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Q&A WITH PETER BALAKIAN
Frederick News Post , MD
Feb 28 2013
Q&A with Peter Balakian: Author, poet and essayist will give talk on
'memory and trauma'
By Nicholas C. Stern News-Post Staff
As part of the Hood College Colloquium series, author, poet and
essayist Peter Balakian will give a lecture at the school tonight. The
theme of the series is "In Retrospect: Time and Memory," and Balakian's
talk will focus on his memoir "Black Dog of Fate," as he'll speak on
memory and trauma. In the memoir, Balakian contrasts his suburban
childhood in 1960s New Jersey with his growing awareness of his
family's history as survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. In an
email exchange, Balakian answered some questions from The Frederick
News-Post about his book, as well as his lecture, which starts at
7 p.m. tonight in Hodson Auditorium at Hood College, 401 Rosemont
Ave., Frederick. For event details, email [email protected], or go
to www.hood.edu.
In your memoir "Black Dog of Fate" (1997), you write about growing up
in the New Jersey suburbs and the "stone door" put up by your family
about the Armenian Genocide. Can you describe a bit what that was
like? How did you feel when this barrier of silence started to come
down, and what did you do?
No one wanted to talk about the trauma of the past and the events of
1915 through which my grandparents on both sides were harshly scarred
for life. This was painful stuff and not meant for children of young
people, especially in happy, affluent suburbia of the 1950s and '60s
in Teaneck and Tenafly, N.J., where I grew up. The wall of silence
came down slowly and much of that had to do with my own writing and
work on this history. When I started asking questions as a young
poet in the 1970s, my aunts began to talk, and things started taking
shape in the narrative about the Armenian Genocide as it impacted
our family. Their memory and testimony gave my writing about this
past a new sense of rootedness and location.
Can you explain for those who may not know much about what happened
about the Armenian Genocide, and how your family was involved?
The Ottoman Turkish government's plan to eradicate the Armenians from
Turkey is the first example of genocide done in modern form (genocide,
of course is a crime as old as human history). The Ottoman state
used its bureaucracy, its military, national ideology and technology
(the railway and telegraph) for the purpose of eliminating a targeted
ethnic group in a short period of time; this happened between 1915 and
1918 behind the screen of World War I. The Armenians were the largest
Christian minority living on their historic homeland throughout much
(of) eastern Turkey; somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 million Armenians
perished out of a population of around 2 to 2.2 million. The other
two Christian minorities, the Greek and Assyrians, also were wiped
out during this period. The Armenian genocide had such an impact on
Adolf Hitler that he said on the eve of invading Poland in 1939, "Who,
today after all, speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?" And
the Polish legal scholar Raphael Lemkin, who created the term genocide
and developed the concept of genocide as a crime in international law,
was greatly influenced by what happened to the Armenians in 1915. It
was Lemkin who first coined the term Armenian Genocide in the 1940s.
What is the origin of the title of your memoir "Black Dog of Fate"?
The title takes off on a folk tale my grandmother tells me when I'm
a young boy. The reader will have to read that episode and pull the
threads of that folk tale through the book and make sense of it.
My grandmother filed a human rights claim against the Turkish
government for the losses she endured in August 1915 when the Turkish
forces murdered all of her family, from her mother and father to
brothers and sisters and to 2- and 3-year-old nieces and nephews. She
and her two infant daughters were the only survivors. Because her
first husband, who died in the genocide, was a naturalized U.S.
citizen, she filed this claim through the U.S. State Department in 1920
upon her arrival in the U.S. Nothing came of the claim in monetary
terms, but it has been a powerful text of witness to the atrocities
of 1915; it is a testimony in a young mother and woman's voice that
is clear and precise. Much of this text appears in facsimile form in
my memoir. I didn't discover this document until I was nearly 30.
In the memoir, you condemn the U.S. government's policy toward Turkey,
as well as ongoing efforts to gloss over what happened to Armenians
in Turkey. Can you summarize your argument? What, if any steps,
have been taken in the U.S., in Turkey and throughout the world to
address this issue?
The Turkish government has made it a state policy to deny the Armenian
Genocide, to take no responsibility for the crime, and to falsify
the facts and narrative. This has been going on since 1918. But the
aggressiveness of Turkey's denial is unusual in its invasive thrust
and its meddling in the free intellectual climate of other countries.
In 1980, '85, '89, 2000 and '07, the Turkish government used its
military alliance with the United States to pressure the State
Department to block passage of various nonbinding congressional
resolutions affirming the Armenian Genocide, and paid lobbyists
millions of dollars annually to work against them.
In the face of Turkish denial, scholars, organizations and nations,
motivated by an ethical sense and the value of historical honesty,
have made statements of acknowledgment and affirmation of the Armenian
Genocide. The International Association of Genocide Scholars has
issued several Open Letters which underscore that the historical
record on the Armenian Genocide is overwhelming and unambiguous, and
noting Raphael Lemkin's first use of the term genocide to describe
the Armenian case, and the applicability of the 1948 United Nations
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
As an ethical redress to the extremeness of Turkish denial, 20
countries, as well as the Vatican and the European Parliament, have
passed resolutions acknowledging the events of 1915 as genocide. Nobel
Laureate Elie Wiesel has called Turkish denial a "double killing"
that strives to kill the memory of the event. Noted Holocaust scholar
Deborah Lipstadt has written: "Denial of genocide whether that of
the Turks against the Armenians, or the Nazis against the Jews is not
an act of historical reinterpretation. The deniers aim at convincing
innocent third parties that there is another side of the story ...
when there is no other side. Denial of genocide strives to reshape
history in order to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the
perpetrators, and is the final stage of genocide." What Lipstadt and
Wiesel note is why perpetrator denial remains an important ethical,
human rights issue.
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/72hours/subdetail.htm?ID=147421
Frederick News Post , MD
Feb 28 2013
Q&A with Peter Balakian: Author, poet and essayist will give talk on
'memory and trauma'
By Nicholas C. Stern News-Post Staff
As part of the Hood College Colloquium series, author, poet and
essayist Peter Balakian will give a lecture at the school tonight. The
theme of the series is "In Retrospect: Time and Memory," and Balakian's
talk will focus on his memoir "Black Dog of Fate," as he'll speak on
memory and trauma. In the memoir, Balakian contrasts his suburban
childhood in 1960s New Jersey with his growing awareness of his
family's history as survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. In an
email exchange, Balakian answered some questions from The Frederick
News-Post about his book, as well as his lecture, which starts at
7 p.m. tonight in Hodson Auditorium at Hood College, 401 Rosemont
Ave., Frederick. For event details, email [email protected], or go
to www.hood.edu.
In your memoir "Black Dog of Fate" (1997), you write about growing up
in the New Jersey suburbs and the "stone door" put up by your family
about the Armenian Genocide. Can you describe a bit what that was
like? How did you feel when this barrier of silence started to come
down, and what did you do?
No one wanted to talk about the trauma of the past and the events of
1915 through which my grandparents on both sides were harshly scarred
for life. This was painful stuff and not meant for children of young
people, especially in happy, affluent suburbia of the 1950s and '60s
in Teaneck and Tenafly, N.J., where I grew up. The wall of silence
came down slowly and much of that had to do with my own writing and
work on this history. When I started asking questions as a young
poet in the 1970s, my aunts began to talk, and things started taking
shape in the narrative about the Armenian Genocide as it impacted
our family. Their memory and testimony gave my writing about this
past a new sense of rootedness and location.
Can you explain for those who may not know much about what happened
about the Armenian Genocide, and how your family was involved?
The Ottoman Turkish government's plan to eradicate the Armenians from
Turkey is the first example of genocide done in modern form (genocide,
of course is a crime as old as human history). The Ottoman state
used its bureaucracy, its military, national ideology and technology
(the railway and telegraph) for the purpose of eliminating a targeted
ethnic group in a short period of time; this happened between 1915 and
1918 behind the screen of World War I. The Armenians were the largest
Christian minority living on their historic homeland throughout much
(of) eastern Turkey; somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 million Armenians
perished out of a population of around 2 to 2.2 million. The other
two Christian minorities, the Greek and Assyrians, also were wiped
out during this period. The Armenian genocide had such an impact on
Adolf Hitler that he said on the eve of invading Poland in 1939, "Who,
today after all, speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?" And
the Polish legal scholar Raphael Lemkin, who created the term genocide
and developed the concept of genocide as a crime in international law,
was greatly influenced by what happened to the Armenians in 1915. It
was Lemkin who first coined the term Armenian Genocide in the 1940s.
What is the origin of the title of your memoir "Black Dog of Fate"?
The title takes off on a folk tale my grandmother tells me when I'm
a young boy. The reader will have to read that episode and pull the
threads of that folk tale through the book and make sense of it.
My grandmother filed a human rights claim against the Turkish
government for the losses she endured in August 1915 when the Turkish
forces murdered all of her family, from her mother and father to
brothers and sisters and to 2- and 3-year-old nieces and nephews. She
and her two infant daughters were the only survivors. Because her
first husband, who died in the genocide, was a naturalized U.S.
citizen, she filed this claim through the U.S. State Department in 1920
upon her arrival in the U.S. Nothing came of the claim in monetary
terms, but it has been a powerful text of witness to the atrocities
of 1915; it is a testimony in a young mother and woman's voice that
is clear and precise. Much of this text appears in facsimile form in
my memoir. I didn't discover this document until I was nearly 30.
In the memoir, you condemn the U.S. government's policy toward Turkey,
as well as ongoing efforts to gloss over what happened to Armenians
in Turkey. Can you summarize your argument? What, if any steps,
have been taken in the U.S., in Turkey and throughout the world to
address this issue?
The Turkish government has made it a state policy to deny the Armenian
Genocide, to take no responsibility for the crime, and to falsify
the facts and narrative. This has been going on since 1918. But the
aggressiveness of Turkey's denial is unusual in its invasive thrust
and its meddling in the free intellectual climate of other countries.
In 1980, '85, '89, 2000 and '07, the Turkish government used its
military alliance with the United States to pressure the State
Department to block passage of various nonbinding congressional
resolutions affirming the Armenian Genocide, and paid lobbyists
millions of dollars annually to work against them.
In the face of Turkish denial, scholars, organizations and nations,
motivated by an ethical sense and the value of historical honesty,
have made statements of acknowledgment and affirmation of the Armenian
Genocide. The International Association of Genocide Scholars has
issued several Open Letters which underscore that the historical
record on the Armenian Genocide is overwhelming and unambiguous, and
noting Raphael Lemkin's first use of the term genocide to describe
the Armenian case, and the applicability of the 1948 United Nations
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
As an ethical redress to the extremeness of Turkish denial, 20
countries, as well as the Vatican and the European Parliament, have
passed resolutions acknowledging the events of 1915 as genocide. Nobel
Laureate Elie Wiesel has called Turkish denial a "double killing"
that strives to kill the memory of the event. Noted Holocaust scholar
Deborah Lipstadt has written: "Denial of genocide whether that of
the Turks against the Armenians, or the Nazis against the Jews is not
an act of historical reinterpretation. The deniers aim at convincing
innocent third parties that there is another side of the story ...
when there is no other side. Denial of genocide strives to reshape
history in order to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the
perpetrators, and is the final stage of genocide." What Lipstadt and
Wiesel note is why perpetrator denial remains an important ethical,
human rights issue.
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/72hours/subdetail.htm?ID=147421