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HOW NOVEL ABOUT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BECAME BESTSELLER IN WARSAW GHETTO
Jewish Daily Forward
April 17 2015
Inspirational Epic Spurred Resistance of Doomed Jews
By Edna S. Friedberg
Published April 17, 2015, issue of April 24, 2015.
By any measure, the Warsaw Ghetto was hell on earth. An urban prison
zone in the middle of German-occupied Warsaw, after November 1940
the ghetto was enclosed by a ten-foot high wall that was topped
with barbed wire and tightly guarded. German authorities packed over
400,000 Jews of all ages into an area of just 1.3 square miles, with an
average of 7.2 persons living in each room. Conditions were miserable:
inadequate food, no sanitation, little heat. By mid-1942, 83,000 Jews
had died of starvation or disease. Of those who managed to survive,
the German authorities deported almost three hundred thousand of them
to the Treblinka killing center to be gassed.
And yet in Warsaw and many other ghettos across occupied Poland, Jews
organized clandestine schools and libraries, smuggling in books and
other cultural materials in collective acts of spiritual resistance.
Arguably the most popular book in the Warsaw Ghetto was the novel
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, by Austrian-Czech writer Franz Werfel.
The Nazis had burned Werfel's earlier writings in May 1933, labeling
them the poison fruits of a Jewish author who advocated pacifism,
love for all mankind, and hostility to extreme nationalism and Nazism.
First published in Austria just a few months after the Nazi book
burnings, Musa Dagh detailed the systematic expulsion and murder
of at least one million Armenian Christians by authorities in the
Ottoman Empire starting in 1915-16-a series of actions we now call
the Armenian genocide.
Based on actual events, Werfel shone a light on a group of Armenian
men fighting under desperate conditions. Quickly translated from its
original German into many languages, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was
critically acclaimed and widely read in both the United States and
Europe, except in Nazi Germany where it was soon banned.
Werfel cast the Armenian characters' armed revolt against their
oppressors in a heroic vein. As the editor of The New York Times Book
Review described the novel in 1934, "[It is a] story which must rouse
the emotions of all human beings... . a story of men accepting the
fate of heroes... . It gives us the lasting sense of participation
in a stirring episode of history."
Just a few years later, Werfel's tale of a besieged people taking
control of its destiny captured the imagination of those imprisoned
in German ghettos. Copies of the novel were passed from hand-to-hand
among members of Jewish youth groups marshalling the courage to
revolt. When leaders of the underground movement in the BiaÅ~Bystok
Ghetto debated whether to take up arms, they invoked Werfel's book.
A young man wrote, "Only one thing remains for us: to organize
collective resistance in the ghetto, at any cost; to consider the
ghetto our 'Musa Dagh', to write a proud chapter of Jewish BiaÅ~Bystok
and our movement into history." Many leaders of the resistance in
the Warsaw Ghetto also drew strength from the struggle at Musa Dagh.
Across Europe, Jews in mortal danger looked back one generation to
the annihilation of the Armenians and saw themselves.
We study history for inspiration and for warning. But first we must
remember-and the Armenian genocide has been almost totally forgotten
in this country. In 1915 alone, The New York Times published 145
stories about Ottoman attacks, including startling death tolls.
Millions of Americans supported food and clothing drives to help
Armenian refugees in what may have been the first public charitable
appeal of its scale. Yet how many Americans today have even heard of
the atrocities that rallied their great-grandparents to action?
This month marks one hundred years since the beginning of the massive
crime perpetrated against the Armenians. Raphael Lemkin, the man
who coined the word "genocide" in 1944 and who himself was deeply
influenced by Armenian suffering, wrote that "the function of memory is
not only to register past events, but to stimulate human conscience."
Haunted by the loss of his own family during the Holocaust, Lemkin
declared, "I have transformed my personal disaster into a moral
striking force."
If we forget what happened in 1915, which forces truly prevail? Which
books will guide our actions?
Edna S. Friedberg is a historian at the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum
http://forward.com/articles/218734/how-novel-about-armenian-genocide-became-bestselle/
Jewish Daily Forward
April 17 2015
Inspirational Epic Spurred Resistance of Doomed Jews
By Edna S. Friedberg
Published April 17, 2015, issue of April 24, 2015.
By any measure, the Warsaw Ghetto was hell on earth. An urban prison
zone in the middle of German-occupied Warsaw, after November 1940
the ghetto was enclosed by a ten-foot high wall that was topped
with barbed wire and tightly guarded. German authorities packed over
400,000 Jews of all ages into an area of just 1.3 square miles, with an
average of 7.2 persons living in each room. Conditions were miserable:
inadequate food, no sanitation, little heat. By mid-1942, 83,000 Jews
had died of starvation or disease. Of those who managed to survive,
the German authorities deported almost three hundred thousand of them
to the Treblinka killing center to be gassed.
And yet in Warsaw and many other ghettos across occupied Poland, Jews
organized clandestine schools and libraries, smuggling in books and
other cultural materials in collective acts of spiritual resistance.
Arguably the most popular book in the Warsaw Ghetto was the novel
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, by Austrian-Czech writer Franz Werfel.
The Nazis had burned Werfel's earlier writings in May 1933, labeling
them the poison fruits of a Jewish author who advocated pacifism,
love for all mankind, and hostility to extreme nationalism and Nazism.
First published in Austria just a few months after the Nazi book
burnings, Musa Dagh detailed the systematic expulsion and murder
of at least one million Armenian Christians by authorities in the
Ottoman Empire starting in 1915-16-a series of actions we now call
the Armenian genocide.
Based on actual events, Werfel shone a light on a group of Armenian
men fighting under desperate conditions. Quickly translated from its
original German into many languages, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was
critically acclaimed and widely read in both the United States and
Europe, except in Nazi Germany where it was soon banned.
Werfel cast the Armenian characters' armed revolt against their
oppressors in a heroic vein. As the editor of The New York Times Book
Review described the novel in 1934, "[It is a] story which must rouse
the emotions of all human beings... . a story of men accepting the
fate of heroes... . It gives us the lasting sense of participation
in a stirring episode of history."
Just a few years later, Werfel's tale of a besieged people taking
control of its destiny captured the imagination of those imprisoned
in German ghettos. Copies of the novel were passed from hand-to-hand
among members of Jewish youth groups marshalling the courage to
revolt. When leaders of the underground movement in the BiaÅ~Bystok
Ghetto debated whether to take up arms, they invoked Werfel's book.
A young man wrote, "Only one thing remains for us: to organize
collective resistance in the ghetto, at any cost; to consider the
ghetto our 'Musa Dagh', to write a proud chapter of Jewish BiaÅ~Bystok
and our movement into history." Many leaders of the resistance in
the Warsaw Ghetto also drew strength from the struggle at Musa Dagh.
Across Europe, Jews in mortal danger looked back one generation to
the annihilation of the Armenians and saw themselves.
We study history for inspiration and for warning. But first we must
remember-and the Armenian genocide has been almost totally forgotten
in this country. In 1915 alone, The New York Times published 145
stories about Ottoman attacks, including startling death tolls.
Millions of Americans supported food and clothing drives to help
Armenian refugees in what may have been the first public charitable
appeal of its scale. Yet how many Americans today have even heard of
the atrocities that rallied their great-grandparents to action?
This month marks one hundred years since the beginning of the massive
crime perpetrated against the Armenians. Raphael Lemkin, the man
who coined the word "genocide" in 1944 and who himself was deeply
influenced by Armenian suffering, wrote that "the function of memory is
not only to register past events, but to stimulate human conscience."
Haunted by the loss of his own family during the Holocaust, Lemkin
declared, "I have transformed my personal disaster into a moral
striking force."
If we forget what happened in 1915, which forces truly prevail? Which
books will guide our actions?
Edna S. Friedberg is a historian at the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum
http://forward.com/articles/218734/how-novel-about-armenian-genocide-became-bestselle/