The Forty Days of Musa Dagh

Rating:
Summary: If Franz Werfel hadn't written and published this book...
Review: ...in the beginnig of the 1930's, the Turks would have succeeded in making the whole world forget about the Armenian genocide that took place in 1915/16.

Turkey did succeed in putting pressure on the US-government in 1933 though, when a movie was supposed to be made based on this book, so the then US-government again put pressure on MGM not to make this movie. A foreign government coerced censorship in the Unites States: Just imagine that! I hope the the making of the movie

Rating:
Summary: Franz Werfel knew that he had been taken in forgeries
Review: Abraham Sou Sever (Albert J. Amateau) is a Sephardic Jew, born in Izmir, Turkey, before World War I.He later emigrated to the United States.

Abraham Sou Sever (Amateau) has filed a written deposition and Testimonal in which he tells the truth about Armenian "genocide" claims and their propaganda methods from his own personal life experiences and knowledge.Particularly significiant is his testimony on Franz Werfel.Mr. Sever's notarized deposition has been transmitted to research institutions in the United States as part of a written and oral history collection on Armenian claims for a genocide.

Here is what Mr. Sever has to say about Franz Werfel and the evnts which took place on Musa Dagh:

"Moussa Dagh(Mount Moussa), if the truth be known, is the best evidence of the Armenian duplicity and rebellion.Fifty thousand Armenians, all armed, ascended the summit of that mountain after provisioning it to stand siege.Daily sallies from that summit of armed bands attacked the rear of Ottoman armies, and disappeared into the mountain.When Ottomans finally discovered the fortification the Armenians had prepared, they could not assault and invade it.It stood siege for 40 days, which is a good indication of the preparations the Armenians had made surreptitiously under the very nose of the Ottoman Government.Nor was it ever explained that the rebellion of the Armenians, had been fostered, organized, financed, and supplied with arms and munitions by the Russians.

Leaders of Armenian revolutionary organization DASHNAGTZOUTIUN have since admitted to have been seduced by Russia with promises of independence and a New Armenia.They have admitted that bands of Armenian revolutionaries had been organized to sabotage and interfere with the Ottoman armies defending their homeland, even before the Ottoman Government had entered the war against Russia.The thousands who occupied the summit of Moussa Dagh for 4o days escaped by descending the mountain by a secret exit fronting on the Meditterenean, while Ottoman armies were besieging the front of that mountain.The Armenians had communicated by flambeu signals with the French and British naval ships patrolling the Meditterenean.Those(thousands) who escaped were taken aboard the ships of the British and French and transported to Alexandra in Egypt.The Armenians found it to their interest to invent that those thousands had perished-keeping their rescue by the British and French a secret.Only a small contingent of Armenians who had remained fighting the Ottomans finally surrendered.

My dear departed friend, Franz Werfel, who wrote that book, The Forty Days Of Moussa Dagh , never was in that region to investigate what he wrote.He wrote it as his Armenian friends in Vienna had told him.Before his death, Werfel told me that he felt ashamed and contrite for having written that book and for the many falsehoods and fabrications the Armenians had foisted on him.But he dared not confess publicly for fear of death by the Dashnag terrorists.

Christian missionaries had found the Armenians willing and easy converts from their ancestral orthodox Christianity to the Protestant and Catholic brands.Sympathetic to their converts, they helped spread the false stories of massacre throughout the Western World.Modern day Armenians heard the false stories from their elders who were never there themselves, but had heard them from the Dashnag revolutionaries who had made deals with the Czar and Bolsheviks.The Republic they established died aborning because of the intrigues and subtle dealings typical of the Dashnag fanatis.The faise claims of genocide and holocaust have gained for them great sympathy throughout the Western World.They can not tolerate disproof and refutation.They try to stifle and disproof by threats."

For people who obviously don't believe in the authenticity of this testimony I provide these details. Now you're able to trace that this information is very well real:

"Wendy O'Steen 
Notary Public - California 
Principal Office in Sonoma County
My Commission Expires December 1, 1992 
Signed and Sealed

Albert J. Amateau, residing at XXXX, being duly sworn, deposes that he has prepared and hereby submits the attached statement containing (a) facts, (b) extracts from published and/or uttered communications which disprove the allegations of Armenians that their ethnic brethren suffered genocide by the government of the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1923."

Rating:
Summary: Werfel made himself a voice to the world for the Armenians!
Review: Between 1915 and 1917 1.5 million Armenians were killed in the 20th century's first genocide, and to this day the existing Turkish government still denies any wrong doing!
It is Franz Werfel's merit that he made the world listen to the crying of the Armenian people, which would have been almost forgotten otherwise.
He tells the story of a handful of men being deported to the Syrian desert who - by courage of despair - manage to escape to the mountain Musa Dagh (which means "mountain of Moses") and resisting the flabberghasted superior Turkish soldiers for forty days, until they were discovered and rescued by french war-ships.
When the book was published in 1933 in Germany, Werfel also intended to draw attention to the imminent same fate that the Jews were facing in Germany, but it was in vain. Both, the Nazis and the Turks were outraged, and the book was banned in both countries (in post-war Germany it was published again, of course), but through the English translation it fortunately had become a bestseller already. However: When MGM was planning to make this book a movie, they had to yield to Turkish pressure not doing so! So to this very day there has not been any movie made from this excellent book.

Rating:
Summary: Franz Werfel knew that he had been taken in forgeries
Review: I have read this book a while ago, and it is enshrined in my mind. The book is the story of a little Armenian village and its people who fought desperately to survive against the invaders who were bent on killing them down to the last person during WW1. These villagers went through 40 days of hell on the top of mount Moussa against the Turks and managed to be rescued by the French warships.
As I was going through the reviews, the comments of Mr. Holdwater made me fume and filled me with anger.
As an Armenian, I heard the stories of members of my family who perished during the Genocide, and I know of numerous other countrymen who told me the horrifying stories of their families.
Mr. Holdwater, you can go on and ramble with your nonsense excuses, rationales, mathematics, and explanations. However, there is no way, and no power in this universe that will be able to refute and hide the documented evidence, witnesses and memoirs of the genocide. Neither you nor your Turkish friends have any power to hide the truth.
You can not revise history!!!!!...
What is sad about you was the math work that you performed claiming that there were only 300 or 400 thousand people that were killed and not the 1.5 million. I don't care even if they were 10,000. When there is an evil intention to kill other human beings regardless of how many, it constitutes a crime. But for you and you Turkish friends perhaps, the barbarian mentality that you people posses, it might seem that the action of killing is insignificant.
I look forward to the day when the Turks will muster enough courage as Germany did, and accept the responsibility of their barbaric act.
Until that day I will not have an ounce of respect towards revisionists like you, the Republic of Turkey and its cohorts.
God bless

Rating:
Summary: Crime against humanity
Review: I have read this book a while ago, and it is enshrined in my mind. The book is the story of and its little Armenian village people who lived on that land for almost 1000 years. This was way before the Turks made their way into Anatolia. The book narrates of the Armenian villager's resistance to survive against the invaders who were bent on killing them down to the last person during WW1. These villagers went through 40 days of hell on the top of mount Moussa against the Turks and managed to be rescued by the French warships.
As I was going through the reviews, the comments of Mr. Holdwater made me fume and filled me with anger.
As an Armenian, I heard the stories of members of my family who perished during the Genocide, and I know of numerous other countrymen who told me the horrifying stories of their families.
Mr. Holdwater, you can go on and ramble with your nonsense excuses, rationales, mathematics, and explanations. However, there is no way, and no power in this universe that will be able to refute and hide the documented evidence, witnesses and memoirs of the genocide. Neither you nor your Turkish friends have any power to hide the truth.
You can not revise history!!!!!...
What is sad about you was the math work that you performed claiming that there were only 300 or 400 thousand people that were killed and not the 1.5 million. I don't care even if they were 10,000. When there is an evil intention to kill other human beings regardless of how many, it constitutes a crime. But for you and you Turkish friends perhaps the barbarian mentality that you people posses, it might seem that the action of killing is insignificant.
I look forward to the day when the Turks will muster enough courage as Germany did, and accept the responsibility of their barbaric act.
Until that day I will not have an ounce of respect towards revisionists like you, the Republic of Turkey and its cohorts.
God bless.

Rating:
Summary: This book is a must to be red by historians
Review: I strongly recommend this book to be red.

Rating:
Summary: Is this "genocide" akin to religious fanaticism?
Review: If this book is fictional as even the people who are crazy about it admit, then how could they take it as historic fact? The degree of emotionalism involved by the Armenian reviewers here is phenomenal. It's almost as though this supposed genocide is a religious experience, and the truth needs to be damned.

An Ara Belian (Feb. 4, 2004) is upset at the revelations of another reviewer, whose essay made a lot of sense to me. He counts on stories by relatives as his evidence... but nobody is arguing Armenians did not suffer. The point is, everyone suffered during those tragic times. Didn't Armenians kill Turks in large numbers, that we never hear about? (Why are there no Turks in Armenia, when once the Turks were the majority?)

The point is whether a governmental extermination policy was in effect; this is the unproven part of genocide theory, and emotionalism is an unfair substitute for history.
All the "documented evidence, witnesses and memoirs of the genocide" prove is that ugliness occurred during what was a state of war. That's why none of it was admissible as actual evidence when the British attempted to try the Turks for massacre crimes at the end of WWI.

Taking the moral high road by claiming numbers don't matter is awfully ingenuous of Belian when propagandists make sure to tell us numbers do matter... the higher the number, the greater the sympathy value. That's why false numbers as 1.5 million have been created. Instead of saying he was made to "fume and filled ...with anger," why doesn't Mr. Belian THINK? Approach this subject coolly, rationally and without emotion? Instead of acting like a religious zealot who doesn't care about reason and common sense?


Rating:
Summary: This is a story that should never be forgotten
Review: It's a fascinating fiction book based on reality. Franz, however, sometimes, I think exaggerates the Armenian civilization (Armenians were/are NOT that wonderful), but at the same time he does review what the Turks did, and even though this novel is fiction, it does give good enough insight on what really happened to the Armenians. It's a classic and like Anne Frank's diary and Schindler's List, it should get more attention than it is getting now: not only for Armenians, Turks and Kurds, but for everyone. A genocide is a genocide and should never be ignored or forgotten. Unfortunately so many genocides occured around the world, and yet, I only seem to hear about THE Holocaust. It's time for all the other stories to come out: republishing The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is a good start.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful and Moving.
Review: The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is a very human novel written on an epic scale. It is at once the struggle of a "foreign" man to hold together his family, and the valient attempt of a people to survive. It is unfortunate that so many people have attacked this book to advance their political agenda of blurring history. "Martyr" is a word that is unfortunately abused today, however, in Forty Days one truly understands the broad scope and sacred purpose of that word. This is a book of wonderful contradictions: profound loss replaced by hope for the future; despair replaced by courage. Truly moving.

Rating:
Summary: More than a book on Armenians...a book on humanity.
Review: This Hans Werfel novel, written in 1933, is about a band of Armenians, 5000 strong, that defend themselves against persecution by the Turks during WWI. Indeed an anomaly, since the Young Turks' plot to innihalate Armenians was executed virtually unchallenged, making the battles of Musa Dagh all the more heroic. While the Armenian Genocide is as much an undeniable fact as the sky is blue, this novel was written as a fiction and was not meant to serve as an historical report. Yes it is about the fate of the Armenian people, but that is only the setting, for it is, at the core, a story about humanity and what becomes of it when forced to the brink of extinction. Unfortunately, this sad fate of the Armenians did not serve to curtail future Genocide, but instead set a world example that it is easier to get away with Genocide then it is to commit a murder. Werfel's ink was not yet dry, when the Nazi's vowed to rid the world of Jews...Werfel was not meant to be spared.