The Birth of ‘Great Calamity’: How ‘Medz Yeghern’ Was Introduced onto the World Stage

Vartan Matiossian

 

… Listen, O Lord, to the lament that rises from this place,
to the call of the dead from the depths of the Metz Yeghérn …
–John Paul II (2001)
 

Words matter. Some people try to keep them meaningful, while others render them meaningless. And while some struggle to preserve memory, others fight to impose amnesia.

“Medz Yeghern”¹ is the most common term used by survivors of the Armenian Genocide and their descendants to identify what befell the Armenian nation in 1915. Over the past decade, American, European and Turkish news outlets have consistently translated Medz Yeghern as “Great Calamity.” The Turkish media has repeated this seemingly innocuous translation over and over again in an attempt to deny the genocidal intent inherent in the meaning the victims themselves have given to the phrase.

In a parallel development, influential Armenian-American writers and editors have uncritically adopted this translation. We have come to the point where many readers and writers, Armenian and non-Armenian alike, appear to be sincerely convinced that the word “yeghern” has meant “calamity” over the past hundred years. This article, the first in a series, will explore the birth of “calamity” after Pope John Paul II and President George W. Bush used Medz Yeghern.

Medz Yeghern: Setting the Record Straight

Vartan Matiossian

 

Too much fuss has been made about the use of the expression Medz Yeghern instead of "Armenian Genocide" since His Holiness John Paul II used it, for the first time by a foreign dignitary, when visiting Armenia in 2001. You can stretch it as much as you want, but the fact is that it literally means "Great Crime" (or whatever synonym of "crime" you may like) and nothing else. It is synonymous with Medz Vojir (a term also used in the years after the Genocide; Aram Andonian gave this title to his book in Armenian, the original to the book known in English as "Memoirs of Naim Bey"), and yeghernakordz means exactly the same as vojrakordz, namely, "criminal." Neither "cataclysm," nor "catastrophe," nor "calamity" (the one preferred by Turkish writers; I wonder who was the Armenian author of this mistranslation) will do justice to its meaning.