4 stars
A Goodreads friend asked me, tongue in cheek, why I was reading this book on a lovely summer day. I responded "What can I say? I have a Jewish daughter in law, an interest in history, spent 2 months in Bulgaria as a SAM(Sanctions Assistance Monitor) during the Bosnian war and worked with a man whose father escaped the Armenian genocide?"
The author is an Armenian-Canadian reporter for CBC(Canadian Broadcasting Corp.). His gr-grandfather was killed in the Armenian genocide in 1915. His grandfather escaped to Lebanon. His family left Lebanon during the civil war in 1984.
He decided to write a book about 20th century genocides by interviewing genocide survivors. He picked 3 genocides: Darfur, Rwanda and Armenian. He started by visiting Darfur refugee camps in Chad, which shares a border with Sudan. the genocide is still ongoing there and the refugees cannot return to Sudan. Then he went to Rwanda, where the genocide has ended and Rwanda is trying to reconcile it's past and prosecute the main offenders. Finally he journeys to the part of Turkey where the Armenian genocide took place and the now abandoned home of his gr-grandfather's family.
It is a sad and depressing book, but still an important book, as he mentions Hitler, reassuring subordinates by asking "Who talks about the Armenian genocide today?"
My colleague lent me 2 books some 30 years ago, which I also recommend The Forty Days of Musa Dagh and Facing Mt. Ararat.
One quote on Turkish government denial of Armenian genocide:
"Successive Turkish governments know recognition will bring with it financial and land claims, a large part of why they continue to deny."
Thanks to Dundurn for sending me this e-book through NetGalley.

Take a walk through the horrors of genocide with Raffy Boudjikanian. He seeks out the survivors, family members, and sifts through the secrets that surrounded the mass graves.

Read through the book, but be careful, it a book that will make you sit back and really open your eyes to the tragedy that was suffered through these regions.

I have had a lifelong interest in World War II – starting with tales of heroism, resistance organisations across Europe, and escapes from German prisoner-of-war camps. At that time, everything was black and white: German=Nazi=bad; Allies=Good. As I grew older, learned to speak German, and acquired German friends, my interest in action-heroes and my bigotry diminished, and I became much more concerned with how normal people (on both sides) lived, thought, fought and survived. In particular, I wanted to know about the Holocaust. Not just what happened, but (to me), much more importantly, WHY and HOW. How did one of the most civilised, advanced nations of the world, home to great intellectuals, artists, authors, philosophers and scientists (many of them Jewish), in such a short time become renown for one of the most vile and horrendous acts of state directed genocide ever? What turns a loving family man into a murderer? At what point (if ever) does he realise that he is a murderer (not ‘just’ a killer)? How close do you have to be to the machinations of genocide to be guilty? Is the railway clerk who arranged the transportation from Mechelen to Auschwitz responsible? What about the people who crossed the road when Jews were being beaten in the street? When does the need to protect oneself and one’s family outweigh the rights and lives of others? And how, how can one ever justify murdering thousands upon millions of people, simply because they were OTHER.
That is what I wanted from this book – an understanding of how these three genocides in Rwanda, Turkey and Sudan came about. What were the warning signs? When did they first appear? Could anything have been done to stop the catastrophes? What can we learn from these horrible histories? The lessons from the Holocaust should have put an end to genocide – but Rwanda and Sudan happened, the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and currently Burma, not to mention the absolute carnage in Syria: the murder of Kurds, annihilation of the Yazidis, …
The author is of Armenian descent. His grandparents escaped the genocide in Turkey to go to Lebanon. Then, when the author was five, the civil war in Lebanon forced the family to flee again – this time to Canada. So, he is perfectly able to relate to the survivors of genocide, and civil wars: “It’s not that by constantly speaking about the Armenian case I am forgetting all the others. The Armenian story is, on the contrary, my way of understanding them.” However, I felt that with Rwanda and Sudan, he was relating what atrocities happened, rather than understanding why. He was better on examining the way forward after the genocides – particularly in the case of Rwanda. “In Chad, where refugees make ends meet in the desert through the inadequately budgeted kindness of the international community, talk is therapy. Here, where Rwandans go to work and interact with their families and friends in a society that has painstakingly normalized itself, talk is trauma.” ““We want a country where parents do not intoxicate their children with these genocidal ideas,” … “Otherwise it’s going to continue, it’s going to be a vicious circle, vengeance””.
Once the author moved on to Turkey and the Armenian genocide, the book really came alive. His paranoia as he moved around the country was palpable, and highly understandable. Turkey has never acknowledged the genocide, and imprisons people who mention it. For the author, and probably for all Armenians, there can be no forgiveness without acknowledgement of the wrongs perpetrated. Ethnic Armenians who remain in Turkey disguise their ethnicity, and to the horror of the author, do not speak their own language: “For many Armenians, the idea of linguistic amnesia has become inexorably intertwined with the idea of forgetting the genocide”.
The book was summed up by: “Genocide is not only whom and what it destroys; it is also whom and what it leaves behind”.
I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

I enjoyed this book even though it wasn't at all what I was expecting. I was hoping for interviews and stories about where these terrible crimes had been committed, and how it's affected those involved. What I got was a very brief history, and a lot of stories of Raffy's travails of traveling. So, if someone's looking for what has been suggested in the book cover, then they may wish to look elsewhere. Still a fairly interesting book. My thanks to the publishers and Netgalley.

His grandparents were survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and this is what inspired Raffy to dream of a trip, which allowed him to visit every country which had experienced a genocide in the 20th century. As the calendar moved into the 21st century, Raffy knew that he needed to start planning his trip. The world was not changing for genocides were still occurring, the word was out but nothing was being done to stop them. Finances made his dream trip impossible, so Raffy scaled back his trip and began his planning.

I found when I read this novel that it was more about Raffy’s journey visiting the cities than it was about visiting the individuals who were affected by the genocides. I read the synopsis a few times while reading this novel, as “stories of survivors and dead” was what I was looking forward to reading about and I had a hard time finding this in the novel. I felt the synopsis led me astray. This was a journey but it covered more about Raffy’s travels to the cities and his experiences in the cities than about speaking to individuals about the genocides.

I did discover that many of the individuals who did the killings are on the run and some that did end up in court, were let go. It seemed that the common thread was that many individuals will not acknowledge that the genocides took place. If they can’t admit to this, then a trial nor a verdict can occur and justice cannot be provided for those whose lives have been affected. The survivors must live in limbo. Some survivors fear of history repeating itself, some live their lives in frustration and/or some are hurt. They live in a world where reality is a dark cloud and they are waiting for someone to shed some light on the situation. In the novel, there was a report where the number of deaths in the village was so large that the remaining villagers created mass graves. These graves were quicker to prepare and the villagers were also afraid that the offenders would return and murder more of the villagers. That is not all, when the authorities came to the village to check out the damage, nothing was done, no further action was taken. How could the authorities walk away from such devastation and do nothing?

Some of the novel’s illustrations were wonderful, they showed the history/cities and gave the story more meaning. The novel was very descriptive and I enjoyed that about this novel. This novel was Raffy’s journey to find more information on genocides. It was about his travels: what he experienced, what he saw, and how things are. I enjoyed the novel but I was expecting more in the way of interviews and/or information about the genocides.

I received a copy of this novel from NetGalley and DunDurn in exchange for an honest review.

The author of Journey through Genocide, Raffy Boudjikanian, is a product of genocide himself—from an Armenian family, some of whom were able to escape Turkey, most of whom were not, moving first to Iran, later to Canada. Given this history, he feels compelled to bear witness to contemporary genocides, as he works to understand his family's experience.

Boudjikanian travels to Chad and Dafur, interviewing genocide survivors. He attempts to let them speak for themselves, including significant passages in their own words, which is a wise choice. He also reflects on the meaning of their experiences—what they tell us about the human capacity for evil, for survival, for simple decency, and for forgiveness.

On the heels of his African travels, he journeys to Turkey, seeking his family history. The official silencing of any discussion of the Armenian genocide makes this a difficult task, and Boudjikanian is on edge—with cause—as he digs through this obscured past.

My experience reading this book was mixed. I learned a good bit about events I'd only known of before in outline. Like Boudjikanian, I was particularly moved by the capacity for forgiveness he finds when genocide is discussed openly. However, because this book recounts a personal jounery, it is sometimes limited in what it can communicate, since we experience all it relates through Boudjikanian's personal perspective. This is a book that will leave you wanting more, and that's not a bad thing. The 20th Centuries genocides deserve a firmer, better-informed place in the public consciousness than they currently have.

This review will appear on my blog on May 15 to coincide with the book's release.

This book is such a fantastic read! Thoughtfully written, harrowing and informative. I liked the personal approach Raffy takes, whilst also making no assumptions about the plights of the genocide survivors he interviews.

I felt such a personal connection with the author of Journey Through Genocide, Raffy Boudjikanian. I do not personally have descendants of Armenian heritage, but my mother’s second husband’s family, my stepfather, were of Polish descent. They grew up in what is now Belorussia and the Ukraine, witnessed and lived through pogroms against the Poles, were sent to concentration camps in Siberia by Stalin, and then left to wander the earth, refugees without a home to go back to. My stepfather was born in a refugee camp in England. So, another act of atrocity that isn’t really talked about often, like the Armenian genocide that Raffy Boudjikanian discusses at large in his book. I recognized a lot of what Raffy Boudjikanian says when he refers to answering the question of forgiveness and where one’s home is.

In addition to all of the above, Raffy Boudjikanian actually does something I wanted to do myself back in 2010, although personally my countries were the DRC, Rwanda, Sudan, and Bosnia. I wanted to travel to these countries and document in words and pictures the aftermath of genocide and the ability or non-ability for a country and her people to move on. And also to raise awareness to how in the western world we never care enough until its way too late. I mean we only have to look at Sudan, Syria, and Myanmar currently for example: ongoing death, displacement, and war. I still haven’t gone on that trip. Maybe one day I will finally do it.

Anyway, Journey Through Genocide is a personal account of Raffy Boudjikanian’s exploration of three countries where genocide has occurred: Sudan, Rwanda, and Armenia. He doesn’t actually enter Sudan but instead visits Sudanese refugee camps in Chad (he explains the extremely valid reason for this in the book), and he also visits what used to be Armenia but what is now Turkey, where his ancestors were from, rather than modern day Armenia. Raffy Boudjikanian organizes interviews with refugees, survivors, and with descendants of survivors, and recounts these as well as his own personal views and experiences in his book. His recounts of modern day genocide are usually discussed with a backdrop of the Armenian genocide and it makes for a very interesting narrative. The stories are always so hard to hear, whether they are from last century or from yesterday, but so very necessary, especially in this day and age where we scroll on without bothering to contemplate what is happening around us.

If you are looking for a detailed exposé on genocide then Journey Through Genocide isn’t going to be for you. But if you are interested in reading a personal and compassionate essay on the effects of genocide on a population, and the lingering effects of genocide on future generations then this is for you. Journey Through Genocide reads like a travelogue, and is both informative and personal, and I appreciated the perfect mix of both so much. So many books on the topic of genocide are too dry: a sea of horror so awful that we need to remove all emotions to hope to absorb it, so I think it is important to read as many personal narratives too, whether they be those of survivors, or those of people who have ventured further afield than they ever imagined they would.

Raffy Boudjikanian does a great job of bringing the Armenian genocide into the conversation, as too often no one has ever heard about it, especially not in North America anyway. (I was brought up in France and had Armenian friends so it often surprises me when people have never heard of it). I also have so much respect for the author for doing this trip, and for being so honest about his experiences. It was a very poignant, informative, and compassionate read.

Journey Through Genocide will be published on May 15, 2018 by DunDurn. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance copy!

By covering two genocides of the recent past and one of the major genocide of the twentieth century, the author not only provides a spotlight for the affected to speak under, but he highlights the myriad of difficulties that come with facing this most hideous of atrocities.