Armenian Golgotha - book

I have just finished the book, Armenian Golgotha, by Grigoris Balakian, Knopf, 2009). Grigoris Balakian is the great uncle of the translator, Peter Balakian. The first volume, Armenian Golgotha, was published in 1922 in Armenian. Because of a lack of funding the second volume was not published until 1956. These two volumes were edited and published together as this version. I find it incredible that a book of this importance did not find its way immediately into publication, especially in an English language edition.

I found this remarkable book somewhat difficult to read, for two reasons. First, the many personal names, along with the place names, were completely foreign to me. Second, it is a very depressing account of almost unbelievable savagery and greed. Grigoris Balakian was a well-known and important priest in the Armenian Apostolic Church, and also an intellectual who had studied for some time in Germany. His duties involved him in Armenian and international politics so he was in a good position to understand what was happening in Turkey, Germany, and Armenia during the First World War, when the Turks developed their national policy for the final and complete extermination of the Armenians. There had been several large-scale massacres of Armenians: 1890, 1895-96, 1902, and 1909. But what began in 1915, under the cover of the larger world war, was unprecedented in its scope and horror. The previous massacres were somehow forgiven, and Armenians continued to live under Turkish rule with seemingly little resistance to their periodic persecutions.

On the night of April 24, 1915, 250 of the finest Armenian cultural leaders were arrested in Constantinople, and deported by bus and train to a prison in Chankiri, two hundred miles to the east. Thus began a journey of unspeakable horror and hardship that lasted for months while these prisoners were forced to walk, under constant police guard, through rain, snow, and mud, with very little to eat and drink. On the way they witnessed and heard about scenes so terrible they can scarcely be believed. Because this group had at least some money they managed to survive through bribery and good luck, and arrived eventually at their destination hundreds of miles away having lost only one of their number (some of the Turkish Commanders could scarcely believe it). Even so they arrived in rags, many without shoes, sick and malnourished. They were the lucky ones.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were driven this way towards Der Zor, the desert in the south where they perished of starvation and disease. Those, that is, who actually made it that far. It was commonly the case that hundreds were simply massacred by ambushes led by gangs of criminals who had been released from prisons for just that purpose. It was also common for local peasants to be invited to participate in these massacres and participate in the bloodshed and looting. The victims were stripped of whatever possessions they had, even down to their clothing. When Balakian asked one of the Turkish commanders if the victims had been shot or bayoneted, he replied as follows: “It’s wartime, and bullets are expensive. So people grabbed whatever they could from their villages – axes, hatchets, scythes, sickles, clubs, hoes, pickaxes, shovels – and they did the killing accordingly.”

These were scenes of killing and bloodlust so terrible they can hardly be described. Not content with merely killing their victims, they decapitated them, cutting off arms and legs, heads, and ripping bodies open to spill out the intestines. Balakian continued his questioning by asking the commander if he felt any remorse or guilt: “’Not at all,’ he replied. ‘On the contrary, I carried out my sacred and holy obligation before God, my Prophet, and my caliph…a jihad was proclaimed…a fatwa to annihilate the Armenians as traitors to our state…And I, as a military officer, carried out the order of my king…Killing people during war is not considered a crime now, is it?’”

On another occasion Balakian asked a guard why he didn’t sleep. “…I killed so many people in this past year that my victims won’t let me sleep peacefully. I can’t even close my eyes because those I dismembered appear before me. In particular, the souls of the more than twenty virgin girls whom I violated and then killed won’t let go of me.” One might well wonder why it took twenty victims before he began to feel any remorse. I cite these merely as examples of what was happening at the time, there are many more.

The main part of Armenian Golotha is a virtual step by step account of Balakian’s miserable journey under the supervision of mostly sadistic and unsympathetic guards. He lists each village where they stayed, the conditions under which they slept (in a stable, on the wet ground, on the rocks. In deserted buildings, and so on). And he recounts their delight at times in even a dry crust of bad bread. Balakian survived to write his account of what he had seen and heard. He eventually, largely because he spoke fluent German, managed to escape and find work on a huge railway project under the supervision of a German engineer who needed whatever help he could find and protected his Armenian workers. After years of living in fear, hiding out and moving frequently, most often with the help of sympathetic others, Armenians, Greeks, and even Germans, he made it back to Constantinople, was briefly reunited with his mother, and then left for Paris, Manchester, and elsewhere.

Since the publication of Armenian Golgotha in 1922 there has been great interest and much research dealing with what we now consider The Armenian Genocide. This book, and many others, make it quite clear what happened, in spite of the Turks many and consistent attempts to deny it. It is interesting to note that Germany and Turkey were allies in the war, fighting against Russia, England, France, and eventually the U.S. The Germans were aware of what was happening to the Armenians, and while they did not actively participate in the slaughter, they did nothing to stop it, and at times referred to the Armenians as the Jews of Turkey. The only thing that even resembles this Armenian Genocide is the Holocaust, which killed many more than the million and a half estimated Armenians who perished. But the Germans at least conducted their genocide more or less in secret, did not publicly boast about it, and certainly did not encourage the participation of local citizens. The excuse the Turks employ has mostly to do with their claim that the Armenians were undermining their war effort (there were some Armenians fighting with the Russians), and of course Armenians would have liked independence from Turkish rule, but this is mostly just a made-up claim on the part of the Turks. The real reason, I believe, is that the Armenians were not Turks, they were not Muslims, and they had wealth and lands that were eminently desirable which, of course, ended up in the hands of the Turks. What happened is unforgivable. The Turks will never admit what they did, some things are so heinous they simply can never be admitted. Christians, with their history of murder, rape, torture and plunder, rarely admit to it either.

Balakian’s comments on what happened might well be accepted for all of human history:

“If all the seas were ink and all the fields were paper, still it would be impossible to describe, in detail, the reality of the endless tortures of hundreds of thousands of them – men, women, elderly, sons, daughters-in-law, daughters, down to children and innocent suckling infants…”