Memories of Eyewitness-Survivors of the Armenian Genocide

Memories of Eyewitness-Survivors of the Armenian Genocide: "MEMORIES OF EYEWITNESS-SURVIVORS OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE"

SHOGHER ABRAHAM TONOYAN'S TESTIMONY

SHOGHER ABRAHAM TONOYAN'S TESTIMONY
(Born in 1901, Moosh, Vardenis village)

My grandfather's name was Hovhannes and my grandma's name was Kishmish. In the days of the Sultan they took my grandfather to Istanbul by force. They imprisoned him. My grandfather died in the prison.

I was born in 1901 in the village of Vardenis, Moosh region. There were eight hundred Armenian families in our village. Meghraget (Honey River - in Arm.) flowed through our village. When it rained, the fish came out of the water. We brought drinking water from the fountain in jugs.

The roofs of our houses were covered with earth. The tundir was in the middle of the house. We used to bake lavash (Armenian bread) every day. There was a hearth outside the house and we burned wood in it. Outside, there were two stones at the foot of the wall, upon which there was a cross-shaped iron grate to hold the cauldron.

The house, where we lived, was large. We had no garden. There was a special place in our house where we arranged the folded beds one on top of another, which reached the ceiling. There were no bedsteads. It was a dark world. We raised sheep, cows, buffaloes, horses. We sowed wheat, lentil and linseed. We had twelve buffaloes, eight cows, two hundred sheep. We had a plough. Five-six families came together and ploughed the land and sowed. We had so much wheat that there was no place to store the crop.

The land belonged to the Turks. We paid land tax. The wheat was sown, was harvested and threshed, then the bran was given to the wind. When they finished, a man came from the Turkish government together with the village chief and he brought a stick with him. He drew lines on the wheat pile. The Turk measured seven parts gave them to the owner of the wheat and took away one part. There was no tax for peas, lentil and linseed.

In our house everybody knew his work: they were divided. Seven women lived peacefully in the house, daughters-in-law and sisters-in-law; the eldest woman was the manager. Our daughters-in-law were Voski, Mariam and Naré...

In the evening and morning everyone went to church. Elderly women, young women and girls used to wear their nice clothes and went to church. On holidays we fasted. There was church service every day. Our village had two priests. The Turks killed both of them. There couldn't be any marriage without the church. The bride used to wear nice clothes made of good material, a jacket, on her head there was a head-wear made of silver. Her face was covered with yellow-green-red cloth. Her face remained closed till she had her first child born. The bride's dress was velvet. The clothes of our country were nice. The girls were married at the age of thirteen-fourteen. If she became twenty, they didn't marry her, they said: "She's old, she has remained at home." They used to have many children. They gave the girl a dowry: quilts, mattresses, pillows, shawls and stockings. The bride was given gold rings, golden necklaces as a present. On carnivals dhol-zourna (Armenian national instruments) played: they ate and drank. We made halva: gata. During the feast days we made bishi (pastry fried in oil - in Turk.).

It was hot in our country. There was a shed: in hot weather we used to sit there and talk. The women didn't work outside; they worked only at home. In hot weather we used to bathe in the river every day. We had a well. There was something like a pond where water gathered: horses used to bathe in it and then they let the water flow to the fields.

In Mush there were no doctors; there were hakeems. We were very healthy, we lived well, there wasn't much to care.

There was a school in our village. Children came from ten other villages to our village-school. The school was for boys. Girls didn't go to school; they made handiwork at home. There was a teacher in our village. There were books. The people of our village read the Bible; they read Armenian books.

Until the proclamation of Hurriyet they didn't take young men to the army. My uncle went to the Turkish army.

We had Kurd friends from Kurd villages; they used to come to our house. The plates, spoons, cups for the Kurds were washed and kept in the bread barns. We had no right to eat with them. My cousin was ten years old during the massacre; our Kurd friend took him to their place and saved him. The Kurds were better than the Turks. There are good and bad people among the Turks, there are good and bad people among the Kurds, and there are good and bad people among the Armenians. There are good and bad people among every nation.

Teacher Margar, God bless his soul, was a revolutionary; he fought with the askyars, they took him to Moosh and hanged him. The Turks cut off his head. The Armenians bought his head with gold, took it to St. Karapet of Moosh and buried it under the monastery wall. It is said that a ray of light descended every day on his grave. Margar's grave had become sacred place of pilgrimage for the Armenians.

Under the pretence of taking the youth to serve in the army, the Turks gathered them, took them away and butchered them.

My father Abraham had a rifle, the Turks came and killed him with his own gun, then tied a rope to his neck, pulled him and threw him into the fire and burned him. My mother Altoun saw it, couldn't stand it and died on the spot. My brother Hovhannes sucked his mother's milk only for ten days. My brother and I remained orphans.

On the day of Vardavar (the Transfiguration of Christ), 1915, The Turkish askyars (policemen) brought Chechen brigands from Daghestan to massacre us. They came to our village and robbed everything. They took away our sheep, oxen and properties. Those who were good-looking were taken away. My aunt's young son, who was staying with me, was also taken away, together with all the males in the town. They gathered the young and the elderly in the stables of the Avzut village, set fire and burned them alive. Those cattle-sheds were as large as those of our collective farms. They shut people in the stables of Malkhas Mardo, they piled up stacks of hay round them, poured kerosene and set on fire. Sixty members of our great family were burned in those stables. I do not wish my enemy to see the days I have seen, lao! Only I and my brother were saved. From the beginning, they took away the young pretty brides and girls to turkize them and also they pulled away the male infants from their mothers' arms to make them policemen in the future. The stable was filled with smoke and fire, people started to cough and to choke. Mothers forgot about their children, lao! It was a real Sodom and Gomorrah. People ran, on fire, to and fro, struck against the walls, trod upon the infants and children who had fallen on the ground. ...What I have seen with my eyes, lao! I don't wish the wolves of the mountain to see! They say that, at these distressing scenes, the Turkish mullah hung himself. During that turmoil the greatest part of the people choked and perished. The roof of the stable collapsed and fell upon the dead. I wish I and my little brother had been burned down in that stable and had not seen how sixty souls were burned down alive. I wish I had not seen the cruel and ungodly acts of those irreligious people. The Armenians of the neighboring villages of Vardenis, Meshakhshen, Aghbenis, Avzut, Khevner and others were burnt in the same manner in their stables. I do not wish my enemy to see what I have seen. There was a very old woman among us. Those who knew her called her Polo, Arshak's mother-in-law. She was about one hundred years old. When smoke began to enter the stable, she gathered the children and made them lie on their faces, their nose and mouth on the ground, then she made their mothers lay on them. She made my brother also lie on the ground. She took off her apron, covered him with it and pushed me to lie down on my brother and not let him get up, even if he cried. May God bless her soul. That woman said: "Lao, what's the use of crying, we must act so that from each house one boy remains alive and comes out of the fire, so that their hearth is not extinguished, so that they may tell the world the acts of these godless and ruthless Turks. People, don't get disappointed, don't lose your head, be staunch in your belief. God is great; He shall open a door." I covered my brother with my body. Fallen on his nose and mouth in the dirt of the stable, the poor boy wasn't able to breathe, he wanted to come out. He cried and cried, he cried so much that he fainted and calmed down. When the roof of the stable collapsed, the flame and the smoke escaped from the opening, and air penetrated in the stable. I and my uncle's daughter, Areg, took my unconscious brother by the arms and legs and, treading on burnt logs and corpses, we came out through the breach. There we saw the Turkish soldiers dancing in round, swinging and striking their sabers and singing merrily 'Yürü, yavrum, yürü!' ('Walk, my child, walk!'). Up to this day that song resounds in my ears. That dance, lao, should never be danced in an Armenian house; that's the dance of the ruthless, godless, wild beasts. Fascinated with the dance they didn't see us. I put my brother on my back and ran away. I escaped and entered the nearby reeds. When dark fell I took my brother and ran away. How far did I run, or where, I don't know? Suddenly I saw people coming towards us. I took my brother and hid under the shrubs. Then I heard those people speaking Armenian. I ran and joined the group. That was Andranik's group. May I die before his foot-dust! We went. Wherever we went the Turks cut our way. We went to Persia together with Andranik, on the way to Khoy, the Turks were in front of us. We ran away: we went to Nakhidjevan, Gharabagh, Ghapan, Goris, Sissian, Sevan... Eh, lao, where didn't we escape to, where didn't we suffer! From the Goris pastures we came to Talin. What days I've seen, lao, I don't wish my enemy to see!

In a village near Sissian or Goris - its name was Aghoudi-Vaghoudi - the refugees had gathered wheat ears about 5-6 kg. Together with 8-10 small children they had gone to the water mill of the valley to grind the wheat. Those children went and didn't come back. Grown-up men went to see what was the matter. What did they see? I wish my eyes had become blind, so that I wouldn't see... The Azeri-Turks had filled the children into the chimney of the mill and had burned them. Lao, the Turks here don't differ from the Turks there. To tell the truth, they are even worse, more pitiless and crueler than the Turks of our country.

They came and told Andranik that the Turks had filled the young boys into the chimney and had burned them alive. Andranik pasha took off his papakh, knelt on the ground and swore that he would avenge the young boys' massacre. He did avenge. He made short work of the Turks of that village, may I fall a victim at Andranik's feet.

In 1922 we came to the Talin region, to the Mehriban (now: Katnaghbyur) village. This village had been an Armenian village. The Turks had occupied and destroyed our churches; when they began constructing the road, they dug the ground and many khachkars were found. I married Grigor Tonoyan from Sassoun, Arpi village. My husband became the first chairman of our village-council. He had no education, but he was very intelligent. Of my ill fate, he died in 1955. I have brought up nine children. Their names are: Aghavni, Vardoush, Gulnaz, Mkrtich, Sarkis, Vachagan, Hreghen, Anahit, Shoushik. I have thirty-six grand-children and great-grand-children. They are good children. None of them became a hooligan.

My brother got his education in the orphanage of Kars, he became a well-educated teacher. I wish I hadn't given him to the orphanage, he had better stayed with me and became a choban (shepherd - in Turk.), then he would have married, have his family, his children, he would have filled what the Turks had emptied. I saved my baby brother from the Turks' sword and fire, thinking there wouldn't be other swords. I said: "This is Armenia: there aren't any Turks or fire here. I thought, let him study and become an educated person and let him tell the world what we saw. How should I know, lao, that there would be the 1937 exile [of Stalin period in the USSR] for us?"

My brother Hovhannes Abrahamian was born in 1912 in Moosh. My brother came from the orphanage, he went to Russia, Krasnodar, then he came to Meghri, Aparan as a school-inspector, then he became director of Talin - Azizbekov, Gndevaz village schools. In 1937 he was accused as a member of the Dashnak party. 1937 was a year of harvest. They took him away, they took away many, many people, they took away my only-born brother as well. They connected my brother with Yeghishé Charents and Aghassi Khandjian and they took him away: they took him away and they ruined him. I freed him from the mouth of the beast, I saved him and brought him here and I threw him into the mouth of the godless hyena. The godless and impious hyena took away my only brother; it took him away and devoured him. I cry night and day. I will cry up to my grave. I want my brother's name to be written on my grave-stone. In this big, large world I have no one else left besides my children, nothing else, I'm all alone...

My son Sarkis¹ is my sole hope and protector. God is in Heaven, here, below is Sargis. My son Sargis took me by the hand and we went to the Monument of the Genocide [in Yerevan]; mourning and crying I lay flowers there and it seemed to me all my burned ones were there. It was the Tomb of all my lost ones. I cry very much, I want to go to our land. I want to go and drink the sweet water of our Meghraget, I want to breathe the fresh air of our mountains, of my sweet land. The taste and smell of our land was different, lao. I want very much to go to our land. I hope, by God, I know, I won't see it, but my children, my grand-children shall see it, our Moosh will become Armenia, as Yerevan is our city today.

I wish all the Armenians hope, love, faith honesty and conscience. This country is good, but it doesn't believe in God. If you have conscience, you are righteous; your soul is holy.



1 Shogher Tonoyan's son, Doctor Sargis Tonoyan, has told us about his uncle Hovhannes Abrahamian's and Armenian poet Yeghishé Charents's friendship. It turned out that Charents and Hovhannes had been in the same jail in 1937. Doctor of Historical Sciences, Colonel Armenak Manoukian has discovered from the archives of the Ministry of State Security, Republic of Armenia, Y. Charents's poem "He Burned the 'Capital'," where the great poet has written about his prison life and has dedicated several verses to our tormented narrator Shogher Tonoyan:
Holding grand-son by the hand,
And a sack on her shoulder,
Poor old Shogho her head bent low,
Implored the guard of the prison:
"It is three days we have left home,
And we're waiting for our turn,
To hand over some clothes and bread."
But who was listening to her?
"The chief of guards came," they said.
Poor old Shogho ran to him.
"About meeting with him again?
Then tomorrow...!"

Impressive lecture by Akcam in Amsterdam

Impressive lecture by Akcam in Amsterdam (18 December 2006)

 
By I. Drost

 

Well documented and eloquent, Turkish professor of History Taner Akcam, held a lecture at University of Amsterdam on 18 December 2006. The meeting was organised by CREA Studium Generale in cooperation with Humanist Broadcasting Foundation (HUMAN) and Dutch Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Taner Akcam was invited to give a lecture in Amsterdam because of the current debate in the Dutch media and politics on the Armenian Genocide. HUMAN wanted to contribute in a positive way to this debate by improving the knowledge on this matter. The event coincided with the publication of Akcams new book A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, which will be published in Dutch in May 2007.

 

Prior to the lecture the participants to this event, among whom many members of Turkish and Armenian communities of the Netherlands, watched the Dutch documentary A wall of silence by Dorothee Forma, a HUMAN production in 1997. This documentary film parallels the personal and professional lives of Armenian scholar Vahakn Dadrian and Turkish researcher Taner Akcam and their call for recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

 

Introducing Taner Akcam professor Erik-Jan ZՖrcher, professor of Turkish language and culture at the University of Leiden, mentioned that Akcam is one of the scholars, who presents the state of the art in his field of research. He combines in his research Armenian scientific publications, documents from Ottoman archives and Turkish Military Tribunal of 1919 as well as documents found in the German archives.

 

After Akcams speech many Turks stood up to protest rather than ask questions, but Akcam peacefully and effectively managed to give clear response and at the same time tried to pacify the Turks by repeating the statement: we have to learn to talk.

 

Akcam focussed in his lecture on his findings in Ottoman archives, especially the material available in the Prime Ministerial Archives (Basbakanlik Osmanli Arsivi) in Istanbul. According to him a number of documents can also be found online. At the same time he mentioned that lots of documents have been removed from the archives. For the cleaning itself there are more than enough evidences; lots of documents concerning Armenian deportations and massacres have been destroyed during the crime.

 

He explained also how total cleaning of archives is impossible, even when the government demanded to burn documents directly after reading. Orders and documents were always copied for different departments and it is impossible to retrace and destroy all of them.

 

Akcam said that the first deportations and forced migration already began in 1913 with the deportation of Greeks from the Aegean area. This forced migration expanded to the other minorities: Assyrians and Muslims from Bulgaria etc. whose lives were affected in different ways, depending on the intention of the government. While the goal with respect to the non-Turkish Muslims was the Turkification, in the case of the Armenians the intention to annihilate the whole population is evident from many documents. Regarding to the deportation this intention was present as the authorities were aware of the effect of these deportations, but still continued to handle in the same way. Other evident examples are the decrees issued by the government on the Armenian properties, which gives strong indications that the intention of the Young Turk rulers was the annihilation of Armenians. Akcam also explained why UN Genocide Convention (1948) is applicable to Armenian case. For example forcible transfer of Armenian children to Muslims constitutes one of elements of the UN definition of genocide. Also young Armenian girls were forced to marry Muslims. This is well documented.

 

Answering a question about the Turkish proposal to Armenia to form a joint commission of Turkish and Armenian historians, professor ZՖrcher said that a dialogue is necessary, but that the proposal is not as innocent as it seems, because of the conditions put forward by Turkey. Turkey wants the historians to be appointed by the governments and also all political discussion on historical subjects to be suspended during the work of the commission. It should not come as a surprise that Armenia cannot accept the proposal under such conditions.

 

Akcam elaborated on this issue by putting the rhetoric question how such a commission could function when there is no normal relation between the two countries. Even a letter from Ankara first has to go to Tbilisi in Georgia before reaching Armenia. Akcam agrees therefore with Armenian government that a commission is necessary to deal with all issues. He would also suggest the EU to compose a roadmap that includes a step-by-step approach for solving all problems.

 

When Turks who brought up a Turkish translation of a book (1923) by the first Armenian Prime Minister (1918) H. Katchaznouni, in which the author would have admitted the role of Armenian voluntary troops in the Russian army, Taner Akcam said, that even if this is corrrect, would it mean that the genocide had not taken place? And what was the culpability of Armenians living peacefully far from the Russian borders, who had nothing to do with the events in Eastern Turkey? Comparing with World War II, would the fact that one million Germans were killed after the war in several countries mean that the Holocaust did not occur?

 

Referring to the alleged 100 thousand Turks killed by Armenians, Akcam recalled that the figure given by Turkish Military in 1917 in this respect, is in total approximately 5000 deaths, for all the places involved. But we regret every victim, he added.

 

Akcam made a great impression by the way he dealt with sometimes-aggressive way of acting by Turkish audience. He asked to remain calm and show more respect towards each other, but also repeating and reassuring that Turks and Armenians are not the only two peoples in the world that have problems with each other and that there are ways to solve these problems, like it is done in South Africa, and that this process needs time and effort.

 

Source: Abovian Armenian Cultural Association (Netherlands)

21 December 2006

http://www.abovian.nl/blog/archive/2006/12/23/2173.aspx

The truth should be proclaimed loudly

Nouvelles d'Arménie, France
March 17 2007

Robert Fisk : The truth should be proclaimed loudly


samedi 17 mars 2007, Stéphane/armenews

When has any publisher ever tried to avoid publicity for his book ?

Published : 17 March 2007

Stand by for a quotation to take your breath away. It's from a letter
from my Istanbul publishers, who are chickening out of publishing the
Turkish-language edition of my book The Great War for Civilisation.
The reason, of course, is a chapter entitled "The First Holocaust",
which records the genocide of one and a half million Armenians by the
Ottoman Turks in 1915, a crime against humanity that even Lord Blair
of Kut al-Amara tried to hide by initially refusing to invite
Armenian survivors to his Holocaust Day in London.

It is, I hasten to add, only one chapter in my book about the Middle
East, but the fears of my Turkish friends were being expressed even
before the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was so cruelly
murdered outside his Istanbul office in January. And when you read
the following, from their message to my London publishers
HarperCollins, remember it is written by the citizen of a country
that seriously wishes to enter the European Community. Since I do not
speak Turkish, I am in no position to criticise the occasional lapses
in Mr Osman's otherwise excellent English.

"We would like to denote that the political situation in Turkey
concerning several issues such as Armenian and Kurdish Problems,
Cyprus issue, European Union etc do not improve, conversely getting
worser and worser due to the escalating nationalist upheaval that has
reached its apex with the Nobel Prize of Orhan Pamuk and the
political disagreements with the EU. Most probably, this political
atmosphere will be effective until the coming presidency elections of
April 2007... Therefore we would like to undertake the publication
quietly, which means there will be no press campaign for Mr Fisk's
book. Thus, our request from [for] Mr Fisk is to show his support to
us if any trial [is] ... held against his book. We hope that Mr Fisk
and HarperCollins can understand our reservations."

Well indeedydoody, I can. Here is a publisher in a country
negotiating for EU membership for whom Armenian history, the Kurds,
Cyprus (unmentioned in my book) - even Turkey's bid to join the EU,
for heaven's sake - is reason enough to try to sneak my book out in
silence. When in the history of bookselling, I ask myself, has any
publisher tried to avoid publicity for his book ? Well, I can give
you an example. When Taner Akcam's magnificent A Shameful Act : The
Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility was
first published in Turkish - it uses Ottoman Turkish state documents
and contemporary Turkish statements to prove that the genocide was a
terrifying historical fact - the Turkish historian experienced an
almost identical reaction. His work was published "quietly" in Turkey
- and without a single book review.

Now I'm not entirely unsympathetic with my Turkish publishers. It is
one thing for me to rage and roar about their pusillanimity. But I
live in Beirut, not in Istanbul. And after Hrant Dink's foul murder,
I'm in no position to lecture my colleagues in Turkey to stand up to
the racism that killed Dink. While I'm sipping my morning coffee on
the Beirut Corniche, Mr Osman could be assaulted in the former
capital of the Ottoman empire. But there's a problem nonetheless.

Some months earlier, my Turkish publishers said that their lawyers
thought that the notorious Law 301 would be brought against them - it
is used to punish writers for being "unTurkish" - in which case they
wanted to know if I, as a foreigner (who cannot be charged under
301), would apply to the court to stand trial with them. I wrote that
I would be honoured to stand in a Turkish court and talk about the
genocide. Now, it seems, my Turkish publishers want to bring my book
out like illicit pornography - but still have me standing with them
in the dock if right-wing lawyers bring charges under 301 !

I understand, as they write in their own letter, that they do not
want to have to take political sides in the "nonsensical collision
between nationalists and neo-liberals", but I fear that the roots of
this problem go deeper than this. The sinister photograph of the
Turkish police guards standing proudly next to Dink's alleged
murderer after his arrest shows just what we are up against here. Yet
still our own Western reporters won't come clean about the Ottoman
empire's foul actions in 1915. When, for example, Reuters sent a
reporter, Gareth Jones, off to the Turkish city of Trabzon - where
Dink's supposed killer lived - he quoted the city's governor as
saying that Dink's murder was related to "social problems linked to
fast urbanisation". A "strong gun culture and the fiery character of
the people" might be to blame.

Ho hum. I wonder why Reuters didn't mention a much more direct and
terrible link between Trabzon and the Armenians. For in 1915, the
Turkish authorities of the city herded thousands of Armenian women
and children on to boats, set off into the Black Sea - the details
are contained in an original Ottoman document unearthed by Akcam -
"and thrown off to drown". Historians may like to know that the man
in charge of these murder boats was called Niyazi Effendi. No doubt
he had a "fiery character".

Yet still this denial goes on. The Associated Press this week ran a
story from Ankara in which its reporter, Selcan Hacaoglu, repeated
the same old mantra about there being a "bitter dispute" between
Armenia and Turkey over the 1915 slaughter, in which Turkey
"vehemently denies that the killings were genocide". When will the
Associated Press wake up and cut this cowardly nonsense from its
reports ? Would the AP insert in all its references to the equally
real and horrific murder of six million European Jews that right-wing
Holocaust negationists "vehemently deny" that there was a genocide ?
No, they would not.

But real history will win. Last October, according to local newspaper
reports, villagers of Kuru in eastern Turkey were digging a grave for
one of their relatives when they came across a cave containing the
skulls and bones of around 40 people - almost certainly the remains
of 150 Armenians from the town of Oguz who were murdered in Kuru on
14 June 1915. The local Turkish gendarmerie turned up to examine the
cave last year, sealed its entrance and ordered villagers not to
speak of what they found. But there are hundreds of other Kurus in
Turkey and their bones, too, will return to haunt us all. Publishing
books "quietly" will not save us.

http://www.armenews.com/article.php3?id_article=30416

Armenian Genocide At The Berlin Film Festival

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AT THE BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL
By Wolfgang Hobel and Alexander Smoltczyk

Der Spiegel Online, Germany
Feb 14 2007

'The Lark Farm' Wakens Turkish Ghosts

The film "The Lark Farm" is sure to stir up controversy at this year's
Berlin Film Festival. It takes a close look at Turkey's most sensitive
taboo -- the 1915 genocide against the Armenians. Extra security has
been brought in for the Wednesday evening premiere.

All that was missing at the Festival Palace was the wave cheer, given
the level of enthusiasm with which Dieter Kosslick, the festival's
director, staged the opening gala of the 57th Berlin International
Film Festival last Thursday. Once again, Kosslick has managed to
position the German capital as a world-class film city, and this
year's Berlinale again vies with past festivals in its relentless
determination to deliver euphoria.

Photo Gallery: Controversial Film at the Berlin Film Festival Click
on a picture to launch the image gallery (3 Photos) The French film
"La Vie en rose," the first film on the festival's schedule, matched
the effusive mood of the event. In the film, director Olivier Dahan
tells the life story of singer Edith Piaf, sumptuously portraying
her descent into drug addiction and disastrous love affairs. The
president of the festival's jury Paul Schrader -- himself a writer,
director and film critic -- has said he sees film as a kind of museum,
or cultural memory bank. It's an interpretation that clearly applies
to this year's festival.

Steven Soderbergh's black-and-white drama "The Good German," provides
a good example. George Clooney portrays an American reporter in
post-World War II Germany who is tragically in love with a beautiful
but mysterious woman (Cate Blanchett). The American thriller "The Good
Shepherd," starring Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon and Alec Baldwin and
directed by Robert De Niro, is a story about the early days of the
CIA. In the historical drama "Die Falscher" ("The Counterfeiters"),
Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky describes how inmates at the
Nazi concentration camp in Sachsenhausen were forced to print British
pound notes in a counterfeiting workshop.

Taboo in Turkey

But there is one film that will encounter little competition for
being the most important and stirring contribution to the culture of
reminiscence. It deals with the Turkish genocide of the Armenians, a
topic that is still considered taboo in Turkey. Indeed, sentiments on
the issue are so strong that representatives of the Turkish government
are still trying to convince others to avoid the topic as well. Last
week, for example, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul made it
clear that relations between his country and the United States could
be seriously jeopardized by a resolution proposed in the US Congress
that would officially condemn the 1915 genocide committed by the Turks.

"If this resolution is approved," Gul threatened representatives of
the Bush administration, which is seeking a strategic partnership
with Turkey, "why should we continue to support one another?"

FROM THE MAGAZINE Find out how you can reprint this DER SPIEGEL
article in your publication. Close to a century after the Armenian
genocide, the issue remains explosive. When Turkish novelist and Nobel
laureate Orhan Pamuk had the courage to write about the genocide, he
was promptly taken to court by ultra-nationalists. After the murder
of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, Pamuk, fearing for his
own life, fled abroad.

The Armenian genocide is sure to become a hot-button issue in Berlin
-- home to about 250,000 Turks -- where legendary directors Paolo
and Vittoria Taviani will premiere their new film "The Lark Farm"
on Wednesday evening. It is a shocking film about the genocide and
the film's distributor is nervous. The festival management, fearing
riots, has hired additional security.

Bundles of flesh

It is a film filled with vivid images and meaningful gestures. In one
scene, a Turkish soldier stands awkwardly next to an opulently set
table. He carefully picks up the soup bowl, lifts it into the air,
pauses for a moment, and then slowly pours the soup over the damask
tablecloth. The horror begins with the insignificant, setting the
stage for the unimaginable in the most polite of ways.

In another scene, Turkish servants suddenly refuse to unload the
truck belonging to their Armenian masters, saying that it's too
late in the day for work. A short time later, the masters, already
earmarked for slaughter as enemies of the people, have been reduced
to sobbing bundles of flesh as they beg for their lives. Such is how
genocide begins.

In their past masterpieces, "Padre Padrone" (1977) and "Notte di
San Lorenzo" ("The Night of San Lorenzo") (1982), Italian directors
Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, both well into their seventies, dealt with
the human effects of persecution and political violence -- and with
the desire to rebel against fate. While "The Night of San Lorenzo,"
an episode from the Italian resistance movement against Mussolini's
fascist militia, managed to describe the senselessness of violence
with the tools of absurdist comedy, "The Lark Farm" is a deeply
dark melodrama.

In the political inferno the film portrays, Moritz Bleibtreu and Paz
Vega are perfectly cast as tragic lovers. "It is not a film against
Turkey, on the contrary," they say, and rightfully so. But the editors
who published the Danish cartoons that so inflamed the Muslim world
were also in the right. "The Lark Farm" could well become the political
scandal at this year's Berlinale.

Obedience, cowardice, expediencey and vileness

The screenplay, based on a novel by Antonia Arslan -- a literature
professor who now lives in Padua -- deals with the history of Arslan's
family. The novel portrays the Avakians, a respected middle-class
Armenian family that lives in a provincial city, hoping that things
will not take a turn for the worse. The film begins with intimate
scenes of beautiful faces and women wearing long dresses, filmed
in the light of a Vermeer painting. The family patriarch has died,
and even the Turkish Colonel Arkan (Andre Dussollier) bows to pay
his respects to the deceased.

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But then Arkan receives his orders from Istanbul, orders he promptly
obeys. In only a few scenes, the directors depict the mixture of
obedience and cowardice, of expediency and vileness that has always
made ethnic cleansing and pogroms possible.

The men and boys are crucified, castrated and hacked to pieces, and
the women are sent on a starvation march into the deserts of eastern
Anatolia. Nazim, a beggar (played by Palestinian filmmaker Mohammed
Bakri), betrays his masters but then regrets it and attempts to at
least help the women. Youssuf (Moritz Bleibtreu), a Turkish soldier,
is drawn to the family's proud surviving daughter (Paz Vega) and falls
in love with her. In an attempt to flee, Nunik sacrifices herself
to enable her nieces to escape. When Youssuf receives his orders --
"Throw them into the fire first, then cut off their heads" -- he
decapitates Nunik to save her from being burned alive.

The outstanding performances -- and the sheer incomprehensibility
of the events -- keep the film from descending into sentimentality,
despite the costumes and the over-abundance of stage blood. The
Tavianis have managed to produce images the film's viewers will regret
having seen, because these are the kinds of images one has trouble
forgetting. This is both the film's achievement and its curse.

Watching the film is almost unbearable. According to some eyewitnesses,
soldiers gave Armenian mothers the option of killing their newborn
boys themselves. Others say that women were forced to place their
babies in a rucksack and stand back-to-back with another woman,
their arms interlocked and... One doesn't want to know or see what
actually happened.

A muffled silence

This is what Vittorio Taviani has to say about it: "The murder of
the innocent has been a part of theater history since the Greeks,
since Shakespeare. Three years ago we discovered the Armenian tragedy,
almost by accident, when we read the book by Antonia Arslan. We wanted
to tell it with the means at our disposal."

Arsinee Khanjian, a Canadian of Armenian heritage who lost part of
her own family, plays the role of Armineh Avakian. In one scene the
severed head of her husband is thrown into her lap. "She was adamant
about acting in our film. She felt that it was a sort of obligation
to her murdered great-grandparents. We promised her that we would
only shoot this scene once, and without rehearsal," says Paolo
Taviani. "According to the script, she was supposed to scream. But
all that came out was a muffled silence. We left it that way."

The Armenians were Christians, often educated and affluent. As such,
they made for the ideal fifth column when the Ottoman Empire attacked
Russia. But the Ottomans lost the war. According to the official
version in Ankara, the Armenians had to be resettled during the war,
and most of them died as a result of disease and at the hands of
Kurdish tribes. But many contest that version.

"One million Armenians were murdered. This is something hardly anyone
dares to say," said Orhan Pamuk prior to his winning the Nobel Prize in
Literature. His words immediately made Pamuk the victim of nationalist,
hate-mongering propaganda. The persecution and murder of the Armenian
minority remains the foremost trauma of the founding of modern Turkey.

It was, in fact, the "young Turks," those who were eager to found a
new and modern state, who issued the orders which led to the deaths
of the Armenians. Recognizing the genocide as such would be tantamount
to admitting that the spiritual founders of modern Turkey were men who
today would be easily convicted of war crimes by the International War
Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. And yet the majority of officers charged
with crimes against the Armenians were promptly released after the war.

Efforts in vain

For the past 70 years, Hollywood studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has had
plans to film the Armenian epic "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh," by
Czech-born poet, playwright and novelist Franz Werfel. And Sylvester
Stallone has likewise recently indicated he would be interested
in making the movie. But the project was repeatedly shelved for
political reasons. Keeping NATO's eastern flank happy was apparently
more important that bringing justice to a minority that had already
been heavily decimated.

Even today the European Union avoids using the word "genocide,"
anxious not to cast a shadow on the negotiations over Turkey's bid
for EU membership.

The film is an Italian-French-Bulgarian-Spanish co-production.

Turkey's delegate to the European film fund Eurimage attempted to
put a stop to the Taviani project. But this time Turkey's efforts
were in vain.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,466427,00.html 

Does UN act in Turkey's favor?

---

Does UN act in Turkey's favor?

---

PanARMENIAN.Net

Does UN act in Turkey's favor?
 
Does it really make any difference how many people
were killed - one and a half million, six, or even if
only one person? Genocide is genocide, arithmetic is 
not needed here.
31.01.2007 GMT+04:00
   
On January 25 the UN General Assembly adopted a
Resolution condemning the denial of the Holocaust as
of a historical fact. The Document was supported by
103 countries out of the 192 Member States, no voting 
was held. The Resolution was submitted for
consideration on Tuesday by the US representative, it
contains a call to all the UN Member States for the
absolute denial of any doubts of the indisputability
of the Holocaust. 

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ No definite country was mentioned in
the document, however it was mentioned that `ignoring
the denial of the historical fact of the terrible
Holocaust runs the risk of its repetition'. The date 
was chosen in honor of the liberation day of the
prisoners of the largest concentration camp Oswiecim,
January 27, 1945. Laws banning the Holocaust denial
are applied in 9 EU Member States - Austria, Belgium, 
Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Rumania, the Slovak
Republic, France, and the Czech Republic. 

The adopted Resolution causes embarrassment. On the
one hand everything is quite obvious - genocide, in
its any kind of manifestation must be recognized and 
condemned. On the other hand it is a double standard
policy, which by the way shows its worth in its most
obnoxious form. The slaughter and deportation of 2
million Armenians in the Ottoman Turkey, which was
 placed on a national basis, is considered only `tragic
events of 1915'. Bewilderment is caused by another
article of the Resolution, which says that `ignoring
the historical fact of the terrible Holocaust runs the 
larger risk of its repetition'. This is what Armenia
has just been talking about for so long, mentioning
that if in due time the League of Nations had
recognized `the events of 1915' as a Genocide, it 
could have helped to avoid the Holocaust, or at least
the later wouldn't be on such a large scale. However
it did not, and thus impunity of the murders on racial
grounds followed one another. Nevertheless Hitler's 
famous phrase, which is denied by the Turkish
historians, was uttered. One very essential detail
should be mentioned here; according to some sources,
the slaughter of the Armenians, was `provoked' by
Germany, which was Turkey's ally in the First World 
War. The German advisors of course didn't call the
Turks to exterminate the Armenians, but they didn't
display great efforts to stop them from doing it
either. In 1915 the German Ambassador to Istanbul, 
Wangenheim was asked to stop the deportation, for he
was able to do that. But he didn't, grounding on the
absence of the instructions from Berlin. By the way,
according to some sources in 1915 Wangenheim died from 
cardiac rupture. It is said, he couldn't endure the
stories about the horror in Western Armenia. But all
this is already in the past, and we are more concerned
with the present, which is full of anti-Armenian 
propaganda disseminated by the Turkish Government.
`Historical indisputability of the Holocaust is
nothing but reality, and it must be condemned, but the
denial of the Armenian Genocide, which is still
continuing on a rather large scale, is of more vital 
importance than any case of the Holocaust denial. Here
the real point is that the Armenian Genocide must not
be disregarded. The Armenian Genocide was the first in
the XX Century and is immediately linked with the 
Holocaust, dated later. One should not put any
difference between them, as the denial of the Armenian
Genocide is the denial of the Holocaust. Besides, the
hypocrisy is obvious - even today Genocides are
committed in Darfur, Rwanda and the international 
community does very little to stop them', says expert
Richard Giragosyan. Another question that comes to
mind is; what are the politicians guided by while
adopting such Resolutions? Maybe by the number of the 
victims? Does it really make any difference how many
people were killed - - one and a half million, six, or
even if only one person? Genocide is genocide,
arithmetic is not needed here. Or else once again the 
Armenians become victims for the Turkey's sake, whose
turning its back to the West is completely undesired.

P

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AN ISSUE IN SWEDEN

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AN ISSUE IN SWEDEN
by Afram Barryakoub

Spero News
Nov 29 2006

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has received an interpellation
from parliament demanding an investigation into finding of human
remains of genocide.

The finding of a mass grave in south eastern Turkey, believed to date
from the 1915 genocide of Assyrians and Armenians, and the Turkish
government's silence regarding the finding has prompted a debate in
the Swedish parliament on the matter.

It was on October 17 this year that villagers from Xirabebaba (Kuru)
in southeastern Turkey came across a mass grave when digging a grave
for one of their deceased. The villagers took pictures of the skulls
and bones in the mass grave before Turkish military came and blocked
the site.

The villagers were certain that they had found remains of victims of
the 1915 genocide. The military personnel forbade the villagers to
tell anyone about the site and then closed it. Some of the villagers
chose not to follow the orders of the military and told the story to
a local newspaper who followed up on the story.

As soon as the military learned that someone has leaked this
information to the press, they pressed the villagers to give the
names of those responsible for this. Since then journalists trying
to get near the mass grave have been denied access by the military.

Turkey still denies that its Christian population of Assyrians (also
called Chaldeans and Syriacs), Greeks and Armenians were subjected
to genocides. That could explain why the Turkish state and most of
the Turkish media has remained silent about the finding.

But now one of Turkey's most popular weekly magazines, Nokta,
has highlighted the mass grave finding with a cover story in the
latest issue with the main heading "Again acting the three monkeys -
a mass grave was found one month ago in Nusaybin and the jurisdiction,
execution and legislation bodies as well as the media are silent."

The writer, Talin Suciyan, accuses the Turkish state of turning a
deaf ear to the mass grave finding. "None of the three 'powers' of
our democracy, legislation, jurisdiction or execution made a move to
deal with the issue. And when the fourth power - the media - swept
the bones under the carpet (the Turkish) public remained completely
unaware of the issue." she writes.

In fact, the only Turkish group that has reacted to the finding is
the Turkish Human Rights Association who sent an open letter to the
ministry of interior calling for an investigation into the matter.

The mass grave finding has yet to enter Turkish politics but in Sweden
the matter has stirred up a debate on the highest levels, much due
to the efforts of the Assyrian Chaldean Syriac Association (ACSA).

The news about the mass finding was distributed by Tidningarnas
Telegrambyrå (TT), Sweden's top news agency and was thereafter
published in several Swedish media, including the two leading morning
papers Dagens Nyheter (DN) and Svenska Dagbladet (Svd).

As a result of the above the mass grave issue has now entered Swedish
politics as MP Hans Linde from the left party recently submitted an
interpellation to the Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, asking
for an independent commission of scientists and historians to examine
the findings.

The foreign minister must now ask the foreign ministry to launch an
investigation into the matter before he can respond to MP Hans Linde.

The response of the foreign minister on this issue is due to be
presented on the 12 of December before parliament.

Turkey's 'New' Approaches In Armenian Genocide Issue

---

TURKEY'S 'NEW' APPROACHES IN ARMENIAN GENOCIDE ISSUE
By Kiro Manoyan

Yerkir, Armenia
Nov 27 2006

The "exciting" announcements that Turkey makes about applying new
tactics when dealing with the Armenian Genocide issue are nothing
more than a new packaging for the old tactics.

The aim is the same as before: to dispute the facts of the
Armenian Genocide for years with a goal to derail the process of
the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide. In other
words, this "new" tactics pursues the same goal as Turkish Prime
Minister Erdogan's 2005 proposal to set up a "bilateral commission of
historians," and by transforming the issue into a historical dispute,
remove it from the political agenda.

Speaking two days ago at a meeting that was discussing his ministry's
budget for the next year, Turkish Foreign Minister Gul said the
Armenian Genocide will be among the key issues for Turkey's foreign
policy in the coming ten years because it stands in the way of Turkey's
relations with many countries. He also said they were seeking advice
of Turkish and foreign lawyers for possibilities to take the case to
the "international court."

The Turkish foreign minister's vague description of the "international
court" was immediately explained by Turkish retired diplomats Sukru
Elekdag and Gunduz Aktan. Aktan, who was also a member of the infamous
Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission, spoke about it at a recent
lecturing tour to Canada.

It turned out that the "international court" is not the International
Court of Justice but the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Though both
courts operate in the same building in the Hague, their missions and
authorities are quite different as their names show.

Apparently, the Turkish diplomatic circles are trying to first of
all make a propaganda move. Aktan told Milliyet newspaper, "Though
the trial process may take 5-10 years, but it ensures us a moral
advantage now. If Armenia or France refuse to appear in the court,
they will be embarrassed in the world."

According to Aktan, the process of passing the Armenian Genocide to
the international law assumes: 1.Set up a commission to check the
reality of the documents kept in the archives of Turkey, Armenian
Patriarchate of Constantinople, Boston chapter of ARF, Russia, USA,
Germany, England and France; 2.Carry out statistical work to study the
ethnic changes of the population; 3.Study military movements and the
activities of the Armenian armed groups; 4.Find out the causes of the
deaths during the deportation; 5.Study the registration books of the
hospital for the period in question; 6.Though a forensic examination
determine the ethnicity of those buried in common graves.

The Turkish diplomats are trying to accomplish the goal that was
supposed to be reached by the failed "bilateral commission of
historians."

But the thing is that Article 9 of the 1948 Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide clearly
states: "Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the
interpretation, application or fulfillment of the present Convention,
including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide
or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3, shall be submitted
to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the
parties to the dispute."

In other words, the Turkish diplomats, violating the rules of the
Convention, plan to take the issue to another direction, knowing well
that Armenia has not signed under the 1899 and 1907 Hague conventions
that have set up the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

If the Turkish diplomacy really wants to take the problems between
Armenia and Turkey - of which the Armenian Genocide is just one part
- to the international law, the issues should first of all include
issues such: 1.Restoration of Turkey's eastern border as determined by
US President Wilson under the Sevres Treaty of August 10, 1920; 2.The
issue of non-validity of the December 2, 1920 Treaty of Alexandrapol;
3.The non-validity of the treaties signed on March 16, 1921 in Kars,
and on October 23, 1921 in Moscow; 4.Violation by Turkey since 1991
of the main principles set in the Kars Treaty; 5.The illegality of
replacing the 1920 Severs Treaty with the July 24, 1923 Lausanne
Treaty.

However, if Turkey wishes to determine its responsibility in the
Armenian Genocide through an international court, it should turn to
the International Court of Justice.

It is important to reveal the real goals and efficiency of this new
Turkish fraud for the international public opinion.

Bible verses

Revelation 6:9-11 (New International Version)

9When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. 10They called out in a loud voice, "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?" 11Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.

Psalm 13

1. How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2. How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3. Look on me and answer, O LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;
4. my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5. But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6. I will sing to the LORD,
for he has been good to me.

Psalm 42

9. I say to God my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”
10. My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
11. Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.

Lamentations 5

1. Remember, O LORD, what has happened to us;
look, and see our disgrace.
2. Our inheritance has been turned over to aliens,
our homes to foreigners.
3. We have become orphans and fatherless,
our mothers like widows.
4. We must buy the water we drink;
our wood can be had only at a price.
5. Those who pursue us are at our heels;
we are weary and find no rest.

Remember The Armenian Genocide (link)

This report is a collection of research articles offered as evidence of the veracity of the Genocide inflicted on the Armenian peoples by the Ottoman Empire, to justifiably qualify for inclusion in the commemoration of holocausts perpetrated throughout history.

http://www.rememberarmenia.co.uk/