BALAKIAN TO PRESENT "ARMENIAN GOLGOTHA" AT MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE DEC. 2 NEW EXHIBIT ON THE MORGENTHAU FAMILY FEATURES "RACE EXTERMINATION" TELEGRAM

Reporter.am
Wednesday, 25 November 2009

New York – In conjunction with a new exhibit on the Morgenthau
family, author and translator Peter Balakian will present the English
translation of Armenian Golgotha, his great-uncle’s landmark memoir of
the Armenian Genocide, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, on Wednesday,
December 2, at 7 p.m.

New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau will introduce Mr.

Balakian. Preceding the talk will be a gallery tour of The Morgenthaus:
A Legacy of Service, at 6 p.m., for which preregistration is required.

A key witness to genocide

On April 24, 1915, Fr. Grigoris Balakian was arrested along with
some 250 other intellectuals and leaders of Constantinople’s Armenian
community. It was the beginning of the Ottoman Turkish government’s
systematic attempt to eliminate the Armenian people from Turkey,
a campaign that continued through World War I and the fall of the
Ottoman Empire, by which time more than a million Armenians had been
annihilated and expunged from their historic homeland.

For Fr. Grigoris, himself condemned, it was also the beginning of a
four-year ordeal.

He saw his compatriots sent in carts, on donkeys, or on foot to
face certain death in the desert of northern Syria. Many would not
even survive the journey, suffering starvation, disease, mutilation,
and rape, among other tortures, or being slaughtered outright en route.

Miraculously, Fr. Grigoris managed to escape. His memoir brings to
life the survivors, foreign witnesses, and Turkish officials involved
in the Armenian Genocide, and also those few brave, righteous Turks,
who, with some of their German allies, resisted orders calling for
the death of the Armenians.

This powerful book, newly released in English translation, has been
praised by Elie Wiesel and critics worldwide as a classic of survivor
literature. The New Yorker called Armenian Golgotha a "fascinating,
first-hand testimony to a monumental crime."

Peter Balakian is the author of The Burning Tigris: The Armenian
Genocide and America’s Response, winner of the 2005 Raphael Lemkin
Prize, a New York Times best seller, and a New York Times Notable
Book; Black Dog of Fate, winner of the PEN/Albrand Award for Memoir,
also a New York Times Notable Book; and June-tree: New and Selected
Poems, 1974-2000.

The Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities at
Colgate University is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a
fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Grigoris Balakian
was his great-uncle.

The Morgenthau legacy

The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service, on view through December 2010,
profiles three generations of an extraordinary family. Occupying the
museum’s Overlook gallery, the exhibit makes use of newly discovered
film footage, personal artifacts, and rare documents that changed
the course of history.

They show how Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr., Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., and New York County
District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau came close to world events –
including the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, refugee crises, and
the formation of the State of Israel – and felt compelled to respond
as both Americans and Jews.

Henry Morgenthau, Sr., (1856-1946) graduated from Columbia Law School,
ran successful businesses in law and real estate, and was the founding
president of Rabbi Wise’s Free Synagogue. After his success in the
private sector, he made the decision to devote the rest of his life
to serving his country and the causes in which he believed.

Appointed ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1913 as World War I was
looming, Mr. Morgenthau in the first two years of his post witnessed
the poverty of Jewish settlers in Palestine. A menorah he acquired
on his first trip to the region (then a part of the empire) in 1914
is among the artifacts on view.

Shocking dispatches from American consuls and missionaries
stationed in the interior of the empire alerted Amb. Morgethau
to the Turkish persecution of the Armenians. In a telegram to the
U.S. State Department, he warned: "it appears that a campaign of
race extermination is in progress." This important document from the
National Archives is a highlight of the exhibit.

During his ambassadorship, Morgenthau called attention to the
sufferings of Christians and Jews in the Empire and helped supply
direct aid and relief. Afterwards he continued to speak out about
conditions for Jews and minorities abroad, and to raise funds on
their behalf. Starting in the 1930s he personally provided direct
assistance to dozens of families that fled Nazism.

Another telegram on display was sent by World Jewish Congress Secretary
Gerhart Riegner to Rabbi Stephen Wise in 1942 about the Nazis’ plans
to exterminate all Jews in Germany and German-controlled areas in
Europe; this information was breaking news obtained through Riegner’s
private contacts.

The exhibit, funded by The Isenberg Family Charitable Trust, Marina
and Stephen E. Kaufman, Lois and Martin Whitman, Jack Rudin, and New
York State Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, includes additional artifacts
from the lives and careers of Amb. Morgenthau’s distinguished son
and grandson, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and Robert Morgenthau.