PRESS OFFICE
Diocese of the Armenian Church of Canada
Contact; Deacon Hagop Arslanian, Assistant to the Primate
615 Stuart Avenue, Outremont-Quebec H2V 3H2
Tel; 514-276-9479, Fax; 514-276-9960
Email; [email protected], Website;

News From the Canadian Armenian Diocese

Bishop Bagrat Galstanian to participate in the Spiritual Supreme
Council meetings

Upon the invitation of His Holiness Karekin II Catholicos of All
Armenians His Eminence Bishop Bagrat Galstanian, Primate of the
Canadian Armenian Diocese will be traveling to motherland Armenia, on
Monday 29th of March 2004, in order to attend the Spiritual Supreme
Council Meetings in the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin. Due to this
emergency meeting, His Eminence’s pastoral visitations will be
rescheduled after his return from the Mother See.

Unfortunately, Bishop Galstanian will not be able to attend the
luncheon organized by the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of
Montreal, His Eminence Andrew Hutchison to honor the Armenian Primate
of Canada.

Saintly Women’s Day in the Diocese of the Armenian Church of Canada

On Saturday March 20, 2004 Saintly Women’s’ day was celebrated in the
Armenian Holy Apostolic Church Canadian Diocese. Celebrations were
held in Montreal (Province of Quebec) and in Hamilton (Province of
Ontario).

For Ladies Guild Committees in the Province of Quebec the celebration
was held at St Gregory the Illuminator Armenian Cathedral. Present
were the Pastor Rev Fr Vazgen Boyajyan and over 100 women from Laval,
Quebec City and Montreal area. During the Sunrise office of the
Armenian Holy Apostolic Church Rev Fr Vazgen Boyajyan read Bishop
Bagrat Galstanian’s Greeting on this unique occasion. After the Church
service a reception held at Marie Manoogian Hall. This year the Life
of St Sahakadoukhd was presented by Mrs. Verjin Assadourian.

For Ladies Guild Committees in the Province of Ontario the celebration
was held at St Mary Armenian Apostolic Church of Hamilton. Present
were the Primate, His Eminence Bishop Bagrat Galstanian and Pastors of
Ontario Armenian Churches. The Sunrise ceremony of the Armenian Church
was officiated during which, Bishop Galstanian greeted the
participants and blessed them. During the reception followed at the
Church Hall the Life of St Sahakadoukhd was presented by Mrs. Seta
Guzuyan.

Reverend Father Hayrik Hovhannisyan arrives at Armenian Holy Apostolic
Church Canadian Diocese

It is with deep spiritual joy that we learned about the appointment of
Reverend Father Hayrik Hovhannisyan by His Holiness Karekin II
Catholicos of All Armenians to serve the Canadian Armenian Diocese.

Reverend Father Hayrik Hovhannisyan is a member of the Brotherhood of
the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin. Rev Fr Hayrik Hovhannisyan was
born on March 1st, 1975 in Yerevan, Armenian. His baptismal name was
Hovik. In 2001 he graduated from the Gevorkian Theological Seminary of
the Mother See with Honors and was ordained a celibate priest in 2003
by His Eminence Archbishop David Sahakian. He was renamed
Fr. Hayrik. Before his ordination to the rank of celibate priesthood
Father Hayrik Hovhannisyan had served as chaplain at the Defense
Ministry of the Republic of Armenia.

His Eminece Bishop Bagrat Galstanian, Primate expressed his joy on
this occasion and thanked the Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All
Armenians His Holiness Karekin II. Fr Hayrik Hovhannisyan will be
attending special university program by the order of His Eminence
Bishop Bagrat Galstanian.

Bishop Bagrat Galstanian in Toronto

Friday March 26, 2004 His Eminence Bishop Bagrat Galstanian presided
over a meeting of the Board of Trustees of Holy Cross Armenian Day
School of Toronto. His Eminence has always been caring in this regard
and pays a very special attention to the role and the mission of
Armenian Schools in Diaspora.

His Eminence Bishop Galstanian celebrated the Divine Liturgy on Sunday
March 28 and headed the Annual Assembly of the Parish of Holy Trinity
Armenian Apostolic Church of Toronto.

The Schedule of His Eminence Bishop Galstanian for the month of April

We hereby would like to present to the Clergy, Diocesan Council
members, Parish councils and faithful of the Armenian Holy Apostolic
Church, Diocese of Canada the Schedule of His Eminence Bishop Bagrat
Galstanian for the month of April 2004.-

March 29-April 5 Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin
April 5- Diocesan Council meeting
April 8- Maundy Thursday Divine Liturgy Ceremony of the washing of the feet,
khavaroom, St Gregory the Illuminator Armenian Cathedral of Montreal.
April 9-Burial of our Lord St Gregory the Illuminator Armenian Cathedral
Montreal.
April 10- Easter Eve meeting with the Christian Education Council Sunday
School Department.
April 10- Divine Liturgy, Holy Trinity Armenian Church of Toronto
April 11- Easter (Zadik) St Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral of Montreal
April 12- Food Drive (In support of Sun Youth celebrating there “50-th
anniversary” a local charitable organization which helps less fortunate families.
Foods gathered on this occasion will be given to Sun Youth by the Diocese of
the Armenian Church of Canada on behalf of Canadian Armenian community).
April 18- New Sunday, Communion and Blessing of Alex Manoogian-Armen Quebec
Armenian school, Montreal St Gregory the Illuminator Armenian Cathedral.
April 22- Toy Drive (In support of the Montreal Children’s Hospital
celebrating “100 years of caring for Children”. Toys gathered will be donated to
Montreal Children’s Hospital. Bishop Galstanian, Clergy of the Diocese and Youth
council executive will be present).
April 23- Martyr’s Prayer and Ecumenical service commemoration of April 24th,
Armenian Genocide organized by Diocesan Youth Council and ACYOC’s of Montreal
and Laval. The key speaker will be the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of
Montreal His Eminence Archbishop Andrew Hutchison at Saint Gregory the
Illuminator Armenian Cathedral, Montreal.
April 24- Divine Liturgy Toronto Holy Trinity Armenian Church. Toronto Church
leaders and politicians will be present on this occasion.

Divan of the Diocese

ChronWatch.com
March 28 2004

Gun Control, Dianne Feinstein, and the ”Assault Weapons” Ban

by Howard Nemerov
~~o~~

`The Senators and Representatives shall … in all Cases, except
Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest
during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses,
and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or
Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other
Place.’ – U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 6, Clause 1.

It’s Okay to Lie in Congress

The preceding excerpt from the Constitution is our origin of
what is called legislative immunity. It means that if Diane
Feinstein prefers to lie while carrying out her job as Senator, we
cannot hold her liable. Furthermore, if her dishonest comments are
quoted by the New York Times, it is given an aura of authority. If
other newspapers use quotes from the New York Times, often called the
paper of record, in their own articles, pretty soon it becomes gospel
truth, because you can read it just about anywhere.

Diane Feinstein sent this in response to a request she uphold
the Constitution that protects her from arrest for using her position
to lie about firearms.

”Thank you for writing to me about the Assault Weapons Ban.
I appreciate hearing from you on this matter and welcome the
opportunity to respond.

”In 1994, Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Bill, which was
signed into law. One provision of this bill banned the manufacture,
transfer, or possession of semi-automatic assault weapons for a
preliminary period of ten years. Since 1994, it has become even
clearer through chilling examples, such as the 1999 shootings at
Columbine High School in Colorado and at the Jewish Community Center
in Los Angeles, that military-style assault weapons are a danger on
our streets and to our children. Semi-automatic assault weapons
which fire up to 250 rounds of ammunition within seconds and without
warning are weapons of war that do not belong on the streets of our
communities.”

She combines the terms ”semi-automatic” and ”assault
weapons” together. True assault weapons, meaning military-grade
firearms, are fully automatic, and have been outlawed for civilians
since the National Firearms Act of 1934. In practice, the law
focuses on guns which have cosmetic similarities to fully automatic
military weapons. The term is so vague that the Fresno, California,
District Attorney sued the state attorney general over the confusing
state assault weapons ban. (1) ”Assault weapons” is becoming so
general a term that most semi-automatic handguns are included.

Let’s look at what she doesn’t say about the Columbine
killers. The two murderers broke 19 existing laws, including using
straw purchasers to buy guns for minors, manufacturing and possessing
explosive devices, and manufacturing a sawed-off shotgun. (2)

She assumes that the two mass murderers would have been
stymied by lack of available firearms and not seek out the black
market. She also assumes they would not focus their efforts into
making and installing more effective explosive devices, which would
have raised the death toll.

The Jewish Community Center murderer had also violated
existing gun laws, being a felon on parole. As such, it was illegal
to possess a firearm. (3)

The next Big Lie is ”semi-automatic assault weapons which
fire up to 250 rounds of ammunition within seconds.” Only fully
automatic weapons are capable this type of dispersal. Fully
automatic weapons, not available to civilians, are rarely used in
crime. (4)

Feinstein also ignores other pertinent facts:

Between 1977 and 1997, states with citizen-friendly Right to
Carry (Shall Issue) laws averaged 25 fewer multiple victim murders
than states that did not trust their tax-paying citizens the right of
self-defense in public. (5)

In states without Shall Issue laws, there have been 15 school
shootings between 1977 and 1995, but only one in Shall Issue states.
The five school shootings in 1997-1998 occurred after the 1995
Gun-Free Zones law banned firearms within 1,000 feet of schools. (6)

These omissions highlight the manner in which gun control
advocates seek to slant the discussion by omitting the costs of gun
control laws, and ignoring the benefits of trained, law-abiding
citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights for self-defense
and community protection.

Feinstein: ”Unless acted upon by the United States Congress
and President Bush, the assault weapons ban will expire, as
scheduled, in September 2004. On May 5, 2003 I introduced a bill, S.
1034, which would reauthorize the assault weapons ban for another ten
years. The success of this bill depends on support from the House,
the Senate, and the administration. President Bush and Attorney
General Ashcroft have both publicly stated their support for an
extension of the ban, and I intend to hold them to their promise.
Please know that I will keep your thoughts in mind as I continue to
fight for this important legislation.”

Feinstein has warned us: call and write your Congressional
representatives and tell them to stop any renewal or expansion of the
1994 Assault Weapons ban.

Gun Control Means Confiscation

”If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United
States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them, Mr. and
Mrs. America, turn ’em all in, I would have done it.” – Senator
Dianne Feinstein, CBS-TV’s 60 Minutes, February 5, 1995.

Feinstein wants us to believe mass murderers would be stopped
if law-abiding gun owners were disarmed. If gun-banners wanted only
some ”reasonable steps” to insure that people were protected from
accidental gun death and gun violence, why are they still asking for
more gun control after 20,000 gun laws? They cite new ”loopholes”
that allow criminals access to firearms. (7, 8) They justify it with
the mantra ”If it saves one life, it’s worth it.” But they never
factor in the costs of not owning a gun for personal protection, nor
the lives saved because a physically weaker woman shot and killed the
man who was stalking her with intent to kill, or the children who
still have a mother. (9)

Nor do they talk about the costs to society when civilian
firearms are confiscated, such as what is happening in Britain. (10)

Nor do they mention that no study has concluded that the 1994
Assault Weapons ban (17) or that gun control laws reduced crime. (18)

So why do they continue wanting more gun control?

Confiscation Leads to Mass Murder

It is curious that law-abiding gun owners are considered
guilty without any evidence showing their culpability in crime, but
national governments, with ample evidence to the contrary, are still
assumed to be the most able protectors of the people.

Rudolph J. Rummel, professor emeritus of the University of
Hawaii and author of numerous books on the depredations of
governments, has a web site (13) packed with data covering what he
calls democide: ”The murder of any person or people by a government,
including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.” (14)

Following are some facts relating to governments which
disarmed their people as a prelude to democide.

”The Soviet Union appears the greatest mega-murderer of all,
apparently killing near 61,000,000 people. Stalin himself is
responsible for almost 43,000,000 of these.’ (15)

”In sum the communists probably have murdered something like
110,000,000, or near two-thirds of all those killed by all
governments, quasi-governments, and guerrillas from 1900 to 1987.
(15)

Professor Rummel estimates over 35 million people were
slaughtered by the Chinese Communists. (16)

”By genocide, the murder of hostages, reprisal raids, forced
labor, ‘euthanasia,’ starvation, exposure, medical experiments, and
terror bombing, and in the concentration and death camps, the Nazis
murdered from 15,003,000 to 31,595,000 people…Among them 1,000,000
were children under eighteen years of age. And none of these
monstrous figures even include civilian and military combat or
war-deaths.” (17)

What Hitler, Mao, and Stalin all have in common is civilian
disarmament. They banned the people’s guns first. Then, in their
arrogance and self-righteousness, they began to remove the
”undesirables.” These are only the most heinous examples.
Professor Rummel documents the democide of over 170 million civilians
in the 20th century, a common thread being civilian disarmament.

Via email interview, Professor Rummel reported a variation of
confiscation: ”For the Khmer Rouge, there was no general gun
confiscation, but anyone found with one was murdered on the spot.”
Khmer Rouge killed ”only” 2 million. (18)

”[Include] Turkey’s genocide of the Armenians and Greeks.
Weapons were seized beforehand as part of the step-by-step
implementation of what the Young Turks planned in the highest
councils.” During the WWI era, Turkey murdered 1.5 million of its
Armenian citizens. (18)

Conclusion

Every despot had a ”reasonable” explanation for their power
grab. Communism was supposed to free the little people from the
depredations of nobility and industrialists. It ended up merely
changing terms, from serf to proletariat, murdering over 100 million
along the way. Hitler wanted to create a superior human race. He
ended up being instrumental in causing the deaths of tens of
millions.

We are now faced with a reality check. There is no proof that
civilian disarmament reduces crime. On the other hand, civilian
disarmament is proven to lead to increased crime and genocide. Given
the nature of those who seek to gather power unto themselves, there
is no third option.

It is time for you to choose.

Footnotes

(1) Fresno official sues the state over ban on assault weapons,
Sean Scully, The Washington Times, November 5, 2001.
;ArticleID011105-28385456

(2) High School Shooters Broke 19 Laws, Professor J.D. Crouch,
April 29, 2000.

(3) Furrow pleads guilty to shootings, will avoid death penalty,
get life without parole. CNN.com, January 24, 2001.

(4) Full Auto Weapons, GunCite.
au.html

(5) The Bias Against Guns, page 106, John Lott, 2003.

(6) Gun Facts Version 3.3, page 15. Guy Smith, 2003.
Go to and select the format you prefer.

(7) The Gun Show Loophole, Americans for Gun Safety.

(8) Flashbunny.org provides instructional Flash video on the
fantasy of the Gun Show Loophole.

(9) A Clarksdale man was shot to death by a 12-year-old girl
Saturday night as he allegedly attacked the girl’s mother, police
said. Jeff Piselli, Clarksdale Press Register, April 30, 2001.
;BRD38&PAG=461&dept_id=230617&rfi=6

(10) Gun Crime Rockets 35 Percent. Bob Roberts,
UK Mirror, January 10, 2003.
;method=full& siteid=50143

(11) Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban:
1994-1996. National Institute of Justice, March 1999.

(12) First Reports Evaluating the Effectiveness
of Strategies for Preventing Violence: Firearms Laws, CDC
Publication, November, 2002

(13)

(14)

(15)

(16) China’s Bloody Century By R.J. Rummel

(17) DEMOCIDE: NAZI GENOCIDE AND MASS MURDER by
R.J. Rummel

(18)

~~o~~

Howard Nemerov is a Bay Area freelance writer who receives e-mail at:
[email protected].

__________________________________
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Los Angeles Daily News
March 28 2004

Vote set on school holiday
Proposal would give students day off on Armenian Christmas

By Naush Boghossian
Staff Writer

GLENDALE — The school board will vote Tuesday on two new student
attendance calendars, both of which include having Jan. 6, Armenian
Christmas, as a day off.

The financially strapped district lost about $250,000 in state
funding this year because so many Armenian students stayed home on
Jan. 6 to celebrate their culture’s Christmas holiday. About 10,000
of the district’s 29,200 students are of Armenian descent.

“If students are not in attendance, then that disrupts their
opportunity to have the continuity of instruction,” said Cathy
McMullen, the district’s assistant superintendent of human resources.
“We need to do everything to maximize instructional opportunities,
our financial resources and to be respectful of our community’s
needs.”

Under both calendars — the product of several meetings with parents
and the teachers’ association — students on a traditional school
year would receive the mandated 180 days of instruction between Sept.
8 and June 23, but would have Jan. 6 and the day before Thanksgiving
off.

The district originally was considering starting the school year a
week early and adding a week to its winter break to incorporate
Armenian Christmas as a school holiday, but the idea was thrown out
after complaints from parents.

School board member Greg Krikorian said it is unlikely they will be
able to please everyone in the community but the calendars that have
been settled on will allow the district to save a great deal of money
and be respectful of a holiday.

“We are steadfast in incorporating Jan. 6 as a day off in our school
district for students and staff because it helps us address the
budget challenge, it gives us a better opportunity to educate more
children on that day, and finally, it helps us be more culturally
sensitive to our large Armenian population,” Krikorian said.

Nearby school districts have made accommodations for days they
experience high student and staff absenteeism in order to avoid
losing average daily attendance revenues.

The Las Virgenes Unified School District, which has a large Jewish
student population, has a staff development day on Sept. 17 to
coincide with Yom Kippur.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has tried to build its
calendars around days when a large number of students and staff are
absent — including Good Friday and Yom Kippur.

Naush Boghossian, (818) 546-3306 [email protected]

IF YOU GO: The Glendale Unified School District board will meet at
3:30 p.m. Tuesday in the board room of the school administration
center at 223 N. Jackson St. For more information, call (818)
241-3311.
From: Baghdasarian

Baku Today, Azerbaijan
March 28 2004

US Diplomat Says His Country Has No Desire To Establish Base In
Azerbaijan

Richard Armitage, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, said on Saturday
that he had not discussed military bases with President Ilham Aliyev
because his country has `no desire’ to set up bases in Azerbaijan.

Armitage, who arrived Baku late Friday on the last leg of his trip to
Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan, thanked Aliyev for his support in
Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said cooperation in so called U.S.-led war against terror and also
Azerbaijan’s support for the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Baku
has sent peacekeepers, was proof of a good military relationship
between the United States and a Muslim country.

The visit came amid continued planning for a global realignment of
U.S. forces that could result in more U.S. military activity in
former republics and satellites of the former Soviet Union.

Armitage, who also met with opposition leaders, reiterated U.S.
concerns about what the opposition calls a crackdown on dissent and
independent media. But he did not play up the problems, saying that
Aliev agrees that there must be independent media.

He said that “the human rights situation is certainly not as good as
it could or should be. But it’s not a permanent situation and we have
no doubt that it will change, change
for the better.”

Armitage said that a settlement of the lingering conflict between
Armenian and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh cannot be imposed
from above by outside forces.

“It has to be a lasting and durable solution, and it has to be
something the two sides agree on,” he said. He said an international
mediating group that includes Russia and
the United States “has some new ideas” on the issue, but did not
reveal them.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly ethnic-Armenian populated western region
of Azerbaijan, was occupied by Armenia in 1991-94 war. Armenian
troops also took control over Azerbaijan’s seven administrative
districts – Lachin, Kelbejer, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jebrail, Zengilan and
Gubadli – surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh.

As a result of the war, over 700,000 Azeris left their homes in the
occupied territories. Azerbaijan was also subjected to a heavy burden
of more 400,000-refugee population that fled Armenia.

Around 400,000 ethnic-Armenians also had to move from their homes in
Baku and Azerbaijan’s other districts after Nagorno-Karabakh began
demanding unification with Armenia in 1988.

A cease-fire was signed between the two countries in 1994, but no
agreement has been reached on the territory’s final status yet.

Zaman, Turkey
March 28 2004

Armitage Fails to Convince Aliyev to Open Armenia Border

The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, said
yesterday that the Washington administration favors the opening of
the border between Turkey and Armenia; however, Azerbaijani President
Ilham Aliyev is opposed to reopening the border while certain issues
remain unresolved.

After his meetings in Baku, Armitage said that Aliyev did not seem
very receptive to Washington’s suggestion. Armitage speculated that
part of the reason for Aliyev’s demeanor might have been related to
the fact that Aliyev thinks it would be very difficult to resolve the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict if Azerbaijan were to reopen their border
with Armenia at the present time.

Armitage added that the U.S. does not have any plan to establish a
military base in Azerbaijan and that the topic was not even on the
agenda of their talks. He also conveyed the U.S.’s concerns about
resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. “Incidents in Kosovo roused
concerns that fierce fighting might resume in Nagorno-Karabakh.”
Armitage emphasized that basic recommendations for a solution have to
be prepared by Yerevan and Baku.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
March 28, 2004 Sunday 1:17 AM Eastern Time

Georgia elects deputies to national parliament

By Eka Mekhuzla

TBILISI

Georgia started general elections on Sunday at 08.00 local time. The
voting will be held till 20.00 at 2,841 polling stations, out of
which 265 are located in the Adzharia Autonomous Republic. Another 26
polls operate abroad, including four in Russia (three in Moscow and
one in St. Petersburg).

Voters are to elect 150 deputies according to proportional party
lists. The above seats are contested by 11 political parties and five
blocs. The elections will be pronounced valid if a third of voters go
to the polls.

The election results according to proportional party lists, held on
November 2, 2003, were made null and void by the Supreme Court on
November 25. The results of polls of 75 deputies, elected by the
majoritarian system, were not appealed and remain in force.

Ballot papers are printed not only in the Georgian, but also in
Azerbaijan and Armenian languages. The last ones were dispatched to
the areas Kvem Kartli (Eastern Georgia) and Samtskhe-Dzhavakheti
(south of the country) where the Azerbaijan and Armenian ethnic
groups predominate.

The republican Central Election Commission took this decision due to
the fact that not all Georgian citizens of these ethnic groups,
especially in the countryside, know Georgian well enough. Some 84
percent of the country’s population are Georgians, 6.5 percent –
Azerbaijanis and 5.7 percent are Armenians.

Los Angeles Times
March 28, 2004 Sunday
Home Edition

On the other side of darkness;
Holocaust Literature An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work Edited
by S. Lillian Kremer Routledge: 1,500 pp., $295, two volumes

by John Felstiner, John Felstiner is the author of “Paul Celan: Poet,
Survivor, Jew,” which won the Truman Capote Award for Literary
Criticism, and editor of “Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan,”
which received translation prizes from the Modern Language Assn., the
American Translators Assn. and PEN West. He teaches at Stanford
University.

Years ago in Long Island, I visited a Berlin-born poet, Ilse
Blumenthal-Weiss. As a young woman in 1921, having written to Rainer
Maria Rilke admiring his poetry, she’d evoked Rilke’s fervent
response about her good fortune, about the Jews’ God “to whom you
belong” because “every Jew is emplaced in Him, ineradicably planted
in Him, by the root of his tongue.”

Later, Blumenthal-Weiss had her own poetry to write. “Landscape With
Concentration Camp” begins: “The earth is black, the sky sheer
steel.” Although her husband was gassed at Auschwitz and her son
Peter murdered in Mauthausen, she survived Westerbork and
Theresienstadt. Her lines “For Peter” (1946) sound like this in
translation:

When they say Murder! I must learn

That this word, that this single term

Means you, means you a mere child’s blood,

You: Boyish! Jubilant! Brave moods! —

God taketh. One time hath God given.

You’re gone — and I should go on living?

When this woman in her 80s asked what brought me to see her and I
said I was studying Holocaust poetry, she drew a blank. What did that
phrase mean? The abstract topic now sounds callow, hollow, in the
face of Ilse’s loss and desolate voice.

Think too of the German-speaking Paul Celan, whose lexicon never had
the word “Holocaust” for what he’d been planted in, by the root of
his tongue. The German language “passed through frightful muting,
through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech,” he said,
and it “gave back no words for that which happened,” for das was
geschah. In the ballad-like “Deathfugue” (1945), he writes:

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night

we drink you at morning and midday we drink you at evening

we drink and we drink.

“Black milk,” Schwarze Milch, which is a way of saying there are “no
words for that which happened.”

Celan’s voice makes us approach this very welcome “Holocaust
Literature: An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work” with a measure
of caution. For besides the word’s academic pigeonholing, we’ve
become habituated to a misnomer. From the Greek for “wholly burned,”
“Holocaust” echoes biblical Hebrew olah, meaning a burnt offering
whose smoke “rises” to God. Can this designate the slaughter of a
people emplaced in Him, as Rilke put it? Does the sacred aura of
“Holocaust” fit Celan’s poem “Psalm,” with its cry, “Blessed art
thou, No One”?

What’s more, and worse, for years the word, the fact, the Holocaust
specter, has been exploited by any person or faction with a
grievance, whether trite or momentous. Legal abortion is called a
Holocaust; Jewish victims are perpetrating their own Holocaust in the
Middle East; American Jewish assimilation is a Holocaust. Scare
tacticians crave that absolute alarm.

Against analogy-mongering we need the keen, deep sense that
literature can give, of how the European catastrophe actually
impinged on human bodies, personhood, spirit. To clarify contemporary
as well as historical imagination, we need the sound and texture and
tempo of one life after another after another.

That potency, which makes the now-indispensable misnomer also a prime
slogan, has given rise to a crucial question of definition: Whose
Holocaust? Twenty-one years ago an Israeli conference took the title
“Holocaust and Genocide” to acknowledge as well the Armenian
massacres of 1915. As for the Holocaust years 1933 to 1945, the
catchphrase “6 million” Jews is always in danger of turning glib, and
is anyway deemed inadequate, misleading. Didn’t the Holocaust extend
to Slavs, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, disabled, mentally
ill and various political victims?

Well, yes and no. All these were designated victims, but not with the
same drastic and particular ferocity. Hitler’s “Final Solution” was
actually Endlosung der Judenfrage, “Final Solution to the Jewish
Question.” His “war against the Jews,” as the historian Lucy
Davidowicz called it, was different in kind as well as magnitude: a
“unique event with universal implications,” says survivor Elie
Wiesel.

Although this unique two-volume encyclopedia, complete with an
in-depth introduction, more than 300 entries, nine appendixes,
several bibliographies and a thorough index, emphasizes the Jewish
experience, nowhere does the publisher’s brochure or the
encyclopedia’s preface use the word “Jews.”

We’re told that “from Homer’s ‘Iliad’ to the present day, writers
have striven to comprehend the spectacle of human inhumanity.” This
claim for a universal reach is borne out when “Holocaust Literature”
features many non-Jewish authors — Borges, Brecht, Camus, Delbo,
Grass, Mann, Styron — who wrote about fascism with little or no
focus on Jews. At the same time, other entries on non-Jewish authors
— Boll, Hersey, Hochhuth, Keneally, Milosz, Sartre, Schlink, Sebald,
D.M. Thomas — rightly focus on the Jewish fate. The fraught sense of
“Holocaust” will inevitably ricochet between universal and
particular, as the writer Meyer Levin knew too well in trying for
decades to reclaim from Broadway and Hollywood the Jewish identity of
Anne Frank’s diary.

What is meant by “Holocaust” literature? How wide and deep to cast
the net? As far as Franz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” (1919), Isaak
Babel’s “Story of My Dovecot” (1927)? To see these as foreshadowings
skews them, though at some deep stratum such visionary stories do
benchmark a continuum of terror.

At its center, “Holocaust” literature would mean writings by victims
and others on the Jewish catastrophe — first, works that somehow
emerged from Nazi-ridden Europe in as many as 20 languages, then what
has come later and from elsewhere. Beyond this core, it’s an open
question.

Slowly over half a century, we’ve come to realize that countless
victims were jolted into creating songs and poems, diaries and
journals, letters and memoirs, eventually stories, novels and plays.
Even before the war, voices of alarm had emerged, notably Mordecai
Gebirtig’s 1938 song that begins, ‘S brennt, “It’s burning, brothers,
our shtetl’s burning!” Primo Levi published “If This Is a Man” in
1947, but only its later paperback version, “Survival in Auschwitz,”
thrust this unique memoir to the center of Holocaust memory. Now we
have a plethora of writings, down to the grandchildren of survivors.

At the heart of actual Holocaust experience, though still virtually
unknown, are graffiti that have been found scratched on the walls of
the Drancy transit camp outside Paris. Jews from Europe and North
Africa who’d found refuge in France beginning in 1938 were rounded up
by the French between 1942 and 1944 and sent from Drancy to
Auschwitz. Take Marcel Chetovy, age 17, who decoratively inscribed,
in French, this biography of himself and his father Moise: “Arrived
the 1st, deported the 31st July, in very very good spirits with hopes
of returning soon.” Elsewhere on the crowded cement wall, boldly
lettered, anonymous and challenging comprehension: Merci Quand Meme a
la France, “Thanks all the same to France.”

What tried-and-true canon, what aesthetic fits this bottomless
strangeness and poignance? Which theory of metaphor explains Celan’s
“Black milk of daybreak,” or a woman telling us summer dawn in
Auschwitz “was always black to me”? These questions hold for
children’s poems and drawings in Theresienstadt, sardonic ghetto
lullabies, Jerzy Kosinski’s brutal grotesque “The Painted Bird” and
Dan Pagis’ six-line ruptured Hebrew verse, “Written in Pencil in a
Sealed Boxcar”:

here in this transport

I Eve

with Abel my son

if you see my older son

Cain son of Adam

tell him that I

In the same vein, Celan spoke of “true-stammered,” “death-rattled,”
“prayer-sharp knives / of my / silence.” “Your singing, what does it
know?” he asked himself, Dein Gesang, was weiss er?

“Holocaust Literature,” bravely and ably edited by S. Lillian Kremer,
reflects various literary, socio-historical and psychological
approaches, especially from the earliest critics in this field:
Irving Halperin, George Steiner, Lawrence Langer, Edward Alexander,
Alvin Rosenfeld and Sidra Ezrahi. By now, so many monographs and
anthologies, courses and conferences abound, it’s hard to imagine a
time when only Anne Frank’s diary and Wiesel’s “Night” were generally
accessible in this country. Kremer’s informative, wide-ranging
introduction sees in Holocaust literature a uniquely compelling body
of testimony. As time wears on brutally, carelessly, the humanist
spirit itself has come under duress and needs attesting more than
ever.

Even a seasoned reader will find these entries on more than 300
souls, a hundred of them women, mind-stretching. They wrote in many
genres and languages: Yitzhak Katznelson, Avraham Sutzkever, Kadya
Molodowsky in Yiddish; Abba Kovner, Haim Gouri, Aharon Appelfeld in
Hebrew; Nelly Sachs, Gertrud Kolmar, Jurek Becker in German; Andre
Schwarz-Bart, Piotr Rawicz in French; Tadeusz Borowski in Polish;
Jiri Weil in Czech; the recent Nobel laureate Imre Kertesz in
Hungarian; and in English, Charles Reznikoff, Philip Roth, Cynthia
Ozick, William Heyen (the nephew and son-in-law of Nazi soldiers),
Irena Klepfisz (born in the Warsaw ghetto) and Bernard Malamud (but
his story “The Last Mohican” deserved mention, with its piercing
comic ironies).

More than a third of these figures are English-speaking, which may
seem overweighted. One also balks at meeting here an author who
“neglected the German genocide of the Jews,” or someone in whose
massive work “the Jewish issue occupies a relatively minor space,” or
another whose Holocaust “material … is only briefly — and rather
chaotically — narrated.”

Such misgivings seem trivial, given the richness of this
encyclopedia. There are omissions, though — most being inevitable,
some unfortunate. Here then are a few writers worth adding, if only
to give them Yad vaShem, “a monument and a name,” and to fill in the
dense landscape “after Auschwitz.” They have a claim on us, like
Felix Nussbaum’s 1942 self-portrait, in which the painter stares out
sidelong, exposing his yellow star and an identity card with his
German “Place of Birth” effaced.

Anne Frank and Moshe Flinker are here, yes, but let us add Yitshok
Rudashevski, who at 13 in 1941 started his Yiddish diary of the Vilna
ghetto: “An old Jew has remained hanging in the narrow passage of the
second story. His feet are dangling over the heads of the people
below.” In April 1943 Yitshok meets an escapee from the killing field
outside Vilna, “pale with wild eyes. His fur coat is completely
covered with lime.” His diary ends: “The rain lashes with anger as
though it wished to flush everything out of the world.” Such a
sentence stretches to breaking our Bildungsroman tradition, the
“portrait of the artist as a young man.”

Let us add Michal Borwicz, a poet in Warsaw’s clandestine 1944
anthology, “From the Abyss,” and Gebirtig as well as Hirsh Glik,
whose 1943 “Zog nit keynmol az du geyst dem letsten veg” (Never say
this is your final road) became the partisans’ anthem; and French
resistant Andre Verdet, for his Auschwitz sequence “the days the
nights and then the dawn”; and Romanian poet Benjamin Fondane, who
fought in the French army but was gassed as a Jew; and Robert Desnos,
whose verses are incised in the underground Holocaust memorial behind
Notre Dame. And Ilse Blumenthal-Weiss.

>From postwar fiction let us add Siegfried Lenz, for his superb novel
on Nazi oppression, “The German Lesson”; Anatoli Kuznetsov, for “Babi
Yar”; Wolfgang Borchert, Leon Uris, Uri Orlev and then Johanna Reiss
and Hans Peter Richter for their children’s books.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, the Tunisian Albert Memmi are
here, but by all means let us add Edmond Jabes, an Egyptian Jewish
emigrant to Paris, whose “Book of Questions” the catastrophe
undermines on every page. By that gauge, too, weren’t “Waiting for
Godot,” “Endgame” and Samuel Beckett’s novel “The Unnamable” all
composed under the sign of the Holocaust? Let us also recall
Charlotte Salomon, in hiding on the French Riviera, who longingly
painted sentences in her German mother tongue onto her 1,200
autobiographical watercolors before Adolf Eichmann’s henchman Alois
Brunner sent her to Auschwitz.

Recalling his fellow prisoners’ “hundreds of thousands of stories,
all different and full of a tragic, disturbing necessity,” Levi asks,
“But are they not themselves stories of a new Bible?” In this
daunting light, “Holocaust Literature” bears ample witness. We must
never stop disproving Theodor Adorno’s “After Auschwitz, to write a
poem is barbaric.” Language did indeed “pass through frightful
muting,” as Celan knew well enough. For 25 years, until drowning in
the Seine, he wrote his own way “through the thousand darknesses of
deathbringing speech.” *

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: HAUNTING: Felix Nussbaum in his “Self-Portrait With
Jewish Identity Card,” probably painted in 1942, still speaks to us.
PHOTOGRAPHER: VG Bild Kunst

Connecticut Law Tribune
March 22, 2004

Vol. 10; No. 10; Pg. 372

Attorney NeglectedImmigrant’s BIA Appeal
Keshishyan v. Burrier;
STATEWIDE GRIEVANCE COMMITTEE

CASE-INFO: 8 pages. Statewide Grievance Committee [Doc. No. 02-0037]

In May 2001, Bardukh Keshishyan, the complainant, hired Attorney
Walter Burrier to represent him in the appeal of a decision by the
Board of Immigration Appeals, which denied his application for
political asylum from Armenia. Keshishyan claimed he faced
persecution and death if forced to return. Burrier accepted a $135
retainer, but didn’t file the appeal on his client’s behalf. When
Keshishyan discovered, one year later, in May 2002, that there wasn’t
a pending appeal with the BIA, he spoke with Burrier, who admitted
that he forgot about Keshishyan’s case. After reviewing the file,
Burrier told Keshishyan that the deadline for filing the appeal had
expired and refunded the retainer. In a written response to the
Statewide Grievance Committee complaint, Burrier attributed the error
to his heavy workload and to a mistake by his office employee. The
SGC found, by clear and convincing evidence, that Burrier didn’t
provide competent representation, in violation of Rule 1.1. Although
Burrier blamed his office employee, keeping track of the appeal was
his responsibility, especially in this instance, where he had only
three weeks from the first meeting with Keshishyan to file a timely
appeal. Burrier admitted that he forgot about Keshishyan’s case. It
was essential for him to act with diligence and promptness. His
failure to do so violated Rule 1.3. Burrier previously was
reprimanded three times, and the SGC ordered that he be presented to
the Superior Court for discipline.

Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee)
March 24, 2004 Wednesday

Question & answer

Q: What is the oldest business in the United States?

A: The prize goes to Zildjian, the world’s No. 1 maker of cymbals. In
1623, in Constantinople, Turkey, an Armenian alchemist named Avedis
created an alloy for making cymbals of extraordinary clarity and
power. A sultan gave him the name “Zildjian,” meaning cymbalsmith. In
1929, the company he founded moved to America, where they set up a
new foundry in Quincy, Mass. Zildjian celebrated its 380th
Anniversary last year. Craigie Zildjian is the company’s current —
and first female — CEO.

Submitted by Janoyan Ana

Turkish MP urges Armenians to develop ties

Arminfo
25 Mar 04

YEREVAN

The Turkish people have no bias towards the Armenians and historical
problems should be frozen. We should do our best to develop bilateral
relations, Turkish Republican People’s Party Deputy Yasar Nuri Ozturk,
has told Armenian Kentron TV.

He said that if the Russian military base is on Armenian territory to
avert a danger from the Turkish side, then this is a mistaken view as
Turkey is a peaceloving country which respects both its own and other
countries’ territorial integrity. It is wrong to build neighbourly
relations on the basis of fear and on ways of eliminating it,
especially in modern times when nothing can be achieved in a military
way.

I would like to stress that Turkey is a country which lay no claim to
other countries’ territory, the Turkish MP said, adding that the
principle of Turkey’s foreign policy is peace. By signing many
international treaties, Turkey assumed certain commitments.

Ozturk noted that Turkish Foreign Ministry officials are making
efforts to normalize relations between Turkey and Armenia and
following the last elections, the country entered the new stage of
intensive reforms. He said that Turkey’s foreign policy was based on
sincerity and top officials had visited over 60 countries after the
elections.

“I think they will visit Armenia as well and we should do our best to
make it happen,” he said.