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The Star (South Africa)
December 29, 2012 Saturday
E1 Edition
ARMENIA'S BURDEN
by Robert Fisk
Between wars, I lecture on the Middle East. But rarely have I seen an
audience so moved, so trapped by history, so tearful, as one night in
Sharjah last spring.
Nothing I said upset them. But the pictures I showed them were
terrifying. In front of me, young and middle-aged Armenians - well-off
for the most part, businessmen and women, well-educated - sat in an
almost religious silence as they watched a succession of four
photographs.
Each showed the progress of an Armenian death march from Erzerum, old
people, carts, young men with hidden faces, the doomed on their way to
death 97 years ago.
The four pictures were taken by Victor Pitchman, an Austrian soldier
in the Turkish army, who could not have known that these men and women
were about to die.
Nor could they have known. They are heading in a straight line, down a
straight road, women with scarves, over-burdened donkeys, past the
same bunch of trees which feature in each photograph, a pale line of
hills on the far horizon.
All the Armenians of Erzerum were to die at the hands of the Turks in
the 1915 genocide.
There are many photographs of Armenian survivors. And there are
pictures of their corpses. But few show the living just before they
were slaughtered.
These people, in the pictures I had been trawling through from the
Armenian genocide museum in Yerevan, were the living dead. Shellfire,
wounds, death.
Each year, we report this miserable saga. But old wars and other
genocides lean heavily upon us, as they did upon my Armenian audience
in the Gulf.
These were their grandparents and great-grandparents, plodding along,
possessions piled on horse-carts, a pleasant enough, sunny day, clouds
high in the sky.
Only the grave awaits them.
From: Baghdasarian
December 29, 2012 Saturday
E1 Edition
ARMENIA'S BURDEN
by Robert Fisk
Between wars, I lecture on the Middle East. But rarely have I seen an
audience so moved, so trapped by history, so tearful, as one night in
Sharjah last spring.
Nothing I said upset them. But the pictures I showed them were
terrifying. In front of me, young and middle-aged Armenians - well-off
for the most part, businessmen and women, well-educated - sat in an
almost religious silence as they watched a succession of four
photographs.
Each showed the progress of an Armenian death march from Erzerum, old
people, carts, young men with hidden faces, the doomed on their way to
death 97 years ago.
The four pictures were taken by Victor Pitchman, an Austrian soldier
in the Turkish army, who could not have known that these men and women
were about to die.
Nor could they have known. They are heading in a straight line, down a
straight road, women with scarves, over-burdened donkeys, past the
same bunch of trees which feature in each photograph, a pale line of
hills on the far horizon.
All the Armenians of Erzerum were to die at the hands of the Turks in
the 1915 genocide.
There are many photographs of Armenian survivors. And there are
pictures of their corpses. But few show the living just before they
were slaughtered.
These people, in the pictures I had been trawling through from the
Armenian genocide museum in Yerevan, were the living dead. Shellfire,
wounds, death.
Each year, we report this miserable saga. But old wars and other
genocides lean heavily upon us, as they did upon my Armenian audience
in the Gulf.
These were their grandparents and great-grandparents, plodding along,
possessions piled on horse-carts, a pleasant enough, sunny day, clouds
high in the sky.
Only the grave awaits them.
From: Baghdasarian