NEITHER TO LAUGH NOR TO WEEP

by Abraham H. Hartunian ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 25, 1968

This, A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, written by one of its few survivors, is a powerful, painful account of atrocity, murder, corruption. Mr. Hartunian, who became one of the religious leaders of the Armenian people during their quarter-century of persecution, offers an impassioned condemnation cf not only the Turkish ""monsters"" but of Western powers who stood by--""all the Christian powers of the world are our murderers."" Or even abetted massacre--the betrayal of the French in particular. From 1899, when a verse from the Bible cost him thirteen months in prison, to the later death marches, wholesale rape and savagery, torture and annihilation until the final purge at Smyrna as the city burned, there is blood on every page. The story seems incredible, even after the enlightenment of the gas chambers, and if the tone seems hysterical at times, it is perhaps justified. Neither to laugh nor to weep but to understand, Spinoza's tenet and an imperative reason for this book. So that we can not only understand but prevent the past as prelude to the future.

Pub Date: Oct. 25, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Beacon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1968

Categories: NONFICTION