It is a great honor and a great responsibility to be with you, today, on your memorial day, and I am really moved. I join you and I am here today with you as a human being, as a Jew and as an Israeli. I am an Israeli-Jew who was born after the Holocaust to parents who had immigrated to Palestine from Poland before it but lost many members of their families in the Holocaust. I became involved in the subject in the framework of my activity as a researcher of contemporary Jewish studies and as an educator. Over the years, troubled by the evasive behavior, verging on denial, of the various governments of Israel regarding the memory of the Armenian genocide, I decided to examine both the overt factors and the deeper and more complex factors leading to such behavior which to me seems morally unacceptable, particularly since we Jews were the victims of the Holocaust.

I have been involved in the subject for almost fifteen years, and my research has carried me to unanticipated places and events. It has revealed to me, I must confess, a reality that I did not expect. I had hoped to find a greater degree of identification with the suffering of the Armenians, more empathy, and more attempts to help, within the scope of the very limited possibilities of thee Jewish people. Instead, I found, as will be elaborated later, much indifference and an attitude that stressed the particular rather than the universal. The results of the studies have been published in my books The Banality of Indifference - Zionism and The Armenian Genocide and in The Banality of Denial - Israel and the Armenian Genocide that will be published in the next month. It seems to me that every society - as well as every human being - should explore it's personal and collective history and identity. Knowing and facing out own history is part of our behavior and consciousness in the present and in the future. We, in my opinion, can't avoid this self-examination, including looking through the difficult and black pages of our individual as well as our collective past.

Tonight I will speak about the special connections between our two peoples, about Jewish memory and Armenian memory, about the trauma of genocide, about the attitudes of the State of Israel to the Armenian Genocide, and then conclude with some general comments about our common responsibilities, Jews and Armenians alike, regarding moral issues.

Connections Between Jews and Armenians

There are similar characteristics in the history of the Armenian and the Jewish peoples, who for long periods lived as ethno-religious minorities among he majorities, different from and hostile to them. The Armenians lived in their historic homeland while the Jews lived in exile. The Turkish slaughter of the Armenians during 1915-16 was one of the most horrible deeds of modern time. Henry Morgenthau, Sr., the American ambassador to Turkey at the time - a Jew - described it as `the greatest crime in modern history…' `Among the blackest pages in modern history this is the blackest of them all.' Morgenthau was one of the few people who tried to assist the Armenians, insofar as circumstances allowed, in order to contain the extent of their destruction.

The First World War ended in the victory of the Allied Powers: the United States, England, and France. The Armenians believed that with the war's end these nations would help them attain sovereignty and, indeed, during the course of the war explicit declarations were made to that effect. However, the declarations were not realized and the Armenians remained without a sovereign state of their own. For many years you were forced to make do with an Armenian Republic within the borders of the former Soviet Union.

The Second World War witnessed the Holocaust, making humanity aware of deeds even more evil and widespread than those that had occurred during the First World War.

The Holocaust has become a formative component, not only in the historical memory and in the identity of Israeli Jews, but also in the identity of Jewish communities in the Diaspora as well. Over the years the Holocaust has become a touchstone in the collective memory of Western European and American society. The Holocaust Memorial Day is noted on the American civil calendar. Yet the Armenian genocide has remained the private historic memory of the Armenian People. The memorial day of the Armenian genocide does not appear on the American calendar. After First World War the triumphant allies, chose to ignore the Armenians, and largely not to acknowledge the tragedy. The Turks denied - and continue to vehemently deny - the crimes they committed against the Armenians, belittling the scope and significance of deeds intended utterly to destroy a civilian population.

The genocides we, Jews and Armenians alike, have suffered created another similarity and connection between us. We, the Jews, commemorate our Holocaust Memorial day every year, according to the Hebrew calendar. It is usually at the end of April or the beginning of May. It is always very close to the Armenian memorial day. Sometimes it even happens to be on the same day. Every year Armenians gather here, in Israel and all over the world to remember and to remind the world of the terrible disaster, which befell your people at the beginning of the century.

The Armenian Memorial Day should be a day of reflection and introspection for all of humanity, a day of soul-searching. On this day, we as Jews, victims of the Shoah, should examine our relationship to the pain of others.

Let me demonstrate the special connections between our two peoples by recalling two examples.

In 1918, Shmuel Talkowsky, the secretary of Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader who became the first president of the State of Israel, wrote with the approval of Weizmann, an important article entitled `The Armenian Question from a Zionist Point of View.' `We Zionists look upon the fate of the Armenian people with a deep and sincere sympathy; we do so as men as Jews and as Zionists. As men our motto is `Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.' `I am human being. Whatever affects another human being affects me.' As Jews our exile from our ancestral home and our centuries of suffering in all parts of the globe have made us, I would fain say specialists in martyrdom; our humanitarian degree, so much so that the sufferings of other people - even alien to us in blood and remote from us in distance - cannot but strike the deeper chords of our soul and weave between us and our fellow-sufferers that deep bond of sympathy which one might call solidarity of sorrow. And Among all those who suffer around us, is there a people whose record of martyrdom is more akin to ours than that of the Armenians? As Zionists we have a peculiar question of principle. Zionism being in its essence nothing else than the Jewish expression of the demand for national justice, it is natural and logical for us to be deeply interested in the struggle for emancipation of any other living nation. … In our opinion, a free and happy Armenian, and free and happy Arabia, and a free and happy Jewish Palestine, are the three pillars on which will rest the future peace ad welfare of the Middle East.'

The second example is the epic work written by the Jewish author Franz Werfel, `Forty Days of Musa Dagh.' The novel tells the story of the annihilation of the Armenian people and one of the most heroic chapters in its history by telling the story of the inhabitants of the Armenian villages at the foot of Musa Dagh (Mount Moses) in the Cilicia district during the First World War. I studied and analyzed the impact of the book as symbol for and an influence on Jewish youth in Palestine and the Jewish ghettos during the Holocaust. Franz Werfel's book was published in Germany in 1933. By 1934, it had already been translated to Hebrew. The reviews in Eretz Israel praised the quality of the book, but were ambivalent about the fact that a Jew was dealing with the tragedy of another nation. A recurring motif in the criticism was to question why a Jew was dealing with the suffering of others. On the other hand, the book had an enormous impact on Jewish youth in Europe and in Eretz Israel in the `30's and `40's.

During the period of thee danger of a German conquest of Eretz Israel in the Second World War, the limited Jewish defense forces organized their defense against a possible invasion in a plan called `The Massada Plan', or the `Carmel Plan', or the `Musa Dagh Plan'. The Jewish underground fighters in Europe at the start of the `40's widely read the book. In several gripping discussions and diaries which were preserved, we find evidence of the book's great influence and as an example to be followed. Let me give you only a few examples, among the many that are mentioned in my book.

In a letter to Bronka Klevansky, the Jewish Resistance contact on the Aryan side of Bialystock, sent on May 25, 1943, Mordechai Tenebaum, the commander of the Jewish underground in the ghetto, wrote, `Musa Dagh is all the rage with us. If you read it, you will remember it for the rest of your life. Written by Franz Werfel.' Bronka Klevansky later said that she had read the book in Polish, or perhaps even in German. She thought that Tenebaum had read the book before the war, and during the time in the ghetto, he and others apparently recommended it.

Among the activists of the Jewish youth movements Werfel's book was highly regarded. In those days, they read Musa Dagh. The book passed from hand to hand.

Inka Wajbort almost used the same exact words in her memoirs when describing the book's impact on the fifteen-and sixteen-year-old members of `Hashomer Hatzair' (a Socialist-Zionist Jewish youth movement) in Sosnovitz, in the summer of 1941:

The book passed from hand to hand…It completely captivated me. For four full days I was engrossed in the book and could not tear myself away… I myself was at Musa Dagh; I was under siege. I was one of the Armenians doomed to death. If I lifted my eyes from the book, it was only to hear the cry - Mama, how could this be? The world knew and kept silent. It could not be that children in other countries at the same time went to school, women adorned themselves, men went about their business, as if nothing had happened… And there, a people was annihilated.

Mother knew nothing about Musa Dagh. And that also seemed horrible to me. I was totally shocked by the tragedy and when I finished reading the book and went out to the yard for the first time - it was a summer day, drenched in the afternoon sunlight - I was suddenly overcome by a feeling of joy at my very existence. I was grateful to the Creator for the sunlight and the blue sky, for the vision of two little girls with braided hair jumping rope as they laughingly counted their hops, for the fact that the world still stood.

Then, I did not deal in comparisons. Then, in the summer of 1941 I did not yet sense that a new Musa Dagh was imminent. That happened later.

Wajbort goes on to observe that in May, 1942, before the deportations from the Sosnovitz region, Mordechai Anilevitch, commander of the Jewish Underground in the Warsaw Ghetto, came to the ghetto and reported to the older comrades of his movement about what had already transpired in other regions of Poland, where a significant part of the Jews had already been exterminated. `And so, again Musa Dagh? And again the world keeps silent?'

In the `30's and the `40's Werfel's book broke away from what was defined as the narrow scope of literature.

Today, I am sorry to point out, the younger generation in Israel has heard nothing of Musa Dagh and most of them do not know, to our regret, anything about the genocide of the Armenian people.

Jewish Memory

Jewish history in the post-Holocaust era cannot be understood without an awareness of the profound and lasting influence of the Holocaust. The Second World War and the Holocaust on one hand, and the establishment of the State of Israel on the other, fundamentally changed the history of the Jews. The Jewish People experienced its greatest disaster and three years later lived to witness the birth of the Jewish State and Jewish sovereignty. In spite of the passage of time, Jewish attitudes to the Holocaust and its implications remain a crucial element in contemporary Jewish identity. In many respects Holocaust awareness has increased over the years in the consciousness of Jews in Israel and the Diaspora. Today it is a central factor in the attitudes of young Israeli Jews to themselves as Jews, Israelis and Zionists, and its influence is felt in many other aspects of their lives. The Israeli educational system also views the Holocaust as a central component of Jewish and Zionist education. Therefore, an understanding of the attitudes of Jews in Israel and abroad to the Holocaust is essential to understanding their Jewish identity overall. >From the point of view of Jewish and Israeli identity, and from an educational point of view, this raises a substantive question: Is it possible in the long term to foster an identity on the basis of elements which are fundamentally negative? Is now a balance called for in terms of positive Jewish elements?

Armenian Memory

Armenian history in the post-genocide era cannot be understood without an awareness of the profound and lasting influence of the genocide on the first, second, third and now even fourth generation.

In spite of the passage of time, and even maybe because of it, Armenian attitudes toward the genocide and its implications remain a crucial element in contemporary Armenian identity in Armenia and, even more, in Armenians communities all over the world. The genocide is a central component today in the attitudes of young Armenians - the third and the fourth generation - when viewing themselves as Armenians, be it in Armenian, Australia, Israel or elsewhere.

Furthermore, for you, Armenians, there is also the painful fact that your genocide is unfortunately not recognized. By denial you have been victimized twice. There is something sad, even despairing, to witness the ongoing efforts of the Armenians and their supporters over 88 years to gain recognition from the international community and the many states where they are living in Diaspora as direct consequence, very often, of the genocide. I have learnt to know it in Israel during 15 years and later on across many other Armenian communities all over the world.

In 1992 Judith Lewis Herman published a landmark work on the social impact of psychological trauma and on its treatment. The book `Trauma and Recovery', deals with the aftermath of violence, from domestic abuse to political terror, bridging the worlds of war veterans, survivors of the Holocaust, prisoners of war, battered women and incest victims.

In the introduction to her book Herman makes the following remarkable psychological observation:

The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable. Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of he social order and for the healing of individual victims. The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner which undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom.

Herman further writes in the first chapter of her book which she titled `A Forgotten History':

To study psychological trauma is to come face to face both with human vulnerability in the natural world and with the capacity for evil in human nature. To study psychological trauma means bearing witness to horrible events. When the events are natural disasters or `acts of God,' those who bear witness sympathize readily with the victim. But when the traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator. It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to take sides. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.

These powerful comments are, undoubtedly, applicable to our issue, for the Armenian genocide is described sometimes as `the forgotten genocide.'

I was happy to learn that the author, clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, was among more than 150 distinguished scholars and writers who signed a statement in 1999 asking governments - including the Turkish one - to recognize the Armenian genocide.

The statement emphasizes that `denial of genocide strives to reshape history in order to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators. Denial of genocide is the final stage of genocide.' The signers, academics from different countries, state that they `urge government officials, scholars, and the media to refrain from using evasive or euphemistic terminology to appease the Turkish government; we ask them to refer to the 1915 annihilation of the Armenians as genocide.'

The Attitudes of the State of Israel

I know how important for the Armenians is the position of the Jews, and especially the attitude of the State of Israel to their genocide. Concern with that position is raised again and again, I believe, because the State of Israel was populated by people who were victims of the Holocaust.

I am a Jewish Israeli who aspires in his academic work to describe, analyze and then comment on the attitudes of his state and his society, as honestly as I can, and who also tries to change those attitudes. My goal is to uncover the truth with as much precision as possible. My duty as a scholar, as I see it, is to try to discover the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The all truth, I am ashamed to say, is that the attitude of the various Israeli governments to the Armenian genocide has been characterized by evasiveness and denial. The State of Israel has officially refrained from relating to it. A combination of factors connected to Israel's relations with Turkey and concepts of the uniqueness of the Shoah have brought about an almost total absence of any mention of the Armenian genocide by Israeli representatives and on State Television. Government ministers - apart from few such as Yair Tzaban, Yossi Sarid and Yossi Beilin - have systematically avoided the issue altogether by declining to participate in Armenian Memorial Day ceremonies.

Public debate and argument about that official attitude towards the Armenian genocide has erupted several times due to a number of events. In 1978, a film on the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem was banned from screening. In 1982, the Israeli Government intervened in an International Congress on the subject of the Shoah and Genocide. In 1989, Israel was involved in preventing mention of the Armenian genocide in an American calendar. In 1990, the showing of `Armenian Journey', a TV film produced in U.S., was banned.

Another phase in the controversy about increasing awareness to the Armenian Genocide in the Jewish-Israeli historical consciousness occurred in 1995 in connection with the high-school study program `Sensitivity to Suffering in the World: Genocides in the 20th Century.' The program includes the Armenian Genocide and the Genocide of Gypsies during the Second World War and intended later to deal with more current acts of Genocide such as the ones that occurred in Bosnia and Rwanda. The focal point of the controversy was a denial of full-hearted recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Although the program was eventually rejected by the Israeli Ministry of Education, the program is taught in several high schools in Israel without official approval.

Two forces led to the rejection of the program: (a) the pressure of the Turkish government; and (b) the opposition of several high-powered Jewish groups who were afraid that the program might damage the concept of the uniqueness of the Shoah.

It is relevant to note that in a field of study that I conducted in 1996 of more than 800 students in universities and teachers' colleges in Israel, I found that the majority of them, by far, defined their degree of knowledge about the Armenian Genocide and Genocide of the Gypsies as `not at all' or `very little'. Although I can not assert with absolute certainty that the degree of ignorance among Israeli Jews about the Armenian Genocide is much greater than the knowledge in many countries about the Holocaust, I believe it is probably so.

What is the significance of this study? Israelis tend to say over and over that Israel, the national home of the Jews, has a special moral as well as political responsibility to place the issue of genocide on the world agenda. Is the Shoah the only subject worthy of learning? I believe that it is essential to develop a greater sensitivity among our youth to the suffering of others and to strengthen universal, humanistic values which are an integral part of the Jewish tradition. I believe these values are deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition.

In this context I would like to mention the statement made by Yossi Sarid, at the time the Minister of Education on April 24, 2000 at the memorial gathering of the Armenian community in Jerusalem.

Sarid sympathized with the pain of the Armenians over the denial of the genocide. The Minister of Education concluded his statement with a commitment to ensure that the Armenian Genocide be included in the Israeli secondary school history curriculum. He stated: `I would like to see a central chapter on genocide, on this huge and inhuman atrocity. The Armenian genocide should occupy a prominent place in this program, which does justice to the national and personal memory of every one of you, to the memory of all the members of your nation. This is our obligation to you, this is our obligation to ourselves.

But unfortunately about a year later, in April 10, 2001, the Foreign Minster of Israel Shimon Peres was quoted as saying `We regret attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. It is a tragedy, but not a genocide'. This statement was repeated by the Israeli Ambassador to Armenia Rivka Cohen on February 2002. These statements may be regarded as Israel's escalation from passive to active denial, from moderate denial to hard-line denial. An Armenian friend told me, rightly so, `I do not know of any enlightened politician in a democratic state that has ever made remarks such as these,' `You the Jews of all people.'

Some General Conclusions

Acts of genocide can occur under certain circumstances. One of them is a clear superiority of power of the perpetrator over his victim. This superiority is largely depends on the behavior of `third parties.' `Third parties' consist of the overwhelming majority of humanity who is not involved in the action. `Third parties' are divided into three sub-groups: There are those who support the perpetrator - he is powerful, and because of pragmatic considerations, it is `beneficial' to have relations with him. On the other hand of the scale, there are those who support the victim. Examples are those who tried to help the Jews and the Armenians because of humanitarian values, risking their lives in doing so. The rescuers are always a small minority - they risk their interests and their lives. The third sub-group consists of the bystanders, those who are not involved directly in the genocide but do nothing to come between the murderer and his victim. The bystanders, who remain indifferent and silent in the face of evil, remind us of the human potential for passivity in the face of suffering. This sub-group is the major part of the `third parties' - the major part of humanity.

The picture that becomes increasingly clear regarding the attitude toward acts of genocide is a picture of banality of indifference, of being bystanders. The reaction of the multitudes, those located between the perpetrator and victim, is characterized by indifference, conformity and opportunism. I, as an Israeli, can say that the State of Israel, unfortunately, has not risen above this banality with regard to the genocides that we witnessed in the last decade. It is up to you to, as residents of the US to examine and analyze how America has behaved during the genocides over the last decade in Yugoslavia, Rwanda and East Timor.

I have become increasingly convinced that those who stand on the sidelines inevitably support the murderers, never the victims. When we choose not to take sides, we in fact take side for the aggressor. Morally, we cannot sit idly in the face of criminal acts of genocide. We cannot accept the argument that nothing can be done, or that `such things happen'. Evil does not cease to be evil when it hurts another. It is written in the Bible, Leviticus 16: 19 : `You shall not stand against the blood of your neighbor.' Morally, at least, the bystanders are responsible, and maybe also guilty.

I have chosen as the motto of one of my books a passage from our Jewish sources:

`Thus was created a single man, to teach us that ever person who loses a single soul, it shall be written about him as if he has lost the entire world, and every person who sustains a single soul it shall be written about him as if he has sustained the entire world.' (Mishna, Sanhedrin, IV, 5)

This passage was revised overtime and the phrase `from the People of Israel' was added so that the line no longer reads `every person who sustains' or `loses a single soul,' but rather `every person who sustains or loses a single soul from the People of Israel.' In editions of the Mishna generally available today we usually find the later `amended' version. I would propose with humility that we go back to the first, more universal version. Let us remember that our common struggle for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide bears, at least for me, a major moral significance, and that in our joint moral struggle we must be consistent.

Every human and every people, but in my opinion especially we, Jews and Armenians, have continuing obligation never again to be a victim; of course never to be a perpetrator; but also never to be a bystander.

I can assure you that I, and I am sure, a great many Jews, in Israel and in the world, will continue the struggle for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Israel and by the world. This is my obligation to myself as a human being; this is my obligation as a Jew and an Israeli.

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Dr. Yair Auron is senior lecturer at The Open University of Israel and the Kibbutzim College of Education. He is the author, in Hebrew, of "Jewish-Israeli Identity"; "Sensitivity to World Suffering: Genocide in the Twentieth Century"; "We Are All German Jews"; "Jewish Radicals in France During the Sixties and Seventies" (published in French as well); "The Banality of Indifference: Zionism & the Armenian Genocide"; and, "The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide".