Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide

328 Pages·1999·11.651 MB·English

by  Richard Hovannisian

_I
Remembrance
A N D
The Case of the Armenian Genocide
Edited by
Richard G. Hovannisian
^ Wayne State University Press Detroit
Copyright © 1999 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201.
All rights are reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
02 01 00 99 5 4 3 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Remembrance and denial: the case of the Armenian
genocide / edited by Richard G. Hovannisian.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and
index.
ISBN 0-8143-2777-X (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Armenian massacres, 1915-1923. 2. Armenian
massacres survivors—Psychology. 3. Genocide—Turkey—
Historiography. I. Hovannisian, Richard G.
DS195.5R46 1999
956.6’2015—dc21 98-28282
In tribute to
Souren and Verkin Papazian o/P alu-Havav
and all other survivors

Contents
Contributors 9
Introduction: The Armenian Genocide
Remembrance and Denial
Richard G. Hovannisian 13
1 Modern Turkish Identity and the Armenian Genocide
From Prejudice to Racist Nationalism
Stephan H. Astourian 23
2 The Archival Trail
Authentication of The Treatment of Armenians
in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-16
Ara Sarafian 51
3 The Baghdad Railway and the Armenian Genocide,
1915-1916
A Case Study in German Resistance and Complicity
Hilmar Kaiser 67
4 Finishing the Genocide
Cleansing Turkey of Armenian Survivors, 1920-1923
Levon M arashlian 113
5 The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
Its Impact on Jewish Youth in Palestine and Europe
Yair Auron 147
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Contents
^ 6 Survivor Memoirs of the Armenian Genocide as
Cultural History
Lorne Shirinian 165
7 Problematic Aspects of Reading Genocide Literature
A Search for a Guideline or a Canon
Rubina Peroomian 175
8 The Role of Historical Memory in
Interpreting Events in the Republic of Armenia
Donald E. Miller 187
9 Denial of the Armenian Genocide
in Comparison with Holocaust Denial
Richard G. Hovannisian 201
10 Freedom and Responsibility of the Historian
The “Lewis Affair”
Yves Ternon 237
11 The Truth of the Facts
About the New Revisionism
Marc Nichanian 249
12 Professional Ethics and the
Denial of the Armenian Genocide
Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen,
and Robert Jay Lifton 271
Works Cited 297
Index 317
Contributors
Stephan H. Astourian has taught Armenian, Caucasian, and Middle
Eastern history and Western Civilization at the University of California,
Los Angeles, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and California State Uni­
versity, Long Beach. His doctoral dissertation is titled “Testing World-
System Theory, Cilicia (1830s-1890s): Armenian-Turkish Polarization and
the Ideology of Modem Ottoman Historiography,” and he has published
research articles on Caucasian historiography, the Karabagh conflict, and
the Armenian Genocide. He serves on the editorial boards of several schol­
arly journals.
Yair Auron is a specialist in Contemporary Judaism at the State Teachers
College, Seminar Hakibutzim, Tel Aviv, and the College of Yezreel, where he
heads the Division of Cultural Studies. He has published numerous essays on
the impact of the Holocaust on Jewish identity in Israel and the Diaspora. His
books in Hebrew include Between Paris and Jerusalem: Selected Passages
of Contemporary Jewish Thought in France; Jewish-Israeli Identity; and
The Banality of Indifference: Attitude of the Jewish Community in Palestine
and the Zionist Movement towards, the Genocide of the Armenians, which
will be published by the University of Toronto Press.
Richard G. Hovannisian is holder of the Armenian Educational Founda­
tion Chair in Armenian History at the University of California, Los Angeles.
His numerous publications include Armenia on the Road to Independence;
a four-volume comprehensive study titled The Republic of Armenia; The
Armenian Genocide in Perspective; The Armenian Genocide: History, Poli­
tics, Ethics; and four edited volumes on Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.
A Guggenheim Fellow, he has been honored by election as Academician
in the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia and by the bestowal of
honorary doctorate degrees from Yerevan State University and from Artsakh
State University.
HlLMAR KAISER is a doctoral candidate in history and civilization at the
European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and a scholar-in-residence
9
Contributors
at the Armenian Research Center of the University of Michigan-Dearbom.
Specializing in late Ottoman social and economic history, he has conducted
extensive archival research in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.
Among his publications are Imperialism, Racism, and Development Theo­
ries: The Construction of a Dominant Paradigm on Ottoman Armenians,
and “Germany and the Armenian Genocide: A Review Essay.”
Robert Jay Lifton is Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Psychol­
ogy at John Jay College and The Graduate Center of the City University of
New York. He is the author of The Nazi Doctors; The Future of Immortality
and Other Essays for a Nuclear Age; Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima;
Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans—Neither Victims nor Executioners;
History and Human Survival, and is the co-author of Indefensible Weapons
and The Genocide Mentality.
Levon Marashlian is professor of history at Glendale Community
College, where he teaches Armenian, Middle Eastern, Russian, and United
States history and politics. A Fulbright scholar, he has lectured in Erevan
and Stepanakert and is a frequent contributor to national and international
journals and newspapers. He is the author of Politics and Demography:
Armenians, Turks and Kurds in the Ottoman Empire.
Eric Markusen is professor of sociology and social work at Southwest
State University in Minnesota. He is the co-author of The Genocide Men­
tality; The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: Genocide and Total War in
the Twentieth Century; and Nuclear Weapons and the Threat of Nuclear
War, and has written articles on collective violence, including “Professions,
Professionals, and Genocide.”
Donald E. Miller is professor of religion at the University of Southern
California. With his wife, Loma Toury an Miller, he is the author of Survivors:
An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide, and he has contributed several
chapters and essays based on oral history interviews and studies. His other
works include Writing and Research in Religious Studies; The Case for
Liberal Christianity; and Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity
in the New Millennium.
Marc Nichanian has taught philosophy at the University of Strasbourg
and Armenian language and literature in Paris and at the University of
California, Los Angeles, and currently at Columbia University. He has
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Contributors
\
lectured widely on the historical interpretations and literary responses to the
Armenian Genocide and has offered the course “Holocaust and Catastrophe”
at the College International de Philosophic in Paris. Among his publications
are Ages et usages de la langue armenienne; “La denegation au coeur
du genocide”; “Sous 1’empire de la catastrophe”; “L’Empire du sacrifice”;
“L’Ecrit et le mutisme”; and “The Style of Violence.” He has translated
Armenian poetry into French and has edited the Armenian-language literary
journal, Gam.
Rubina Perogmian has taught Armenian language and literature at the
University of California, Los Angeles, Glendale Community College, and
the University of La Verne. She is the author of Literary Responses to
Catastrophe: A Comparison of the Armenian and the Jewish Experience,
and, in the Armenian language, Armenia in the Context of Relations between
the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the Bolsheviks, 1917-1921, and
The Armenian Question, a series of secondary school textbooks.
Ara Sarafian is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan-
Ann Arbor. He specializes in the history of the late Ottoman Empire. He
has published United States Official Documents on the Armenian Genocide
(3 volumes to date), is an editor of Armenian Forum: A Journal of Contem­
porary Affairs, and serves as a director of the Gomidas Institute.
Lorne Shirinian is professor of English at the Royal Military College
of Canada. A poet and author, he has published two scholarly volumes of
literary criticism on Armenian literature in North America. His most recent
works are a collection of stories, History of Armenia and Other Fiction; a
novel, Ripe for Shaking; and a collection of poetry, Rough Landing.
Roger W. Smith is professor of government at the College ofWilliam and
Mary. He is the co-author of Guilt, Man and Society, and has written and
taught extensively on the nature and history of genocide, women and geno­
cide, the denial of genocide, the language of genocide, and the United Nations
Genocide Convention. He is a founder of the Association of Genocide Schol­
ars and a regular contributor to the Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide.
Yves Ternon holds a doctoral degree in medicine and another in history
from the Sorbonne. He is the author of several volumes on human rights
and genocide, including Les Armeniens: Histoire d’un genocide, and L’Etat
criminel: Les genocides au XX siecle. He has taken a prominent role in
responding to the phenomenon of denial or “negation ” in Europe.
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