/Reporter.am/ New York - In conjunction with a new exhibit on the Morgenthau family, author and translator Peter Balakian will present the English translation of Armenian Golgotha, his great-uncle's landmark memoir of the Armenian Genocide, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, on Wednesday, December 2, at 7 p.m.

New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau will introduce Mr. Balakian. Preceding the talk will be a gallery tour of The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service, at 6 p.m., for which preregistration is required.
A key witness to genocide

On April 24, 1915, Fr. Grigoris Balakian was arrested along with some 250 other intellectuals and leaders of Constantinople's Armenian community. It was the beginning of the Ottoman Turkish government's systematic attempt to eliminate the Armenian people from Turkey, a campaign that continued through World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, by which time more than a million Armenians had been annihilated and expunged from their historic homeland.

For Fr. Grigoris, himself condemned, it was also the beginning of a four-year ordeal.

He saw his compatriots sent in carts, on donkeys, or on foot to face certain death in the desert of northern Syria. Many would not even survive the journey, suffering starvation, disease, mutilation, and rape, among other tortures, or being slaughtered outright en route.

Miraculously, Fr. Grigoris managed to escape. His memoir brings to life the survivors, foreign witnesses, and Turkish officials involved in the Armenian Genocide, and also those few brave, righteous Turks, who, with some of their German allies, resisted orders calling for the death of the Armenians.

This powerful book, newly released in English translation, has been praised by Elie Wiesel and critics worldwide as a classic of survivor literature. The New Yorker called Armenian Golgotha a "fascinating, first-hand testimony to a monumental crime."

Peter Balakian is the author of The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response, winner of the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize, a New York Times best seller, and a New York Times Notable Book; Black Dog of Fate, winner of the PEN/Albrand Award for Memoir, also a New York Times Notable Book; and June-tree: New and Selected Poems, 1974-2000.

The Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities at Colgate University is the recipient of  a Guggenheim Fellowship and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Grigoris Balakian was his great-uncle.
The Morgenthau legacy

The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service, on view through December 2010, profiles three generations of an extraordinary family. Occupying the museum's Overlook gallery, the exhibit makes use of newly discovered film footage, personal artifacts, and rare documents that changed the course of history.

They show how Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr., Franklin D. Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., and New York County District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau came close to world events – including the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, refugee crises, and the formation of the State of Israel – and felt compelled to respond as both Americans and Jews.

Henry Morgenthau, Sr., (1856–1946) graduated from Columbia Law School, ran successful businesses in law and real estate, and was the founding president of Rabbi Wise's Free Synagogue. After his success in the private sector, he made the decision to devote the rest of his life to serving his country and the causes in which he believed.

Appointed ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1913 as World War I was looming, Mr. Morgenthau in the first two years of his post witnessed the poverty of Jewish settlers in Palestine. A menorah he acquired on his first trip to the region (then a part of the empire) in 1914 is among the artifacts on view.

Shocking dispatches from American consuls and missionaries stationed in the interior of the empire alerted Amb. Morgethau to the Turkish persecution of the Armenians. In a telegram to the U.S. State Department, he warned: "it appears that a campaign of race extermination is in progress." This important document from the National Archives is a highlight of the exhibit.

During his ambassadorship, Morgenthau called attention to the sufferings of Christians and Jews in the Empire and helped supply direct aid and relief. Afterwards he continued to speak out about conditions for Jews and minorities abroad, and to raise funds on their behalf. Starting in the 1930s he personally provided direct assistance to dozens of families that fled Nazism.

Another telegram on display was sent by World Jewish Congress Secretary Gerhart Riegner to Rabbi Stephen Wise in 1942 about the Nazis' plans to exterminate all Jews in Germany and German-controlled areas in Europe; this information was breaking news obtained through Riegner's private contacts.

The exhibit, funded by The Isenberg Family Charitable Trust, Marina and Stephen E. Kaufman, Lois and Martin Whitman, Jack Rudin, and New York State Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, includes additional artifacts from the lives and careers of Amb. Morgenthau's distinguished son and grandson, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and Robert Morgenthau.