Black Dog of Fate : Witness to Genocide

While digging into the Bishop Balakian section of the book, I was reminded of our discussion of the word “witness” during our first class. One of the obituaries for Bishop Balakian described him as “a witness in the most noble and most Christian sense of the term” (260). I looked up witness on etymonline.com and found:

witness (n.)

Old English witnes "attestation of fact, event, etc., from personal knowledge;" also "one who so testifies;" originally "knowledge, wit," formed from wit (n.) + -ness. Christian use (late 14c.)

Following  up on martyr, I found:

martyr (n.) Look up martyr at Dictionary.com

Old English martyr, from Late Latin martyr, from Doric Greek martyr, earlier martys (genitive martyros) in Christian use "martyr," literally "witness"

It’s interesting how the bishop is referred to as a witness, even an “eyewitness”  (263), how he literally gives a testimony to the genocide (267-9), and how important it is that his testimony, his witnessing, and his “words” find an audience in Peter Balakian (and later in us) “near the end of the century” (269). Even his grandmother “carried the voice of her witness from the Old World to the New” (294). I think that witnessing this event, of recording it for future generations to discover, is essential work for survivors of an attempted extermination, especially when Turkish government still diligently tries to erase any evidence of the event. And I think it is important to us as readers to receive that knowledge and bear it into another century.