the Forgotten Fire

Reading the book Forgotten Fire was extremely difficult, but looking at the image at left makes it even more realistic and horrible. However it is important to see the realities of what happened in the world. The genocide of the Armenian people by the Turks in 1915 is a horrific event that is often skipped over in history. Forgotten Fire by Adam Bagdasarian opens with a quote in the epigraph made by Hitler in 1939 “Who does now remember the Armenians?” correctly describing how the genocide of an entire group of people is not remembered or discussed twenty years later. The point of view of the book is that of a child’s, Vahan Kenderian, who does not see that there were any problems between the Turks and the Armenians and in fact does not see any differences between them except that they go to different places of worship. Vahan lives in Armenia during the period predating the Genocide with his family, his mother and father, his grandmother and uncle, Mumphre, his brothers, Sisak, Tabel and Diran and his sisters Oskina and Armenouhi. Vahan experiences three major aspects of his life in the book, the beginning when he is complacent about his life and does not understand what is happening, the second part where he is struggling to survive and the last when he is searching and has found freedom. Through the view of Vahan his experiences of the genocide can be experienced and the atrocities endured by the Armenian people are brought to life. Vahan was very lucky because he was able to escape several times from death. One particularly poignant scene is when he was walking through town and people thought he was a ghost because Armenians by this point a couple years later were so rare. Although Vahan escaped from the death march he was still forced to endure more horrific moments, constantly hiding for fear of being murdered and people taking advantage of him. At one point he is forced to go back to his home and work for Selim Bey who is known as a top Armenian Killer by putting hooves on the feet of people with burning hot steel. The utter humiliation of working for Selim Bey is not understood by Vahan because of his desperation to survive. Vahan like many Armenians were forced to lead a life of fear and survival suffereing the humiliations like these because they were driven out of their homes. Forgotten Fire is not only a story of a young boys survival but it brings into graphic detail and reality the consequences of hatred based on ethnicity.

http://www.danegerus.com/weblog/images/ArmenianGenocide.jpg