Author: Karapetian Hovik

GERMAN DOCUMENTARY ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE PREMIERS IN BERLIN
Appo Jabarian

Executive Publisher / Managing Editor
USA Armenian Life Magazine
April 18, 2010

The 90 minute German TV documentary film "Aghet-Ein Volkermord"
had its premier on April 7 in Berlin’s Babylon cinema house.

Written and directed by Eric Friedler, the film depicts the "great
calamity" suffered by the Armenian people in 1915. Attending the
premier were German political figures, members of the diplomatic
corps and German-Armenian community. Armenian Ambadssador to Germany,
Armen Martirosyan, and film director Friedler, fielded questions from
the audience after the showing.

Below are some links for the German documentary "Aghet" which was
aired in early April.

The links are followed by an April 8 article titled "Demons of the
Past;The Armenian Genocide and the Turks" published on April 8 in
Spiegel Online International, the German leading magazine.

Preview

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en/aghet/filmset100_org-aghet102_p-1.html

http:// kermord110_org-aghet102.html

gle.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www .ndr.de/kultur/film/ndr_produktionen/aghet/chronol ogie108.html&ei=trW7S-DKJoSAswO_oLSaBQ&sa= X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1& ved=0CAcQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www. ndr.de/kultur/film/ndr_produktionen/aghet/chronolo gie108.html%26hl%3Den

Demons of the Past The Armenian Genocide and the Turks

By Benjamin Bidder, Daniel Steinvorth and Bernhard Zand Spiegel
Online International

April 8, 2010

The month of April marks the 95th anniversary of the start of the
Armenian genocide. An unusual television documentary shows what
motivated the murderers and why Germany, and other countries,
remained silent.

Tigranui Asartyan will be 100 this week. She put away her knives and
forks two years ago, when she lost her sense of taste, and last year
she stopped wearing glasses, having lost her sight.

She lives on the seventh floor of a high-rise building in the Armenian
capital Yerevan, and she hasn’t left her room in months. She shivers
as the cold penetrates the gray wool blanket on her lap. "I’m waiting
to die," she says.

PHOTO #1: 4.html
PHOTO #2: 4-2.html
PHOTO #3: 4-3.html

Ninety-two years ago, she was waiting in a village in on the Turkish
side of today’s border, hiding in the cellar of a house. The body of
an Armenian boy who had been beaten to death lay on the street. Women
were being raped in the house next door, and the eight-year-old girl
could hear them screaming. "There are good and bad Turks," she says.

The bad Turks beat the boy to death, while the good Turks helped her
and her family to flee behind withdrawing Russian troops.

Avadis Demirci, a farmer, is 97. If anyone in his country keeps records
on such things, he is probably the last Armenian in Turkey who survived
the genocide. Demirci looks out the window at the village of Vakifli,
where oleander bushes and tangerine trees are in full bloom.

The Mediterranean is visible down the mountain and in the distance.

In July 1915, Turkish police units marched up to the village. "My
father strapped me to his back when we fled," says Demirci. "At least
that’s what my parents told me." Armed with hunting rifles and pistols,
the people from his and six other villages dug themselves in on Musa
Dagh, or Moses Mountain. Eighteen years later, Austrian writer Franz
Werfel described the villagers’ armed resistance against the advancing
soldiers in his novel "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh."

"The story is true," says Demirci. "I experienced it, even if I am
only familiar with it from the stories I was told."

Avoiding the Word

Aside from Werfel’s book — and the view, from the memorial on
Zizernakaberd hill near Yerevan, of the eternally snow-capped and
eternally inaccessible Mount Ararat — there are few reminders left
of the Armenian genocide as its last few survivors approached death.

Between 1915 and 1918, some 800,000 to 1.5 million people were
murdered in what is now eastern Turkey, or died on death marches
in the northern Syrian desert. It was one of the first genocides
of the 20th century. Other genocides — against the European Jews,
in Cambodia and in Rwanda — have since taken their place in history
between the Armenian genocide and today.

The Armenian people, after suffering partial annihilation, then being
scattered around the world and forced back to a country that has
remained isolated to this day, have taken decades to come to terms
with their own catastrophe. It was only in the 1960s, after a long
debate with the leadership in Moscow, that the Armenians dared to
erect a memorial.

Turkey, on whose territory the crimes were committed, continues to deny
the actions of the Ottoman leadership. Germany, allied with the Ottoman
Empire in World War I, and the Soviet Union, well-disposed toward the
young Turkish republic, had no interest in publicizing the genocide.

Germany has still not officially recognized the Armenian genocide. In
2005, the German parliament, the Bundestag, called upon Turkey to
acknowledge its "historical responsibility," but it avoided using word
"genocide."

Because of Ankara’s political and strategic importance in the Cold
War, its Western allies did not view a debate over the genocide as
opportune. And the relative lack of photographic and film material
— compared with the Holocaust and later genocides — has made it
even more difficult to examine and come to terms with the Armenian
catastrophe. "The development of modern media," says German documentary
filmmaker Eric Friedler ("The Silence of the Quandts"), "arrived 20
years too late for the examination of this genocide."

But there are contemporary witnesses, Germans and Americans, in
particular, whose accounts and correspondence are preserved in
archives, where they have been studied mainly by specialists until
now. This Friday, to mark the 95th anniversary of the genocide,
Germany’s ARD television network will air the elaborately researched
documentary "Aghet" (Armenian for "Catastrophe"), which brings the
words of diplomats, engineers and missionaries to life.

An ensemble of 23 German actors narrates the original texts —
not in the style of a docu-drama, which re-enacts the events using
semi-fictional dialogue and historic costumers, but in simple
interviews that derive their effectiveness from the selection of
texts and the presentation rather than a dramatization of history.

First-Hand Documents

The first performer is actor and author Hanns Zischler, who starred in
director Wim Wenders’ 1976 film "Im Lauf der Zeit" (or "Kings of the
Road"). He reads the words of Leslie Davis, who, until 1917, was the
US consul in the eastern Anatolian city of Harput, where thousands of
Armenians were herded together and sent on a death march toward the
southeast. "On Saturday, June 28th," Davis wrote, "it was publicly
announced that all Armenians and Syrians [Assyrians of the Armenian
Apostolic faith] were to leave after five days. The full meaning of
such an order can scarcely be imagined by those who are not familiar
with the peculiar conditions of this isolated region. A massacre,
however horrible the word may sound, would be humane in comparison
with it."

Friedrich von Thun, a film and television actor who appeared in
Steven Spielberg’s film "Schindler’s List," plays US Ambassador Henry
Morgenthau. He describes encounters with Ottoman Interior Minister
Talaat Pasha, who, at the beginning of the operation, confronted
Morgenthau with the "irrevocable decision" to render the Armenians
"harmless."

After the genocide, Talaat summoned the US ambassador again and made a
request that Morgenthau said was "perhaps the most astonishing thing I
had ever heard." Talaat wanted the lists of Armenian customers of the
American insurance companies New York Life Insurance and Equitable
Life of New York. The Armenians were now dead and had no heirs,
he said, and the government was therefore entitled to their benefits.

"Naturally, I turned down his request," Morgenthau wrote.

Actresses Martina Gedeck and Katharina Schuttler recount the memories
of two missionary sisters, one Swedish and the other Swiss. Hannah
Herzsprung and Ludwig Trepte narrate the experiences of two survivors,
and Peter Lohmeyer reads from the diary of German Consul Wilhelm
Litten, one of the most shocking documents of the time.

On Jan. 31, 1916, Litten was on the road between Deir al-Zor and
Tibni in present-day Syria, where he wrote the following entry into
his diary: "One o’clock in the afternoon. On the left side of the road
is a young woman, naked, wearing only brown stockings on her feet, her
back turned upward and her head buried in her crossed arms. 1:30 p.m.

In a ditch on the right side is an old man with a white beard, naked,
lying on his back. Two steps away is a boy, naked, back turned upward,
his left buttock ripped off."

Equally cold and calculating was the reply of then-Chancellor of
the German Reich, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, to the German
ambassador’s proposal to publicly rebuke Germany’s Ottoman allies
for the crime. "Our only goal was to keep Turkey on our side until
the end of the war, regardless of whether or not Armenians perished."

‘Wrongs’

The wealth of image and film documents gathered from archives as
distant as Moscow and Washington, says author and director Friedler,
even surprised the historians who provided him with expert advice
for his 90-minute film. Some incidents, such as the ostentatious 1943
reburial in Turkey of the remains of Talaat Pasha, who was murdered
in Berlin in 1921, will be shown on film for the first time. Other
documents depict individuals who the archivists had not recognized
there before.

The film also offers an oppressive description of the current debate
over the genocide, which is only now erupting in Turkey, almost a
century after the crime. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan blusters
that Turkey will never admit that genocide took place. During an
exhibition on Armenia, ultra-nationalists angrily rip photographs from
the walls, and then, as if they’ve lost their minds, they attack a
car in which Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature,
is being taken home after a court appearance — because he dared to
express what historians had proven long ago.

For decades, Armenians born after the genocide felt tortured and
troubled by it. "The tragedy," says Hayk Demoyan, the director of the
genocide memorial in Yerevan, has become "a pillar of our national
identity." And Armenian President Serge Sarkisian has told SPIEGEL:
"The best way to prevent the repetition of such an atrocity is to
condemn it clearly."

The post-genocide generation of Turks had no trouble sleeping. Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish republic, made a radical
break with the Ottoman Empire and the three men who were primarily
responsible — Talaat, Enver and Cemal Pasha. Ataturk admitted that
"wrongs" had been committed, wrongs his successors deny to this day,
but he also let government officials and military leaders participate
in his government who had been directly involved in the genocide.

A Living, Hidden Memory

The demons of the past are now awakening in response to pressure,
particularly from the Armenian Diaspora. Every spring, before the April
24 anniversary of the arrests of Armenian politicians and intellectual
in what was then Constantinople, arrests that marked the beginning of
the deportations in 1915, more national parliaments adopt resolutions
to acknowledge the Armenian genocide: France in 2001, Switzerland in
2003 and, this year, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House
of Representatives and the Swedish parliament.

Every time one of these resolutions is passed, Ankara threatens with
political consequences — and ultimately never follows through. It
has become a ritual, the purpose of which men like Hrant Dink have
questioned. The publisher of the Turkish-Armenia newspaper Agos
didn’t dwell on the definition of the world "genocide." Instead,
he wanted Turkey to confront its gruesome past directly.

He paid for his views with his life. On Jan. 19, 2007, Dink was
murdered in broad daylight. The 200,000 Turks who marched through
the streets of Istanbul at his funeral, holding up banners that read
"We are all Armenians," humiliated their own government with their
forthrightness. A reality which thousands of Turks are confronted
with in their own families appears to have had a stronger impact than
diplomatic pressure.

In the early 1980s, Istanbul attorney Fethiye Cetin discovered that
she had Armenian roots. Her grandmother Seher had confided in her
after several anguishing decades. In 1915 Seher, who was baptized
with the Armenian name Heranush, witnessed the throats of men in her
village being slit. She survived, was taken in by the family of a
Turkish officer, was raised as a Muslim girl and eventually married
a Turk. She became one of tens of thousands of "hidden Armenians"
who escaped the murderers and blended in with Turkish society.

Her grandmother’s revelation came as a shock to Cetin, and she began
to see her surroundings with different eyes. In 2004, Cetin wrote a
book in which she outlined the history of her family.

"Anneannem" ("My Grandmother") became a bestseller, and countless
readers contacted Cetin, many with words of appreciation.

Others cursed her as a "traitor." But the taboo had been broken.

TURKEY’S OBJECTIVE — TO SPLIT AND WEAKEN ARMENIANS

news.am
April 19 2010
Armenia

Initiating dialogue with Armenia, Turkey pursued the only objective
— to split and weaken our nation, ARF Dashnaktsutyun leader Vahan
Hovhannisyan told the journalists.

According to him, Turkey sowed discord between Armenia and
Nagorno-Karabakh and quite succeeded in implementation of its plans
related to Armenia and Diaspora. "Presently Ankara seeks to sow discord
within Diaspora. Turkish authorities’ intentions to meet Armenian
communities’ representatives worldwide pursue the mentioned aim,
as Ankara has already announced it will hold meetings with Armenian
non-radical organizations," Hovhannisyan noted. He added that ARFD
foreign offices will decide independently whether to meet with Turkish
representatives or not.

Earlier, Turkish Premier and Foreign Minister declared of their
intention to meet with Armenian Diaspora representatives to discuss
the issues urgent for both nations.

Hovhannisyan also stated that Armenia’s second president Robert
Kocharyan had never been off-politics, thus raising of this issue
is incorrect. "The matter might concern return of Kocharyan to the
leadership position. As to ARFD’s stance, we have not discussed the
issue as it is not on agenda," politician noted, adding that certain
circles are concerned over his return. "My feeling is that those people
are envious of Kocharyan. Say media put the fact of RA president’s
visit to Woodrow Wilson memorial in a way that it was unprecedented
move, forgetting that Kocharyan paid tribute to the memory of the
former American president 15 years ago," Hovhannisyan stated.

Touching upon ARFD plans, the MP underlined that it was decided to
convene an enlarged meeting of the forces opposing the Protocols on
April 22. He also emphasized the signature collection against the
Protocols, informing that as of today 220.000 people have signed
the petition. Hovhannisyan recalled that ARFD rally will be held on
April 23.

Ya Libnan, Lebanon
April 17 2010

Torsarkissian: FPM not allowed to impose its conditions in Beirut
Municipal election
April 17, 2010 ?… 9:05 pm

March 14 MP Serge Torsarkissian told MTV television on Saturday that
the Beirut MPs will not allow the party that failed to be elected in
the 2009 parliamentary elections to impose its conditions on the
creation of a candidate list for municipal elections. He was referring
to Free Patriotic Movement (FPM)

Torsarkissian said deliberations with spiritual leaders and parties `
including the Phalange , the Lebanese Forces, the Henshag and the
Tashnaq ` over the selection of the 12 Christian candidates for
Beirut’s municipal council have already begun.
According to Torsarkissian, Minister of State Michel Pharaon is
negotiating with the Tashnaq to reach an agreement over the council’s
three Armenian seats.

Similarly MP Nadim Gemayel said FPM must negotiate with us because
we’re the legitimate representatives of Beirut.

kissian-fpm-not-allowed-to-impose-its-conditions-i n-beirut-municipal-election/

>From now on, negotiations with Turkey should be defined by the norms
fixed by Armenia

2010-04-17 18:02:00

ArmInfo. Over this visit to Washington, Armenian President Serzh
Sargsyan clarified to Turkey and the USA the norms of negotiations
between Armenia and Turkey, Chairwoman of the European Armenian
Federation Hilda Tchoboyan told ArmInfo.

"From now on, the negotiations should be defined by the norms fixed by
Armenia. The international forces and particularly Turkey noted that
the Armenian national unity can no more be questioned",- she stressed.

To recall, when visiting Washington to participate in the Nuclear
Security Summit, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan met US President
Barack Obama and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Armenian
leader also made a speech at the Washington National Cathedral after
visiting Woodrow Wilson’s grave.

AZERBAIJANI PARLIAMENTARIAN: TURKEY MADE ITS POSITION CLEAR FOR YEREVAN AND WASHINGTON

Today
April 15 2010
Azerbaijan

"That U.S. President Barack Obama will never utter the word
"Armenian genocide" is critically important for Turkey," member of
the Azerbaijani Parliament Fuad Muradov said commenting on the recent
Erdogan-Sargsyan meeting in Washington.

"This meeting is shrouded in a lot of stories and fables. But I think
that the most important is the fact that Ankara reiterated that a
lasting peace in the region can not be achieved without the settlement
of the Karabakh problem. Ankara did not yield in this matter and
reiterated its position that it had expressed many times," the MP said.

"Even before the meeting the rumors had it that a kind of "road map"
may be signed. However, I believe it is hard to predict any future
agreement following the well-known decision on the Zurich protocols
by the Armenian Constitutional Court as well as other related events.

Yerevan’s statements indicate that its non-constructive position on
all major regional issues remains unchanged," the MP said.

Asked whether U.S. will further seek Armenian-Turkish rapprochement
through defiance of Azerbaijan’s interests, Muradov said that "America
has multi-faced policy. Since Barack Obama came to power, they began
to use the so-called "smart politics", which implies return to the
solution of complex and urgent problems in the Middle East, region
of U.S. strategic interests. I think that they will show activity
also in resolving conflicts in the Caucasus region."

"In America, the issue of "Armenian genocide" has long been used
against Turkey, strategic partner of Washington. It is very important
for Ankara to succeed to make it clear to its overseas partner that
such a step is detrimental for relations between the two countries
and that it is impossible to achieve peace in the region without
resolving the Karabakh conflict," Muradov added.

WORLD BRANDS DO NOT RESPOND TO OFFERS TO CONTROL THE SALES OF FORGERY OF THEIR PRODUCTS IN ARMENIA

ArmInfo
2010-04-15 16:51:00

ArmInfo. The well-known brands do not respond to the offers to control
the sales of forgery of their products in Armenia, Armen Azizyan,
Director of the Intellectual Property Agency under the Armenian Economy
Ministry, said at today’s press conference dedicated to enhancement of
awareness of copyright protection. The conference started in Yerevan
on Thursday.

"We have repeatedly offered the well-known brand owners to control
the sales of their products in Armenia, but received no response. The
only exception is the Microsoft Armenia Office. As regards the rest,
as a rule, they explain to us that Armenia is a too small market,
and it is more profitable to direct the control efforts to larger
markets",- said Azizyan. He pointed out that several laws on copyright
protection have been adopted in Armenia, however, the law-enforcement
practice leaves much to be desired.

"In 2005 a special department for combating copyright violations
was set up in the Armenian Police, however, one should confess that
over 5 years of its operation this structure has not achieved the
desired efficiency. Piracy in the republic has not declined and may
have even increased",- said Azizyan. He recalled that since 2009 an
interdepartmental group for copyright protection headed by Economy
Minister Nerses Yeritsyan has been operating in Armenia. "I hope this
group’s steps will lead to certain progress",- he added.

To recall, the sphere of intellectual rights protection in Armenia
is represented by the following laws: "On trademarks, service marks,
names of places of origin of the commodities", "On inventions, useful
models and production samples", "On legal protection of topologies of
integral microchips", "On copyright and allied rights", "On company
names". The intellectual rights are also protected by Section 14 of the
Armenian Customs Code, Section 10 of Civil Code, Law "On protection of
economic competition", as well as by several provisions of the Armenian
Law "On state dues" and Articles 158, 159 and 197 of the Criminal Code.

LARISA ALAVERDYAN: PRESIDENT SARGSYAN’S SPEECH GAVE ANSWERS TO ALL TURKISH HINTS
Lusine Vasilyan

"Radiolur"
14.04.2010 16:59

The "Heritage" Party is not dissatisfied with President Sargsyan’s
remarks in Washington, but continues to insist that the protocols
should not be ratified in their current shape.

President Sargsyan’s speech gave answers to all Turkish hints,
Secretary of the Heritage faction Larisa Alaverdyan told a press
conference today.

"The President’s speech focused on three important issues. First, he
said that Armenia and Diaspora always have common approaches and the
opinions on recognition of the Armenian Genocide do not diverge. The
second message referred to the Nagorno Karabakh settlement and finally,
the third important point was the establishment of Armenian Turkish
relations without preconditions," Larisa Alaverdyan said.

The "Heritage" would be more inspired by the President’s statements
if he touched upon the issue of mutual recognition of borders, Larisa
Alaverdyan said.

ARMENIAN POLICE HAVE NO PROGRESS IN INVESTIGATION OF ATTACK ON TV COMMENTATOR NEVER MNATSAKANYAN

ArmInfo
2010-04-14 14:59:00

ArmInfo. "This crime has not been revealed," said Head of Armenian
Police Alik Sargsyan in a press conference when commenting on attack
on Never Mnatsakanyan, Shant TV commentator, on Wednesday.

"No one casts doubts on the fact of attack, but the crime has not been
revealed," he said. N. Mnatsakanyan was attacked on May 7 2009 in the
city center. The young people detained in the course of investigation
said they confused Mnatsakanyan with the other person. For his part,
Mnatsakanyan said they did not attack him. Afterwards, the detainees
refused from their testimonies as well.

April 14, 2010

AC360

Nell Irwin Painter

Author of ‘The History of White People’

Were there "white" people in antiquity? Certainly some assume so, as though
categories we use today could be read backwards over the millennia. People
with light skin certainly existed well before our own times. But did anyone
think they were "white" or that their character related to their color? No,
for neither the idea of race nor the idea of "white" people had been
invented, and people’s skin color did not carry useful meaning. What
mattered was where they lived; were their lands damp or dry; were they
virile or prone to impotence, hard or soft; could they be seduced by the
luxuries of civilized society or were they warriors through and through?
What were their habits of life? Rather than as "white" people, northern
Europeans were known by vague tribal names: Scythians and Celts, then Gauls
and -Germani.
But if one asks, say, who are the Scythians? the question sets us off down a
slippery slope, for, over time and especially in earliest times, any search
for the ancestors of white Americans perforce leads back to nonliterate
peoples who left no documents describing themselves.1 Thus, we must sift
through the intellectual history Americans claim as Westerners, keeping in
mind that long before science dictated the terms of human difference as
"race," long before racial scientists began to measure heads and concoct
racial theory, ancient Greeks and Romans had their own means of describing
the peoples of their world as they knew it more than two millennia ago. And
inevitably, the earliest accounts of our story are told from on high, by
rulers dominant at a particular time. Power affixes the markers of -history.

Furthermore, any attempt to trace biological ancestry quickly turns into
legend, for human beings have multiplied so rapidly: by 1,000 or more times
in some two hundred years, and by more than 32,000 times in three hundred
years. Evolutionary biologists now reckon that the six to seven billion
people now living share the same small number of ancestors living two or
three thousand years ago. These circumstances make nonsense of anybody’s
pretensions to find a pure racial ancestry. Nor are notions of Western
cultural purity any less spurious. Without a doubt, the sophisticated
Egyptian, Phoenician, Minoan, and Persian societies deeply influenced the
classical culture of ancient Greece, which some still imagine as the West’s
pure and unique source. That story is still to come, for the obsession
with -purity–racial and cultural–arose many centuries after the demise of
the ancients. Suffice it to say that our search for the history of white
people must begin in the misty mixture of myth and reality that comprises
ancient Greek -literature.

Early on, most Greek notions about peoples living along their northeastern
border, especially that vaguely known place called the Caucasus, were
mythological.2 Known to Westerners since prehistoric times, the Caucasus is
a geographically and ethnically complex area lying between the Black and
Caspian Seas and flanked north and south by two ranges of the Caucasus
Mountains. The northern Caucasus range forms a natural border with Russia;
the southern, lesser Caucasus physically separates the area from Turkey and
Iran. The Republic of Georgia lies between the disputed region of the
Caucasus, Turkey, Armenia, Iran, and Azerbaijan. (See figure 1.1, Black Sea
Region.)-

According to Greek mythology, Jason and his Argonauts sought the Golden
Fleece in the (Caucasus) land of Colchis (near the present-day Georgian city
of Poti) obtaining it from King Aeetes, thanks to the magical powers of the
king’s daughter, the princess Medea. In Homer’s Odyssey, Circe, the sister
of King Aeetes, transforms half of Odysseus’s men into animals and seduces
Odysseus. Later on, Hesiod and Aeschylus take up the tale of Prometheus, son
of a Titan, punished for having stolen the secret of fire from Zeus, who
chains Prometheus to a mountain in the Caucasus and sends an eagle to peck
at his liver every day for thirty thousand years.3 One can see that to the
Greeks, almost anything goes on in the Caucasus. Furthermore, Greek
mythology accords women of the Caucasus extraordinary powers, whether the
magical of Medea and Circe, or the warlike of the Amazons, variously located
in a number of places, including the Caucasus. Even today, these
myths -reverberate.4

Underlying the idea that all people originated between the Black and the
Caspian Seas is the text of Genesis 8:1, which has Noah’s ark coming to rest
"on the mountains of Ararat" after the flood. In the thirteenth century
Marco Polo located Mount Ararat in Armenia, just south of Georgia in eastern
Turkey, at the juncture of Armenia, Iraq, and Iran in the country of the
Kurds. At any rate, Mount Ararat, at 5,185 meters, or some 17,000 feet high,
is Turkey’s highest mountain and is still believed by many to mark the site
of postdiluvian human history in western Asia. Nor have recent events
lessened its -importance.
Twentieth- and twenty-first-century wars contest access to oil (South
Ossetia, Azerbaijan, Grozny, Maykop, and the Caspian Sea, especially Baku,
hold rich old deposits); earlier trade brought slaves, wine, fruit, and
other agricultural produce from the valleys along the Black Sea, and a
variety of natural resources (e.g., manganese, coal, copper, molybdenum, and
tungsten). Current iconography of the Caucasus shows bombed-out cities and
oil rigs of Chechnya or bearded nationalists called "terrorists" by the
Russians. Occasional photographs of Caucasians show gnarled old people as
proof of the life-prolonging powers of yogurt. There was a time when the
people of the Caucasus were thought the most beautiful in the world. But
documentary images making this case–in pictures, not just words–have
proven -illusive.

By contrast, vague and savage notions had lodged in the Greek mind
concerning Scythians and Celts, who lived in what is now considered Europe.
Voicing broad ethnic generalities, Greeks had words–Skythai (Scythian) and
Keltoi (Celt)-to designate far distant barbarians. Scythian, for instance,
simply meant little known, northeastern, illiterate, Stone Age peoples, and
Celt denoted hidden people, painted people, strange people, and barbarians
to the west. We cannot know what those people called themselves, for the
Greek names stuck. Nor can we know how many of those situated in northern,
western, and eastern Europe, two or three thousand years ago or earlier,
became the biological ancestors of nineteenth-century German, English, and
Irish people and twentieth-century Italians, Jews, and Slavs.5 We know from
Greek descriptions of their habits that, whether chiefs or slaves, all had
light-colored -skin.

For a sense of this vagueness, recall the naming skills of fifteenth-century
Europeans as they looked west in the Americas. Their backs to the Atlantic
Ocean, Europeans described sparsely settled people they had never seen
before as "Indians." Such precision regarding faraway, unlettered peoples
has been commonplace throughout the ages. Those at a distance became the
Other and, easily conquered, the lesser. But not in antiquity because of
race. Ancient Greeks did not think in terms of race (later translators would
put that word in their mouths); instead, Greeks thought of place. Africa
meant Egypt and Libya. Asia meant Persia as far to the east as India. Europe
meant Greece and neighboring lands as far west as Sicily. Western Turkey
belonged to Europe because Greeks lived there. Indeed, most of the Greek
known world lay to the east and south of what would become recognizable
later as -Europe.

Mostly, Greek scholars focused on climate to explain human difference.
Humors arising from each climate’s relative humidity or aridness explained a
people’s temperament. Where the seasons do not change, people were labeled
placid. Where seasons shift dramatically, their dispositions were said to
display "wildness, unsociability and spirit. For frequent shocks to the mind
impart wildness, destroying tameness and gentleness." Those words come from
Hippocrates’ Airs, Waters, and Places.6

Distance was all, for travel went at the speed of foot and hoof. Scythians
roamed from Georgia in the Caucasus and the lands around the Euxine (Black)
Sea to the steppes of Ukraine and on east to Siberia. Interestingly, the
word "Ukraine" stems from Polish and Russian language roots meaning "edge of
the world."7 Russians and Ukrainians who now claim ancient Scythians as
glorious ancestors look to Yalta in the Crimea as their ancestral home. Some
Russian ancestors surely would have lived there, but the region’s tumultuous
history renders any single origin an invented tradition. Black Sea ancestors
were Scythians, yes, but must also have included invaders and migrants of
Tartar, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Iranian, and Chinese origin–at the
very -least.

Reprinted from The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter. Copyright
(c) 2010 by Nell Irvin Painter. Used with permission of the publisher, W.W.
Norton & Company, Inc.

© 2009 Cable News Network LP, LLLP. A Time Warner Company.

ARMENIAN LEGION HIGHLIGHTED IN TRAVELING EXHIBIT

Journal Times
re/article_a20186e4-4728-11df-88ec-001cc4c002e0.ht ml
April 13 2010

RACINE — "Légion Arménienne: The Armenian Legion and Its Heroism
in the Middle East," a traveling exhibit developed and prepared by
the Armenian Library and Museum of America (ALMA), will be on display
April 19-May 31 at the Racine Public Library, 75 Seventh St.

The exhibit explores the formation, training, military action and
postwar activities of this all-volunteer force from World War I through
photographs and narratives. ALMA commissioned this traveling exhibit
in response to tremendous interest from the Armenian and Veteran
communities. The exhibit tells the story of the brave and selfless
young men who fought with the Allies to victory and later risked all
in defense of Armenian human rights.

The Racine Public Library in partnership with St. Hagop Church will
host a grand opening event from 5 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 21. The
exhibit will be open for viewing at 5 p.m. with presentations beginning
at 6 p.m. The event will feature presentations by ALMA board member
Arakel Almasian and Dr. Levon Saryan, traditional Armenian oud music
by Stephan Fronjian, and homemade refreshments provided by the Women
of St. Hagop Church.

Visitors can see the exhibit at no charge in the library’s second
floor reading area from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday,
and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday.