“A while ago, a very violent attack had been organized against one of our locations in Gapatepe [Kabatepe]. [Enemy soldiers] had attacked with such ferocity that after the attack the area between the casements had filled with Turkish corpses. It had been the most courageous attempt by the enemy to tear open the Australian and New Zealand lines. Some of the attackers had come as close as the casements that were being protected by the Victoria units; but our soldiers just disarmed this brave enemy and took them as prisoners. Later on we learned that the attack had been by Armenian [soldiers] who had been forced to march 15 miles per day [nearly 27 km] barefoot. They had been ordered out of Istanbul on a forced march and had walked for three weeks straight on very little food. As soon as they got to [the front] [these] exhausted men had been forced to attack the enemy [by way of an order to charge] for which there was no chance of success.” ¹

If the debates around Captain Torossian’s memoir in Turkey aren’t just used for worthless insults that spill out beyond the boundaries of good manners in the editorial pages of newspapers, they will have at least been the cause of initiating discussion over many subjects that had not, until now, ever been broached. At the top of the list is the subject of what happened to the Christian soldiers who served in the Ottoman army during the First World War and their families, who had been deported and destroyed. The quote at the top of this article was taken from news coverage that was based upon the statements of an Armenian soldier who had been taken prisoner by the Anzaks in 1915.² Many similar stories had been recounted amongst Armenians. It’s been said that Armenians were disarmed and forced to march on the battle front in Gallipoli and then shot in the back.³

In order for the Torossian debates to continue in a way that is conclusive and opens up new horizons in our understanding of history, it would be beneficial if Turkish historians kept in mind another matter. They are entering a field which is foreign to them. This field has to do with large-scale mass murders and how the survivors recount their life stories. Turkish historians have never been interested in this subject and so they should exercise the utmost care in what they have to say about it. There have been plenty of examples to illustrate how oblivious they’ve been during the Torossian debates.⁴

Here’s just one. If you take the debate around Captain Torossian’s memoir and focus entirely on the information he provides on battle fronts, hills and the size of cannons instead of the context of where he was and what was happening elsewhere, i.e. the reality of the deportation and annihilation of the Armenian population between 1915-1918, not only will you not understand a single thing, but you will have made some serious mistakes. For example, you will believe that an ordinary Armenian of Ottoman citizenship in the year 1916 could have obtained a passport; you will claim he freely left the country and you will write that he arrived in America. Regardless of whether he was an officer, it doesn’t occur to anyone to ask how an Armenian could travel outside the country in 1916.

In fact, we know that in 1915 all Armenians were prohibited from entering or leaving the country, “Without the special permission of the Supreme Commander, [you are hereby] notified [by the aforementioned office] that either man or woman, no Armenian will be permitted entry into the Ottoman Empire from outside and Armenian males, from between seventeen and fifty five years of age are absolutely forbidden from departing to the outside, all necessary actions are to be taken accordingly.”⁵ Forget about traveling outside the country; you needed a special travel document just to travel inside the country.

Traveling outside the country was so tightly monitored that despite tremendous pleading and pressure by the American government, even Armenians who had acquired American citizenship were refused exit visas and were sent to their deaths.⁶ In this kind of an environment, you need some answers to serious questions like just how did Sarkis Torossian, someone without any kind of foreign citizenship (regardless of whether he was a soldier or not) acquire a passport, leave the country and even travel within the country without permission? But as I mentioned, not only did it not occur to anyone to even ask these questions, everyone accepted as fact, without debate, the ‘revelation’ that Torossian left the country under normal conditions in 1916 and traveled to America.

Another example that can be presented here has to do with what it means to survive genocide and the subject of the diaspora. There have been some very serious mistakes made on the subject, not least of which is Hakan Erdem’s book. Unfortunately our academics have been prisoners of their own prejudices on the subject of the diaspora. Instead of treating Torossian like a member of a nation who had survived a huge mass murder, he has been imagined as a level-headed intellectual who had read a lot of books, done some research and at the conclusion of his research used the time on his hands to write an historical novel. Then to add to this, a lot of fantasy based claims have been put forth, actually made up completely out of whole cloth, with no basis in any research whatsoever. One claim is that nationalist Armenians in the diaspora had totally ignored or dismissed Torossian’s book completely.

It was indeed this issue that pulled me into the debate; I claimed that you couldn’t debate this without knowing and understanding the context of the Armenian genocide. For this, I was accused of being an “intellectual for hire” by Taha Akyol.⁷ Putting aside his insults for a minute, Halil Berktay made similar observations and characterized my behaviour as “opportunistic” and “Armenian loving”.⁸ It’s worth taking a closer look at what I had to say, here.

The Armenian Matter: A Problem of Existence versus Non-existence

In both the statements that were made to AGOS on November 23, 2012 and the article in Taraf on Dec. 24, 2012, I had criticized the way the debates around Torossian had been made and were progressing, calling it “trying to sweep the reality of genocide under the rug”. My basis for doing this was quite simple. Torossian’s book consisted of two main parts. One had to do with the memoirs of an Armenian soldier serving in various fronts while in the Ottoman army while the second had to do with his family being deported and annihilated along with other Armenians. All of the discussions around Torossian, including historian Cemil Koçak’s 2.5 hour TV show Eski Defterler, focused on the facts surrounding the military fronts. Not a single person mentioned something that is at least as important and that is that Captain Torossian’s family was deported and destroyed. That subject was treated like an unimportant detail that wasn’t worth mentioning and when someone like me reminded others of this humble little fact, what I got was insults instead of thanks.

From where I’m standing my criticism that “the genocide is getting swept under the rug” is quite inadequate and incomplete actually. What I really want to discuss is a problem that’s got much deeper roots than that. In order to explicate this better I’m going to enlist the help of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas points to a hidden phenomenon of violence that is embedded in a society’s social tissue and institutions. He proposes that there’s a mode of communication, accepted by all of society, that’s created as a result of this violence. As a result of this “collective mode of communication” not only do some phenomena manage to successfully escape attracting the attention of society but other invisible restrictions of society get entrenched.⁹ A mindset that is based upon this method is weaved together and a tacit agreement is reached making sure that certain subjects aren’t discussed.

The term “communicative reality” (die kommunikative Wirklichkeit) which I will borrow from Elias Siberski may provide even greater clarity. Siberski used this term to describe an important characteristic of secret organizations.¹⁰ According to him, secret organizations create an internal reality that’s separate from the actual reality around them by way of this communicative method, which is shared amongst its members. Turkey’s relationship with its history resembles this to some degree. We as a society treat our relationship with our history much like the members of a secret organization. Since our founding, we have created a “communicative reality” like most secret organizations. This “communicative reality” defines our way of thinking and of existing. It gives shape to our belief systems that define our emotions; in fact, it does this for our entire social-cultural network, all of the things that make us who we are.

In the end, a collective secret, one made up of all the spoken and unspoken worlds through this “communicative reality” and which, as a result, fits our society like a glove, has been created. Allow me to provide a very simple example from our intellectual world: Idris Küçükömer and especially his work titled “Düzenin Yabancılaşması” (Alienation of the System) is one of the important cornerstones of Turkish intellectual thought. In his book, Küçükömer posits a very significant macro model to explain both Turkey’s past and its present.

Take a look at this book again from the perspective of what I have said about the examples provided from Habermas and Siberski. When analyzing Ottoman society, this book, which has influenced Turkey very deeply and has led to endless debates over dozens of years between right wing, left wing and everyone in between, failed to take note of the almost 30% of Ottoman society that was comprised of Christians. This is not a joke. Küçükömer described to us an Ottoman society in which there are no Christians. This is a more profoundly disturbing situation than trying to analyze Turkish society by forgetting to include the Kurds and Alewites in Turkey today.

I’m not debating how correct the analyses of Idris Küçükömer are if they fail to count for 30% of a population; that’s a separate subject. I want to draw attention to a more important issue than this. The analyses of Idris Küçükömer on Ottoman society, which failed to account for Christians and treated them as non-existent, never seemed to bother those who either loved or hated him and it still doesn’t.

The Torossian debates have been no different. From the moment the book was published, the fact that Torossian was a Christian soldier and that his family was deported and annihilated, has been ignored. The entire memoir was regarded as a source of information about Gallipoli and the battle fronts and it was debated that way. The televised debates and newspaper editorials revolved around the names of hills and ships, and the dates when the latter were sunk and the scales of cannons. The deportation and annihilation of the Torossian family was treated like some unimportant detail that wasn’t even worth mentioning. I believe that none of this is a coincidence and that all of it is the product of the mentality described above. The essence of the reaction can be observed in this statement from Taha Akyol, “Where the hell did this come from?”

What is the Subject of the Debate?

As a general rule, if you can’t agree about where the source of your conflict is, you can’t argue about it either. In the Torossian debates, unfortunately, the parties are far from agreeing on the points of their disagreements. To my understanding there are two different levels of the debate which are interrelated. The first level is on the question of “what’s this memoir about?” The memoir is about a Christian soldier who served in the Ottoman army and what happened to his family. Torossian described both his duties in the Army and how his family, along with other Armenians, was deported and annihilated. During the debates however, only the information that Torossian provided about the battle fronts was debated and the perspective about his family was completely ignored.

Actually Hakan Erdem went one step further and proposed that what Torossian had to say about his family was fabricated. In particular, after describing the story of his sister, using a special form of the past participle tense¹¹ with a particularly sarcastic tone, he proposed that there’s no proof that “her mother and father lost their lives in the events of 1915”.¹² I’m not sure what kind of proof Erdem is searching for when it comes to whether people have or have not died during genocide. Just as I’m not sure whether he’s aware of the fact that this same issue of proof that he’s insisted on would apply to the almost one million people who lost their lives…

The second aspect to the debate is the question of whether or not Torossian was a real person and whether the events he described around the war actually happened to him or not. Treating the memoir as being in essence a “military reminiscence”, Halil Berktay and Hakan Erdem claimed and continue to believe that what was written was the product of imagination. The most important piece of evidence put forward by Hakan Erdem is the “proof” that Torossian arrived in America in 1916. This “discovery” was regarded by public opinion as a huge victory and was accepted without question or inquiry.

Using Torossian’s purported arrival in 1916 in the US as a starting point, Halil Berktay and Hakan Erdem go on to claim that everything in the book, from his officer status, to information about battle fronts, the more than 10 photos that are published in the book and documents, are all completely false and fabricated. The fact that someone like him was born in the district of Develi from Kayseri, that his grave is marked by a gravestone, that he finished his first year of middle school, was a painter in the trades and that he arrived in America in 1916 is accepted as true but everything else about him is considered false and phony.

Ayhan Aktar, who makes an opposing claim, proposes that the memoir is an account of Captain Torossian’s own life story and that Torossian was only describing what had happened to him personally. Since I’ve read literally hundreds of personal accounts of people who have survived genocide, for me there isn’t any question about authenticity. Having met with the granddaughter Louise Schreiber and attained some new documents, my belief that Torossian’s memoir, more or less, is based on actual life events has become even stronger. Torossian was a real person; his memoirs described more or less, what he had experienced.¹³

After meeting with Louise Schreiber and publishing more information, this side of the debate should have come to a end; there should have remained no doubt whatsoever that the memoirs were transcribed in the 1920s in Armenian based upon what Torossian had been able to remember and that someone who hadn’t been in the battle fronts would not have been able to recount memories that were filled with so many details. It’s another topic altogether, what degree the account given by Torossian can be utilized as an “historical source”; I will touch upon that below.

It appears that Halil Berktay (and most probably Hakan Erdem) will continue to state that the new information and documents confirm what they have been saying all along and in fact that is what they are doing. This is Berktay’s main thread of logic: so much of the information provided by Torossian about the battles and the fronts is incorrect and fabricated so that is proof positive that his entire memoir is a phony. In this regard Berktay criticized me for relying on the statements of the granddaughter Louise Schreiber and inquiring into the life of Torossian in America; according to him this is a complete “disaster of historical research”.¹⁴

According to Halil Berktay, instead of getting around the subject matter, someone needs to show him that at least 1-2 of the dozens of mistakes he found regarding battle fronts and wars are wrong. Berktay believes that if we can’t show that what Torossian had to say about Gallipoli and the other battle fronts is correct and that the documents relied on are genuine, then you have to throw his memoirs and all claims that they are based on a true life story, into the garbage. As I am going to discuss below, to take a memoir and test it against undisputed facts and documents and then throw it in the trash if it doesn’t quite match the existing data is a very short sighted and misguided way of looking at memoirs. This point of view derives from a lack of knowledge about the principle behind the place that memoirs hold in historical writing and how they need to be discussed.¹⁵

The Matter of the Phoniness of Two Ottoman Documents

It seems that there’s developed a consensus on the issue of the phoniness of the Ottoman documents that I took from Louise Schreiber and published.¹⁶ At least, there have been no counterarguments made thus far against the claim that documents cannot be fakes. However, for a variety of reasons, I believe that this debate will continue and should continue. It may seem strange that I’m saying this despite the fact that there seems to be widespread consensus on “phoniness”. First of all I want to make clear that due to their importance, it would not have been right not to publish these documents. I needed to share them with the public and present them to other historians in particular. Perhaps we needed to issue a caveat prior to presenting them, due to some of the spelling errors in the language of the document that we had detected during the translation. I consider this to be oversight.

Even if the mistakes had been pointed out, the arguments would have continued around the axis of whether or not the documents were phony. In fact, I believe that the documents are not phony. Or perhaps more accurately, I believe that you can’t argue “real” and “fake” like black and white, by placing the two against each other. This is a situation where it isn’t enough to describe the meaning of the words “fake” and “fabricated”. For this reason, there’s value in having this debate continue over time.¹⁷ That’s my position.

The arguments that Torossian was a con man and that the documents were phonies aren’t very compelling. The reason is that claims that Torossian produced the seal, the letterhead and Enver Pasha’s signature and that his main purpose was to get rich and show off to Americans isn’t based in reality. This not only shows a complete lack of knowledge of what it takes to fabricate fake documents¹⁸ but it shows a lack of knowledge about the lives of those in America who survived genocide and the level of interest that American society holds towards these individuals. As I’m going to describe below, there is neither a great deal of interest in America nor is there a market for this kind of thing.

Also, along with other matters that I will touch upon below, I believe that it is impossible that these documents were written during the war, rather than in America and that Torossian created them on his own, without the knowledge of his commanders. In order to comprehend what I am stating here, my statements must be taken within the context of genocide, something I drew attention to at the start of this writing and which has been ignored during the debates. I want to remind everyone of certain matters that appear in Torossian’s memoir and that no one has noticed.

According to what is recounted by Torossian, around March 1915 he started to hear of “gossip around the massacres of Armenians”. We understand also that he knew that in the Spring months Armenians who were employed in government offices were being relieved of their duties and that Armenian soldiers were being disarmed. He started to hear “Word was that…great big massacres had been planned and that the Armenian population was going to be annihilated”. Torossian stated “I started to wonder what my fate would be.”¹⁹

In the pages that followed this, he describes the meeting that he had with Cevat Pasha, his commander in Gallipoli. The commander knows that Torossian has heard that Christians are having their weapons taken away but he doesn’t want Torossian taken off of active duty. He had made attempts before Istanbul [office] to keep “an officer who can’t be replaced” like Torossian by his side but his efforts hadn’t been successful. “I was frozen” says Torossian, “it seems that I had reached the end of this adventurous path.” Quite obviously, Torossian is anxious about his life and afraid of death.²⁰

He traveled to Istanbul with great fear and describes how he ended up in the basement of the Ministry of War building, as a detainee. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that the date of Torossian’s document from Enver Pasha coincides with the days described here. In order to understand this claim better another social phenomenon needs to be understood. The “Code of Conduct” especially for members of the Armed Forces, is very important. Officers will do anything to protect their friends who are ready to fight to the death together. Therefore, during the months of 1915, in the days when Armenian soldiers were being stripped of their arms and the destruction of the Armenian nation was under way, in order to keep Torossian on active duty, his commanders were trying everything they could.

For this reason I believe that the document pertaining to Enver Pasha whose date falls within this period was prepared with his commanders’ knowledge and is therefore not false. Torossian was an officer who was deemed valuable. His weapons were not taken from him and he continued to stay with his active unit. It is impossible to think of Torossian, someone who was anxious about his future and his life, as being capable of preparing these documents on his own because to prepare false documents without anyone’s knowledge and then use those documents or carry them on his person is tantamount to having a death sentence on himself.

It would also not be off base to state that the document pertaining to the Romanian front was granted with his commanders’ knowledge as a result of the success he had achieved. As I am going to illustrate below, we know that the information he gives about being wounded in the head at that battle front is correct. I believe that due to the Code of Conduct followed by the Armed Forces, which is independent of ideological or ethnic ties, Torossian was able to stay with his active war unit and ultimately save his own life.

What I am saying may strike you as so much speculation but as I mentioned at the start of this article, in order for our historians to debate this they need to see that they are entering a field that is very new to them and that they are debating a social phenomenon that they are not familiar with. For this reason it doesn’t surprise me that the passages I recounted above from Captain Torossian’s memoir didn’t attract anyone’s attention. Our way of thinking isn’t ready to engage in this kind of reading yet.

We can provide a striking example to this subject from the Holocaust. During the entire period, an estimate of around 150,000 soldiers and officers of “full, half and quarter” Jewish heritage, in the racist terminology of that era, served in the Nazi army. It may seem surprising to have such a high number of Jews (generally “half” and “quarter”) serving in the Nazi army and surviving, at a time when the Nazis were carrying out their extensive annihilation policies against the Jews. One of the most important reasons behind this was that the commanders for these Jews prepared reports stating that they were “full blooded Aryans” or the documents prepared by Jewish officers were signed and sent to the Head office. And most of these commanders were members of the Nazi Party. There are many reasons behind this behavior but one of the biggest reasons is the necessity felt for these officers during war.

We learned about the facts I speak of from interviews with surviving Jewish soldiers.²¹ We do not have the opportunity to interview our Captain Torossian or his like but I don’t think it strange at all, that at a time when Armenians in the army were being gathered up and annihilated, his superiors would want to protect an officer who they knew was involved in active battle and heroics, by taking certain precautions. But as I said, in order to understand this, the debate can’t be conducted without the context of genocide.

Another point is that the question of whether or not the documents are “phony” and whether or not the information they contain is false are completely different subjects from one another. A document might be “false” but it may nevertheless contain information that is true; or a document can be “genuine” but the information in it false. The records in the Presidential Archives, especially from April 24, 1915 and afterwards in connection with the Armenian intellectuals who were arrested in Istanbul and then later taken to Çankırı and Ayaș can be given as an example that falls into this second category. According the Ottoman documents, most of these intellectuals, a large portion of whom were killed, were either prosecuted and acquitted, pardoned or they escaped. The ones who remained in prison were later released; none were killed.²²

In summary, if you don’t hold thoughts that have little connection with reality, like “Armenians are capable of everything” or “Torossian’s some crazy nut who wants to prove to diaspora Armenians that he fought for the Turks” or “he fabricated documents in order to show off to Americans”, you need to know that we will be arguing over the “social history” encompassed by these documents for quite some time. For this reason, it makes sense to continue the debate.

Torossian and the Legend of Arriving in America in 1916

The biggest argument put forward to prove that Torossian was a dreamer who made up his memoir is the claim that Torossian entered the US in 1916. This idea is simply not correct; it is plain wrong. Hakan Erdem hasn’t shown any kind of entry register to show that Torossian entered the US in 1916 and won’t be able to because such a thing doesn’t exist. The whole claim, as is published here, derives from an entry register by Torossian from 1920 where on the line where it asks “Have you been to America before?” there’s a handwritten note saying “1916, 6 months”. It isn’t clear which months, these six months correspond to (See Document 1-A and 1-B).

The fact that there is no entry register for Torossian into the US in 1916, means there are four possibilities: a) Torossian entered the country in 1916 illegally; b) he entered the country in 1916 legally but there are no entry register documents to prove this; c) he lied when he entered in 1920; d) this information was entered there in error. As you see there is no definitive conclusion that one can draw, only speculations on the subject matter. For this speculation to be correct, in other words, that Torossian did in fact enter the US in 1916, there’s only one condition required. That is, that Torossian provided accurate information at the border when he made entry into the country in 1920. I have to confess that I find it very difficult to understand how Hakan Erdem is able to present this speculative situation as undisputed truth.

If you take each one of the alternatives that I’ve listed one by one, this is what emerges: a) to claim that Torossian entered the US illegally and therefore that is why there are no entry registries for 1916 is very problematic and is not worth considering;²³ b) Torossian entered and exited the US legally, with his own passport but there are no documented registry items to show this. This is a more logical possibility. We know for example, from the work done by experts in this subject, that the registry entries of some immigrants cannot be located. The biggest reason is that names were often misspelled upon entry. Still, for Torossian, this alternative is practically impossible for two primary reasons.

First, Torossian would have had to have legally departed from Ottoman territory, with his own passport during the last months of 1915 or early 1916 which was impossible since departures or entries of Armenians from the country was illegal. It makes no sense to even consider whether Torossian had managed to depart from the country with a specially issued passport by way of Talat Pasha’s permission.

Second, if Torossian had in fact entered the US legally in 1916, this would appear in later declarations. In other words, if Torossian had stated accurately in 1920 that he had entered the country in 1916, then this information would have been repeated in future years. There are no reasons for keeping this a secret and in fact it would have worked against him to have hidden this. In fact, in future declarations, Torossian never mentioned 1916 and gives 1920 as the year that he entered the country. We can speculate all we want over alternatives “c” and “d”.

Instead of going on about this topic with speculation, it makes more sense to turn our attention to other documents that are in our possession.²⁴ We already have an official registry that shows that Torossian entered the US on December 23, 1920. The other related documents are: First, information from the 1930 Census. Torossian gave “1920” as the year he arrived in the US, in this census.²⁵ (See Record 2) If the hand writing in the entry row for 1920 (entry 1916) had been true, Torossian would have repeated that information in 1930. Otherwise, Torossian would have to be lying in 1930, if he had provided accurate information in 1920 and this is not very credible.

The second and very crucial record that we possess is a document that was given to Torossian from the US Department of Labor when he applied for American citizenship, which shows the official date of arrival into the country. In this document, whose original is being published here, the Department declares that Torossian’s official entry into the country, according to their own records is December 23, 1920. The document’s date of issuance is October 11, 1930.²⁶ (See Record 3)

We could, in fact, decide that with the information provided by the US Department of Labor, i.e. that Sarkis Torossian entered the country on December 23, 1920, this subject is now closed but I would like to present another document that I have. The importance of this document is twofold. Not only does it confirm that the 1916 date of entry information is incorrect, it confirms that some of the information provided by Torossian about the war is in fact correct. The record that I’m referring to is a military draft registration for Sarkis Torossian from 1942 and health report. (See Record 4).

As can be seen from the published record, Torossian’s physical characteristics are listed and it states that there’s a scar on the left side of his head.²⁷ We can guess where he got that scar. Torossian reported being injured during his service at the Romanian front and stated that “a piece of shrapnel grazed my head” and continued “I fell flat on the ground and my head felt very strange. I was in terrible pain. The blood that was spurting out from the wound covered my eyes and the front of my uniform.” These two pieces of information conform to each other. Torossian gave the date as November 30, 1916.²⁸

Pulling all of this information together, I believe that based upon the four separate official documents, Torossian did not enter the United States in 1916 and that he was in fact fighting on the Romanian front during that year.

The list of the Things Torossian Must be Capable of, if the Con Man Claim is True

My main point, which is that Captain Torossian’s book reflects what he experienced, to best of his recollection, more or less, factually correct or not, rests upon a very simple foundation. Someone who hadn’t been at those battle fronts could not describe divisions, military quarters, army corps, commander and front details (with or without mistakes) to the extent he did. He could not have drawn, in his own hand, war battle drawings as he did in the book nor could he have had those photos taken at the fronts. It would be ridiculous to even think that there were research sources available in 1929, the year that we know this book was completed, that contained the information Torossian described about battle fronts in such detail.

If, like Halil Berktay and Hakan Erdem, we conclude that the Torossian memoir is the fictional work of a con man, then we would need to expect that someone who “we can definitely state”²⁹ attended the Armenian Community School in Everek, with an education of a first year middle school student, was capable of doing the following:

1. He would have to be capable of research, to learn and memorize detailed information about the units, divisions, commanders’ names (correct or not) of not only Gallipoli but of five different military fronts. In fact, he would have to be able to chronologically set out the timeframes of different military operations.
2. He would have to be able to draw very detailed drawings of the battle fronts or at least be capable of stealing these from somewhere.
3. He would have to be able to fabricate false documents. It isn’t enough to just find the official letterhead paper for the text with Enver Pasha’s signature. You would have to know what Enver’s signature looked like so that you could create a forgery. Similarly, you would have to have fabricated the Abdülkerim Pasha document and especially ensure that you got the seal correct.³⁰
4. There are 17 photographs in the book, 11 of which depict Torossian in his military uniform in different battlefronts either by himself or with other soldiers. So Torossian had to find an officer’s uniform and have photographs taken around Turkey as if he had been to various fronts.³¹
5. He would have had to have suffered from the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder over an entire lifetime, or have pretended to be.
6. He would have had to have lied to his wife, who he married in Adana, about his true identity and tricked his entire family with this information too until the end; or he would have enlisted his entire family into playing along with this fabrication.
7. He would have had to tell ‘fake’ war stories to his children at night.
8. He would have had to recount his life story and war stories to Armenian circles; and to give lectures and interviews after the book had been published…

I could go on with more… Of course in order for some of the points I make above to be true, you would have to take Louise Schreiber’s statements and the publications of the Armenian diaspora about Torossian seriously.³²

As you can see, it isn’t enough for a painter who had left Armenian school after grade 6 to have found and fabricated information and documentation and taken photographs in a professional studio in order to have created a fake personality that was a figment of imagination. He had to have created a narrative too; it wasn’t even enough to have come up with a scenario, he had to have lived it during an entire lifetime. I don’t think I need to say more about how preposterous a proposition this is turning into.

But there’s a way to free yourself from this strange proposition. As his grandchild recounted, you can accept that Torossian was in fact describing his own life, to the best that he could recall. Outside of the some of the colorful aspects to his life, we are confronted with an ordinary memoir.

Brief Observations on Memoirs about Genocide

There is a very important, fundamental logical error in Hakan Erdem’s book that’s very interesting. In the book, Torossian is depicted as an intellectual with lots of time on his hands, who is capable doing research and finding sources and the memoir is asserted to be a work that was penned after the conclusion of all this research. The Torossian that Hakan Erdem depicts is just like a university professor, an intellectual from the diaspora community, with a lot of resources, who reads, researches and seeks out sources when writing his book.³³

According to this description, Torossian is not trying to fight for his life, to merely survive. He is someone who is writing an historical novel based on research, in a comfortable, peaceful environment, not unlike our own academics and what’s even worse, according Hakan Erdem, he had plenty of time to do this.³⁴ Hakan Erdem’s book was built on top of this logical error. After the Louise Schreiber interview and the information she provided, it’s time to accept that the whole “Torossian as researcher” theory has reached the end of its academic value and close this chapter.

Starting with Hakan Erdem, why was a mistake like this made during the debate? It seems like there are three basic reasons. First of all, as I said in the beginning, the fact that the subject pertained to over one million people being killed was completely ignored and it was debated in a way that was detached from the context of genocide. Secondly, the tradition of “memoir writing by survivors as a way of processing what has happened in the past” after events of mass violence is something very foreign to the world of Turkish academia. Thirdly, it relates to the prevailing view towards the diaspora and Armenians in our country.

For this reason, the fact that Torossian was a member of a community, whose own family and nation had been destroyed during the period 1914 – 1918, was treated as non-existent. The fact that he and especially his family were the victims of a huge tragic drama was ignored. What this situation shows is a state of being uninformed about such fundamental issues as what mass violence is about, of what it means to be a survivor of something like that and to struggle in the diaspora during the aftermath, which should be acknowledged is a huge gap in Turkish scholarship.

Armenian Memoirs and How Memoirs Need to be Interpreted

I would like to provide a bit of general information about Armenian memoirs that were written after the genocide in order to shed some light on Captain Torossian’s book. Much of a memoir is based upon what remains in reminiscences. Outside of what can be recalled from memories, there usually is little in the way of other sources. Even if they had existed previously, personal archives were destroyed and people survived by mere coincidence. These memoirs, which were often recounted in Armenian to a family member or acquaintance (in some rare instances, into Turkish) were often then translated into English by that same family member or acquaintance. Not knowing English or speaking it very little could lead to the translation not being reviewed thoroughly and having it stray from the main memory. One of the common characteristics of these memoirs is errors in dates and in recounting names, or mistakes made when the names of places or persons are translated into English. Also, often the memoir writer would use an exaggerated language when describing their own role.

Besides the memoir writer’s wish to describe what they have experienced for future generations, one of the important aims of writing a memoir is the writer’s own need for catharsis. For those writing them, memoirs are a form of therapy. For this reason especially, people who write memoirs want to have them published regardless of what it takes. It is very difficult to find an audience that has an interest in the subject in the country of residence. For this reason for example, as is true in the US, finding a publisher who will agree to publish a memoir is nearly impossible. Often, people will publish them by their own private means, getting them printed at any available print press and distributing them only to their own acquaintances in their own close circles. In the rare instance when a publisher is obtained, often it will be under an agreement where publishing costs are shared or the memoir writer agrees to purchase a certain number of the printed books. The reason that most people, including the academic world, aren’t aware of the existence of these types of books, is precisely because of this.

Captain Torossian’s book represents a very common example of the type of thing we described above. He recounted his story in Armenian and a woman who spoke English, came to his house, translated what was said and typed it up. In fact, as can be seen here in the record of receipt of Captain Torossian’s memoir from the Library of Congress in 1929, the description of the book is given as “seen and told” by Captain Torossian.

Record 5: Record of receipt, Library of Congress 1929

We can see that Torossian waited to publish the book until 1947 no doubt due to his penniless state and the lack of an interested publisher during the years of struggles. Based upon the “death certificate” issued by a New York hospital in 1954 wherein his occupation is listed as “contractor”, we can conclude that he had established a business and was earning a living. According to the 5^th paragraph of an agreement he signed with a publisher in Boston in 1947, Torossian had agreed to share the printing costs of the book and had promised to pay $1650. (See Record 6). Based upon the receipts that we possess, it’s clear that Torossian actually paid out $1950. In other words, he paid out more than what was indicated in the agreement. It is probable that in order to distribute the book to his acquaintances, he purchased his own books. Taking into account inflation, the current value of what Torossian had paid to the publisher would be around $20,000 today, which is a rather high sum.

This new information reminds us of a very important point. Throughout the debates, there were those who claimed that the primary reason Torossian wrote his memoirs was to earn money and get rich.³⁵ In fact what we know is that not only did he not become rich, Torossian had his book published by paying out of his own pocket a sum that even exceeded what was promised in the agreement. There’s only one reason that explains this and that is a common emotion that’s often seen in those who have survived genocide; the desire to share what has happened to them with others. Torossian was under the effects of the trauma he had experienced in war and wanted others to know what had happened to him.

A sentence that he stated during an interview with the newspaper Hairenik, a publication organ of the Armenian Dashnak party, is important to understanding what his mental state was: “My book is meant to reflect the true character of the Turks. The Turks repaid the service I had given them with ingratitude. This is my justification for turning against them.”³⁶ It just makes no sense to take seriously the claims that it was done out of a wish to become famous or rich in America. There is no great market for this kind of thing in America and the fact that the publisher demanded a sum this large shows this to be true.³⁷

Had the meaning between what Torossian had recounted and what was printed in English in the draft of 1929 gone sideways in places? If so, where? Or were there differences between the text of 1929 and what was published in 1947? It seems we will never know the answers to these questions. Despite all our attempts in searching for it, we have not been able to locate the original draft. There is a high probability that after the book was published in 1947, the typed manuscript that was delivered to the Library of Congress was destroyed.

In truth we should consider Torossian lucky in one respect. Besides being able to find a publisher for his book, the Armenian press of that period expressed interest in his book. Notices of the book appeared in newspapers like Hairenik, Baikar, Mirror Spectator and Groong that published in both Armenian and English, it was covered in articles about new books and an interview with Torossian was conducted. For example in the Mirror Spectator which was the official newspaper of the Ramgavar organization and the Hairenik, which was the official publication organ of the Dashnaks, very positive reviews were published about the book. Hairenik also covered the story with an interview of Captain Torossian titled “An Extraordinary Person”.

What we can understand from all of these publications is that the claims put forth that the Dashnaks or “Armenian nationalist circles” ignored the book, pretended it didn’t exist or that Torossian was ostracized for having served in the Ottoman army are patently wrong. The way that academics, who participated in the debates over Torossian engaged in this kind of speculation without ever having even reviewed these materials which are easily available is a misstep that is difficult to explain.³⁸

As I have stated, the main problem with this debate was how it was detached from the context of genocide. It’s about not having even the smallest idea of what it means to have survived an event of mass violence and not engendering even the tiniest effort at feeling empathy towards survivors. One should add to this the misinformation about the Armenian diaspora and very powerful prejudices that operate against it. What we can see is that as long as our academics continue to avoid evaluating the issues that I have listed above, they should refrain from writing works of scholarship about these subjects.

Whether to Use the Torossian Memoir as a Reference Source

There’s another subject being tossed around that isn’t worthy of debate in my opinion but nevertheless has been turned into one: whether or not Torossian’s memoir should be used as a historical reference. In some of his writings Halil Berktay claimed that this issue was the main topic of debate. According to him, I have stated that “this memoir can be used as an historical reference” while he has claimed “no it can’t”. From my perspective the debate isn’t about this and never was.

There is an issue that needs to be stated quite emphatically here. Debating whether or not a memoir is fabricated and the product of imagination is a completely different subject from how a memoir can be used as a source. Halil Berktay and Hakan Erdem have claimed that this memoir is completely a product of imagination and therefore phony. If that’s the case then arguing that it “should be used as a historical reference” makes no sense anyway. The only way you can make that argument is if the memoir in question is an actual account of a life story. If it is indeed a true life story, then the rules are simple; even if a memoir describes a true life story this doesn’t naturally lend itself to being used as an historical reference source.

First, whether or not a memoir is going to be used as an historical reference as a whole isn’t a meaningful question on its own. Depending on their subject of inquiry, a researcher may use this or that piece of information from any memoir. For example, I might make use of an observation that Torossian made about the Armenian deportees in the Syrian Desert but I may avoid using some statement of his on another subject because I think it’s incorrect. Secondly, I will critically evaluate information that I want to use from a memoir the same way that I would critically evaluate any Ottoman record. I stated these exact words in my article in Taraf.

How to interpret and use memoirs is a subject that is of very serious interest not only to genocide research but for social sciences in general and the different perspectives on the subject would surpass the narrow confines of what is being discussed here. As we have observed on the subject of the Holocaust especially, in the beginning historical science looked askance at memoir writing. With the development of the field of oral history as a new branch of social science, memoirs, which rest more squarely in the fields of psychology and sociology, have started to be examined by historians as important sources.³⁹

The difference between me and the other academics in this debate is that Armenian memoirs from both before and after the genocide have been my field of interest and work since 1990. At the start of the 1990s, when I had just begun my studies in the subject, I had long discussions over it with my dissertation advisor, Vahakn Dadrian. Dadrian told me of the importance of memoirs, but he also gave me detailed recommendations about the things that I needed to be careful about if I was going to use them. Dates, locations, names etc. are always a problem in memoirs. Individuals tend to exaggerate their own role in events. For this reason the information that they provide definitely needs to be reviewed carefully; parallel readings are necessary. It’s better to not use them as direct reference sources unless they are supported by other sources etc. These are the accepted rules of our field and there’s no need to debate it. Take a look at the writings that Dadrian and I have done on the Armenian genocide with this point of view and you will see that we did not use memoirs as sources very often.

However, what I have stated here about memoirs falls too squarely within the classic viewpoint of historical writing. This classic viewpoint approaches memoirs from the perspective of how closely they reflect a “single truth” and how much they provide phenomena and histories correctly. This point of view is quickly changing. Memoirs remind us that “historical truth” is not singular; that it is in fact far more complex. They show us that the drama that’s been experienced is comprised of “different histories”. Memoirs are sources that motivate us, that force us to ask interesting questions and that show us new paths. Also, they help us understand the mindset of the people of that period, what and how they thought and how they lived. For me, the Torossian memoir is this kind of a resource.⁴⁰

It’s worth repeating. This isn’t what we are arguing about. Besides, this subject was debated from every angle possible during Cemil Koçak’s TV show “Eski defterler” and the different sides managed to come to a kind of consensus on the subject. The subject that was debated and what was covered in Hakan Erdem’s book and Halil Berktay’s column was whether or not Torossian was a phony and whether or not what he wrote about actually happened. You can’t argue about whether a book should or shouldn’t be considered an historical source, when the book is being touted as a “phony and a fake”.

In Coming to an End

In my opinion the debate over whether or not Captain Torossian’s memoir was really his own life story should come to an end. There’s absolutely nothing that can be defended about the claims that the memoir is a “complete fantasy that is a product of imagination, a fiction”; that outside of Torossian’s gravestone and the fact that he completed the 6^th grade, everything else about him is fake; and that Torossian traveled to America in 1916 and therefore everything he wrote is completely phony. For me, these words that appear in a website dedicated to the First World War and the Gallipoli Front constitute a reasonable starting point from which to engage in debate: “First let’s make it clear that to completely ignore Sarkis Torossian and to reject everything that he wrote won’t be an objective position to take. Like other non-Muslim officers and soldiers, Sarkis Torossian may have genuinely served in the Ottoman army. He may have gone to the battlefronts in Çanakkale, Macedonia, Iraq and Palestine. He may have been a sergeant or lieutenant or captain in the army.”⁴¹

We need to make the starting point of our debate the fact that Torossian found himself in these battlefronts and that he wrote about what happened, right or wrong.

The issue that was never discussed and remained untouched and which was the real reason I entered into this debate, is the question of what happened to all those Christian soldiers who served in the Ottoman army and their families. It would be to everyone’s advantage to start the debate from there. Really, what did happen to them?

1. Argus newspaper, as recounted by Vahe G. Kateb, 20 August 1915, “Australian press coverage of the Armenian genocide, 1915-1923”, University of Wollongong, 2003, unpublished MA, 383. ↩
2. I possess other, heretofore unpublished, reports that are based on accounts of Armenian soldiers taken prisoner in Çanakkale, which were written down by Anzak officers. ↩
3. Of course, it’s a matter of debate how much of this is accurate. What’s important is to know that this is a widely held belief. This situation may give us the chance to consider Gallipoli differently, not as a saga of heroism but as a slaughterhouse to which people – Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Arabs, Anzak and British -were annihilated. ↩
4. Hakan Erdem, Gerçek ile Kurmaca Arasında Torosyan’in Acayip Hikayesi (Istanbul: Doğan Yayınevi, 2012); this is the greatest example of lack of awareness on the subject. Of the many serious errors that this book is filled with, some of which I will discuss here, the most problematic issue is its language. Throughout the book a very sarcastic tone is used to demean not only the Torossian family but anyone who has survived genocide. The fact that the book garnered great admiration from a wide circle of people, not least of which is the Turkish media, is a social phenomenon that needs to be taken up as a topic all on its own. All I want to say here is that this intense interest and uncritical acceptance can be taken as an indication of Turkish society’s position in regard to the subject of mass murders and this indicates a very disturbing condition. ↩
5. BOA/DH.ŞFR., 53/334, From the Directorate of Public Security, Ministry of the Interior (EUM), a coded telegram sent on June 13, 1915 to the provincial offices of Edirne, Erzurum, Adana, Ankara, Aydin, Bitlis, Basra, Bagdad, Beirut, Aleppo, Hȕdâvendigar (Bursa), Diyarbakir, Syria, Sivas, Trabzon, Kastamonu, Konya, Mamuretülaziz, Mosul, and Van along with the governor’s offices of Urfa, Izmit, Niğde, Içil, Bolu, Canik (Samsun), Çatalca, Zor, Karesi, Kudüs-i Şerif, Kale-i Sultaniye, Menteşe, Teke, Kütahya, Maraş and Eskişehir. ↩
6. In theory, Armenians who were citizens of foreign countries were waived from the deportation and their properties were not to be confiscated. However, referring to and in reliance upon the Citizenship law of 1869, the Union and Progress administration refused to recognize the acquisition of foreign citizenship of Armenians and sent them to deportation and death after confiscating their properties. For more information on this topic see: Taner Akçam, Űmit Kurt, Kanunlarin Ruhu, Emval-i Metruke Kanunlarında Soykırımın Iznini Sȕrmek (Istanbul: Iletişim Publications, 2012). ↩
7. Hȕrriyet, 18 December 2012. 8 Taraf, 6 and 8 December 2012. ↩
8. Taraf, 6 and 8 December 2012. ↩
9. Jürgen Habermas, “Die Ütopie des guten Herrschers”, in : Habermas, Kultur and Kritik (Frankfurt a.M., 1973, p. 386-7. ↩
10. Elias Siberski, Untergrund und Offene Geselschaft, Zur Fragen der strukturellen Deutung des sozialen Phaenomens, (Stutgart, 1967), p. 51. ↩
11. There is a special form of Part participle tense [mişli geçmiş] that is used in Turkish to denote a reported account of a past event which can be employed when a person disbelieves a story… ↩
12. Hakan Erdem, Gerçek ile Kurmaca Arasında Torosyan’ın Acayip Hikayesi, p. 228-229. ↩
13. The fact that there are some exaggerated statements, common to memoir writing like “I told Enver that…” or “Besides, Lawrence was always…” is something that I don’t expend much mental energy contemplating; they are details that should be put aside. ↩
14. I take this opportunity to remark that the words expended by Halil Berktay about Louise Schreiber and her grandfather (Taraf, 9 January 2013) are quite rude. In the end, someone could make similar accusations about him and his grandfather Halil Namik Bey [In his different columns Halil Berktay quoted or referred to his grandfather, who according to Berktay fought on Gallipoli]. What Halil Berktay writes is the product of a mindset that goes far beyond what most of us consider proper; I hope they did not reflect his true intention. The connotations within Turkey, of him expecting us to completely believe what his grandfather recounted to him while nevertheless not taking what Louise Schreiber says with any seriousness, are unfortunately quite dire. ↩
15. The most interesting example of this is from the memoir of a survivor of the Auschwitz detainment camp, which had stated that during the rebellion at Auschwitz, four of the gas ovens had been destroyed. During the debates over the topic, it was asserted that claims that the information “didn’t comport with reality” and were therefore “fake” failed to comprehend the subject and that this type of information was a way of expression of a different reality experienced by those who survived. [Tom Lawson, Debates on the Holocaust, (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2010), p. 284-5]. Because of the way the debates about Torossian have progressed in Turkey, we are far from being able to make similar arguments. ↩
16. The most detailed analysis made on this was by Edhem Eldem. By showing that the two documents had been written by the same hand, that some of the words were incorrect and that there were certain expressions used which were not common to Ottoman bureaucratic language, Eldem asserted that the documents were fake. According to Edhem Eldem, the stamp and letterhead were phony also and that the documents were probably created in the US; see “Torosyan Belgeleri ve Sonrası”, Toplumsal Tarih, Feb. 2013. Muzaffer Albayrak, drew attention to the errors in language usage in the document belonging to Abdülkerim Pasha and preferred to use a more equivocal expression by stating “in my personal opinion leaning towards fake,”; see http://www.geliboluyuanlamak.com/415_Serkis-Torosyan-in-Tasdikn%C3%A2me-Belgesi-Uzerine-Bir-Inceleme-(Muzaffer-Albayrak).html There is other writing on this site on the topic of the phoniness of the documents. ↩
17. I do not want to give the impression here that I do not confer importance to what academics who are experts on handwriting in Ottoman records have to say about the errors in language usage in the documents and the topic of how the use of certain expressions violate writing standards. Quite the opposite, I believe that this information is very important and that the records present important clues on how to understand its social history. On the other hand, I would like to add that if a debate on the genuineness of these documents is made without having compared them with other military records of similar characteristics that I surmise are in the archives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it won’t be a very productive one and the right conclusion won’t be reached. For just this reason alone, these archives should be made accessible to historians. ↩
18. I’m not stating this because I held the documents in my own hands. I speak as someone who in 1976 spent a lot of time with my friends trying to come up with fake stamps. ↩
19. Captain Sarkis Torossian, Çanakkale’den Filistin Cephesine, (publisher and editor Ayhan Aktar), (Istanbul: Iletișim Publications, 2012), 136, 147. ↩
20. Ibid. p. 149. ↩
21. Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military, (Kansas: University Press of Kansas), 2002. ↩
22. For example, according to some Ottoman documents, Dr. Rupen Savag Çilingiryan who was arrested in Istanbul on June 22, 1915 and later tortured and killed while being transported en route from Çankırı to Ayaș on August 26, 1915, was acquitted, released and departed for Ankara. [BOA/DH.EUM., 2. Şube, 10/73 20 L 1333, telegram from the Governor’s office of Kastamonu to the Ministry of the Interior, dated 18 August 1331 (31 August 1915).] See the article of Yusuf Sarınay for similar claims: “What Happened on April 24, 1915?: The Circular of April 24, 1915 and the arrest of the Armenian Committee Members in Istanbul” International Journal of Turkish Studies, Volume 14, Nos. 1-2 Fall (2008): 75-103. ↩
23. Some technical information is necessary here. The passenger manifests that are used as sources to document entry into the US would be prepared at the port where the ship launched. Those who were stowaways on ships headed for the US were registered on separate lists at the port of arrival. Anyone who wants to declare that Torossian entered the US illegally despite the fact that his name did not appear on either list would have to create a very involved scenario and that is not something that concerns us here. ↩
24. I owe a debt of gratitude to Mark Arslan, Janet Andreopoulos and Louise Schreiber who helped me a great deal in attaining copies of documents, some of which are published here. ↩
25. Hakan Erdem is not in possession of the 1930 Census information about the Sarkis Torossian family. He was unable to find it, but this is understandable because the census workers wrote down “Sarkis” as the last name for every member of the family. For this reason researching it under “Torossian” comes up empty. The inquiry has to be made under the name “Sarkis”. ↩
26. This official document makes it clear that the possibility that Torossian’s name was written incorrectly in 1916 is not likely. For example, Torossian’s wife Celile’s last name had been recorded as “Forossian” when she made entry in 1920. When Celile applied for citizenship in 1937, the official date of arrival document issued by the US Department of Labor repeats the last name that appeared in the entry records as “Forossian”. ↩
27. In the documents portion of his book, Hakan Erdem published what he claimed was Torossian’s Military Draft registration and Health record from 1942. This information does not appear in that record. Hakan Erdem has unfortunately published a document that he believed to be Torossian’s when in fact it is someone else’s. Then, based upon this incorrect information, he claims that Torossian is “pink cheeked and complexioned…(and) freckled”. (Hakan Erdem, Torosyan’ın Acayıp Hikayesi, 297-8).↩
28. From his statement we can see that Torossian was wounded on the second day of an offensive attack that began on November 28, 1916. Captain Sarkis Torossian, Çanakkale’den Filistin Cephesine, 203-4. ↩
29. Hakan Erdem, ibid, p. 354. ↩
30. I state this not to make a polemical point but to impart information. In 1977, after I became a fugitive from prison, I made many attempts with friends in Ankara, but I couldn’t come up with even a potato seal that resembled anything of a quality even close to what Torossian’s looked like. Additionally, it’s a bit strange that a false document that Torossian went to such supposed great lengths to create would not have been published. It’s possible to speculate of course, that either he or the publisher didn’t want to but under these circumstances, the argument that he created the documents in order to have some distinction conferred on him in the US is very weak. He’s going to pay $20,000 (present value) out of his own pocket to have the book published, but then he’s going to hold back on publishing a document that he arguably fabricated into the book. It doesn’t seem plausible. ↩
31. It may seem like a joke, but Hakan Erdem claims that the photographs were taken when Torossian was in Çukurova. “For example, these photos of him in officer’s dress could have been shot when he was in Cilicia”, Hakan Erdem, Torosyan’in Acayip Hikayesi, p. 348-49. To confess, it’s upsetting to see an historian make this kind of a claim but what is perhaps even more upsetting is knowing that the public believes this idea, without questioning it in the slightest. ↩
32. At this point I would like to point out that I do not make a categorical distinction between the information that either Halil Berktay or Louise Schreiber have to recount about their grandfathers. It’s irrelevant what nation either the grandfather or the grandchild is a member of. ↩
33. Hakan Erdem doesn’t stop there and even presents a list of works that he believes Torossian must have read. (Hakan Erdem, ibid, p. 262-63, 275.) 34 Ibid. p. 345-46. ↩
34. Ibid. p. 345-46. ↩
35. Just one example: Hakan Erdem, ibid., p 305. ↩
36. Hairenik, 27 November 1947. ↩
37. The situation isn’t that different even today. Many memoirs still continue to be published through personal resources and distributed that way. To even think that there’s a market for this kind of memoir in the US is a misguided argument that isn’t worth spending much time on. This should be considered a most unsophisticated view of the diaspora that’s based upon misinformation. ↩
38. Based on the point that’s been reached, in light of the information that I have provided, we can say with confidence that every argument put forth about Torossian and the diaspora in Hakan Erdem’s book has been rebutted. (Just a few examples, Hakan Erdem, ibid, p. 268, 270 and 349.) ↩
39. From the perspective of Holocaust history, memoirs are meaningful and there are quite a lot of resources about the issues that they have created. In order to gain a general introduction to the subject see: Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust Testimonies, The Ruins of Memory, (New Haven and London; Yale University Press, 1991); Tom Lawson, ibid, 270-312; James E. Young, “Toward a Received History of the Holocaust”, History and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 4, (December 1997); 21-43. ↩
40. On the subject of the new perspectives that memoirs have created in historical writing Tom Lawson’s work is very important. In particular the idea he propounds around how even incorrect information that’s recounted in memoirs reflects a kind of truth about the past is especially interesting. A similar idea is how some memoirs, even if they have been written as complete fabrications, can give voices to some subjects that had been marked by silence and can spark interest. ↩
41.“http://www.geliboluyuanlamak.com/index.php, introduction January 10, 2013. ↩