Posted on 08/29/2003 9:10:39 PM PDT by Destro
The long out of print, well known book "THE BLIGHT OF ASIA" was published in 1926 in the USA and written by the American General Consul in Smyrna in 1922, who was an eye witness of all the perils of that city and of its Christian inhabitants. This testimony comes from a high-ranking American diplomat, who served in this capacity in that part of the world for about 30 years, and was therefore a knowledgeable and impartial source.
“What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.”
REVELATIONS, I:11
At the Cannes film festival this year, "Ararat" has won all sorts of praise. The film by Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter) tells the story of the Armenian holocaust in 1922. I suspect Ararat will become to the Armenians what Schindlers List has become to the Jews. Since Turkey is apparently vowing to fight its distribution (New York Times, Arts, 6/7/02) it remains to be seen whether the film will make it to the states.
Seeing the movie makes you want to buy an arsenal.....
Being armenian, I already have....
There is an armenian saying," Your borders are defined by your guns."
It has always rang true, always will.
ps: re the turks, maybe there are some that now have social redeeming qualities, however, the diehard muslim crosses between Gengis Khan's hordes and middle easterners? screw em.
I originally wrote much, much more, but I will bite my tongue.
More important than the number of Armenians subjected to the Ottoman Empire was the status and conditions under which they lived. The Ottoman Turks ruled by means of the millet system, which recognized the rights of non-Muslims to practice their religion, use their language, and preserve their culture, but which also stratified society along confessional lines. All Christians were second-class citizens, inferior in status, discriminated against, and deprived of critical rights, especially the right to bear arms even for the purpose of self-defense. While those barriers could be crossed, the price of acceptance into the legitimate fold was the shedding of one's former identifications.
The possibility of inclusion presented a serious dilemma to those who would not join the Muslim community. By continuing to adhere to their institutions, to their culture, language, and religion, the Armenians, who lived more interspersed among the Muslims than other Christian peoples in the Ottoman Empire, became the object of a specific type of contempt. By choosing to maintain their separate identity, in the eyes of the Turks the Armenians appeared to refuse normative conformity with the dominant class. They were thought of as rejectionists whose presence was an affront to the legitimate social order.
The inferiority of the Armenians was further underlined by their exposure to another brand of stigmatization. The Armenians had been absorbed into the Ottoman Empire as a subservient people. They had waged no war of resistance and had made no attempt to defend themselves from further conquest. As a stateless people, they had not even earned for themselves the badge of defeat in the eyes of the Ottomans. No one would entertain striking a bargain with them. In the hierarchy of the Ottoman system, where the Turks concentrated all power into their hands, the Armenians could never be awarded a function other than servility. Moreover, in a society governed by military might, the servility of the Armenians was regarded as irredeemable.
So, you propose a time limit on atrocities to your kin?
Tell me, do you remember the people jumping out of the towers as they burned, after throwing their babies out the window?
Well, what do you figure is a reasonable time to forget that and grow up...10 years, 50 years, 88 years?....so, in 91 years you wish your offspring to forgive the perps, especially though they and their governments have not denounced the previous actions, and wish to grow up and move on??
Just asking
Musa Dagh (Musa Ler in Armenian) was the site of the famed resistance during the Armenian Genocide. Of the hundreds of villages, towns, and cities across the Ottoman Empire whose Armenian population was ordered removed to the Syrian desert, Musa Dagh was one of only four sites where Armenians organized a defense of their community against the deportation edicts issued by the Young Turk regime beginning in April 1915. By the time the Armenians of the six villages at the base of Musa Dagh were instructed to evict their homes, the inhabitants had grown suspicious of the government's ultimate intentions and chose instead to retreat up the mountain and to defy the evacuation order. Musa Dagh, or the Mountain of Moses, stood on the Mediterranean Sea south of the coastal town of Alexandretta (modern-day Iskenderun) and west of ancient Antioch.
With a few hundred rifles and the entire store of provisions from their villages, the Armenians on Musa Dagh put up a fierce resistance against a number of attempts by the regular Turkish army to flush them out. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Armenians had little expectations of surviving the siege of the mountain when food stocks were depleted after a month. Their only hope was a chance rescue by an Allied vessel that might be patrolling the Mediterranean coast. When two large banners hoisted by the Armenians were sighted by a passing French warship, swimmers went out to meet it. Eventually five Allied ships moved in to transport the entire population of men, women, and children, more than four thousand in all. The Armenians of Musa Dagh had endured for fifty three days from July 21 to September 12, 1915. They were disembarked at Port Said in Egypt and remained in Allied refugee camps until the end of World War I when they returned to their homes. As part of the district of Alexandretta, or Hatay, Musa Dagh remained under French Mandate until 1939. The Musa Dagh Armenians abandoned their villages for a second, and final, time when the area was annexed by Turkey.
In the face of the complete decimation of the Armenian communities of the Ottoman Empire, Musa Dagh became a symbol of the Armenian will to survive. Of the three other sites where Armenians defied the deportation orders, Shabin Karahissar, Urfa, and Van, only the Armenians of Van were rescued when the siege of their city was lifted by an advancing Russian army. The Armenians of Urfa and Shabin Karahissar were either massacred or deported. Musa Dagh stood as the sole instance where the Western Allies at war with the Ottomans averted the death of a community during the Armenian Genocide.
That story inspired the Prague-born Austrian writer, Franz Werfel, to write a novelized version of the events as The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Published in 1933, the book became an instant bestseller, but with the rise of Hitler, Werfel, himself a Jew, fled Vienna that same year. The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was eventually translated into eighteen languages, while Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the Hollywood film company, announced plans for the production of a movie version of the novel. The Turkish ambassador's protestations to the Department of State resulted in the intervention of the United States government in the matter. In response to a veiled threat to ban American-made films from Turkey, MGM studios permanently shelved plans to produce the movie.
In Eastern Europe many Jews read Werfel's The Forty Days of Musa Dagh as a warning about their fate. During the Holocaust years, copies of the novel are reported to have been circulated as a source of inspiration and a call to arms in some of the ghettos to which the Nazis confined the Jews.
September 11, 2001 happened less than two years ago and some people seem to have forgotten. NEVER FORGET!!!
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