NEW YORK—For the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the PEN/World Voices Festival will host an evening titled, “Armenian Genocide: A Dark Paradigm,” to commemorate the 82 Armenian writers killed by the Turkish government in 1915. The mass killing of Armenian cultural leaders became a paradigm for silencing writers in the ensuing decades of the 20th century: The purges of writers and intellectuals by the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, in various ways, have their origins in the Ottoman state’s use of bureaucracy in the killing of Armenian writers in 1915.
The program will feature Peter Balakian, Eric Bogosian, Maureen Freeley, Robert Jay Lifton, Nancy Kricorian, Ronald Suny, and Ragip Zarakolu. The panel will commemorate the Armenian writers by exploring issues surrounding genocide and political oppression, intellectual freedom, and cultural legacies. There will be readings from the Armenian writers who were killed, including Siamanto and Daniel Varoujan, and those who survived, such as Vahan Tekeyan and Zabelle Yessayan.
Raphael Lemkin considered the destruction of culture and the killing of writers as a crucial dimension of genocide. “In terms of the larger issues involved, the losses in culture through the genocide of the Armenian people in Turkey were staggering,” he wrote. “The Armenians, as the intellectual core of Turkey, were in possession of valuable personal libraries, archives, and historical manuscripts, which were dispersed and lost. Churches, convents, and monuments of artistic and historical value were destroyed.”
In an interview, Peter Balakian, the organizer and moderator of the panel, noted, “this is the most distinguished literary festival in the English-speaking world, and it’s a great honor to have PEN giving such a forum to remember the writers of the Armenian Genocide and to ponder the issues of political oppression and intellectual freedom, and the value of writers to any culture.”
The event will take place on Wed., May 6 at 7:30 p.m. in the SVA Theatre at 333 West 23rd St. in New York. Tickets can be bought by visiting penworldvoices.org or by calling (866) 811-4111. Sponsors include the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee of America, PEN America, and SVA Theatre.
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This is the equivalent of 1320 writers today for 82 and 5280
intellectuals for 280 killed April 24 1915 as we double every 25
years. 1902 estimation of Armenians was 4 millions in Caucasus and
Asia Minor 64 millions today v/s 10 millions actually 54 millions
are missing without counting 1894/96 Abdulhamid II 300,000 Genocide
victims.
HOW WERE THESE WRITERS KILLED???
Today, April 21, is the day the International Literature Festival of Berlin has called for worldwide reading of works by Armenian writers that Turkey attempted to silence. More than 400 participants in over 65 countries are registered to read. The Festival has written that: “Among the signatories are Nobel Prize winners Elfried Jelinek, Mario Vargas Llosa, John M. Coetzee, Herta Müller, Orhan Pamuk, as well as Elif Shafak, Alberto Manguel, Breyton Breytenbach and John Ashbury.” In Canada, Jane Urquhart and Michael Ondaatje are among those who will be reading the words of writers who will never be silenced.
I was privileged to have been able to read at Western University in London, Canada, from the diaries my father, Misak Seferian, wrote during the Genocide. My father began writing on May 21, 1915, the day when Kurds and Turks came into his village and he witnessed the murder of his grandfather. He wrote in his diaries for seven years as events were unfolding during the Genocide and the Russian Revolution. They were published in serial form in hundreds of columns in the Hairenik after he escaped from a Bolshevik prison and came to Canada in 1923.
I wish he could have known that one hundred years later, in a two hour ceremony in a major university, students and professors were listening intently to his words being read. My father was not silenced, not by Turks or Kurds or Bolsheviks. Turkey cannot silence Truth.
Here is the site for Worldwide Reading. http://www.literaturfestival.com/