Despite having been swept up in the media reaction to Irving's sentence, I have begun to teach and to meet people at the Gregorian. Last night, after my first class, Father Madigan, head of the Inter-Religious program at the school, took me to the local wine cask.
He knew that I had two Turkish Muslims in my class. He had just had a discussion before the class with one of them about Holocaust denial laws as compared to Turkish laws against discussing the Armenian genocide.
This was Father Madigan's comment: I told the student that Turkey is using the law to protect a lie. The European countries which rely on Holocaust denial laws are using the law to protect lies about the truth of "what we did during Holocaust."
While I am still against the laws, I was deeply intrigued by his formulation of the matter. I was touched by his use of the first person plural. BTW, he was born well after the war.
Armenian genocide but Jewish Holocaust? Something special about Jews, or what?
ReplyDeleteI only have two things to you:
ReplyDeleteBefore you attack, talk to some Armenians about my position on the genocide. And hear what I have to say in my classes about it.
And the other thing is: get a life.
Thanks Artyom. Actually one of my good friends [whose book on the Armenian denial I gave a blurb of approval and whose books I use in my classes] is Peter Balakian.
ReplyDeleteHe would probably be appalled by the idiocy of the Anarchist's comments. BTW, he sent some other ugly emails which I dumped. They made no point except to use a lot of unprintable terms about me. There are lots of other places happy to post that stuff.