Family’s tale illuminates old tragedy
By CAROLYN FEIBEL, STAFF WRITER
NorthJersey.com, NJ
Feb 10 2005
Penal Code 306 really makes his blood boil.
Peter Balakian, a poet and historian who grew up in Bergen County,
understands you’ve probably never heard of 306, a Turkish law enacted
last September. That’s one reason he’s trekking cross-country to
promote his book on the genocide of more than 1 million Armenians in
Turkey 90 years ago.
Penal Code 306 punishes people who speak about the genocide with up
to 10 years in prison. If Germany passed a similar law about the
Holocaust, there would rightly be a global outcry, Balakian said. On
306, there’s been hardly a peep.
In a way, Balakian said, that’s not surprising. The slaughter and
expulsion of Armenian Christians from 1915 to 1923 – the “forgotten
genocide” – has long been denied by the Turkish government. But
historians agree it was a well-documented tragedy that ushered in a
new type of state-sponsored mass killing.
Balakian, 53, teaches poetry and genocide studies at Colgate
University in New York. He grew up in Teaneck and then Tenafly, part
of North Jersey’s Armenian community. Although his grandmother was a
genocide survivor, he knew little about her story when he was a
child. His 1997 memoir, “Black Dog of Fate,” chronicles languid
Sundays spent eating cheese pastries and lamb kebabs out on the
patio. While family members celebrated Armenian foods and Armenian
painters, it was harder for them to talk about the genocide.
To fill in the gaps, Balakian began researching his own family’s
trauma. His grandmother lost her first husband in a massacre, endured
a death march with two young daughters and eventually secured their
passage to New Jersey, where she married an Armenian man working in
Paterson’s silk mills.
“She was almost a widow bride,” Balakian said. “Out of the mouth of
death.”
While promoting the memoir, Balakian realized that Americans from all
cultures have forgotten their own historical connection to the
Armenian genocide. Starting in the 1890s, he said, Turkish
persecution of Armenians was the charitable cause in the United
States, drawing in celebrities, rich industrialists, writers,
suffragists and politicians.
Balakian’s new book, “The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and
America’s Response,” aims to resurrect that forgotten history.
“It was America’s first international human rights movement, and
nothing has ever topped it in longevity or intensity,” Balakian said.
“It’s the first harnessing of a civilian response and
non-governmental organizations and philanthropy.”
Key leaders included Julia Ward Howe, a suffragist and author of “The
Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and Clara Barton, head of the American
Red Cross. The movement attracted writers (Ezra Pound, Henry James),
politicians (Theodore Roosevelt), wealthy philanthropists (John D.
Rockefeller and Henry Ford). Thousands of high schools, churches,
synagogues, Kiwanis Clubs and Rotary Clubs collected donations to
save “the starving Armenians.”
The movement raised $110 million for relief – equivalent to $1.3
billion today – for food and medical supplies for refugee camps and
schools for Armenian orphans. Donations also helped Armenians
resettle in Europe and America.
Many settled in North Jersey. Bergen County now has a thriving
community of more than 8,300 Armenian-Americans, almost 1 percent of
the population.
Balakian said the movement drew on the same utopian, spiritual
energies that fueled abolition, civil rights and feminism – but it
has largely faded from accounts of American history.
“There’s been a big misunderstanding of this, that Americans didn’t
understand this, and didn’t care,” he said. “That’s crazy.”
Balakian recounts in the book how the word “genocide” and the phrase
“crimes against humanity” were first coined in response to the
Armenian slaughter. But he said the grass-roots movement could not
persuade the U.S. government to intervene.
“My book is the story of American gridlock,” he said. “We have the
people petitioning for real intervention and real justice and we have
the State Department refusing to take political action.”
Balakian believes the book could help to reawaken Americans to the
roots of their human rights activities.
“It set in motion the traditions we now have for international human
rights work and activism, such as Amnesty [International], the
engagements with the Balkans … and the Holocaust Museum. All owe
something to a process that started back then in the period of the
1890s to 1920s.”