To begin with, this is a book that I happened to run across and recommend to the club to read. When I first saw it, I assumed that the title of the book told the story. It was about the Armenian orphans who survived the genocide. No it isn't!
What the author has done is put together a nice, concise history of the Armenians of the Diaspora from before the genocide to almost today, the children of the genocide survivors. He does a very good job of it and makes it very readable. I learned a lot from the book, and, based on the comments during the book club meeting, so did the other members of the club.
Bobelian starts out talking about the life of Gourgen Mkrtich Yanikian, a survivor of the 1895 genocide, who later saw his brother killed by the Turks. Yanikian becomes a major name in the Diaspora many years later.
Bobelian talks about his exposure to genocide commemorations as he was growing up, how he responded to them and how he believes other Diasporan Armenians responded.
He goes into the history of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, the Balkan wars, the Young Turks, the beginning of World War I, the move to eliminate the Armenians in Anatolia, the creation of the short lived Armenian Republic and the unavoidable move to join the USSR. All of this has been covered in many other books that we have read. He then goes on to cover Soghomon Tehlirian's act of assassination in Berlin and the subsequent trial, the attempt by the Soviet Union to have the United Nations force Turkey to give two provinces to the Armenian SSR as some payment for the Armenian genocide and the United States move to block it, the reasons for the split in the Armenian church, the assassinations of Turkish diplomats by diasporan Armenians, the actions of the Turkish government to prevent any memorials to the genocide being built in America or movies being made about the genocide and the US government's part in this effort, the lawsuits against American insurance companies to recover life insurance benefits due to Armenians killed in the genocide, the sudden appearance of genocide commemoration events at the 50 year anniversary in 1965, and many other topics.
Now, on to the meeting:
First, we discussed the killing of arch-bishop Levon Tourian in 1933. This action by Dashnak Armenians helped bring about the split in the Armenian church in America into two halves.
We discussed the attitudes for and against Dashnaks, how some Armenians felt that they couldn't support the Armenian SSR because that was supporting communism, while others felt that they had to support it as the only Armenian homeland still in existence.
Bobelian talks about the way many Armenians avoided talking about the genocide for many years until the 50 year commemoration, and then yearly commemorations started appearing world wide. Azad disagreed with this, stating that all of the time that he was growing up they held yearly memorial services for all of those who died, at least in Syria.
Tom commented on the author describing the changing feelings about the genocide over time. First, people didn't want to talk about it, they didn't want to hand the trauma on to their children. Then feelings of vengeance started. Now it's more toward feelings of remembrance.
Kass compared the Armenian genocide survivors' reluctance to talk with similar attitudes he has observed in other groups, from some Jews being reluctant to talk about the Holocaust to Japanese being reluctant to talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki to South Africans being unwilling to talk about apartheid. I pointed out how Ellen Kennedy's group, World Without Genocide, contacts local people associated with other genocides worldwide and tries to get them to open up and talk to share their experiences with other people.
Azad felt that Armenians in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East suppressed discussion about the genocide so as to reduce feelings of hatred and to avoid passing the trauma on to their children. What they did instead was hold memorial services every year for those who died in the genocide.
With respect to the attempt by the USSR to get Turkey to hand over land to Armenia and the move by the United States to block it, Azad said that Truman was considered to be the worst U.S. president by Armenians because of his "Truman Doctrine" to contain communism, which led to strong support for Turkey by the U.S.
Tom reminded us of the often-used quote that history has not been kind to the Armenians.
He also pointed out that we have to view the actions of Ataturk to unite Turkey as being a great feat. Tom and Azad then discussed what Ataturk did.
Azad pointed out that to be a Turk at that time wasn't really a racial determination. If you spoke Turkish and were Muslim, you were considered to be a Turk. He also mentioned how the Turkish language was written in a variant of Arabic script but Ataturk made the country change to use the Latin alphabet instead. Also, many books were written in the Turkish language but in Armenian script.
Margaret like the book a lot and learned many things that she hadn't known about the various assassinations for the Armenian cause.
Tashina noted how the book shows how much the Turkish government interfered in U.S. affairs of local governments and the movie industry, how it tried to prevent Armenian genocide commemoration events and memorials. They wanted awareness of the genocide to disappear.
Jim thought the book helped to show that the U.S. never backed Armenia because it had nothing to offer, such as oil or military bases.
Azad liked what he learned about Bob Dole's opinion of Armenia, his policy shift over time, and how he seemed to support justice and freedom for everyone.
Kass and Tashina commented on people from other countries, whether Japan, Turkey or others, who learn the history of their countries for the first time when they come to the U.S. Some Japanese have no idea what Japan did in China and Korea during World War II. Some people from Turkey have zero knowledge of the Armenian genocide.
Margaret felt that the book taught her things about the break in the Armenian church that she had not known before.
With that, our discussion ended.
Our book for next month will be "The Structure Is Rotten, Comrade" by Viken Berberian. For December we tentatively will be reading "Feast of Ashes: The Life and Art of David Ohannessian" by Sato Moughalian.
Happy reading!
Leroy