ARMENIAN - Erevangala500

The "C hef's Armeniens dans Djebel Mousa" on board o f the
French warship D E SA IX , still playing with gun and field
glass, still in best mood.
shame for the Swiss authorities how they handled this
problem... Jewish property and funds were welcome, but
human beeings?) But let us come to the point o f the "40
Days": When Franz Werfel aimed at the Nazis, calling
them "Turks" and the Jews "Armenians" Franz Werfel
commited a crime.
He commited murder - in German there is the word
"Rufmord", murder o f one's reputation - by defaming the
name o f the Turkish nation, the killing o f one's good
name. Sometimes "Rufmord" is worse than murder. It
leads easily to further crimes, in our case against Turkey
and Turks, up to today.
In his note - or intoduction - to the "40 Days..." Werfel
wrote:
"This book was conceived in March o f 1929, in the
course o f a stay in Damascus. The miserable sight o f
some maimed and famished-looking refugee children,
working in a carpet factory, that gave me the final
impulse to snatch from the Hades o f all that was this
incomprehensiible destiny o f the Armenian nation."
Finally Werfel remarks that he had selected for his readings
in Germany, March 1933 the "historic records o f a
conversation betM’een Enver Pasha and Pastor Johannes
Lepsius ".
The source o f this "conversation" were the memoirs o f a
German protestant pastor, a certain Dr. Johannes Lepsius
A number o f wounded Turkish soldiers travelling on home
leave were ambushed and brutally killed by Armenian bands in
the vicinity o f Kum and £u m , in the district o f L ice,
Diyarbakir, on Juli 25, 1915.
Borrowed from "Erm eni Amal ve Herekat-i Ihtalaliyesi;
Tesavir ve Vesaik. The Armenian aspirations and revolutionary
movements.-Albums No: 1 and 2. 1919.
But how could it come that Werfel, this most sensitive
poet, fell into this trap? It seems that the inititive came
from his wife, Alma Maria Mahler-Werfel.
Alma, the alter ego of Franz
Alma Werfel was doubtless one o f the most fascinating
women o f her time. She was born in 1879 as the daugh­
ter o f the Viennese landscape painter E. J. Schindler and
grew up in an environment with artists like Gustav Klimt
or Alexander Zemlinsky - her composer tutor - and at the
age o f 22 she married the meanwhile world famous com ­
poser Gustav Mahler who dedicated his 8th symphony to
Alma. After years o f marriage Alma sought refuge with
an indefinible amount o f (again world famous) lovers,
admirors plus husbands like Walter Gropius or Werfel
and her relation with Oskar Kokoschka who contributed
to her fame with his famous painting "Die Windsbraut"
(something like "bride o f the wind") but, it fits in this case
perfectly, Windsbraut can also be something like a hurri­
cane... and Alma Werfel was such a phenomenon. Die
Windsbraut gave also reason for a Hollywood film,
describing her turbulent life, her love-affairs and her
attractive qualities which she doutless had. The list o f her
adorants is sheer endless: Erich Wolfgang Korngold ded­
icated to her his famous violin concerto, she made friend­
ship ^) with Gabriele d'Annunzio, Toscanini, Arnold
Schonberg, Darius Milhaud, Poulenc, Marc Chagall,
Thomas Mann, met Bernhard Shaw, liked H. G. Wells,
87