April 13, 2009
Genocides, past, present and Holocaust literature
This past weekend, I had the privilege of listening to a refugee from Darfur speak during Shabbat morning services.
The timing was no accident. We’re coming up on Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah, on Tuesday, April 21. I was moved by this man’s story — he witnessed brutal violence, suffered harassment from government soldiers who wrongfully accused him of being associated with rebel militias and watched helplessly as his village was destroyed. As my rabbi noted after the talk, when you need to escape to Egypt to find refuge, you know it’s bad.
As I sat listening, I began to think about a recent essay I read on The New Republic‘s Web site entitled “Primary Source.” The essay, which originally appeared on Nextbook.org and was written by Adam Kirsch, asked the question of whether the Armenian genocide had its own Primo Levi.
It turns out they did, although I doubt he’s reached even one tenth the recognition of Primo Levi or Elie Wiesel. That’s not to say that Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel don’t deserve recognition. They do and their eyewitness accounts play a powerful role in helping to prevent genocide and anti-Semitism. But, I’m a strong believer in the idea that every genocide needs a witness to document the tragedy, to let others know what happened.
When it comes to the Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1918, there is a writer named Grigoris Balakian who, as Kirsch notes, “offers an Armenian equivalent to the testimonies of Holocaust survivors like Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel.” His book, “Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918,” was written in 1918 and it has just been translated into English for the first time. I guess 90-plus years was long enough.
In his essay, Kirsch says Balakian’s account will seem familiar to those who’ve read the works of Levi and Wiesel:
Readers familiar with the literature of the Holocaust will read Armenian Golgotha with a combination of recognition and estrangement. Many of the events Balakian writes about could be taking place in Poland or the Ukraine 20 years later. Again and again, we hear about how Turkish policemen would tell the residents of a village to assemble for a long journey, herd people into carriages, then drive them to a remote spot, where they would be murdered and their possessions divided up among the murderers. Armenians were told that they were simply being relocated to the Syrian desert province of Der Zor, just as Jews were told that they were being resettled in the East; the name of Der Zor takes on, in Balakian’s account, the same aura of nightmare and death that “the East” did for Jewish victims. Balakian even wonders, as have some Jewish observers of the Holocaust, why more of the victims did not fight back. “They had the psychology of a herd of dumb sheep, going to their death without complaint,” he complains about one group of deportees who failed to seize the chance to flee.
The man I heard last Saturday morning was able to flee and now he’s telling his story. But I had to wonder: does the Darfur tragedy have its own Primo Levi? A quick search on Amazon turned up Dave Eggers’ “What is the What,” a fictionalized memoir of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan who made it out and resettled in the United States. There’s also “Darfur: A Short History of a Long War,” by Julie Flint and Alex de Waal as well as “Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival,” by Jen Marlowe, with Aisha Bain and Adam Shapiro. I’d be remiss if I failed to mention Deborah Scroggins’ highly praised “Emma’s War.”
So, those are a few books that bear witness to the tragedy happening in Darfur. Not sure which one of those authors might be the Primo Levi of Sudan but, nevertheless, they have an important story to tell. And, as many will undoubtedly note on April 21, we Jews have a special obligation to listen.
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