The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Genocide Monument

Posted by pancho (Guest) - Tuesday, February 6 2007, 1:03:15 (CET)
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Genocide Monument

A few people have sent me a notice about the proposed Assyrian Genocide Monument to be installed in Yerevan, Armenia. They asked if I’d be interested in proposing a design. My answer was a resounding “no”.

I admit I thought of doing just such a monument some years back, though I’m certain mine would have been altogether different than what’s more than likely on everyone’s mind. I was going to include the names of all those families who lost members….but that isn’t something strange or unheard of. I would have tried to use hopeful images, if I could think of any, instead of showing piles of corpses, as some Jewish memorials have…mothers huddled over dying babies, babies huddled over dying mothers…that sort of thing.

But that was then.

I don’t believe the massacre of Assyrians by Turkey was a genocide at all. It was a crazed attempt to do away with potential traitors…Christians who might well sympathize with the Christian nations attacking Turkey. The Turkish government, like any other government under siege and fighting for its life, could not view calmly the great numbers of potential enemy sympathizers within its borders...especially on its borders…not since a group of Armenians had already seized the National Bank building in Istanbul and threatened to blow it up.

Until that particular war the Turks had never done such a thing. In fact Turkey under the Ottomans was the only nation on earth where Muslims, Jews and Christians were allowed to live in relative peace, as far as humans ever can (considering that the Christians of Europe had been madly butchering each other for a few hundred years). Our people were allowed the kind of autonomy, by the Ottomans, they are now begging the Americans and Kurds for.

My main reason not to participate though is that we are altogether too heavily weighted to the side of memorials, martyrs and loss. We seem to take an unhealthy satisfaction of baring our wounds and picking at them so they’ll keep bleeding in the hopes that we’ll attract enough sympathy, I guess.

The Jews, other than the fact that they really did suffer a Genocide and Holocaust, have done far more than just memorialize it…they have created a vibrant culture, Jewish museums, hospitals, universities, symphony orchestras, cultural centers, movies, plays and operas…also several thousand books on a variety of themes, not just genocide and loss.

We Assyrians have done none of those things. Therefore to memorialize our losses seems, to me, a good way to keep us forever focused on such losses, with the inevitable result that we will continue to suffer them and the after effects, without ever finding in art, culture and the humanities that balm of peace and maturity which allows people to remember even while they strive to build and create anew. Without that committed, creative effort to heal and grow, I refuse to commemorate losses.

The part that worries me, however, is that there are so few capable Assyrian sculptors out there…I mean professionals who’ve been able to earn their living making sculpture and so have had the time and practice to develop their skills to the utmost. We have people who make things, who write books etc…but it’s all terribly amateurish. I worry that whoever among us gets this commission will build something quite below even the standard for art these days.

I hope I’m wrong.

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