First They Came … A Response to Danielian's “A Century of Silence”

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemollor (Marcuse, Harold. Sep. , )

I'm both honored and overwhelmed by the charge of responding to Dr. Danielian's extraordinary contribution (Danielian, 2010). Its achievement as an expression of psychoanalytic thinking is subordinate to its achievement as a moral document written in ink and tears. In what follows, I will try to organize the flood of my emotions and thoughts, a reaction that is the protective reflex of dissociation to a courageous historical document, hoping that the reasons for using the adjective “courageous” will become evident. I do not feel I have much to add substantively to Dr. Danielian's exploration of the relationships among survivors, witnesses, bystanders, and perpetrators beyond hoping that my comments somehow contribute to a thought process in which we pursue the Sisyphusan labor of attending to, retaining, holding on, remembering, memorializing the unique Historical Trauma of the Armenian people, that is, bringing some sound to the awful silence.

Dr. Danielian, in the face of the mind's urgency to dissociate, sets forth his purpose in his title and repeats it throughout his text: he's intent on breaking through a century of silence, to giving presence to a deafening