A novel broke the silence

In an interview with Jungle World, Liane Safaryan calls Franz Werfel's famous novel "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" "a memorial for eternity." Safaryan heads the Austrian Library Franz Werfel Yerevan. The facility is both a library and a cultural center and, among many other things, holds the Austrian writer's complete works as well as the relevant research literature.

The Musa Dagh book was published in German in 1933 and was first translated into Armenian in 1935, although without authorization; The first recognized translation was published in 1964, and others followed. All of Werfel's works are also available in Russian. The story of the fight for survival on Mount Musa Dagh is required reading in school, staged readings are broadcast on the radio and Werfel's entire work is an integral part of Germanic research in Armenia, reports Safaryan.

Werfel is not a chronicler of the genocide; He happened to come into contact with Armenian refugee children on a trip to Damascus and thus heard about the crime for the first time. 

Werfel is not a chronicler of the genocide; He happened to come into contact with Armenian refugee children on a trip to Damascus and thus heard about the crime for the first time. During his research, he learned about the “Miracle of Musa Dagh” and decided to write a novel about it: Instead of submitting to the deadly deportation, Armenian villagers fled to Musa Dagh with their weapons in July 1915 to resist the superior strength of the Ottoman army. After eight weeks of fighting, the distressed people were spotted on the mountain plateau by the French navy and rescued at the last minute.

Every year, on the day of the rescue of the survivors of the Musa Dagh by French warships on September 12, 1915, commemorations take place that are not only dedicated to the event itself, but also to Werfel in a special way, with lectures, special exhibitions and the awarding of the Franz Werfel Medal by the Institute of the Genocide Museum. In 2006, he, who had never been to Armenia himself, was posthumously awarded honorary Armenian citizenship.

In the north of Yerevan, in the Nor Nork district, there is a monument to Werfel. It is located in a long park named after Fridtjof Nansen, the famous Norwegian polar explorer. In 1924 he achieved that the League of Nations provided around 320,000 stateless Armenians with passports in order to give them freedom of movement and the opportunity to work. The Werfel monument seems almost inconspicuous; The almost two-meter-high black tufa boulder shows the writer in the midst of fighting and rescued people with his arms outstretched, as if he were bearing the burden of the suffering that was inflicted on the Armenians in the years 1915 to 1917.

The book was particularly important for the beleaguered Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. It was one of the most widely read books there and fueled the will to resist.

In Germany, the Jewish writer and friend of Franz Kafka, Max Brod and Egon Erwin Kisch, who was born in Prague in 1890, is hardly read outside of universities. This is not surprising, because his somewhat ponderous language, which comes from poetry, sometimes impairs the reading, although the story of this fight for survival develops an astonishing pull. Werfel is one of the writers whose works fell victim to the National Socialists' book burnings.

The book was particularly important for the beleaguered Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. It was one of the most widely read books there and fueled the will to resist.

The Armenian Genocide memorial complex on the Tsizernakaberd (Swallow's Nest) hill in Yerevan also pays tribute to Werfel. The places where massacres and deportations are known are engraved on the 100 meter long memorial wall, and on the back there are memorial plaques for those people who took care of the victims during the genocide and afterwards and made the events internationally known. As a special tribute, earth that was taken from Werfel's grave of honor in the Vienna Central Cemetery was walled in in the outer wall of the Genocide Museum. First editions and early translations into various languages ​​of “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh” are on display in the museum itself. For this work, says Liane Safaryan, “we are deeply grateful.”