NEW YORK—On Wed., Dec. 2 at 7 p.m., author and translator Peter Balakian will present the first English translation of his great uncle’s memoir, which has been praised by Elie Wiesel and critics worldwide as a classic of survivor literature. A priest and an intellectual, Grigoris Balakian bore witness to the Armenian Genocide. Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918, which the New Yorker called “fascinating, first-hand testimony to a monumental crime,” is a powerful and important book.
Tickets are $5 (free for members) and are available online at www.mjhnyc.org or by calling the Museum box office at (646) 437-4202. A tour of “The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service” begins at 6 p.m. Space is limited. Pre-registration for the tour is required.
About ‘Armenian Golgotha’
On April 24, 1915, a priest named 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 Grigoris Balakian, himself condemned, it was also the beginning of a four-year ordeal to which he would bear witness.
Balakian saw his countrymen 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. In these pages, he brings to life the words and deeds of survivors, foreign witnesses, and Turkish officials involved in the massacre process , and also of those few brave, righteous Turks who, with some of their German allies, resisted orders calling for the death of the Armenians. Miraculously, Balakian managed to escape and write this memoir, which is full of shrewd insights into the political, historical, and cultural context of the Armenian Genocide.
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); of Black Dog of Fate (winner of the PEN/Albrand Award for Memoir, also a New York Times Notable Book); and of June-tree: New and Selected Poems, 1974-2000. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities at Colgate University.
About the Museum of Jewish Heritage
The Museum’s three-floor Core Exhibition educates people of all ages and backgrounds about the rich tapestry of Jewish life over the past century—before, during, and after the Holocaust. Special exhibitions include “Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges,” on view through Jan. 4 and “The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service,” which opened on Nov. 16. Keeping History Center, a new permanent, interactive visitor experience, opened on Nov. 6. The museum offers visitors a vibrant public program schedule in its Edmond J. Safra Hall. It is also home to Andy Goldsworthy’s memorial Garden of Stones, as well as James Carpenter’s Reflection Passage, Gift of the Gruss Lipper Foundation. The museum receives general operating support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and is a founding member of the Museums of Lower Manhattan.
Be the first to comment