Jewish response to The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
Encyclopedia
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
was a 1933 novel by the Austria
n-Jewish author Franz Werfel
. Based on the events at Musa Dagh
in 1915 during the Armenian Genocide
in the Ottoman Empire
, the book played a role in organizing the Jewish resistance under Nazi rule. It was passed from hand to hand in Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, and it became an example and a symbol for the Jewish underground throughout Europe. The Holocaust
scholars Samuel Totten
, Paul Bartrop and Steven L. Jacobs underline the importance of the book for many ghettos' Jews: "The book was read by many Jews suffering under the Nazis during World War II and was viewed as an allegory of their own situation in the Nazi-established ghettos, and what they might do about it."
The book was also read by young Jews in Eretz Yisrael, and they discussed it while preparing to defend Haifa
against a possible Nazi invasion. Prof. Peter Medding of Hebrew University of Jerusalem
writes: "Between the wars, Franz Werfel's popular novel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, had a profound effect on young Jews in Palestine and in the European ghettos" Yair Auron
,an Israeli historian, says that "Werfel's book shocked millions throughout the world and influenced many young people who grew up in Eretz Yisrael in the 1930s. For many Jewish youth in Europe, "Musa Dagh" became a symbol, a model, and an example, especially during the dark days of the Second World War." Jews who read the book believed that the novel, though speaking about the Armenians, contained many allusions to Judaism and Israel in relation to Werfel's own beliefs, and it had a profound impact upon many of them. Auron cites a quotation from Forty Days of Musa Dagh which reads, "To be an Armenian is an impossibility" as reminiscent of a similar circumstance that Jews faced during that era.
Auron states that readers of Musa Dagh will have a difficult time believing that the book was written before the Holocaust
. Lionel Bradley Steiman writes:
Adolf Hitler
's propaganda machine also recognized the parallels suggested by the book, and the book was burned
along with other books that were not considered to have proper ideology
.
Merrill D. Peterson
mentions the review written by Louis Kronenberger
in the New York Times Book Review, in which Kronenberger made the point that the book was "was inferentially about the plight of the Jews in Germany even though the story concerned the Armenians." Merrill D. Peterson says that after the novel was published in Hebrew in 1934, "it was quickly taken up and recognized by Jewish youth in Europe and Palestine as "a Jewish book" - not because the author was Jewish but because it addressed the condition and the fate of the Jews under the Nazi peril."
Peter Balakian
describes how the U.S. State Department under President Franklin D. Roosevelt
(FDR) surrendered to the demands of Turkey
and forced MGM to drop the project to make a film based on the novel and once again compares this event concerning the novel to the fate of the European Jews: "This was 1935. How much did FDR's State Department know about what Hitler was doing to the Jews of Europe, and how much did it care?"
. They used to say about the book: "Only a Jew could have written this work". Yair Auron
writes that he has no doubts that Musa Dagh is Mount Moses
. The book's title is The Forty Days of Musa Dagh although according to different documentary sources, the rebellion lasted for 36 days, or for 53 days, or 24 days. Apparently no source says forty days, and Auron believes that this number was chosen to symbolize the forty days of the Great Flood, or the forty days that it took Moses
to ascend the mountain.
Writer and journalist Huberta von Voss says:
Ms. von Voss also makes a parallel between the hero of the novel Gabriel, which means "hero of God" and Moses in the Bible. They both grew up as strangers to their people.
Auron sees "clear analogies" between the fate of Gabriel of Musa Dagh and that of Moses. Gabriel died on top of Musa Dagh, and never saw his people being saved by French
ships. Moses died on top of Mount Nebo
, forty years after the Exodus
in which he led the Israelites out of Egyptian's slavery, and just before his people reached The Promised Land
.
was chosen to rally the Jewish forces. This plan received different names, one of them being "The Musa Dagh Plan" because "We want to turn Mount Carmel into the 'Musa Dagh' of Palestinian Jewry."
One of the members of the Jewish community remembers this time:"I will never forget that patrol. We marched from Ahuza along the Carmel ridge. The moon smiled down on us with its round face. I imagined to myself the Jewish Musa Dagh which was to ensure the future of the Yishuv, and guarantee its honor. We put our faith in the power of endurance of the Jewish 'Musa Dagh' and we were determined to hold out for at least three or four months." Yisrael Galili
, a Chief of Staff of the Haganah
, wrote to his wife: "On the way, we reexamined and elaborated on the idea of Haifa-Tobruk
. Or perhaps Haifa-Massada-Musa Dagh? In any case the idea is exciting."
, and to Musa Dagh. The Jews from the ghettos talked about Musa Dagh more often than they did about Massada. To them, Massada was more a symbol of suicide than a symbol of a battle, while Musa Dagh was a symbol of rebellion.
Several records mention the impact that The Forty Days of Musa Dagh made on the Jews of Europe. One of these records is dated to 1943 in the Białystok Ghetto: "The only thing left is to see our ghetto as Musa Dagh." These words were used when the members of the underground Białystok Ghetto were debating whether they should try to escape to the forest or to remain in the ghetto and organize resistance. According to Auron, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was one of the main factors in the decision not to abandon the elderly, but instead to stay in the ghetto and resist.
The records from the Białystok Ghetto were buried in 1943, and recovered after the war; later they were published in a book named Pages from the Fire. The editors wrote that "because of the similarity between the fate of the two peoples, the Armenians and the Jews", Musa Dagh was extremely popular with the ghetto youth. Mordechaj Tannenbaum, an inmate of the Vilna ghetto
who was sent with others to organize resistance at Bialystok, wrote in a 1943 letter: "Musa Dagh is all the rage with us. If you read it, you will remember it for the rest of your life." The record of one of the meetings organizing the revolt suggests that the novel was often used in the ghettos as a reference for successful resistance: “Only one thing remains for us: to organize collective resistance in the ghetto, at any cost; to consider the ghetto our 'Musa Dagh', to write a proud chapter of Jewish Bialystok and our movement into history.”
Haika Grossman, who in her youth was a partisan
and a participant in the ghetto
uprisings in Poland
and Lithuania
, said that Musa Dagh was popular with Jewish activists in Europe, was read and "passed from hand to hand":
Inka Wajbort, a young member of Hashomer Hatzair
, described reading the book in the summer of 1941:
Later, after Mordechai Anielewicz, the leader of Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa
(Jewish Combat Organization), during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
came to the ghetto and described the extermination of Jews outside the ghetto walls to them, Wajbort reported thinking to herself: "And so again Musa Dagh? and again the world keeps silent?"
Itzhak Katzenelson who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and was later murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp
wrote to his younger brother:
Another Jewish underground leader from in Tchenstokhova remembers how he was given an assignment to go to "Konyestopol forest "with the purpose of organizing a 'Musa Dagh' there."
Pesya Mayevska describes the mood in one of Belorussia's ghetto:
According to testimony from the Warsaw Ghetto, Musa Dagh had a big impact on Janusz Korczak
, a director of an orphanage
for Jewish children. A member of Korczak's staff said that they discussed Musa Dagh in the summer of 1941 at one of their meetings. In particular they discussed the episode in which a pastor
abandoned the children to save himself (in the book he later came back). During this discussion, Korczak said "that he would not under any circumstances be parted from his children" and he did not. He was offered sanctuary on the “Aryan side” by Żegota
but turned it down repeatedly, saying that he could not abandon his children. He perished together with the children.
Emmanuel Ringelblum known for his Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto wrote:
One more testimony comes from the Kladovo-Šabac group: "Like Jews throughout the world, from the ghettos of Eastern Europe to the pioneering settlements of Palestine, the Kladovo refugees (young and old) read The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel and became enthralled by the story of Armenia's struggle against Turks during the First World War."
A member of the Dutch
underground said about Musa Dagh: "It was a 'textbook' for us. It opened our eyes and spelled out for us what might happen, although we did not know what in fact would occur."
In a 1938 letter written from prison in Benito Mussolini
's Italy
, Vittorio Foa
stated: "In a novel by Franz Werfel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, I found a pretty faithful description of what the treatment of Jews would be in Mitteleuropa".
In a review published in 1934, R. Zilegman writes: "The book is very interesting for the educated reader in general, but the Jewish reader will find it of special interest. The fate of this Armenian tribe recalls, in several important details, the fate of the people of Israel, and not surprisingly the Jewish reader will discover several familiar motifs, so well known to him from the life and history of his people."
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is a 1933 novel by Austrian-Jewish author Franz Werfel based on the defense of a small community of Armenians living in the Musa Dagh of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 during the height of the Armenian Genocide. The book was originally published as Die Vierzig Tage des Musa...
was a 1933 novel by the Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n-Jewish author Franz Werfel
Franz Werfel
Franz Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet.- Biography :Born in Prague , Werfel was the first of three children of a wealthy manufacturer of gloves and leather goods. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill owner...
. Based on the events at Musa Dagh
Musa Dagh
Musa Dagh was the site of resistance by the Armenians during the Armenian Genocide. The denizens of that region were violently expelled from their six villages by the Ottomans in 1915...
in 1915 during the Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
The Armenian Genocide—also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime—refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I...
in the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, the book played a role in organizing the Jewish resistance under Nazi rule. It was passed from hand to hand in Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, and it became an example and a symbol for the Jewish underground throughout Europe. The Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
scholars Samuel Totten
Samuel Totten
Samuel Totten is a genocide scholar, Professor of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, a Member of the Council of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem...
, Paul Bartrop and Steven L. Jacobs underline the importance of the book for many ghettos' Jews: "The book was read by many Jews suffering under the Nazis during World War II and was viewed as an allegory of their own situation in the Nazi-established ghettos, and what they might do about it."
The book was also read by young Jews in Eretz Yisrael, and they discussed it while preparing to defend Haifa
Haifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...
against a possible Nazi invasion. Prof. Peter Medding of Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
writes: "Between the wars, Franz Werfel's popular novel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, had a profound effect on young Jews in Palestine and in the European ghettos" Yair Auron
Yair Auron
Yair Auron is an Israeli historian, scholar and expert specializing on Holocaust and Genocide studies, racism and contemporary Jewry...
,an Israeli historian, says that "Werfel's book shocked millions throughout the world and influenced many young people who grew up in Eretz Yisrael in the 1930s. For many Jewish youth in Europe, "Musa Dagh" became a symbol, a model, and an example, especially during the dark days of the Second World War." Jews who read the book believed that the novel, though speaking about the Armenians, contained many allusions to Judaism and Israel in relation to Werfel's own beliefs, and it had a profound impact upon many of them. Auron cites a quotation from Forty Days of Musa Dagh which reads, "To be an Armenian is an impossibility" as reminiscent of a similar circumstance that Jews faced during that era.
Auron states that readers of Musa Dagh will have a difficult time believing that the book was written before the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
. Lionel Bradley Steiman writes:
In hindsight, the book appears an almost uncanny adumbration of aspects of the later Nazi Holocaust in which the Jews of Europe perished.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's propaganda machine also recognized the parallels suggested by the book, and the book was burned
Nazi book burnings
The Nazi book burnings were a campaign conducted by the authorities of Nazi Germany to ceremonially burn all books in Germany which did not correspond with Nazi ideology.-The book-burning campaign:...
along with other books that were not considered to have proper ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
.
Merrill D. Peterson
Merrill D. Peterson
Merrill Daniel Peterson was Professor of History at the University of Virginia and the editor of the prestigious Library of America edition of the selected writings of Thomas Jefferson...
mentions the review written by Louis Kronenberger
Louis Kronenberger
Louis Kronenberger was an American critic and author. He was a novelist and biographer, and wrote extensively on drama and the 18th century.-Biography:He studied at the University of Cincinnati from 1921...
in the New York Times Book Review, in which Kronenberger made the point that the book was "was inferentially about the plight of the Jews in Germany even though the story concerned the Armenians." Merrill D. Peterson says that after the novel was published in Hebrew in 1934, "it was quickly taken up and recognized by Jewish youth in Europe and Palestine as "a Jewish book" - not because the author was Jewish but because it addressed the condition and the fate of the Jews under the Nazi peril."
Peter Balakian
Peter Balakian
Peter Balakian is a poet, writer and academic, the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of Humanities at Colgate University.- Life :...
describes how the U.S. State Department under President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
(FDR) surrendered to the demands of Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
and forced MGM to drop the project to make a film based on the novel and once again compares this event concerning the novel to the fate of the European Jews: "This was 1935. How much did FDR's State Department know about what Hitler was doing to the Jews of Europe, and how much did it care?"
Jewish symbolism
Some Jews believed that the book The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was full of symbolism connected to Jewish history and JudaismJudaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
. They used to say about the book: "Only a Jew could have written this work". Yair Auron
Yair Auron
Yair Auron is an Israeli historian, scholar and expert specializing on Holocaust and Genocide studies, racism and contemporary Jewry...
writes that he has no doubts that Musa Dagh is Mount Moses
Mount Sinai
Mount Sinai , also known as Mount Horeb, Mount Musa, Gabal Musa , Jabal Musa meaning "Moses' Mountain", is a mountain near Saint Catherine in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. A mountain called Mount Sinai is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus in the Torah and the Bible as well as the Quran...
. The book's title is The Forty Days of Musa Dagh although according to different documentary sources, the rebellion lasted for 36 days, or for 53 days, or 24 days. Apparently no source says forty days, and Auron believes that this number was chosen to symbolize the forty days of the Great Flood, or the forty days that it took Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
to ascend the mountain.
Writer and journalist Huberta von Voss says:
Werfel filters the true story of the Armenians' resistance through a Hebrew prism: the chronicle of the exodus. Forty days of resistance, forty years wandering in the desert. Werfel describes the exodus from Egypt, from fate-imposed passivity. The social order in his novel is extracted from the Torah with a firm gouge. One a political leader, the other, a spiritual leader, they guide the fighting chosen people: of course, they are Moses, the prophet, and AaronAaronIn the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, Aaron : Ααρών ), who is often called "'Aaron the Priest"' and once Aaron the Levite , was the older brother of Moses, and a prophet of God. He represented the priestly functions of his tribe, becoming the first High Priest of the Israelites...
, the high priest.
Ms. von Voss also makes a parallel between the hero of the novel Gabriel, which means "hero of God" and Moses in the Bible. They both grew up as strangers to their people.
Auron sees "clear analogies" between the fate of Gabriel of Musa Dagh and that of Moses. Gabriel died on top of Musa Dagh, and never saw his people being saved by French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
ships. Moses died on top of Mount Nebo
Mount Nebo (Jordan)
Mount Nebo is an elevated ridge that is approximately 817 meters above sea level, in what is now western Jordan. The view from the summit provides a panorama of the Holy Land and, to the north, a more limited one of the valley of the River Jordan...
, forty years after the Exodus
The Exodus
The Exodus is the story of the departure of the Israelites from ancient Egypt described in the Hebrew Bible.Narrowly defined, the term refers only to the departure from Egypt described in the Book of Exodus; more widely, it takes in the subsequent law-givings and wanderings in the wilderness...
in which he led the Israelites out of Egyptian's slavery, and just before his people reached The Promised Land
Promised land
The Promised Land is a term used to describe the land promised or given by God, according to the Hebrew Bible, to the Israelites, the descendants of Jacob. The promise is firstly made to Abraham and then renewed to his son Isaac, and to Isaac's son Jacob , Abraham's grandson...
.
Impact in Eretz Yisrael
In 1942, the Jewish Community in the British Mandate for Palestine feared a Nazi invasion. Some argued they had no choice but to surrender. Others said they should fight, and Mount CarmelMount Carmel
Mount Carmel ; , Kármēlos; , Kurmul or جبل مار إلياس Jabal Mar Elyas 'Mount Saint Elias') is a coastal mountain range in northern Israel stretching from the Mediterranean Sea towards the southeast. Archaeologists have discovered ancient wine and oil presses at various locations on Mt. Carmel...
was chosen to rally the Jewish forces. This plan received different names, one of them being "The Musa Dagh Plan" because "We want to turn Mount Carmel into the 'Musa Dagh' of Palestinian Jewry."
One of the members of the Jewish community remembers this time:"I will never forget that patrol. We marched from Ahuza along the Carmel ridge. The moon smiled down on us with its round face. I imagined to myself the Jewish Musa Dagh which was to ensure the future of the Yishuv, and guarantee its honor. We put our faith in the power of endurance of the Jewish 'Musa Dagh' and we were determined to hold out for at least three or four months." Yisrael Galili
Yisrael Galili
Yisrael Galili was an Israeli politician, government minister and member of Knesset. Before Israel's independence in 1948, he had served as Chief of Staff of the Haganah.-Biography:...
, a Chief of Staff of the Haganah
Haganah
Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...
, wrote to his wife: "On the way, we reexamined and elaborated on the idea of Haifa-Tobruk
Tobruk
Tobruk or Tubruq is a city, seaport, and peninsula on Libya's eastern Mediterranean coast, near the border with Egypt. It is the capital of the Butnan District and has a population of 120,000 ....
. Or perhaps Haifa-Massada-Musa Dagh? In any case the idea is exciting."
Impact on resistance forces and Jewish ghetto culture
While in Eretz Yisrael, the plan to resist a possible Nazi invasion was compared to Massada, to TobrukTobruk
Tobruk or Tubruq is a city, seaport, and peninsula on Libya's eastern Mediterranean coast, near the border with Egypt. It is the capital of the Butnan District and has a population of 120,000 ....
, and to Musa Dagh. The Jews from the ghettos talked about Musa Dagh more often than they did about Massada. To them, Massada was more a symbol of suicide than a symbol of a battle, while Musa Dagh was a symbol of rebellion.
Several records mention the impact that The Forty Days of Musa Dagh made on the Jews of Europe. One of these records is dated to 1943 in the Białystok Ghetto: "The only thing left is to see our ghetto as Musa Dagh." These words were used when the members of the underground Białystok Ghetto were debating whether they should try to escape to the forest or to remain in the ghetto and organize resistance. According to Auron, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was one of the main factors in the decision not to abandon the elderly, but instead to stay in the ghetto and resist.
The records from the Białystok Ghetto were buried in 1943, and recovered after the war; later they were published in a book named Pages from the Fire. The editors wrote that "because of the similarity between the fate of the two peoples, the Armenians and the Jews", Musa Dagh was extremely popular with the ghetto youth. Mordechaj Tannenbaum, an inmate of the Vilna ghetto
Vilna Ghetto
The Vilna Ghetto or Vilnius Ghetto was a Jewish ghetto established by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius in the occupied Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic , during the Holocaust in World War II...
who was sent with others to organize resistance at Bialystok, wrote in a 1943 letter: "Musa Dagh is all the rage with us. If you read it, you will remember it for the rest of your life." The record of one of the meetings organizing the revolt suggests that the novel was often used in the ghettos as a reference for successful resistance: “Only one thing remains for us: to organize collective resistance in the ghetto, at any cost; to consider the ghetto our 'Musa Dagh', to write a proud chapter of Jewish Bialystok and our movement into history.”
Haika Grossman, who in her youth was a partisan
Partisan (military)
A partisan is a member of an irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity...
and a participant in the ghetto
Ghetto
A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues.The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated...
uprisings in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
and Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, said that Musa Dagh was popular with Jewish activists in Europe, was read and "passed from hand to hand":
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, by Franz Werfel, which made an indelible impression on us. The bloody, ruthless massacre of over a million Armenians by the Turks in 1915 in full view of the entire world reminded us our fate.The Armenians were starved to death, shot, drowned, tortured to exhaustion. We compared their fate with ours, the indifference of the world to their plight, and the complete abandonment of the poor people into the hands of a barbarous, tyrannical regime.
Inka Wajbort, a young member of Hashomer Hatzair
Hashomer Hatzair
Hashomer Hatzair is a Socialist–Zionist youth movement founded in 1913 in Galicia, Austria-Hungary, and was also the name of the group's political party in the Yishuv in the pre-1948 British Mandate of Palestine...
, described reading the book in the summer of 1941:
It completely captivated me. For four full days I was engrossed in the book and could not tear myself away.... I myself was at Musa Dagh; I was under siege. I was one of the Armenians doomed to death. If I lifted my eyes from the book, it was only to hear the cry — Mama, how could this be? The world knew and kept silent.It could not be that children in other countries at the same time went to school, women adorned themselves, men went about their business, as if nothing had happened.... And there, a people was annihilated.
Later, after Mordechai Anielewicz, the leader of Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa
Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa
The Jewish Combat Organization was a World War II resistance movement, which was instrumental in engineering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. ŻOB took part in a number of other resistance activities as well...
(Jewish Combat Organization), during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Treblinka extermination camp....
came to the ghetto and described the extermination of Jews outside the ghetto walls to them, Wajbort reported thinking to herself: "And so again Musa Dagh? and again the world keeps silent?"
Itzhak Katzenelson who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and was later murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
wrote to his younger brother:
When the Armenians were killed, they were mourned in a Jewish book; but when the Jewish People was killed, who will mourn for them?"
Another Jewish underground leader from in Tchenstokhova remembers how he was given an assignment to go to "Konyestopol forest "with the purpose of organizing a 'Musa Dagh' there."
Pesya Mayevska describes the mood in one of Belorussia's ghetto:
There were those who turned their eyes towards Heaven. They were orthodox, put on tefilin [phylacteries] prayed three times a day and poured out the bitterness in their hearts before the Creator of the universe. Many looked for good literature. Franz Werfel's book. The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, passed from hand to hand, telling about the heroic revolt of a group of Armenians during the Turkish slaughters.Following that example the Jewish youth gathered arms, created an underground.
According to testimony from the Warsaw Ghetto, Musa Dagh had a big impact on Janusz Korczak
Janusz Korczak
Janusz Korczak, the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit was a Polish-Jewish children's author, and pediatrician known as Pan Doktor or Stary Doktor...
, a director of an orphanage
Orphanage
An orphanage is a residential institution devoted to the care of orphans – children whose parents are deceased or otherwise unable or unwilling to care for them...
for Jewish children. A member of Korczak's staff said that they discussed Musa Dagh in the summer of 1941 at one of their meetings. In particular they discussed the episode in which a pastor
Pastor
The word pastor usually refers to an ordained leader of a Christian congregation. When used as an ecclesiastical styling or title, this role may be abbreviated to "Pr." or often "Ps"....
abandoned the children to save himself (in the book he later came back). During this discussion, Korczak said "that he would not under any circumstances be parted from his children" and he did not. He was offered sanctuary on the “Aryan side” by Żegota
Zegota
"Żegota" , also known as the "Konrad Żegota Committee", was a codename for the Polish Council to Aid Jews , an underground organization of Polish resistance in German-occupied Poland from 1942 to 1945....
but turned it down repeatedly, saying that he could not abandon his children. He perished together with the children.
Emmanuel Ringelblum known for his Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto wrote:
What are people reading? This is a subject of general interest; after the war, it will intrigue the world. What, the world will ask, did people think of on Musa Dagh....
One more testimony comes from the Kladovo-Šabac group: "Like Jews throughout the world, from the ghettos of Eastern Europe to the pioneering settlements of Palestine, the Kladovo refugees (young and old) read The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel and became enthralled by the story of Armenia's struggle against Turks during the First World War."
A member of the Dutch
Dutch people
The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...
underground said about Musa Dagh: "It was a 'textbook' for us. It opened our eyes and spelled out for us what might happen, although we did not know what in fact would occur."
In a 1938 letter written from prison in Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
's Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Vittorio Foa
Vittorio Foa
Vittorio Foa was an Italian politician, trade unionist, journalist and writer.-Biography:Foa was born in Turin in 1910 into a middle-class Jewish family....
stated: "In a novel by Franz Werfel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, I found a pretty faithful description of what the treatment of Jews would be in Mitteleuropa".
Jewish critics on the book
In 1933, Dov Kimchi wrote: "A people ravaged by 'sacred' suffering on the biblical pinnacle of tragedy, unparalleled in the twentieth century; but didn't that nation become dedicated to its agony, uplifted, sanctified by a new life, compelled into interpreting all these torments as a reward for suffering? Or, like those who suffer from their weakness, who wither away, their immolation neither shaking the planet nor turning the individuals or the people into Chosen Ones? It is a quintessential Jewish belief in being smoldered and sanctified by fire. This is a typical Jewish question which the Jewish poet has transposed to a different dimension, seeking answers among the Gentiles, since he will not seek them here, among his own people."In a review published in 1934, R. Zilegman writes: "The book is very interesting for the educated reader in general, but the Jewish reader will find it of special interest. The fate of this Armenian tribe recalls, in several important details, the fate of the people of Israel, and not surprisingly the Jewish reader will discover several familiar motifs, so well known to him from the life and history of his people."