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Armenian Golgotha

by Grigoris Balakian, Peter Balakian (Translator)

4.13 of 5 stars 4.13 · rating details · 60 ratings · 19 reviews

Never before in English, Armenian Golgotha is the most dramatic and comprehensive eyewitness account of the first modern genocide.

On April 24, 1915, the priest 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...more Never before in English, Armenian Golgotha is the most dramatic and comprehensive eyewitness account of the first modern genocide.

On April 24, 1915, the priest 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; it was 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 during which he would bear witness to a seemingly endless caravan of blood.

Balakian sees 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, before being slaughtered 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 working for the Baghdad Railway, resisted orders calling for the death of the Armenians. Miraculously, Balakian manages to escape, and his flight—through forest and over mountain, in disguise as a railroad worker and then as a German soldier—is a suspenseful, harrowing odyssey that makes possible his singular testimony.

Full of shrewd insights into the political, historical, and cultural context of the Armenian genocide—the template for the subsequent mass killings that have cast a shadow across the twentieth century and beyond—this memoir is destined to become a classic of survivor literature. Armenian Golgotha is sure to deepen our understanding of a catastrophic crime that the Turkish government, the Ottomans’ successor, denies to this day.(less)

Hardcover, 509 pages

Published March 31st 2009 by Knopf (first published 2009)

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Aug 26, 2012 Chrissie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, bio, turkey, text-checked, armenia, syria, 2012challenge, ww1

ETA: I think, in a nutshell, that this is the MOST comprehensive of all the books I have read about the Armenian genocide, but not the most fun to read. I am not religious. I objected to some part of the book for this reason. I felt that some parts simply did not make sense! I would think: what do you mean with that paragraph. However his description of Berlin when the war began, and how he escaped, and as a summary of all that happened to the Armenians, all of these things I liked a lot.

BUT I...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Steve Cran added it

While studying in Germany at a theological seminary in Berlin, Grigoris Balakian, found himself getting caught up in the days events. Events in Austria-Hungary and Serbia started the war. Turkey and Germany were on the same side. In the midst of his studies Grigoris Balakian is summoned back to Turkey. While making his way back Grigoris make several poignant observations. The Germans mistreat people of foreign decent, especially if they are from enemy countries. Taking the ship back Grigoris rea...more While studying in Germany at a theological seminary in Berlin, Grigoris Balakian, found himself getting caught up in the days events. Events in Austria-Hungary and Serbia started the war. Turkey and Germany were on the same side. In the midst of his studies Grigoris Balakian is summoned back to Turkey. While making his way back Grigoris make several poignant observations. The Germans mistreat people of foreign decent, especially if they are from enemy countries. Taking the ship back Grigoris realized that it was to his advantage to praise the Germans and the Turks. This made traveling g easier and may have even saved his life.

Upon arriving in Istanbul Grigoris makes several observations, about both the Turks and the Armenians and their political parties. He views things intelligently and with a critical eye. As World War I is looming most countries are keeping quiet and holding their cards close to their chest. The Armenians are the opposite they are loudly proclaiming support for Britain and France, the enemies of Turkey and Germany. Grigoris senses quite accurately that the Turkish government is preparing something big for the Armenians and feels that Armenian actions are just provoking Turkish ire and giving them man excuse for what they plan to do.

April 24, 1915 along with other leaders and intellectuals of the Armenian nation, Grigoris finds himself arrested and being deported to the interior of Turkey. The Destination is Chatirli. The trek in a caravan drives Komitas insane. Other intellectuals die along the way. This book is testament to what Grigoris Balakian was forced to endure. The ultimate aim of the Turkish government was to annihilate the Armenian nation. Along with arresting the intellectuals young men of fighting age were drafted as soldiers and then placed into labor battalions. After being place into a labor battalion they were disarmed worked to death and then finally executed at a mass grave. Turkish military also searched the homes of Armenian families confiscating what ever weapon they could find. Most Armenians did not have weapons so the Turks ended up confiscating kitchen knives. Later on the elderly, women and children were marched through the desert al the way to Dar es Zor a fiery hot desert.

The march was a death march. The Armenians were marched under the hot blazing sun and exposed to the elements. They were deprived of food and water. When they made enough distance from population centers the caravans of Armenians were set upon by violent criminals called "Chetes". They were released from Turkish prison with the sole purpose of annihilation of the Armenian population. They not only stole from the Armenians but they butchered the Armenians ruthlessly like savages.

Grigoris Balakian eventually escapes by working for a German rail road company. Disguised as a German he makes his way make to Constantinople or Istanbul. He eventually settled in Paris, France.

This is one document that demands to be read. It is a first hand account of the horrors experienced by the Armenian nation and it is filled with plenty of background knowledge. Grigoris Balakian does not just state the facts of tell a story. He informs the reader and analyzed everything with a critical eye. The man survived by his wits.

Grigoris tells us well the nature of the Turk and their brutal way of life. They have no education yet they persecute the Armenians for having an education. Their way of life is depredation and thieving. They thieve not only from Armenians but also from other Muslims. It was Armenians who were the craftsmen, farmers, doctors, intellectuals and financiers. When the Armenians were annihilated the Turks lost everything. They had no doctors to cure the sick, no one to harvest the grain, no craftsmen to repair needed tools. The Armenians were the pillar of Ottoman society.

The Germans who were Christians like the Armenians yet allied with the Turks were just as disdainful toward the Armenians as the Turks were. They stopped people from giving Armenian refugees food and they held very negative opinions towards the Armenians. The German military supported and even promoted the Ottoman campaign against the Armenians.

The Armenian leadership does not escape unscathed by his critical eye either. Many like the Nalbandian profited from the Genocide because the Turks gave them confiscated Armenian property and wealth. The Patriarchate was infiltrated with traitors who informed the Young Turks of everything that transpired. Many Armenians helped turn over other Armenians to the Turks and even helped the Turks draw up lists of Armenian community leaders. Other Armenians who were in the Turkish government knew in advance about the Young Turks plans and did not do anything to warn their fellow Armenians.(less)

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Nov 15, 2010 Christopher Rex rated it 4 of 5 stars

What an amazing book and what an amazing man at its center. The only drawback to this incredible memoir is the length. The reality is, the author endured, witnessed and overcame so much during the Armenian Genocide that I am unsure how it could be effectively shortened without sacrificing the story. Also, he clearly had a mission to tell as many details of as many people and incidents as possible in order to "honor" their memory and to insure that their memories were not erased from history (as...more

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Aug 28, 2012 Deb rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is definitely the "go to" book if you want to learn about the mind boggling experience of the Armenian genocide, 1915. This is Balakian's eyewitness account of his struggle to stay alive as more than a million Armenians were systematically murdered by the Turks during the years of World War I. Some passages are so graphic that your mind fights accepting these truths. It is an amazing story, admittedly journaled and retold so that the world would know the truth of this genocide. Read it for...more

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Jun 20, 2010 Tim rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Given recent history, it would seem the term "ethnic cleansing" is of late 20th Century origin. Armenian Golgotha , Grigoris Balakian's firsthand account of the Armenian genocide during World War I, disabuses any such notion. Balakian, an Armenian priest, notes several times that the Ottoman Empire embarked on an intentional campaign to "cleanse" itself of Armenians.

Even though this April marked the 95th anniversary of the beginning of this particular persecution of Armenians, whether to call wh...more

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Dec 15, 2009 Mythili rated it 5 of 5 stars

http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/?l...

On April 24, 1915, some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders were arrested in Constantinople. Grigoris Balakian, a Christian vartabed, or priest, was among them. "It was as if all the prominent Armenian public figures—assemblymen, representatives, revolutionaries, editors, teachers, doctors, pharmacists, dentists, merchants, bankers, and others in the capital city—had made an appointment to meet in these dim prison cells," he later wrote. Balak...more http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/?l...

On April 24, 1915, some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders were arrested in Constantinople. Grigoris Balakian, a Christian vartabed, or priest, was among them. "It was as if all the prominent Armenian public figures—assemblymen, representatives, revolutionaries, editors, teachers, doctors, pharmacists, dentists, merchants, bankers, and others in the capital city—had made an appointment to meet in these dim prison cells," he later wrote. Balakian was witnessing the start of a campaign of cultural annihilation orchestrated by the Turkish government; within days, many of his fellow prisoners had been deported east by train towards certain death in the valleys of central Turkey. In the weeks and months ahead, still more would follow, sent on horseback, cart, donkey, and foot to die in the remote deserts of northern Syria.

After an extended detainment in Chankiri, 200 miles east of Constantinople– time bought by sheer bribery– Balakian's own caravan began a tortuous march towards Der Zor, the Syrian outpost whose name would become synonymous with death itself. The first volume of Armenian Golgotha chronicles the month-and-a-half journey (made, in Balakian's case, primarily on foot) through hunger, exhaustion, grief, and the inescapable specter of death; littering the trail were the decomposing skeletons and long-haired skulls of women and girls who had been slaughtered on the path before them. "We were living through days of such unheard-of torture, it was impossible for the mind to fully comprehend," Balakian writes. "Those of us still alive envied those who had already paid their inevitable dues of bloody torture and death."

In April 1916 Balakian escaped, fleeing by foot through an eighteen-hour downpour and hiding in an abandoned mill before finding his way to the first of several families who would offer him shelter. In the following two and a half years he disguised himself as a railway worker, vineyard worker, mentally ill hospital patient, and German soldier, finding refuge among friends and kind strangers and even living alone in the forest for a time before making his way back to Constantinople. There, in the autumn of 1918, he was able to start writing about all he had seen, a witness long in the making. "While traveling this road to death," Balakian reflects, "I was intent on learning everything I could about the martyrdom of my race. I was thinking too, that if it was possible to somehow survive, I might shed light on these criminal events." In the meantime, Balakian's own story—the odyssey of a priest who crafted escape upon escape, disguise upon disguise and evasion upon evasion—had become a legend. That very tale had even returned to his own (disguised) ears as a story of a singular hope for redemption. "If only the priest were freed, at least all the miseries and misfortunes would not have been for naught," one Armenian woman confided to him.

When Balakian did find freedom at the end of the war, he felt "a painful and weighty responsibility: writing this history." The term "genocide" would not be coined for thirty years; to understand the events he'd witnessed, Balakian could only retrace the historic tensions in Turkish-Armenian relations and the rise of pan-Islamic and pan-Turkish nationalism that marked the years before WWI. In his account, the seeds of calamity were visible well before the atrocities began. Because municipal government posts were off-limits, European-educated Armenian Christians took jobs in private enterprise, international trade, medicine and the arts—prospering, but incurring the resentment of their Turkish neighbors. The possibility of Armenian independence through Russian aid also complicated the Turkish government's strategic relationship with the Central Powers. In a speech delivered in February 1914, Baron Rudiger von der Goltz Pasha, the newly appointed chairman of the German-Turkish Society, argued that Turkey's Armenian Christian population posed a liability for the Ottoman Empire. "In order to save Turkey from a new calamity," von der Goltz Pasha explained, "it is necessary to once and for all remove the half a million Armenians living in the provinces . . . contiguous to the Russo-Turkish borders, and move them from those border areas southward, to the vicinity of Aleppo and Mesopotamia."

That "removal" was euphemism quickly became apparent. Balakian writes that by early 1916 the Interior Minister had openly declared, "it is necessary to eradicate the Armenians." With the Ottoman Empire's key Armenian intellectuals already exiled or silenced, the community lacked the leadership to protect the remaining population. The government-implemented "deportations" were in fact nothing short of death marches designed to starve their victims. Deportees who survived into the depths of the desert would find themselves attacked by mobs of local villagers as well as newly released prisoners, pardoned to carry out the government's dirtiest work. Remembering one such mass killing, a Turkish captain described its methods to Balakian thus: "It's wartime, and bullets are expensive. So people grabbed whatever they could from their villages—axes, hatchets, scythes, sickles, clubs, hoes, pickaxes, shovels—and they did the killing accordingly." Before death, many suffered sexual assault, dismemberment, and decapitation. After death, their bodies were stripped, plundered of whatever family wealth had been sewn into the hems and linings of their clothing, and left to decompose in the desert.

In early 1914, there were an estimated total of 2.15 million Armenians in Turkey; by 1918, that number had fallen by more than a million. Balakian would live to see the end of the war, the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of an independent Armenian republic. But there would be no real reparation for the Turkish government's war crimes. In fact, to this day the Turkish government refuses to officially acknowledge the genocide; more than ninety years later, remembering and accounting for this atrocity remains the work of independent scholars, historians, and the Armenian diaspora as a whole. As such, a first-hand account reported with Balakian's precision and farsightedness is an artifact of immeasurable value.

What particularly distinguishes Armenian Golgotha is the breadth of perspective from which it draws. Balakian was fluent in Armenian, Turkish and German and comfortable with the political elite and working class alike. His diplomatic dexterity and talent for shape-shifting allowed him to live for more than two years under assumed names and identities and to incorporate multiple points of view into his account of the war's events. Armenian Golgotha reverberates with diverse voices, from the cryptic warnings of a sympathetic Turkish minister at the war's outset, to secret government telegrams shared in a moment of indiscretion, the hauntingly matter-of-fact confessions of a Turkish captain who estimated he'd had a hand in 42,000 deaths, and the plainspoken commentaries of German, Swiss and Austrian travelers-turned-bystanders. For four years, Balakian was surrounded by those who were either certain that he would soon be dead or had no idea that he was a refugee. With no reason to fear him, they spoke freely to him; in Armenian Golgotha, he faithfully transcribes their accounts. As the author's grandnephew and translator Peter Balakian said in a recent interview, the sum effect is something of a "polyphonic acoustic."

But the beating heart of this work is the clear-eyed and heartbroken voice of Balakian himself. "Oh my tribulation was unbearable," he wrote, "for I was the only surviving shepherd of a banished flock. But I too was a deportee and wanderer." Even in translation, the language of Balakian's anguished narrative displays an unsettling poetry. On the night when Constantinople's intellectuals boarded a "special train" to embark on their long deportation, Balakian wrote, "we moved to our graves, nameless and unknown, to be buried forever." When conditions worsened, he wrote, "None of us was able to sleep or eat, our appetite extinguished by the continuous nightmare of death; we were smoldering without a flame, consumed without burning." Balakian's gift for imagery holds even during the most harrowing of scenes. Of a brutal mass killing, he writes that young men were "massacred with axes, like trees being pruned."

Perhaps such renderings bear the touch of his translator and grandnephew, a poet in his own right. A priest by vocation, Balakian was mindful to subordinate his literary inclinations to what he saw as the primary task of bearing witness. Although his poetic language at times forays into the un-witnessed, he is wary of such attempts at imaginative reenactment. Recounting a massacre he learned of in which a Turkish mob of 10,000 killed more than 6,000 Armenians, Balakian stops short at the scene of the bloodbath: "It is impossible to imagine, let alone write about, such a crime or drama in full detail," he wrote. "To have an imagination that powerful requires the special inner capacities of criminals." Balakian's literary talents were many, and his expansive imaginative powers and capacity for reinvention played no small role in his survival. However, it is finally not these creative powers but the strength and range of his observations and experience that make Armenian Golgotha an uncommon, unflinching portrait of the Armenian genocide—and the powerful testament Balakian hoped it would be.

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Sep 17, 2011 Jeff added it · review of another edition

Shelves: european-history

In 1915, Grigoris Balakian was a forty year old priest of the Armenian Apostolic Church living in Constantinople. On April 24th of that year, he was among the approximately 250 leaders of Constantinople’s Armenian community that were arrested, imprisoned and deported in what is now regarded as the start of the Armenian Genocide. Less than a third of those arrested that night [writers, poets, teachers, clergymen, journalists, doctors, dentists, booksellers and various other prominent Armenian pub...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Megan Blood rated it 3 of 5 stars

Unfortunately, this was the book that put me past my Armenian Genocide saturation point. It's very, very long. I would say needlessly long, but I understand that, as a witness to the genocide, he was acting as a faithful recorder of EVERYTHING that happened. So I was willing to excuse that. What really got to me was the stereotyping. ALL Armenians (with the exception of one or two traitors) were angelic martyrs, doing no wrong. ALL Turks (with very, very few exceptions) were either bloodthirsty...more

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May 15, 2011 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-biography, read-history

Although I didn't feel my pulse racing while I read this, I guess this must be a powerful work of memoir, because in my first (now abandoned) draft of this review I attempted to assault the Ottoman Empire with an unabridged dictionary. I had a nice lie down, and realized that the overwhelming majority of potential readers of this review will already be aware that massacres and holocaust denial are BAD, so it was not really necessary to tell them so again. As for the others, they're probably beyo...more

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Jun 17, 2009 Aengus rated it 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes gripping firsthand account of the Armenian genocide. The saintliness ascribes to the Armenian people (with the exception of a handful of traitors in Istanbul) is excessive, but Balakian's account of the forced death marches, and his escape is harrowing.

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May 09, 2013 James Asante rated it 4 of 5 stars

Really? Humans actually do this to other humans? I will never understand, but we should never forget.

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Feb 25, 2011 Ashley rated it 4 of 5 stars

Armenian Golgotha was a fantastic book that provided a moving first-hand account of the Armenian genocide of 1915. Unfortunately, it was such a heavy topic that I had a hard time getting through it. The first 250 pages are dedicated to Balakian's deportation under the most deplorable conditions imaginable. After that, it follows his escape from the Turks via disguise and deception. A tough read, but an important text.

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Jul 01, 2012 Jeni Enjaian rated it 3 of 5 stars

As the translators (including the author's great-grandnephew) mentioned in the preface, Balakian often waxes eloquent turning passages of history into sermons. Even so, I appreciated this massive memoir for the insight it gave into the story of an Armenian intellectual who managed to survive the Genocide. For an amateur (master's degree level) historian on the topic, this book proved a tremendous resource.

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Sep 17, 2011 Stephen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wow, the Truth exists despite turkish claims. A first hand account of the genocide that happened all too recent ago. How in the world is this turkish society not prepared to admit it and the world turn its back and ignore it? Lord, we have met the enemy and he is us.

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Oct 26, 2010 Erma Odrach rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is an eyewitness account of the Turkish government's (which they deny to this day) persecution and murder of over a milion Armenians in 1915 - one of the biggest mass-murders of the past century. Very sad, emotional and gripping. Really enjoyed the writing.

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Sep 09, 2012 Joshua added it

well written, fascinating first hand telling of the little known Turkish genocide committed against the Armenian people.

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May 19, 2013 Cindy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: around-the-world

heartbreaking

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Oct 25, 2011 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history-bio-memoir

A gripping and often harrowing first-hand account of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918.

Although I never doubted the veracity of Balakian's memoir, his prejudices and biases were obvious.
He states that the genocide was "in the in the name of the Koran, in the name of jihad" and that the massacred Armenians where "martyrs". At the same time he says "the Turks had always burned, broken, destroyed, violated, and massacred the Arabs, Albanians, Circassians, and Persians under their dominion, even th...more

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Jun 23, 2009 Mary Ann rated it 5 of 5 stars

why did Constantinople get the works?

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Shelves: mahgs, history, genocide-studies

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