| The Forty Days of Musa Dagh | |
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The cover page of the first volume of The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (Berlin, 1933) |
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| Author(s) | Franz Werfel |
| Original title | Die Vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh |
| Country | Berlin, Germany |
| Language | German |
| Genre(s) | Historical, War novel |
| Publisher | Paul Zsolnay Verlag |
| Publication date | 1933 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) & Audio book |
| Pages | 817 pp. |
| ISBN | 0-7867-1138-8 |
| OCLC Number | 51322254 |
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is a 1933 novel by Austrian-Jewish author Franz Werfel based on the defense of a small community of Armenians living in the Musa Dagh of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 during the height of the Armenian Genocide. The book was originally published as Die Vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh in German in November 1933. It achieved great international success and has been credited with awakening the world to the evidence of the persecution and partial destruction of the Armenian nation during World War I. The novel is a fictional account based on the defense of Musa Dagh's Armenians who were facing deportations and massacres ordered by the Young Turkish government.
Although written as a novel, Werfel carried out a great deal of research and the historical background content of the book has generally been accepted as fact. In the 1930s, the Republic of Turkey pressured the United States State department to prevent MGM Studios from producing a film based on the novel.[1] A filmed version of the story was eventually made independently and was released theatrically in 1982.
Contents |
Franz Werfel had served as a corporal and telephone operator in the artillery corps of the Austro-Hungarian military during the First World War on the Russian front. His experience of the horrors he witnessed during the war was said to have influenced him during the course of writing the book. His reason for writing the novel is given in a prefatory note in the novel:
This book was conceived in March 1929, in the course of a stay in Damascus. The miserable sight of some maimed and famished-looking refugee children, working in a carpet factory, gave me the final impulse to snatch from the Hades of all that was, this incomprehensible destiny of the Armenian nation. The writing of this book followed between July 1932 and March 1933....Breitenstein, Spring 1933.[2]
Later speaking to reporters, Werfel elaborated: "The struggle of 5,000 people on Musa Dagh had so fascinated me that I wished to aid the Armenian people by writing about it and bringing it to the world."[3]
The novel opens in late 1914 with Gabriel Bagradian, a wealthy Armenian who has recently returned to his native village in Musa Dagh after residing for 23 years in Paris, standing on a cliff and pondering the question of "where he came from." Though proud of his identity, Bagradian, as well as his French wife Juliette and their son Stephan, has difficulty in adjusting to life back home. As a former Ottoman Army artillery lieutenant and a distinguished veteran of the 1912 Balkan War, the future of the Ottoman Empire following its entry intro World War I also weighs heavily on him. Other major characters which are introduced in the first part of the book are the local Armenian notables such as the mayor, the community's head priest, Ter-Haigasun and local physician, Bedros Altouni.
While Bagradian re-enlists for service as a reserve officer in the artillery, he is not called up and he grows suspicious of the government's motives as the war drags on. The first signs of trouble come when the town officials report that they are being denied the use of their passports. Further indications arrive in the form of the chatter that Gabriel overhears amongt Turkish military officers who discuss what the central government is planning. Skeptical, Gabriel and the town's leaders ignore these warnings and attribute it to the necessity of the country's national security and mere gossip. This changes in late April when the remnants of a refugee column arrive in the town, bringing tales of a brutal death march from the town of Zeitoun. It is here where readers are introduced to three important characters of the book, Protestant pastor Aram Tomasian, his pregnant wife Hovsannah and his sister Iskuhi. Detailing the accounts of mass murder, starvation and rape, they confirm the rumors that there is an order by the government to rid the country of its Armenian population.
Bagradian continues to express his skepticism and puts his faith in the Turkish government. Nonetheless, he asks for a meeting to be convened by the town officials and warns Ter-Haigasun and advises that they move a cache of rifles that had been buried near the church (which were originally awarded by CUP authorities during the 1908 Young Turk Revolution). The true motives of the government become clear when an order is given by a group of military irregulars that the 6,000 Armenians living in Musa Dagh are to be deported by them south towards Syria, purportedly for the empire's security.
Book two covers the first 30 days of their exile on the mountain.
After spending forty days on Musa Dagh, the Armenians are taken aboard three French warships and a British troop carrier that had seen the distress signals hung by the cliff. Jubilant that their prayers had been answered, the Armenians earnestly greet the landing party. The side of Musa Ler close to the sea is very steep and adding to the Armenians' difficulties, the ships cannot approach the land and thus it is necessary to construct boats to reach them. The process of getting on the ships is difficult and painful.
Gabriel, in an attempt to make sure everyone is on board the ships, gets left behind; he does not bother to signal for help but instead continues back up the mountain and when he reaches his son's grave, is shot by Turkish troops. The ships take the Armenians, exhausted and on the brink of starvation, to safety to a camp in Port Said in Egypt.
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was met with critical praise when it was first published in 1933 and was eventually translated into 34 languages. When it was published in the United States in 1934, it sold 34,000 copies in the first two weeks.[3] The New York Times Book Review described it as "A story which must rouse the emotions of all human beings....Werfel has made it a noble novel. Unlike most other important novels, Musa Dagh is richest in story, a story of men accepting the fate of heroes.... It gives us the lasting sense of participation in a stirring episode of history. Magnificent."[4] Time called it a "stirring tale" and selected it as its December 1934 choice for its Book-of-the-Month Club.[5]
Werfel's novel has made him famous among Armenians according to his biographer, Peter Stephan Jungk. Citing Father Bezdikian, an Armenian priest living in Venice, Italy whose grandfather served and fought during the siege: "Franz Werfel is the national hero of the Armenian people. His great book is a kind of consolation to us – no, not a consolation, there is no such thing – but it is of eminent importance to us that this book exists. It guarantees that it can never be forgotten, never, what happened to our people."[6]
After the first publication of Edgar Hilsenrath's novel The Story of the Last Thought in 1989 in Germany the critic Alexander von Bormann wrote in the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung with regard to The Forty Days of Musa Dagh that was until then considered to be the most important book on the Armenian people in world literature: “But I think Hilsenrath's novel is significantly superior to Werfel's: it is a historic and poetic novel at the same time.”
Werfel also wrote prophetically about the consequences of Nazi anti-Semitism; The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was labeled "undesirable" by the Nazi government and although not banned, the book was sold and purchased secretly. Werfel was expelled from the Prussian Academy of the Arts in 1933. Das Schwarze Korps, the official newspaper of the Schutzstaffel, painted Werfel as an agent who created the "alleged Turkish horrors perpetrated against the Armenians" and also denounced "America's Armenian Jews for promoting in the U.S.A. the sale of Werfel's book."[7]
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh also found a particularly warm reception among Jews in the 1930s. Many of them believed that the novel, though speaking about the Armenians, contained allusions to Judaism and Israel, which in turn dovetailed with Werfel's beliefs. Werfel's famous line in the novel which reads "To be an Armenian is an impossibility" meant much Jews living in Europe and Palestine.[8]
The novel's importance grew during World War II. Musa Dagh has often been compared to resistance in Jewish ghettos. The ghetto of Białystok found itself in a similar situation as Musa Dagh when in February 1943, Mordecai Tannenbaum, an inmate of the Vilna ghetto was sent with others to organize resistance there. The record of one of the meetings organizing the revolt suggests that the novel was often used in the ghettos as a reference to successful resistance: “Only one thing remains for us: to organize collective resistance in the ghetto, at any cost; to consider the ghetto our 'Musa Dagh', to write a proud chapter of Jewish Bialystok and our movement into history,” noted Tannenbaum.[9] Copies of the book were said to have been "passed from hand to hand" among the ghetto's defenders who likened their situation to that of the Armenians'.[10] According to extensive statistical records kept by Herman Kruk at the Vilna ghetto library, this book was the most popular among ghetto readership, as is recounted in memoirs by survivors who worked at the library.
In addition to Bialystok in 1942, many Jews in the Palestinian Mandate contemplated retreating to Mount Carmel and organizing a defense line due to prospects of a possible Nazi invasion of the region. Known alternatively as the "Northern Program", "The Carmel Plan", "The Massada Plan" or the "Musa Dagh Plan", it was envisioned as a bastion against Nazi incursions and to hold out against them for at least three to four months. Meri Batz, one of the leaders of the Jewish militias who had also read the novel, stated that the community wished to "turn Carmel into the Musa Dagh of Palestinian Jewry....We put our faith in the power of the Jewish 'Musa Dagh' and were determined to hold out for at least three to four months."[11]
The resistance held up at Musa Dagh lasted, contrary to the book's title, for 53 days.[12] Jungk states that the change of the days by Werfel "called up biblical associations: the flood lasted forty days and nights; Moses spent forty days and nights on Mount Sinai; Israel's time in the wilderness was forty years."[13] The French warship, the Guichen, accompanying three other warships including the French flagship Jeanne D'Arc and a British troop transport, ferried out the remaining 4,000 people left on the Damlayik, transporting them to Port Said, Egypt.
Werfel's Bagradian was inspired by the town's defense leader, Moses Derkalousdian. Instead of suffering the fate as Bagradian, he moved to Beirut, Lebanon several years after the war ended and lived there for the next 70 years, serving in Lebanon's government for several decades as a quiet and shy member of Parliament. Derkalousdian died at the age of 99 in 1986.[14]
The popularity of the novel led Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios to purchase its filming rights. Actor Clark Gable was slated to play the role of Gabriel Bagradian but production had hardly even begun when in 1934 the Republic of Turkey's ambassador to the United States, Mehmed Münir Ertegün, was ordered by his government to stop it from ever being made.[15][16] As the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey was intent on suppressing any mention of the Armenian Genocide, whether it was within its own borders or not. Ertegün turned to the United States State Department and told them that he "earnestly hoped that [the movie studio] would desist from presenting any such picture, which would give a distorted version of the alleged massacres."[3] The State Department tried to assure Ertegün that the film would not include any material that would offend Turkey but Ertegün remained adamant. The State Department attempted to mollify the Turkish government by presenting it with the finalized script, although this did not satisfy it either. The film's scriptwriters offered several water-downed versions but Turkey still refused to budge.[17]
MGM's production chief was astonished by this level of interference by a foreign power declaring, "To hell with the Turks, I'm going to make the picture anyway."[17] The fact that MGM was moving forward with the production further enraged Turkey. Speaking to an MGM official, Ertegün threatened that "If the movie is made, Turkey will launch a worldwide campaign against it. It rekindles the Armenian Question. The Armenian Question is settled."[17] Ertegün's threats were soon being echoed across the Turkish press. In a September 3, 1935, editorial colored with anti-Semitic overtones, the Istanbul Turkish-language daily Haber opined:
We will have to take our own steps in case the Jewish people fail to bring the Jewish company (MGM) to reason...The Forty Days of Musa Dagh presents the Turco-Armenian struggle during the World War in a light hostile to the Turks. Its author is a Jew. This means that MGM, which is also a Jewish firm, utilizes for one of its films a work by one of its companions...Declare a boycott against pictures by MGM...Jewish firms which maintain commercial relations with our country will also suffer if they fail to stop this hostile propaganda.[18]
In the face of this pressure, Louis B. Mayer of MGM, conceded to Turkish demands and the film was scrapped. Michael Bobelian, a lawyer and a journalist, states that the "Musa Dagh incident is critical in understanding the evolution of Turkey's campaign of denying the crimes committed by the Young Turks....The standoff with MGM revealed that Turkey would pressure foreign governments to go along with its policy of denial."[19] Another movie version was mentioned in the 1967 sales film Lionpower from MGM as being slated for production in 1968-69 but nothing came of this version either.
After several, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was finally turned into a movie in 1982, directed by Sarky Mouradian with screenplay by Alex Hakobian,[20] but it was a low-profile production.[21] In 2006, Sylvester Stallone expressed his desire to direct a film about Musa Dagh.[21] According to Professor Savaş Eğilmez of Atatürk University but a massive Turkish e-mail campaign in 2007 pressured him into not proceeding with the film.[22] In early 2009, reports surfaced that actor Mel Gibson was also considering in directing a documentary and appearing in the adaptation of Werfel's novel but was dissuaded after receiving 3,000 e-mails sent by a Turkish pressure group.[23]
In an ironic twist of fate, the surviving Armenian community of Istanbul was even forced in the 1930s by the Turkish government to denounce Werfel's book and its content and burn it in public rituals, similar to contemporary Nazi book burning ceremonies and elsewhere. The Armenians would typically gather around in the courtyard of Istanbul's Pangalti Armenian Church and light copies of the book aflame.[24]
"French Rescuers of Musa Dagh Honored." Armenian Weekly. October 16, 2010.