian Genocide of World War I.
This is a remarkable volume with extensive documentation, a powerful
analytical framework, and a wonderfully effective writing style, that
is no doubt enhanced by his personal experiences as a child having
fled genocide.
The book is divided into three major historical sections. The first
explores the background and conditions in the pre-revolutionary ancien
regime of the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Germany. The second section
documents the violent revolutionary goals and ideology of the Young
Turk and Nazi parties. The concluding section compares the
similarities and differences between the Armenian Genocide and the
Holocaust and explores the ruthlessly ambitious and violent nature of
revolutionary genocidal regimes. Chapter #8 is often reprinted
justifiably in edited genocide collections. It is one of the best
comparative summaries in existence of the two genocides.
While the book is analytically comparative, the format proceeds with
one chapter on the desperate plight of Armenians, followed by one on
the deadly fate of so many Jews. Due to the strong analytical
framework employed, the reader is successfully pulled along in the
twinning of the case studies. The Holocaust is the most known genocide
and the comparison, both of similarities and differences, with the
Armenian Genocide is quite instructive, even for an advanced reader.
This is a book that I have often used as one of the core texts in my
university classes on genocide. Melson's book was praised by my
students. If I were to strongly recommend only one book for Armenians
to read on the 1915 genocide, this would probably be the volume I
would select. Part of the reason for this is that I have found that
too often Armenians lack a sufficient theoretical understanding of the
common features and dynamics of genocide in general. And too
frequently they also display a woeful lack of sufficient knowledge of
other genocides. This is the book that can address such gaps and
deficiencies. It is also a powerfully effective volume for
non-Armenians to learn about the terrible sequence of events of 1915.
Peter Balakian, Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir (New York, Broadway, 1997,
ISBN: 0-7679-0254-8; 292 pages) (New York, Basic Books, 2009, 13:
978-0-465-91019-6; 357 pages)
Balakian's Black Dog of Fate is an earlier and quite different volume
than his political history The Burning Tigris. Instead Black Dog of
Fate is more a personal odyssey in which he discovers insights into
his family history. It begins with Peter growing up seemingly as a
typical sports-devoted American teenager, but gradually layers of the
extended family history are pealed back to reveal the horrific
suffering of the Armenian people and the need of the survivors to bear
witness. The family autobiography increasingly travels back in time to
his family's roots in the Ottoman Empire and the terrible turmoil of
1915. This personal memoir probes beneath the surface of a peaceful
ordinary life in New Jersey suburbia to reveal the almost hidden, but
powerful memories of genocide.
Vast numbers like one and a half million are exceedingly difficult to
comprehend and can be numbing for the outsider. But personal family
accounts can be profoundly moving and extremely effective in
communicating to the reader the emotional magnitude of the losses
involved in genocide. Black Dog of Fate had a major impact on many
non-Armenians and young Diaspora Armenians. It received a glowing New
York Times recommendation and was reprinted in an expanded anniversary
edition just over a decade later. It remains a classic introductory
paperback on the 1915 Genocide. For a young teenage reader, it is an
ideal book. For others, it can be a nostalgic and quite moving account
about an adolescent coming of age and acquiring adult insight into one
of the major genocides of the 20th century. It is a memoir about a
land of immigrants, with so many heart-wrenching stories of what their
ancestors have endured. We should learn and remember.
We all need to better learn and understand. These five books can
provide a helpful introduction to this profoundly painful, but crucial
topic. If on April 24, each Armenian family would give a copy of one
of these books to a colleague, friend, public or school library, more
people would have a better chance to know and begin to understand how
1915 has defined so much of the Armenian nation.
Alan Whitehorn is author of a number of books on the Armenian
Genocide, including Just Poems: Reflections on the Armenian Genocide.
http://massispost.com/?p=5786
Saturday, March 3rd, 2012
By Alan Whitehorn
As we approach the 100th memorial year of the 1915 state-sponsored
mass slaughter of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Armenians all over
the world will be reflecting in an ever more somber fashion about the
deadly fate of so many ancestors. As Armenians continue to seek to
fully understand the causes for the horrific crime of genocide,
non-Armenians will also become more aware of the Genocide. With far
less background on the history and the region, many will inevitably
ask their Armenian friends and colleagues: `Which are the most helpful
introductory books on the Armenian Genocide?'. This is not always an
easy question to answer, but as we approach 2015, it becomes an
increasingly pressing and germane question. This is not only so for
non-Armenians, but even for a younger generation of diaspora
Armenians. Five quite different books come to mind as suggestions:
Facing History, Crimes Against Humanity and Civilization: The Genocide
of the Armenians (Brookline, Massachusetts, 2004, ISBN: 0-9754125-0-7;
198 pages) (Also available in electronic format from
www.facinghistory.org/resources/publications).
Facing History, based in Brookline Massachusetts, is the pre-eminent
educational organization preparing high school instructors on how to
teach about difficult topics such as the Holocaust, genocide, racism
and intolerance and how to foster human rights and democracy.
The book's title reminds us of the birth in May 1915 of the
international legal concept of `crimes against humanity'. The
important new term was used to describe the Young Turk deportations
and massacres of Armenians. This book is used extensively in both
Facing History teacher workshops and by high school classes on
genocide in Canada and the United States. The book explores the
psychological and historical factors that gave rise to genocide and
its devastating consequences. The book is quite effective and well
tested in the classroom. It is broken up into 47 smaller manageable
sections, with good use of pictures, maps, posters, background
information boxes and, at the end of each chapter, thoughtful
discussion questions.
The topic of genocide is an extremely difficult emotional and
intellectual journey to travel in a single volume; hence the
attraction of breaking down the complex subject matter into more
manageable steps. While intended for a senior high school audience,
this is a well-crafted and balanced volume that would be an excellent
introduction for any adult. I continue to use the book with high
school classes. Particularly useful for teachers, an electronic
version can also be downloaded from the Facing History website:
www.facinghistory.org/
Peter Balakian, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and
America's Response (New York, Harper Collins, 2003, ISBN:
0-06-019840-0; 475 pages).
Peter Balakian is a well-known Armenian-American poet, academic and
political history author. Known primarily for three books on the
Armenian Genocide (Black Dog of Fate (1997), The Burning Tigris (2003)
and Armenian Golgotha (2009), the latter by his great uncle Grigoris
Balakian), Peter is a high-profile public figure who speaks eloquently
on the Genocide.
Reflecting his literary training, the writing in The Burning Tigris is
poignant and profoundly moving. Many American readers have been
influenced by this volume. Balakian divides the book into four major
sections, commencing with the 1890s Hamidian Massacres and subsequent
American humanitarian relief efforts. The next section describes the
Young Turks violent revolutionary seizure of power and the impact of
World War I which hastened the draconian sense of urgency, growing
state secrecy and centralized coercive planning for genocide. The
heroic efforts of international witnesses such as American Ambassador
Henry Morgenthau, other diplomatic staff and missionaries are
described in the next section. The final portion notes the seemingly
doomed efforts of Woodrow Wilson for a more just post-war world and
the precedent-setting, but largely ineffective Ottoman Courts-Martial
in Constantinople. The epilogue deals with the problem of continued
Turkish government genocide denial and American complicity in this.
The book is accompanied by a substantial collection of heart-wrenching
black and white photographs.
While other more detailed scholarly works by Vahakn Dadrian, Richard
Hovannisian and Taner Akcam are available on the Armenian Genocide,
The Burning Tigris offers a very readable narrative and can serve as
an effective introductory volume for non-Armenian readers. It is
readily available at many bookstores.
Taner Akcam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of
Turkish Responsibility (New York, Metropolitan Books, 2006; ISBN:
13:978-09050-7932-6; 483 pages)
Taner Akcam is the leading Turkish scholar writing on the Armenian
Genocide. He is a remarkably brave academic who has pioneered in the
use of extensive Ottoman and German archival sources and offered
innovative themes. As a professor of History, he currently occupies
the Kaloosdian/Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark
University. Most recently, he has co-authored with Vahakn Dadrian the
pioneering volume Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials.
The title A Shameful Act is taken from a critical comment by Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk about the treatment of the Armenians during WW I.
Akcam's book commences with the challenges facing the crumbling
Ottoman Empire and the bleak and bloody fate of its non-Muslim
population as the multinational Empire is radically transformed into a
nationalist Turkish Republic. The Empire's loss of its Balkan lands
was a traumatic shock that unleashed a wave of desperate and angry
Muslim refugees. Under the conditions of war, the Armenian question
took on an urgent and dramatic turn.
Akcam's focus is on the centralized decision-making of the
revolutionary Young Turk ruling elite and their draconian decision to
commit genocide. The documentary evidence offered is impressive, with
a great amount from Turkish primary sources. It is meticulous
scholarship updated from a book Akcam originally published in Turkish
in Ankara in 1999. Despite the enormous number of footnotes, this
English translation is well-written and is an important volume on the
Armenian Genocide. The Turkish language version has already had a
major impact in Turkey.
Given the focus on the Turkish political-military decision-making
elite and its genocidal decisions, there is at times less descriptive
account about the enormous suffering of the Armenians. That was not
the primary purpose of this volume. The goal was to document Turkish
malevolent intent, planning and responsibility. This volume achieves
that educational goal resoundingly.
That said, it does raise a question that often arises in books on
genocide. To understand why such terrible events occur, we must look
at the causes. Hence we need to analyze the perceptions, motives,
plans and deeds of the people who commit genocide. However, above all
we need to understand what the victims experienced and the enormous
impact of genocide, both in the past and ongoing. To understand the
cause of genocide we must study the perpetrators, but to really
comprehend what genocide involves, we must first and foremost listen
to the voices and words of the victims. As brave and pioneering as
Akcam is as a scholar, his volume seems more suited as a second, more
advanced book to read, not as an introductory account of the Armenian
Genocide. That said, this is probably the best book for a Turkish
audience to read.
Robert Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian
Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago, University of Chicago Press,
1992; ISBN: 0-226-51990-2; 363 pages)
Robert Melson, a survivor of the Holocaust, is an illustrious,
pioneering genocide scholar. He was a distinguished professor of
political science and co-director of Jewish Studies Program at Purdue
University.
His book was an early major contribution to the literature on the
Armenian Genocide and is still highly cited in academic circles. It is
an impressive comparative volume which looks in depth at both the
Holocaust of World War II and the Armenian Genocide of World War I.
This is a remarkable volume with extensive documentation, a powerful
analytical framework, and a wonderfully effective writing style, that
is no doubt enhanced by his personal experiences as a child having
fled genocide.
The book is divided into three major historical sections. The first
explores the background and conditions in the pre-revolutionary ancien
regime of the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Germany. The second section
documents the violent revolutionary goals and ideology of the Young
Turk and Nazi parties. The concluding section compares the
similarities and differences between the Armenian Genocide and the
Holocaust and explores the ruthlessly ambitious and violent nature of
revolutionary genocidal regimes. Chapter #8 is often reprinted
justifiably in edited genocide collections. It is one of the best
comparative summaries in existence of the two genocides.
While the book is analytically comparative, the format proceeds with
one chapter on the desperate plight of Armenians, followed by one on
the deadly fate of so many Jews. Due to the strong analytical
framework employed, the reader is successfully pulled along in the
twinning of the case studies. The Holocaust is the most known genocide
and the comparison, both of similarities and differences, with the
Armenian Genocide is quite instructive, even for an advanced reader.
This is a book that I have often used as one of the core texts in my
university classes on genocide. Melson's book was praised by my
students. If I were to strongly recommend only one book for Armenians
to read on the 1915 genocide, this would probably be the volume I
would select. Part of the reason for this is that I have found that
too often Armenians lack a sufficient theoretical understanding of the
common features and dynamics of genocide in general. And too
frequently they also display a woeful lack of sufficient knowledge of
other genocides. This is the book that can address such gaps and
deficiencies. It is also a powerfully effective volume for
non-Armenians to learn about the terrible sequence of events of 1915.
Peter Balakian, Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir (New York, Broadway, 1997,
ISBN: 0-7679-0254-8; 292 pages) (New York, Basic Books, 2009, 13:
978-0-465-91019-6; 357 pages)
Balakian's Black Dog of Fate is an earlier and quite different volume
than his political history The Burning Tigris. Instead Black Dog of
Fate is more a personal odyssey in which he discovers insights into
his family history. It begins with Peter growing up seemingly as a
typical sports-devoted American teenager, but gradually layers of the
extended family history are pealed back to reveal the horrific
suffering of the Armenian people and the need of the survivors to bear
witness. The family autobiography increasingly travels back in time to
his family's roots in the Ottoman Empire and the terrible turmoil of
1915. This personal memoir probes beneath the surface of a peaceful
ordinary life in New Jersey suburbia to reveal the almost hidden, but
powerful memories of genocide.
Vast numbers like one and a half million are exceedingly difficult to
comprehend and can be numbing for the outsider. But personal family
accounts can be profoundly moving and extremely effective in
communicating to the reader the emotional magnitude of the losses
involved in genocide. Black Dog of Fate had a major impact on many
non-Armenians and young Diaspora Armenians. It received a glowing New
York Times recommendation and was reprinted in an expanded anniversary
edition just over a decade later. It remains a classic introductory
paperback on the 1915 Genocide. For a young teenage reader, it is an
ideal book. For others, it can be a nostalgic and quite moving account
about an adolescent coming of age and acquiring adult insight into one
of the major genocides of the 20th century. It is a memoir about a
land of immigrants, with so many heart-wrenching stories of what their
ancestors have endured. We should learn and remember.
We all need to better learn and understand. These five books can
provide a helpful introduction to this profoundly painful, but crucial
topic. If on April 24, each Armenian family would give a copy of one
of these books to a colleague, friend, public or school library, more
people would have a better chance to know and begin to understand how
1915 has defined so much of the Armenian nation.
Alan Whitehorn is author of a number of books on the Armenian
Genocide, including Just Poems: Reflections on the Armenian Genocide.