The Armenian Genocide in Polish Literature

Mr. Peynirian, in turn, came from Constantinople, where diplomatic missions were, where Europeans with interests in Turkey lived, and therefore the Turks treated Armenians in this city more leniently. However, he had to leave the city, where his mother lived. He knew that his mother was still alive, but he could not correspond with her. He had some remnants of his former fortune, allowing him to live a modest life. “And he was waiting here — for what? It is unknown. For new political changes, for the awakening of international conscience, for a miracle. Because all the promises of America and Europe have failed,” the author adds accusingly.

And finally, the youngest of the three Armenians, Sossé Papazian, “probably also experienced a lot — and she remembered something of it too well, something terrible. It was known that when she had a strong fever and was delirious, she saw a single, well-known, monstrous vision that filled her with terror and despair.”

Compared to Przedwiośnie, in Choucas there is much more information about Ceghaspanutjun, as well as the entire history of the Armenian nation. The topic of this international novel provided the opportunity to develop Armenian themes, and Nałkowska did so. We admire the knowledge acquired by the author, although it is not known how she acquired it, as well as the mastery with which she wove it into the narrative.

I would also like to draw attention to a mention in Władysław Jan Grabski’s novel Bracia from 1934, which deals with current Polish issues. One of its characters, while in Paris, accidentally met an Armenian who did not arouse his sympathy. He looked with dislike at this “thin brunette with a Semitic nose. What a confusing character! History question mark! The Turks complain that the Armenians oppress them, with usury and murder insidiously, and the Armenians shout about the Turks’ atrocities and organized pogroms. Who to believe here if both sides present their arguments with such faith?”

The writer clearly did not bother to establish the facts and deliberately or unconsciously decided to relativize the issue.

The next novel, which contains quite a lot about Armenians and their genocide, is W stanicy [In the Outpost] by Józef Łobodowski, the second volume of his novel series, usually referred to as the “Ukrainian trilogy”, published in London in 1958. Its hero, Staś Majewski, like Cezary Baryka from Przedwiośnie [The Early Spring], tries to leave Russia in revolution. Along the way, he experiences many adventures and meets different people. A Cossack friend named Chubar tells him how during World War I he was stationed among the mountains beyond Yerevan, in Igdir. There was a group of Armenians who hid in the mountains and were not murdered. Russian soldiers ensured their safety and also gave them food in exchange for their services.

In 1961, a List do starego tureckiego znajomego [A Letter to an Old Turkish Friend], written by Bohdan Gębarski, was published in the weekly Kierunki. It is probably not a work of fiction. However, I decided to mention it because it is not devoid of certain elements characteristic of fiction. Moreover, it is the most famous work in Polish literature devoted to the Armenian Genocide. It has been translated into many languages. It was also published by Polish Armenians as a brochure in their own publishing series.

The sender of A Letter…, who is, in a way, the narrator, addresses a Turk he met before the war about the genocide committed by his compatriots. He reminds him of his questions about this issue, which he was unable to answer, explaining that he was a child during the war. But this question undoubtedly irritated him. Maybe that is why he did not make any contact with a Pole for a quarter of a century. And suddenly, after such a long time, he sent him a letter in which he expressed his satisfaction with the acts of justice visible in the modern world, mentioning the Eichman trial and decolonization. The addressee responded with an open letter — List do starego tureckiego znajomego — in which he again asked questions about Armenians murdered by the Turks. He was able to answer most of them himself.

However, he still does not know why the Turks do not respond to their crime and try to convince the world that it did not happen at all:

I cannot understand your current indifference towards the crime that has been weighing on you for forty-something years. I don’t understand how a nation can live in these conditions, love its homeland, laugh and be happy, write and read humorous books, visit abroad and host foreigners. I think this is what German society would have been like if Hitler had won World War II. But then the whole world would be mad. I cannot help but notice that although over a hundred years have passed since this genocide, the Turks have not changed their attitude.

Gębarski is also the author of a short novel titled Morituri. Opowieść o 1915 [Morituri. A tale of 1915], also about what happened in Turkey that year. So far, it is the only larger work in Polish literature entirely devoted to this subject. Unfortunately, it was not published during the author’s lifetime (he died in 1978). And yet Gębarski, although he usually dealt with journalism in magazines, coped with artistic prose quite well. Morituri was published by Armenians only in 1992 in the above-mentioned publishing series. In the same year, it was published in Armenia in Armenian, translated by Anahit Ter-Ghazarian.

The novel takes place at the beginning of World War I and its protagonists are officers of the Turkish army, also of Armenian nationality. Brave and liked by their colleagues, they are unexpectedly doomed to extermination. They begin to be gradually separated from the remaining members of the officer corps.

I must also mention the references to Ceghaspanutjun made by the famous poet Wiktor Woroszylski in a work titled Literatura. Powieść [Literature. A Novel]. This work represents a specific literary genre called Sylva, fashionable in Poland, especially in the 1970s — these are supposedly chaotic notes that form a coherent whole. In Woroszylski’s sylva you can read about the genesis of his poem Oczy Metakse [The Eyes of Metakse]. While in Yerevan in 1954, the poet watched the dance of a very young Armenian woman whose movements seemed to him marked by the trauma that her grandparents had probably experienced and which, in turn, was passed on to her through her parents.

The second mention is a quote from the minutes of the meeting of the leadership of the Young Turk Ittihad party, as if it were a fragment of a conversation. The main speakers are Dr. Mehmed Nazim, one of the most prominent party activists. He states authoritatively that all Armenians must be exterminated. Others agree with him.

Having mentioned longer or shorter fragments concerning the extermination of Armenians by Żeromski, Nałkowska, Łobodowski, Woroszylski, and above all two works by Gębarski, it must be said that this is really not much. Even if I mentioned poems on this topic, because Oczy Metakse is not the only one, the thesis would still hold that Polish literature is not very interested in this topic.

There is no such work written in Polish as Czterdzieści dni Musa Dah [Forty Days of Musa Dah, written by Franz Werfel. Apparently this novel was very popular in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. The Jews locked inside felt similar to the Armenians who were besieged by Turkish troops on Mount Musa.

The topic of the Holocaust in the context of the small number of works about the extermination of Armenians written by Poles is by no means accidental. They were more interested in the extermination of the Jews because Poles had witnessed it. Ceghaspanutjun took place far from the areas inhabited by them, and besides, it took place during a crucial time for them during the First World War and the fight for independence.

Moreover, in Poland in the interwar period the Armenian community was small and assimilated. Refugees from Turkey very rarely chose Poland as their place of settlement. Therefore, there were no people who could remind about this genocide due to genetic connections with the murdered.

Contemporary Armenians living in Poland remember it much more. But most of them came to Poland from Armenia over the last thirty years, so their identity was shaped by the memory of the crime committed in 1915. Maybe what is still stuck in their heads will somehow be expressed in the works of Polish writers.

(Grzegorz Pełczyński is a cultural anthropologist, researcher in religious studies, and publicist, as well as a PhD professor at the University of Wrocław. Since 2004, he’s the chairman of the Ethnographic Committee of the Poznań Society of Friends of Learning. He’s a member of both the Association Internationale des Etudes Armeniennes, and the Historical Committee of the Evangelical Methodist Church. He’s also the creator and executive editor of the Our Europe journal.)