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Conspiracy of Silence - January 3, 2019 @ 5:00 pm
Posted on March 31, 2018 by Uri Noy Meir
Learning Journey to Senegal
“When survivors first arrived,” said psychiatrist Andrei Novac, himself the child of Holocaust survivors,
“they didn’t want to talk about it. When they did want to talk, therapists didn’t want to listen.” December 20, 2018 - January
5, 2019

At the February symposium on Inheriting Genocide and the intergenerational transmission of trauma,
Theatre For Social Healing in
he called this the Conspiracy of Silence.
Thailand
April 26, 2019 - April 28, 2019
The conspiracy certainly affects the Armenian community today. As clinician and researcher Christie
Tcharkhoutian recounted, as many as 300,000 Armenians were killed under the Ottoman Turk regime
in massacres in the mid-1890—and that’s decades before the extermination campaign carried out in View All Events
1915. Before 1915, two million Armenians lived in what is now Turkey; as many as 1.5 million were
killed. First the intellectuals (as in Cambodia) and nationalists, then any men encountered were
slaughtered and (as the world saw later in places like Bosnia and Rwanda), rape became an
instrument of genocide. Armenian women and children were sent on a forced death march into the
Syrian desert. Babies, infants, and young kids were abducted and handed off to Turkish, Kurdish, and
Bedouin families.

The Turkish government has never acknowledged any of this. Armenian survivors and the second and
third generation are haunted by words: “It never happened” or, if it did? “It was more than 100 years
ago. Get over it.”

Tcharkhoutian calls this “psychological genocide”: “How do you explain who you are to others as well diciembre 20, 2018 - enero 05, 2019
as to yourself when no one acknowledges the reality and validity of your past?” Under these
circumstances, Dr. Selina Mangassarian suggests that Armenians don’t experience survivors guilt, but Journey To Senegal
rather “anger, pain, and sadness.”
Senegal
Does that make you think of African Americans living with a legacy of slavery and everlasting racism?
Or peoples around the world burdened by a history of colonization. It’s a lot like what Dr. Natan
Kellermann called the “radioactive genocide effect: You can’t see it, can’t smell it, can’t prove it – but made with ♥ por

it’s in the air.” I think of Patrisse Khan-Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, who
says “anti-black racism is a public health crisis.” She has declared “A therapist should be a part of See previous events
every Black person’s reparations packet.” Though, just like many Holocaust survivors, Black people
sickened by the effects of racism often find therapists unwilling to hear them. Recent Articles
PTV 2018 – ImaginAction Lab in LA
I think of indigenous people in the US and around the world. In the aftermath of genocide, they Healing the wounds of History in
continued to face criminalization of their cultures and suppression of their languages. Dr. Carol A. Berlin
Hand, social worker and professor and enrolled member of the Ojibwe Community, has blogged about Intergenerational Trauma Part 5:
how her culturally informed suggestions and objections have been dismissed or ignored and unheard. Childhood Amnesia
Silenced. Intergenerational Trauma Part 4:
Theories of Transmission
I think of the conspiracy of silence around sexual abuse, only recently broken (and now, shamefully, The Intergenerational Transmission
implicating aid workers). I think of armed conflicts today when 90-95% of war deaths are civilians. In of Trauma Part 3: Surviving Survival
many countries of the world, who addresses the trauma of survivors of terrorist attacks? With so many
atrocities and war crimes globally on a daily basis, how are people affected when their suffering goes
unnoticed or is distorted by the media or when, after a momentary outcry, the world’s attention moves ImaginAction recommends
on to someone else’s plight? Teatro Ritual

In the face of such enormity, it’s daunting to imagine what an outside witness can offer.

We can’t pretend to know what an individual’s suffering and survival truly feel like, but we can be
nonjudgmental listeners who validate experience and encourage people to tell their own stories. We
can create a supportive community when we share these stories through the collective art of theater.
Past Events
Symposium panelist Cally Clein calls the Holocaust survivors she works with “historians and teachers”
Select Month
rather than “clients” or “patients”, treating them always as the experts in their own lives. At the Program
for Torture Victims, I work with “storytellers”. Asylum-seekers, staff, volunteers—we are all “PTV
brothers and sisters”—in spite of the organization’s name. (I was recently surprised and pleased to find
out that many PTV storytellers have no idea what the letters T & V stand for.) It’s a dilemma many of
us face: having to use dehumanizing language for legal purposes or grant applications or other
interactions with the world of official bureaucracy. Person-to-person, we can still choose affirming and
loving language.

From Cally Clein I also got the idea of giving storytellers control by offering them a container with a lid.
They open the lid when they are comfortable narrating their experience. They can shut it at any time
when they want to stop. To survive, Clein said, “they may have had to cross religious or ethical
boundaries and if they need to keep it secret, OK.” I would give a storyteller a third option: Open the lid
just a little and whisper the secret. Put it into words and get it out, but so quietly that no one else can
hear.

Maybe someday the whole story can be told without shame or fear. When that happens, I hope we all
know how to listen.

See you back on the website with the next installment soon.

Diane

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