EARLY PRAISE FROM ELIE WIESEL AND OTHERS FOR GRIGORIS BALAKIAN’S "ARMENIAN GOLGOTHA": A MEMOIR OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE (1915-1918)
AZG DAILY
25-03-2009
Armenian Genocide
New York City – Never before in English, "Armenian Golgotha" is the
most comprehensive and dramatic eyewitness account of the twentieth
century’s first genocide. It sheds light on the Armenian Genocide as
no other book has done.
On April 24, 1915, Balakian, an Armenian Apostolic priest, was arrested
along with some 250 other intellectuals and leaders of Constantinople’s
Armenian community. During the next four years, he bears witness to
the countless deportation caravans of Armenians, tortured, raped,
or slaughtered and subsequently mutilated on their way to death in
the Syrian deserts; through the testimony of many survivors, foreign
witnesses, and Turkish officials involved in the extermination;
and also to some brave, righteous Turks and their German allies who
resisted secret extermination orders. Miraculously, Balakian manages to
escape, and his flight–through forest and over mountain, in disguise
as a railroad worker and then as a German soldier–is a suspenseful,
harrowing odyssey that makes possible his singular testimony.
Advance praise for "Armenian Golgotha" speaks to the memoir’s great
historical importance as well as to Balakian’s gripping eyewitness
narrative-
"Read this heartbreaking book. "Armenian Golgotha" describes the
suffering, agony, and massacre of innumerable Armenian families
almost a century ago; its memory must remain a lesson for more than
one generation."
– Elie Wiesel –
"Grigoris Balakian’s Armenian Golgotha is a powerful, moving account
of the Armenian Genocide, a story that needs to be known, and is
told here with a sweep of experience and wealth of detail that is as
disturbing as it is irrefutable."
– Sir Martin Gilbert –
"In this extraordinary account, Grigoris Balakian makes astute
psychological observations about himself and his fellow prisoners, and
equally astute interpretations of the behavior of Turkish perpetrators
and German collaborators in the Armenian Genocide. His writing is
clear and compelling, as rendered in sensitive translation. He has
a keen sense of history, and his extensive travels enable him to
record a tragic European panorama. This book will become a classic,
both for its depiction of a much denied genocide and its humane and
brilliant witness to what human beings can endure and overcome."
– Robert Jay Lifton, author of The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and
the Psychology of Genocide –
"The translation and publication of "Armenian Golgotha" in English
is long overdue. It constitutes a thundering proof that those who
deny the Armenian Genocide are engaged in a massive deception."
– Deborah E. Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing
Assault on Truth and Memory –
"The first English translation of a seminal personal account of the
first modern genocide. . . . Balakian survived to write this memoir,
which combines extensive research, an account of his own experiences
and testimony from eyewitnesses, both victims and perpetrators. Poet,
memoirist and Armenian holocaust historian Peter Balakian, Grigoris’s
great-nephew, collaborated with professional translator Sevag to
render the blistering Armenian text into modern English."
– Kirkus Reviews –
The recovery of "Armenian Golgotha" is also an extraordinary
story. Since it had been published in 1922 it had remained available
only in Armenian, and it wasn’t until 1991 that Peter Balakian first
learned of his uncle’s memoir through a chain of circumstances
he describes in his prize-winning memoir Black Dog of Fate (just
reissued in a 10th anniversary edition). After a ten-year translation
and editing project, now Peter Balakian with Aris Sevag has brought
this story into an elegant edition in English.
Full of shrewd insights into the political, historical, and cultural
context of the Armenian Genocide–the template for the subsequent
genocides that cast a shadow across the twentieth century and
beyond–"Armenian Golgotha" is destined to become a classic of
survivor literature.
"Armenian Golgotha" is available for pre-order online.