Home Map E-mail
 
Eng |  Հայ |  Türk |   Рус  |  Fr  

Home
Main
About AGMI
Mission statement
Director's message
Contacts
Pre-Genocide Armenia
History of Armenia
Pre-Genocide photos
Intellectuals
Armenian Genocide
What is Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Chronology
Photos of Armenian Genocide
100 photographic stories
Mapping Armenian Genocide
Cultural Genocide
Remember
Documents
American
British
German
Russian
French
Austrian
Turkish

Research
Bibliography
Survivors Stories
Eye-Witnesses
Media
Quotations
Public Lectures
Recognition
States
International organizations
Provincial governments
Public petitions
AGMI Events
Delegations
Museum G-Brief
News
Conferences
Links
   Museum
Museum Info
Plan a visit
Permanent exhibition
Temporary exhibition
Online exhibition  
Traveling exhibitions  
Memorial postcards  
   Institute
Goals & Endeavors
Publications
AGMI Journals  
Library
AGMI collection
   Tsitsernakaberd Complex
Description and History
Memory alley
Remembrance day
 

Armenian General Benevolent Union
All Armenian Fund
Armenian News Agency
armin
armin
armin
armin
armin




News

“Armenian Golgotha”: a story based
on the memories of an eyewitness of the Armenian Genocide

17.04.2009

The other day was republished “Armenian Golgotha” by Grigoris Balakian, translated by Peter Balakian with Aris Sevag. “Armenian Golgotha” is the most dramatic and comprehensive eyewitness account of the first genocide of XX century.

The book was originally published in Armenian in two volumes as Armenian Golgotha: Episodes from the Armenian Martyrology from Berlin to Zor, 1914-1920 (Vienna: Mekhitarist Press, 1922) and Armenian Golgotha, Volume 2: Episodes from the Armenian Martyrology from Berlin to Der Zor (Paris: Imprimerie Araxes, 1959.)

On April 24, 1915, the priest Grigoris Balakian was arrested along with some 250 other intellectuals and leaders of Constantinople’s Armenian community. Is was the beginning of the Ottoman Turkish government’s systematic attempt to eliminate the Armenian people from Turkey; it was a campaign the 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.

GRIGORIS BALAKIAN, born in 1876, was one of the leading Armenian intellectuals of his generation. Educated in Germany and in the Ottoman Empire, he was ordained as a celibate priest in 1901 and served the Armenian Apostolic Church as an emissary to Europe, Russia in particular. He wrote several books, some of which were confiscated by the Turkish government in 1915 or subsequently lost. He later became bishop of the Armenian Apostolic Church in southern France. He died in Marseilles in 1934.

This annotation was taken from the book “Armenian Golgotha” by Grigoris Balakian.

FOLLOW US



DONATE

DonateforAGMI
TO KEEP THE MEMORY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE ALIVE

Special Projects Implemented by the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Foundation

COPYRIGHT

DonateforAGMI

AGMI BOOKSTORE

1915
The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute’s “World of Books”

TESTIMONIAL OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE SURVIVORS

Testimonial
THE AGMI COLLECTION OF UNPUBLISHED MEMOIRS

ONLINE EXHIBITION

Temporary exhibition
SELF-DEFENSE IN CILICIA DURING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

DEDICATED TO THE CENTENNIAL OF THE SELF-DEFENSE BATTLES OF MARASH, HADJIN, AINTAB

LEMKIN SCHOLARSHIP

Lemkin
AGMI ANNOUNCES 2022
LEMKIN SCHOLARSHIP FOR FOREIGN STUDENTS

TRANSFER YOUR MEMORY

100photo
Share your family story, Transfer your memory to generations.
On the eve of April 24, the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute undertakes an initiative “transfer your memory”.
“AGMI” foundation
8/8 Tsitsernakaberd highway
0028, Yerevan, RA
Tel.: (+374 10) 39 09 81
    2007-2021 © The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute     E-mail: info@genocide-museum.am