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The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
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Image:vakifli_musa_mountain_location.png thumb|[[Musa (mountain)|Musa Mountain and Vakıflı village, near
Antakya, in
Hatay,
Turkey.]]
'''''The Forty Days of Musa Dagh''''' is a 1933
novel by
Austrian-
Jewish
author Franz Werfel based around an event that supposedly took place on
Musa (mountain) Musa Mountain in
1915 during the
Armenian Genocide in
Turkey. The book was first published as ''Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh'' in
German language German in November of
1933.
''The Forty Days of Musa Dagh'' achieved great international success and has been credited with awakening the world to the evidence of the persecution of the Armenians. Werfel also wrote prophetically about the consequences of
Nazism Nazi anti-Semitism; ''The Forty Days of Musa Dagh'' was banned in Nazi Germany and was labeled "undesirable" by the government, leaving it to be sold secretly. Werfel was expulsed from the ''Prussian Academy of Arts'' in
1933.
Although written as a novel, the historical background content of the book has generally been accepted as fact, rather than the fiction inspired by fact that it actually is.
In the 30s, Turkey pressured the United States State department to prevent MGM Studios to produce a film based on the novel. As William Albig writes: “In terms of the present capital organization and system of distribution the foreign market is very important to the American industry. The good will of foreign exhibitors and publics is often sought by changing the content of films, deleting offensive sections. It is reported that production ... [of] The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was halted, in Turkey's interest.� (“Public Opinion� by William Albig; McGraw-Hill, 1939). A filmed version of the story was eventually made independently and was released theatrically in 1982.
Later Austrian author and documentary filmmaker Professor
Erich Feigl (author of "A Myth of Terror: Armenian Extremism") has claimed that the book is based on ''fake and false documents'' and ''incorrect evidence''. According to this, Werfel has written the book using the version of events told by
Aram Andonian and used documents (or, rather, the photographs of documents) provided by Andonian, but
Edgar Hilsenrath in his German language work: "Das Märchen vom letzten Gedanken" (The fairy tale of the last cogitation), has severely criticized Feigl's work, accusing it of being a highly “revisionist� publication and also of being abound of misleading details.
Events of Musa Mountain
Five months after receiving the expulsion order, on
September 22nd 1915, most of the Armenians in this region, who were to be sent into the desert which would have ultimately meant a death sentence, went to Musa Mountain. The Ottoman army force in that region was not enough to oppose and overcome the five thousand people fortified in such a mountain. Whether there was a strong engagement of forces is hence unclear. Author of a book about the Ottoman fronts during World War I (''Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War''),
Edward J. Erickson, has written that there was strong fighting for forty days in Musa Mountain, but the book itself has been criticized heavily by the Armenian genocide specialist Vahakn N. Dadrian. A native of the only Armenian village in Turkey (indeed the only one outside Armenia; Vakıflı, a village very close to Musa Mountain, see the figure on right), Avedis Demirci says, "There was no fighting. We went to the mountain, we stayed there for forty days, then left with the ship" (Translations accuracy limited).
After spending forty days at Musa Mountain, the Armenians got onto two
France French ships that they had contacted. The side of Musa Mountain close to sea is very steep, and, adding to the difficulties, the ships could not approach the land and thus it was necessary to construct boats to reach them. The process of getting on the ships was difficult and painful. These ships then took the Armenians, who were already tired and starved, to a camp in
Port Said in
Egypt, after a long journey. After the end of the First World War, the Armenians in 1919 went back to Musa Ler under French protection.
Musa Dagh often has been compared with the resistances in the Jewish ghettos during the Second World War, one of those, the ghetto of Bialystok found itself in the same situation when in February 1943, Mordecai Tannenbaum, an “inmate� of the Vilna Ghetto was sent with others to organize Bialystok's resistance. The record of one of the meetings organizing the revolt, suggests that Musa 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.� (Source: “Anthology of Holocaust Literature� by Mordecai Bernstein, Adah B. Fogel, Jacob Glatstein, Israel Knox, Samuel Margoshes; Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969)
Category:1933 books Forty Days of Musa Dagh, The
Category:Historical novels Forty Days of Musa Dagh, The
de:Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh
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