ARMENIAN FILMMAKER SEEKS JEWISH VIEWERS
By Shayndi Raice
Jewish Advocate, MA
June 5 2006
Franchot Lubin (left) and David Davidian produced a film on the
Armenian genocide.Cites connections between Nazi genocide of Jews
and Turkish genocide of Armenians.
The Armenian genocide might not seem like a Jewish issue, but it should
be according to Armenian filmmaker David Davidian, who has submitted
a DVD on the genocide to the 2006 Boston Jewish Film Festival.
According to Davidian, producer of “The 1915 Turkish Genocide of the
Armenians” and director of the Genocide Archive Project, the Holocaust
and the Armenian genocide are closely related. In 1939, Hitler told
his generals that they should not be worried about world condemnation
for murdering millions of Jews because nobody remembered what happened
to the Armenians. Davidian also suggested that many of the techniques
used by Hitler were in fact copied from the Turkish genocide of the
Armenians. Death marches, round-ups, and marking Armenian homes were
all trademarks of the Turkish genocide, said Davidian.
“There are philosophical and actual connections,” he said. “The
[Armenian] genocide was the first state-sponsored genocide against its
own citizens. The second was Hitler. World governments ignored it as
an internal problem. These things, even if denied, can’t be ignored
because when they’re ignored it encourages someone else to do it.”
Davidian produced the film with director Franchot Lubin, who had
previous experience collecting survivor testimonies while working
for Steven Spielberg’s “Survivors of the Shoah” documentary. The two
filmmakers documented accounts of Armenian genocide survivors who live
in the Boston area today, some more than 100 years old. In addition
to the submission to the Boston Jewish Film Festival, which will
take place this fall, the two men have sent their film to hundreds
of U.S. Congressmen as part of an education campaign.
“If the world did something about it in 1915, there would have been
much less of chance of Hitler doing what he did to the European Jews,”
said Davidian.
Although the film does not seem to have an easily apparent Jewish
theme, Sarah Rubin of the Boston Jewish Film Festival said that while
films must be relevant to the Jewish community, “We do stretch the
envelope.”
While she could not comment on the film’s chances of being chosen
for the festival, she added: “There are times when there might seem
to be something that isn’t strictly Jewish themed but we program it
in because there’s a clear connection.”
s_weeks_issue/news/?content_id=1327