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1Public awareness of history based upon the memory of the evil of the 20th century – the century of genocides – has arisen from witness sources, narrations, museums, documentaries, films and photographs. The consequence of this is that memory appears to overshadow history, which is problematic, as evidenced by the political use of memory by institutions and governments.
- 1 Lecture by Pierre Nora on “The memory in modern times”, Milan, Strehler Theatre, 8th May 2006.
2Speaking of “the tyranny of memory”, the historian Pierre Nora1 has warned of the danger of the manipulation of memory for political purposes through the adoption of laws which could limit freedom in historical research. He has exhorted the distinguishing of memory from history “without fear of falling in the area of the “mad negationists” who “produce theories to serve hate”. Several other voices, too, have called for a reinvigoration of historical research in order to find ways to enable the public area of memory to be nourished by the results and discoveries of that research. An open approach to historical research, with improved methods of working with sources and refined ways of confronting the past, helps reconstruct the past the perception of which influences actions in the present.
3The purpose of this contribution is to invite historians to take into consideration the subject of the “Righteous”, the moral resisters and witnesses of truth of all the genocides of the 20th century. Furthermore, it is to outline the reasons why opening the page of memory to the actions of the “Righteous”, could contribute to the improvement of public awareness of history and the avoidance of risks of manipulation of memory for political purposes. “I respect suffering and memories and proceed with historical research,” stated Pierre Nora. Thus, it should be possible to engage in the defence of both memory and freedom of historical research.
4It is my family story (as the son of a survivor of the Armenian Genocide) that induced me to pay closer attention to the suffering of my people. The crimes perpetrated in 1915 and 1916 by the Young Turk government in the Ottoman Empire, carried out with the objective of creating a homogeneous nation, unveiled the danger of nationalism and its incompatibility with human rights to me. In totalitarian regimes evil is often born of presumptive good. Fear, propaganda and interests help to identify an enemy and defence against this threat becomes a value. The good of the “nation” always exonerates the “willing executioners” of genocides from responsibility.
- 2 Catherine Coquio writes: “The denial of the Armenian genocide produced two strictly connected negat (...)
5Such is the case with Turkey, where governments, subsequent heirs of these national identity building processes, have remained denialist of the atrocities committed and, furthermore, proud of the results achieved by the construction of an ethnically homogeneous nation. Suddenly in 1915, with all good neighbourly relations swept away, the Armenian nation was eradicated from its land and its culture and identity endured a tentative elimination. This is a loss for humanity since all genocides concern humanity as a whole. The will to remember developed slowly in the mind of the descendants of survivors, who have up to now remained victims of Turkey’s official denialism.2 Today, however, both historical research into and the memory and awareness of the genocide of the Armenian people have increased and proceed on the ground in search of the truth. In such a way at least justice is being rendered to the victims of genocide.
- 3 “Massacres do not arise from abstract structures or confused psychological pressures, but from mind (...)
6My personal research on the “Righteous” and the “witnesses of the truth” does not arise from a sentimental attitude or good intentions. It comes instead from an ideal of reason. First was my family story. In the seventies I travelled to my fatherland, collected stories of witnesses, met survivors. I tried to understand the way in which evil arises and how the chain of solidarity among human beings is interrupted. An extreme evil suddenly hits mankind, nourished by ideologies, fanaticisms and the manipulation of religion as an instrument. It also arises from hate and hidden beliefs smouldering in minds of men, which, as Daniel J. Goldhagen reminds us, can be activated and politically used.3
7I understood how difficult it is to feel the victimhood of a denied memory and bear the burden of a memory that is based on pain and resentment. It was on a page of my father’s diary, however, that I found something that pushed me to move in a different direction. It was a record confirming that during the Hamidian massacres of 1895 in Constantinople, my father’s family was saved thanks to the actions of a Turk who did not want to remain on the side of the executioners. He chose to act, thus saving victims of the violence. My journey in search of the memory of good started from there.
- 4 The Yad Vashem Garden of the Righteous was created in 1962 according to a law approved by the Israe (...)
- 5 During the 1990s, I received as a legacy photographs which had been given as a present by a German (...)
8Extending the Yad Vashem4 concept of “Righteous among the Nations”, one that stems from a biblical source, to non-Armenians who saved Armenians at the time of genocide was a natural consequence. The collected testimonies also referred me to “witnesses of the truth”, active testimonies that had documented and denounced what had happened in Anatolia and the Syrian Desert. One such was Armin Wegner, a German officer and photographer, the “Witness of the Truth” for the Armenians I was concerned with.5 At the time of the Armenian Genocide, Germany had been allied with Turkey and involved in the Genocide.
- 6 Sponsored by Giuliano Vassalli and Gaghik Harutunian, former Presidents of their respective countri (...)
- 7 After A. T. Wegner, Johannes Lepsius, Henry Morgenthau, James Bryce, Giacomo Gorrini, Anatole Franc (...)
9My initial research resulted in the founding in 1996 of the International Committee of the Righteous for the Armenians. Memory is the future.6 With a ceremony in Yerevan, I placed Armin Wegner’s ashes into a wall in memory of the Righteous of Dzidzernagapert, the Armenian Genocide Memorial Museum. The warm gratitude shown by Armenians to Wegner’s son, Misha, who attended the ceremony, made me realize that the “Righteous” could open the way to reconciliation. I travelled in diaspora communities, visiting cemeteries where the “Righteous” were buried, looked for family members, reconstructed stories of men who were able to oppose evil and bear witness to the truth. Some of these men had confronted the persecutors in trying to stop deportations; others had provided help to victims and eluded orders. There were also “Defenders of Memory”, who had paid dearly, and who still are today, for their engagement in witnessing against the denialism of the State.7
- 8 Gabriele Nissim, L’uomo che fermò Hitler, Milan: Mondadori, 2001.
- 9 Pietro Kuciukian, Voci nel deserto. Giusti e testimoni per gli armeni, Milan: Guerini e Associati, (...)
- 10 Founded in Milan in 2001, Gariwo, la foresta dei giusti is a non profit organization involved in fi (...)
10Meeting Gabriele Nissim, who was carrying out investigations on the “Righteous for the Shoah”,8 as I was with the “Righteous for the Armenian Genocide”,9 strengthened the connection between our memories. Hence, in 2001 we founded Gariwo, the Garden of the Righteous Worldwide, an organisation for all genocides and totalitarian regimes.10
11Who, then, are the “Righteous” and what is our approach to the figure of the saviour, the “Witness of the Truth”, the moral resister of all genocides and totalitarianisms?
- 11 December 1, 1999, interview released by Nikita Ochotin at Palazzo delle Stelline in Milan, to Pietr (...)
12Nikita Ochotin, a historian of the Memorial Association based in Moscow, who we had approached in 1999 for a meeting and to whom we had submitted our project on the “Righteous” in the Gulag, had reacted negatively at first. His rationale was: “You want to speak of good, but we, as historians, have been studying evil for such a long time that we ourselves have become evil, and with an amount of bitter irony; you refer to a certain level of moral responsibility, but when we speak about the Gulag we speak about extermination, where distinction between evil and good is impossible!”11 However, as we made clear that we had no intention of issuing a new moral theory or re-writing an idea of justice, but were merely looking for stories of singular actions and acts of behaviour, he agreed to our project.
- 12 “Actions of justice are always limited, concrete, contextual. We can only suppose that one who acco (...)
- 13 Hannah Arendt, Alcune questioni di filosofia morale, Turin: Einaudi, 2006.
13Why, then, this non-religious approach to a moral question? A “Righteous” person is not a saint or hero, one who fights for “great justice” in the name of which great crimes are perpetrated (good intentions often produce violence). He or she is someone who when faced with a concrete “specific act of injustice” recognizes it as such and acts against it12. We do not know whether the one who acts is a righteous man; sometimes he is on the side of the perpetrators. We only know that he, at a specific moment, has acted as a “Righteous” person, not accepting injustice or thinking of a homeland, and setting aside ideological choices has thought independently. He knows in advance that if he does not take action he would then consider himself morally different from who he thought he was. He is incapable to bear the burden of inaction13.
14We are uninterested in a memory that creates hagiographies of saviours and we do not give importance to a “celebrative” aspect. We simply aim to expose the sense of these “Righteous” actions. Even one singular act of solidarity in opposition to evil has exemplary value. Referring these actions to the present, helps us recognize the evil around us and to defeat indifference. Rather than speak about the “Righteous”, we speak about “right actions”, ”acts of saving”, such as the case of the Hutu Jacqueline Mukansonera who saved the Tutsi Yolande Mukagasana in Rwanda in 1994.
- 14 Gariwo organizes international meetings, debates, book presentations, seminars for teachers and for (...)
15The educational value of the stories of the “Righteous” is self-evident. Building on them we dedicate our activities to teachers by organizing seminars to further elaborate the matter of the “Righteous” and related historical concepts (human rights, International Courts, denialism and so on). We also involve students active in the research of stories of the Righteous, in meeting with witnesses, in tree planting ceremonies, in didactical projects.14 The examples of the “Righteous” encourages new generations to promote autonomous thinking, and prepares them to withstand projections of propaganda and suggestions for conformism, helping them to distinguish between values of different acts and obtaining satisfaction through the making of independent choices and free will.
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- 15 Marco Impagliazzo, Una finestra sul massacro, Milan: Guerini, 2000.
- 16 Mustafa Ağa Azizoğlu was the Mayor of the town Malatya. He was against deportation measures, helped (...)
16What, then, is it that keeps pushing me to keep carrying on my research on the “Righteous” for the Armenians? It is the feeling that my work will not be complete until I am able to succeed in honouring a Righteous Turk, first in Turkey and then in Armenia. Here are some from the many names I have found: Hamo Ağa of Sindjar, Kalil Ağa of Toméké,15 Ali Souad Bey of Deir es Zor, Hassan Amdja of Hauran, Mustafa Ağa Azizoğlu of Malatia.16 I wish to organize a ceremony in Turkey in the presence of these men’s family members and the participation of local authorities, as we have already done for the “Righteous” in so many other countries, to collect some earth from their graves and take them to Armenia. By stimulating Turkish national pride rebuilt upon the memory of good, we could create the conditions for opening a dialogue between the two peoples.
- 17 At Monte Stella in Milan there is a tree planted for Ayşe Nur Zarakolu, Turkish Publisher who fough (...)
17Denialist propaganda by governments has had an essential role in guiding our knowledge of the past in favour of nationalism. I am convinced that giving a voice to the “Righteous”, especially those who disobeyed orders and risked their lives to help victims and witness the truth, could help promote dialogue and reconciliation.17 I am confident that valuing the actions of the “Righteous” could weaken the nationalism of authoritarian regimes. Examples of “Righteous” actions can impact the political dimension, since they would expose a gap between politics and human rights. Authoritarian regimes oppose speaking about the “Righteous” because they are in search of an enemy with the purpose of maintaining power. After all, speaking about good actions is not useful for their purpose.
- 18 Sante Maletta, Il giusto della politica. Il soggetto dissidente e lo spazio pubblico, Milan, Udine: (...)
18Could, therefore, the subject of the “Righteous” fit in the field of historical research, which usually deals with evil? The search for the “Righteous” stems from the good. Those who help victims unveil the persecuting facade of power. Those who denounce injustice reveal violations of human rights. Those who witness the truth discover the untruth of power. And, those who refuse to fulfil orders reveal the “legal barbarism” of power. To reconstruct stories of the “Righteous”, and therefore make them known to the public, serve to regenerate “the public space”,18 prevent other crimes and reinforce voices of dissent. In today’s authoritarian regimes, such voices still pay for their courage to denounce untruth and human rights violations with their own personal freedom.
- 19 On the 10th of May 2012 the European Parliament approved a written declaration fixing the 6th of Ma (...)
- 20 Baruch Tenenbaum, founder of the Wallenberg Foundation, and Eduardo Eurnekian, chairman, a Jew and (...)
19In addition, the establishment of a “European Day for the Remembrance of the Righteous”,19 as approved by the European Parliament based upon a proposal by the Gariwo Committee, may help reinvigorate a culture of democracy. It is the “Righteous” that have preserved Europe’s moral values in the dark times of crimes against humanity. Today the “Righteous” can help prevent further crimes and restrain the growth of those political groups who use hate to obtain visibility.20
20Why is the acceptance of a proposal to honour the “Righteous” in Turkey and the Armenian world, in Rwanda, or in Bosnia so difficult? It is because the proud organizers of mass killings would be compelled to admit that the perpetrators’ front was not so monolithic. The actions of those who did not take part, who said no and refused to join in, of those who acted according to their conscience and kept a distance from the behaviour of the frenzied masses, would in fact provide the proof of the crime still denied. On the other hand, the persecuted communities, by recognizing that the perpetrators’ front at the time of genocide was not monolithic, shall arrive to the conclusion that it is impossible to generalize and refer to an entire generic “enemy people” as guilty of the crime of genocide.
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Notes
Lecture by Pierre Nora on “The memory in modern times”, Milan, Strehler Theatre, 8th May 2006.
Catherine Coquio writes: “The denial of the Armenian genocide produced two strictly connected negative outcomes on the research work concerning the genocide: on one side a delay in historiography followed by a permanence in the historical research without a reflection on the subjective forms of the memory; on the other side, the difficulty of the Armenian literature to produce critical and testimonial descriptions of the event”, in Marcello Flores (ed.), Storia, Verità, Giustizia. I crimini del XX secolo, Milan: Mondadori, 2001, p. 363.
“Massacres do not arise from abstract structures or confused psychological pressures, but from minds and hearts of men and women”, D. J. Goldhagen, Worse than War, Peggio della guerra. Lo sterminio di massa nella storia dell’umanità, Milan: Mondadori, 2009, pp. 363-364.
The Yad Vashem Garden of the Righteous was created in 1962 according to a law approved by the Israeli Parliament in 1953 which read : “By the present law we establish the Yad Vashem Foundation in Jerusalem to commemorate (…) the Righteous of the nations, who risked their life to help Jewish people.” The first President of the Committee was Moshe Landau, also President of the Court that condemned Adolf Eichman to death in 1961. In 1970 he was replaced by Moshe Bejski who held the chair until 1995 and applied to the work of the Committee a new and more open interpretation of the original 1953 law.
During the 1990s, I received as a legacy photographs which had been given as a present by a German officer to a member of our community on the occasion of a meeting at Armenia House in Milan. The photograph documents concerned Armin T. Wegner and other eyewitnesses of the deportation march of the Armenians toward the extermination, to the Deir es Zor desert. I then met the son of Armin T. Wegner, Misha, who allowed me to use the whole of his father archive: diaries, letters, conference and speech writings. In 1995 we inaugurated in Milan an Exhibition of photographs and documents disclosing, beside the Metz Yeghérn (Great Calamity) also Wegner’s engagement in defence of human rights and his efforts to promote knowledge to the world of what had happened in Anatolia and the Syrian desert. To analyse the iconography which includes the “Armin T. Wegner” Photographic Archive as guarded in Marburg, see appendix by Benedetta Guerzoni, “Fotografie del genocidio armeno. Memoria, denuncia, uso pubblico”, in Marcello Flores, Il genocidio degli armeni, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006.
Sponsored by Giuliano Vassalli and Gaghik Harutunian, former Presidents of their respective countries Constitutional Courts, and supported by institutions and cultural personalities.
After A. T. Wegner, Johannes Lepsius, Henry Morgenthau, James Bryce, Giacomo Gorrini, Anatole France, Franz Werfel, Fridtjof Nansen, Papa Benedetto XV, Fayez El Ghossein, Karen Jeppe, etc.
Gabriele Nissim, L’uomo che fermò Hitler, Milan: Mondadori, 2001.
Pietro Kuciukian, Voci nel deserto. Giusti e testimoni per gli armeni, Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2000.
Founded in Milan in 2001, Gariwo, la foresta dei giusti is a non profit organization involved in finding out and make known exemplary figures of Righteous and moral resisters worldwide. Together with the Milan’s City Hall and the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities, Gariwo created the first Garden of the Righteous worldwide at Monte Stella in Milan. Till now 28 trees were dedicated to the Righteous of all genocides and totalitarianisms. After Yerevan, Milan, Sarajevo – where Svetlana Broz created a Centro per il coraggio civile – many other places were dedicated to the Righteous in Italy and all over the world: Padua, Turin, Genoa, Palermo, Catania, Florence, St. Petersburg, England, Poland and the United States. Also in Rwanda a place in Kigali for a Garden has already been chosen.
December 1, 1999, interview released by Nikita Ochotin at Palazzo delle Stelline in Milan, to Pietro Kuciukian and Gabriele Nissim.
“Actions of justice are always limited, concrete, contextual. We can only suppose that one who accomplishes just actions, is Righteous. We must accept an ethic of behaviour and actions, not an ethic of intentions… Rather than fighting in order that justice may rule the world, we should rather do justice to our neighbours, because if we render justice to the neighbours, perhaps justice could come in the world, otherwise we ultimately fight for an abstract concept.” See Salvatore Natoli, Milan, Casa della Cultura, 23rd April 2002, presentation of Acts of the Padua International Meeting: Si può sempre dire un si o un no. I giusti contro il genocidio degli armeni e degli ebrei, Padua: Cleup, 2002.
Hannah Arendt, Alcune questioni di filosofia morale, Turin: Einaudi, 2006.
Gariwo organizes international meetings, debates, book presentations, seminars for teachers and for the Holocaust Remembrance Day students of Lombardy schools take part in meeting with witnesses, historians, researchers and artists. We for, (Web European Forest Righteous), the didactics proposal of our site was chosen by the European Community to represent excellence of the projects financed and was included in a publication of the Community. From Gariwo-Wefor we launched the appeal to establish an European Day in Memory of the Righteous.
Marco Impagliazzo, Una finestra sul massacro, Milan: Guerini, 2000.
Mustafa Ağa Azizoğlu was the Mayor of the town Malatya. He was against deportation measures, helped and protected many Armenian families. He was killed by his own son, a militant member of the Union and Progress Committee who considered him a traitor, see Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide. A Complete History, London: I. B. Tauris, 2011, pp. 411-412.
At Monte Stella in Milan there is a tree planted for Ayşe Nur Zarakolu, Turkish Publisher who fought, alongside her husband Ragıp Zarakolu, for truth and human rights of minorities. There is also a tree for Hrant Dink, murdered in Istanbul on January 17, 2007, at the doorstep of his journal “Agos”. A Turkish citizen of Armenian origin, he dedicated much work to dialogue between Turks and Armenians.
Sante Maletta, Il giusto della politica. Il soggetto dissidente e lo spazio pubblico, Milan, Udine: Mimesis, 2012.
On the 10th of May 2012 the European Parliament approved a written declaration fixing the 6th of March of each year as “European Day for the Righteous of all genocides and totalitarianisms” inviting all member States to engage for memory of this Day. Declaration nr. 3/2012, 388 signatures.
Baruch Tenenbaum, founder of the Wallenberg Foundation, and Eduardo Eurnekian, chairman, a Jew and an Armenian, visited us in Milan to join our project to honour the “Righteous” for all genocides.
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