Customer Reviews

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As a professor of English literature I have read thousands of books, short stories and histories. The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written. It is certainly not as well known as The Great Gatsby or The Grapes of Wrath, and it usually only receives serious study at the university level, but this does not diminish its importance as one of the greatest works of fiction. It is stirring and disturbing, it relentlessly forces the reader to confront visions of the human psyche, of the darkness of evil, and of the power of courage.

How anyone can draw a moral parallel between Werfel's The Forty days of Musa Dagh and Hitler's Mein Kampf (see Holdwater NYC, Sept. 20, 2003, below) is beyond comprehension or scholarship, and tells me that either they did not read the novel, or that they read the novel but did not understand it, or that they understood it but could not stare at it directly because what stared back at them was their own deformed reflection. What Holdwater is engaging in is called sophistry: he wrote twelve horribly written rambling paragraphs and articulated almost nothing.

Having read several books on the Armenian Genocide - most recently The Burning Tigris by Peter Balakian - I notice also that Holdwater conveniently left out any mention of Henry Morgenthau Jr. and Viscount Bryce (Morgenthau being the American ambassador to Turkey during World War One, and Bryce being the British Ambassador to the U.S. until 1913) both very erudite deliberate statesmen who wrote extensively in their memoirs regarding the genocide of the Armenians and the dispositions of Taalat and Enver when confronted with the incomprehensible evil of the crimes they were committing. In addition he omits any mention of the efforts of the American Red Cross during world war one to relieve the suffering of the Armenians, and also fails to mention the hundreds of American, British and French missionaries in Eastern Anatolia during the years 1915 to 1922, many of whom wrote thousands of pages on what they observed.

Is it not even possible Mr. Holdwater that there is just a little tiny bit, perhaps even a sliver - a shred even - of some evidence that at least a tiny genocide may have taken place - considering there is a mountain range of trustworthy evidence that seems to point in this direction? But this is the point of sophistry to get the ball bobbing and bouncing haphazardly back and forth, to inject illogical arguments into the matter that seem logical based on false assumptions, and in so doing reach ridiculous conclusions that distract from the truth.

Another thing that strikes me in Mr. Holdwater's book review is his total lack of compassion and seeping hatred. He does not display even a sense of sadness let alone remorse towards the hundreds of thousands of Armenians who even the Turkish government admits died horrible deaths. The Turkish government's official position is that about 500,000 Armenians died as a result of what they term a "forced migration for their own safety."

This is a great paradox: Holdwater claims to have read a book that is essentially about compassion, yet he himself displays none. Holdwater lastly recommends the reader not to place too much faith in Amazon's "yes" or "no" survey, my recommendation is, don't place too much trust in someone who has probably not read the book they claim to have read, someone who does not seem to possess even a little sympathy towards human suffering.

Between 1915 and 1917 1.5 million Armenians were killed in the 20th century's first genocide, and to this day the existing Turkish government still denies any wrong doing!
It is Franz Werfel's merit that he made the world listen to the crying of the Armenian people, which would have been almost forgotten otherwise.
He tells the story of a handful of men being deported to the Syrian desert who - by courage of despair - manage to escape to the mountain Musa Dagh (which means "mountain of Moses") and resisting the flabberghasted superior Turkish soldiers for forty days, until they were discovered and rescued by french war-ships.
When the book was published in 1933 in Germany, Werfel also intended to draw attention to the imminent same fate that the Jews were facing in Germany, but it was in vain. Both, the Nazis and the Turks were outraged, and the book was banned in both countries (in post-war Germany it was published again, of course), but through the English translation it fortunately had become a bestseller already. However: When MGM was planning to make this book a movie, they had to yield to Turkish pressure not doing so! So to this very day there has not been any movie made from this excellent book.

This book should be required reading for every student. Werfel writes an excellent in-depth novel about the genocide of the Armenians in World War I.

What is particularly chilling is that Werfel went on a lecture tour about the book in Germany just before Hitler's ascent to power. This did not prevent the German people from participating in the genocide of the Jews. Apparently, people learn nothing from history, even if forewarned.

I have read this book in my country in Turkey. It is really shamefull what the Ottoman did against to our Armenian friends. I hate again Turkish-Islamic bad synthesis for against to whole other communities.

I got great pain as Turkish by reading this book in my life.

This is a sign if yesterday which is still contunie in the end of 20th century in Turkey.

Sureyya Kara

This Hans Werfel novel, written in 1933, is about a band of Armenians, 5000 strong, that defend themselves against persecution by the Turks during WWI. Indeed an anomaly, since the Young Turks' plot to innihalate Armenians was executed virtually unchallenged, making the battles of Musa Dagh all the more heroic. While the Armenian Genocide is as much an undeniable fact as the sky is blue, this novel was written as a fiction and was not meant to serve as an historical report. Yes it is about the fate of the Armenian people, but that is only the setting, for it is, at the core, a story about humanity and what becomes of it when forced to the brink of extinction. Unfortunately, this sad fate of the Armenians did not serve to curtail future Genocide, but instead set a world example that it is easier to get away with Genocide then it is to commit a murder. Werfel's ink was not yet dry, when the Nazi's vowed to rid the world of Jews...Werfel was not meant to be spared.

This book unveils the truth about the Ottoman Emipire's geoncide of the Armenians. The parallels between the treatment of the Armenians by the Ottomans and of the Jews, gypsies, and other "undesirables" by the Nazis is frightening. Despite the horror of the topic, the story is beautifully written and deeply moving. This book is similar in its treatment of a painful subject to the work of Leon Uris in such books as Armageddon and Mila 18. In an added irony, the author, Franz Werfel, a Jew, had to be saved from the Nazis.

This book tells the story of the resistance of Armenians in Syria to the turkish genocidal campaign during World War I. Particularly chilling is the interview of the german pastor with the turkish dictator, where every logical argument is twisted on its ear. This book gives the reader a thorough understanding of the processes behind a genocide, and tells a story in a gripping fashion. Love, betrayal, heroism; this book has it all.

In number of words and pages this is a long novel, but in swiftness of movement it is all too short. Reading it, one hopes it might never end, and actually it does not end. Its implications cling to the heart and mind of the reader as some long forgotten and suddenly remembered experience in the story of all who once lived on the earth and somehow live yet. The novel is written with the ease which gives writing and life inevitability. Here, at last, is a contemporary novel full of the breath, the flesh and blood and bone and spirit, of life.

One of the best books that I have read. Being armenian I can relate to this story.

I've read this book in german, and I have to say that it is brilliant. I think both armenians and turks have to read this book. For armenians not to forget and turks to understand an at last accept what really happened.