Maroon News

Issue date: 10/14/05 Section: Arts & Features

In the early years of World War I, another tragedy was taking place far more quietly to the east. Between 1914 and 1916 over a million Armenians were rounded up by Turkish officials and systematically "deported" - in most cases this amounted to murder. Modern-day Turkey currently disputes that the Armenian tragedy should be called genocide, but there is little doubt in the international community that the mass killings of Armenians were in fact systematic genocide.

In his book, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response, Colgate's own Professor of English and University Studies, Peter Balakian, brings to life both the horror of the Armenian genocide and America's humanitarian response to the crisis. Time and again he uses powerful eyewitness accounts of the genocide, which, though on a smaller scale, were no less horrendous than the Holocaust.

On the governmental level, the response to this international tragedy was meager. Most politicians, Woodrow Wilson included, found their hands tied by diplomatic complexities. This does not mean that there was no response to the crisis. As Balakian makes very clear over the course of his book, the Armenian genocide was America's first international human-rights effort.

Thousands of people around the country on many levels of society poured their hearts out to the Armenian people. They raised money for relief work and food supplies and helped find homes for the thousands of Armenians fleeing their homeland. "The Armenian genocide is important," said Balakian, "not only because it is one of the earliest examples of modern genocide, but also because it is America's first international humanitarian aid movement. Americans should know about that part of their history."

The Burning Tigris recently gained recognition when it won the prestigious Raphael Lemkin Prize, which is given out biannually to the best scholarly book on the subject of genocide, mass killings and gross human-rights violations. Despite the prestige conferred by the prize, Balakian did not want it to overshadow the real issue: the reality of terrible and continuing genocide throughout the world. "Genocide is a real problem today and it is not going away. Nobody is safe," he said.

Genocides are not dark phantoms locked firmly in our turbulent past. They are real and happening right now in many corners of the world from the Balkans, Rwanda, and East Tambour to the current massacres in the Darfur region of Sudan. "Genocide is a modern problem," says Balakian, "because before the modern era and the evolution of the nation state, governments didn't have the centralized bureaucracy or the technology to systematically target and exterminate ethnic minorities. It isn't just that killing occurs that distinguishes modern genocide, but how fast it occurs."

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