"I am very pleased to have been able to speak to combined Armenian and Jewish audiences," Auron remarked, "given the
similarities of the terrible experience of genocide that the two peoples have suffered."Dr. Auron began his lectures by relating how he had become interested in genocide studies. Both of his parents had emigrated from Poland in the 1930s. For Auron, raised in a society influenced by Zionist thinking, the Jewish Holocaust had played a very significant role in his education and in forging his identity. He became an expert in the Holocaust, and even worked for a time at Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. He came to learn that genocide is the ultimate violation of human rights. When the broadcast of a documentary about the Armenian Genocide on Israeli television was suddenly cancelled without explanation, he became curious to know why. This led to his studying other genocides and embarking upon a long exploration of the relationship of the Israeli state and society towards other genocides. He expected that there would be great sympathy and commonality of feeling among Israelis towards victims of other genocides. Instead, he found almost total ignorance of the genocides of other peoples, even the Roma, who were consumed by the Nazis at the same time as the Jews.
Knowledge of the Armenian Genocide was widespread among the Jews in Europe, especially during the years of resistance to the Nazis, when Franz Werfels' The Forty Days of Musa Dagh provided inspiration. However, the book is scarcely known in Israel today. Auron did note that when he left Israel on this tour, he saw that a new paperback reprint of the Hebrew edition was for sale among the bestsellers at the airport, which gave him hope that the book would once again find a wide readership among Jews.
Prof. Auron stressed the fact that victims should not compete in their victimhood. He had a passage written by Vassili Grossman read aloud. It related the experience of Grossman, who visited Armenia in 1961, when he attended a village wedding feast at the foot of Mt. Aragats. An old Armenian peasant spoke to Grossman of his experiences as a German prisoner of war, of how he saw Jewish prisoners being mistreated, of his feeling for the suffering of Jewish women and children, of his love for the Jewish people, whom blood and suffering had brought close to the Armenian people. The old man said he had read Grossman's wartime articles, in which he had written about the Armenian Genocide, and was moved that a Jew whose own people were undergoing terrible tragedy at the time could still write about the tragedy of the Armenians. The warm and emotional reaction of all the people there to these words affected Grossman deeply.
While numerous Jewish scholars in and outside Israel affirm the Armenian Genocide without reservation, according to Prof. Auron, the attitude of the governments of Israel over time has changed from passive to active denial. He cited numerous examples, which are treated in detail in his book. There are two major factors contributing to this situation, Auron found. One is the feeling of the leadership of the State of Israel that its future depends on the strictest application of realpolitik. Thus, Israel entered into a strategic alliance with Turkey, and as part of that relationship, supports Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide, both passively and actively. "It would have been better," Auron asserts, "if Israel had made clear from the beginning of the relationship that certain moral principles were not part of the deal, and Israel had stated that it could not barter with the memory of another people's genocide."
The second factor is the strong belief in the uniqueness and incomparability of the Holocaust by some of the more conservative elements of Israeli society. They feel any comparison with other genocides diminishes the solemnity and the memory of the Holocaust, which some see as a mystical experience.
Auron argues that the opposite is the case. "How can you say the Holocaust is unique if you have not compared it to anything else? Of course the Holocaust has unique characteristics, as do other cases of genocide, but we can learn important things by studying those elements they have in common," he explains. "Moreover," he adds, "genocide is a human act, man's inhumanity to his fellow man, and is recognized as a crime under international law."
Auron advised that Armenians and Jews have a moral obligation never again to be victims, never to be perpetrators, but also never to be bystanders. By citing passages from the Old Testament and the Mishna Sanhedrin, he showed how caring for the suffering of others is an essential part of the Jewish heritage. Auron began and ended his lecture with the words, "I am here with you today as an Israeli, as a Jew, and as a human being." It is that humanity, and his strong moral stance that make Auron's arguments so engrossing and compelling for all people.
Auron lectured at the University of Toronto, the City University of New York Graduate Center, Rutgers University, the Armenian Cultural Foundation in Arlington, MA, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Tufts University), the Université de Montréal, McGill University (Montreal), and to the Armenian community of Montreal at the AGBU centre.
Yair Auron is Senior Lecturer in the field of contemporary Judaism and genocide at the Open University of Israel. He has been researching in the area of indifference and denial since the early 1990s and is a member of the Zoryan Institute's Academic Board of Directors.