The reason I am posting so late in the night is because I attended a show this evening, Fiddler On The Roof. For anyone who has not watched the movie, I highly recommend it. I felt that it was remarkably similar, though not entirely identical, to the method of genocide used in the Armenian genocide. The Jews of the village of Anatevka live hard lives, their community is very small, and they have very little connection to the outside world. They live, although separated, with the Christian Russian soldiers stationed to maintain control of the village. The show begins by diving into the life of Tevye, a poor milk man living near starvation with his wife and five daughters. In the end of the play, the Russians are ordered to clear the city of all it's Jewish contingency, forcing Tevye and his family to leave their home, somberly and abruptly. The reason for the Tzar's edict: ethnic cleansing. This called to my mind a less extreme version of the mass migration and genocide of the Armenians. To quote Black Dog Of Fate, "The police fell upon them just as the eruption of Vesuvius fell upon Pompeii," (168) for the sake of, "Pan-Turkism" (163).
The real reason I bring up Fiddler though, is because I felt a connection with Tevye. There is a connection that I couldn't feel with the Armenians who were being exiled into "the interior," regardless of the tragedies they suffered. For me, the experience needed to open my eyes to what was truly going on in this genocide, I had to dive into one person's experience with being removed from their home. In my mind, I then took the sadness expressed in the play and attempted to multiply that by one million, but to no avail. There are scales of terror that are incomprehensible, at least to my mind. Just as a $700 billion dollar bailout, or 6.022 * 10^23 (the number of atoms in a mole) might be unimaginable, so is the sadness of genocide. It evokes a new scale of atrocity all it's own. In order to feel any compunction beyond a mild sympathy, I had to look to a small scale; the sadness of merely one person's story is comprehendible, and tangible. Not every story can be told, and the other one million stories must go untold, but not die in our memories.
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One element of Fiddler that I think is a key connection point to Black Dog of Fate is the "buy-in" factor. In our class we discussed the importance of having the general populace support the government's actions, whether cruel or otherwise. Although the character of the Constable is a small one in Fiddler, his story highlights how an establishment's pressure can inject so much fear into people that they sever ties with old friends. One of the most heart-wrenching moments in the show for me is at the end of Tzeitel and Motel's wedding when the Christian Constable, a long-time friend of Tevye's leads his pack of policemen to "break up" the wedding. This moment is so moving to me because of the way the Constable softly apologizes to Tevye in a completely genuine way before barking at his men to destroy everything. It reminds of Peter's great-grandfather having to care for the Turkish army men after they've murdered his own countrymen. Just like the Constable, he was forced to make decisions that completely oppose his morals.
ReplyDeleteI would also like to note the already existing tension in Fiddler between Christians and Jews that is strikingly similar to the tension between the Turks (Muslim) and the Armenians (Christians). (Warning spoiler alert) In Fiddler, though Tevye is a "friend" of the Constable, he is extremely upset by the relationship between Chava, his daughter, and Fyedka, a Russian Christian in Anatevka, and cannot except their love because Fyedka is Christian and is different from Tevye's Jewish family. In Dovey's story, Turkish men call Dovey a "Giaur. Whore. Dirty Armenian" (p.221) because she is Christian, while they are Muslim. Just because she is different, it automatically makes her an enemy.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, Fiddler downplays the atrocities of the wedding and even the deportation. Perchik was the only character who was injured (and may I add, not very severely), while if an event like this had happened in reality, the casualties would have been more severe. At the end when the village people are asked to leave, they are given time to pack their belongings, something that would rarely occur. If so, their belongings would later be stolen from them, most likely after they've been killed, such as the incident on page 266, when the commander of the genderarmes informs Grigoris Balakian that they have the women and children pack their belongings so late they can steal their valuables.