By Grigoris Balakian, Translated by Peter Balakian with Aris Sevag

A Borzoi Book, published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2009 Click to Buy this Book!

Grigoris Balakian (1876–1934) was a priest and later a bishop in the Armenian Apostolic Church. He had studied engineering in Germany, entered an Armash Seminary in Constantinople, and had served as a minister before being called to administrative and diplomatic service by the Apostolic Patriarchate. He was a divinity student at the University of Berlin in July of 1914 when the assassination in Sarajevo led to World War I. In the midst of the initial chaotic war frenzy he managed through many difficulties to return to his home in Constantinople, aware that the war had also “stirred the Armenophobic feelings of the Turkish people.” Throughout the entire book there is never a lessening of his compassionate sense of responsibility for the Armenian people and the preservation of their national and folk identity, nor of his soul’s spiritual foundation, a source of strength that becomes essential during a sojourn extending over years through conditions almost too horrific to comprehend. Some of his responses are similar to those revealed in the witness literature of the World War II Holocaust survivors. In Chankiri, where the deported Constantinople Armenians were held for a time, Balakian, with great conviction, tells a distressed friend that “… at whatever cost, I had decided not to die, so that I could see the emancipated dawn of a reborn Armenia.” Later he has cause to write: “Oh, my tribulation is unbearable …” and if he managed to survive he would “… attest to this great crime to future generations.”

At the worst moments during the extreme deprivation and unrelieved horror on the journey by foot from Chankiri toward Der Zor in the Syrian desert, where there would be no chance of survival for any possible emaciated survivors, the ever-present fear of painful death from government-sanctioned murder — that becomes inflamed by cupidity — is overcome through visualizations of climbing higher on the hill of Golgotha. As in the Holocaust literature, near the end of all endurance, death is no longer to be feared and becomes the friend.

Balakian’s renown and capable leadership saves his particular group of exiles many times.  However, his physical strength nearly gives out on one occasion when Shukri Bey [Captain Shukri], by way of stressing the dangers of the vicinity through which they are passing, leads him to a small valley that is full of the massacred (page 160): “… It is difficult to describe the shocking sight of these martyred compatriots, and I don’t remember ever having found myself this close to my grave. Such proximity to death made me feel weak, and as my already tired legs became wobbly, I fell to the ground. I did not, however, lose consciousness. In the wink of the eye, all the notable events of my life flashed before me like a motion picture, and I became bewildered, imagining that from one minute to the next we could be subjected to the same black fate.” Shukri Bey helps him to his feet: “Don’t be afraid, murabhasa effendi [respected bishop], there’s no danger for our caravan …” As on past occasions, a generous bribe was necessary.

Grigoris Balakian was the great-uncle of Peter Balakian. From the Introduction: “The literature of witness has had a significant impact on our understanding of the twentieth century. What we know about our age of catastrophe we know in crucial part from memoirs such as Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel’s Night, Michihiko Hachiya’s Hiroshima Diary, Nadezhda Mandelstam’s Hope Against Hope, and many others, stories that have taken us inside episodes of mass violence and killing, genocide and torture. They have allowed us acquaintance with individual victims and perpetrators, offering insights into the nature of torture, cruelty, suffering, survival, and death. By the end of the twentieth century some scholars had referred to our time as an age of testimony. Grigoris Balakian’s Armenian Golgotha, for decades an important text of Armenian literature, belongs to a group of significant books that deal with crimes against humanity in the modern age.” More »