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The History Podcast
Half-Life: 8. A Polished Stone
00:29:38
Joe meets the people battling to open the first public memorial for a forgotten massacre.
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- [00:01]
Joe Dunthorne
BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
- [00:06]
Belent Bilmez
I will be honest with you because nowadays in this world, everything, every shock, every trauma, you know, the so called shocks and trauma lasts one week, one month, and then it's over. I don't want to turn this meeting into a very dramatic thing and I don't know actually what you think about it, like sometimes you do hesitate to tell, tell people who you are, what role your grandparents could have been. Because don't forget, we are talking about chemical weapons, we are talking about crime against humanity, we are talking about killing of people by a state that was helped by maybe your grandfather. In that sense, I wonder how you feel and what you think after all of this.
- [00:56]
Joe Dunthorne
It's, I mean, I feel you've got to the, you got to the point really accurately. I was, I was. And still, you know, remain, I guess, a little scared to kind of openly talk about it because it feels, you know, how do I, how do I come to terms with that? I can't come to terms with that. That's really difficult. I'm Joe Dunthorne and you're listening to Half Life Episode 8 A Fracture. It was a Saturday morning in the spring of 2025, more than five years since I started looking into my family history. And I admit I was ready for a change. I didn't want to spend another minute reading about, for example, secondary infections in mustard gas blisters. At home in London, I was conducting one of my final interviews with a history professor I'd first met in Istanbul, Belent Bilmez. I mainly just wanted to ask him for clarity on a few points, fact check and tidy up so that I could finally put away my piles of documents.
- [02:30]
Belent Bilmez
And when you said, now, like, about that, it was heavy. On the one hand you said, but then you didn't want to think so much about it. It sounded like a defense mechanism, you know, like maybe you cannot come to terms with it or not in that way.
- [02:45]
Joe Dunthorne
He was right. But the sort of avoidance I'd been engaging in wasn't an option for everyone.
- [02:52]
Belent Bilmez
I was born into it. I mean, my generation was born into these stories in this trauma. It was everywhere. As a child, when you walk around, they tell you, oh, you asked for a place. It's after that place where that massacre took place. Or you pass by, they say, oh, there are still bones of people there. It was in everyday life, you know, like you grew up with it. And then I cannot deny that my relatives, my grandparents were killed for nothing, just for being from their sim or their ethnic or religious Background. And then of course, you think everybody knows it. And it's a kind of, in a sick way, in an unhealthy way, it's normal that it is there. I call it obsessed, but obsessed engagement with that, you know, like you are so much in it, you are almost too much in it. It's a trauma. You are too much in it. And the other world is too much out outside of it, based on denial, silence, extreme silence and denial.
- [04:04]
Joe Dunthorne
I admit there was comfort in knowing that I'd be able to edit this conversation after the fact, cut out any bits I didn't like the sound of.
- [04:13]
Belent Bilmez
You may start with your new project. And then in two years time when we meet, I said, you know, about Tersim, I found this. And then the reaction is, ah, I see, okay. Because that's normal.
- [04:27]
Joe Dunthorne
Or even change the subject entirely, to be honest.
- [04:30]
Belent Bilmez
When you write about this, at the same time, there was a massacre going on in Gaza. We were all watching. I don't know whether it's for you something that questions what you are doing. Because I'm saying this is a kind of projection, actually, because I have got this question in my mind the whole time.
- [04:53]
Joe Dunthorne
You mean why am I working on something that is in the past when similar things are happening?
- [05:00]
Belent Bilmez
I'm not saying why. No, no, it should be done. As an historian, we should do it. But what additional feelings or ideas it gives us, you know, like, of course it is there, we should talk about it and. Because if you wrote this in 1990s or 2000s, it would be different, I think, because we didn't have this ongoing thing. That's why I'm asking and I don't know.
- [05:23]
Joe Dunthorne
Yeah, I do think about that. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I. But a part of me thinks, is this almost an avoidance tactic? You know, I'm completely throwing myself into this history and this quite specific family story at the expense of staying present in the world around me in some way. So there is a question of that.
- [05:52]
Belent Bilmez
Yeah, exactly. That's what I meant. Because the same feelings I've got as well, and I mean consciously, I've got no problem with it. I can explain it. One of excuses for me could be that I'm an historian, it's my profession to work on this. Like, deep in me that question continues, which is difficult to answer. Am I kind of avoiding something very bad going on or not paying enough attention and then dealing with other things?
- [06:32]
Joe Dunthorne
Berlent suggested my producer Elena and I make contact with a man in Berlin, Kamal Karabalut, the chairman of the Dersim Federation. We had come to talk about a monument that was being built here in Kreuzberg in Berlin, what would be the world's first public memorial anywhere to the Dersim massacres of 1937 and 1938. But we kept being interrupted. His phone didn't stop ringing because as well as building the memorial, he was also in the middle of organizing a large scale protest in response to the latest news from Istanbul. Kemal was one of the leaders of a coalition of Turkish and Kurdish groups in Berlin, all calling for the immediate release of Ekrem Imamulu, the mayor of Istanbul, considered to be the politician with the best chance of democratically defeating President Erdogan. Imamullu had been arrested on corruption and terrorism charges, along with dozens of his staff and officials, sparking the biggest protests in Turkey in more than a decade. While the Turkish government rejected claims of political interference, Imam Alu's arrest had been widely seen as Erdogan acting to suppress the opposition. In other words, we had not come at a good time. Kamal took us outside to show us something in a nearby park. We stood with him next to a fenced off concrete plinth. This was where, all being well, in two weeks time, they would unveil the memorial stone.
- [08:23]
Kamal Karabalut
So the day before yesterday, the memorial was shipped from Istanbul to Germany and it's now arrived here. Here.
- [08:31]
Belent Bilmez
Okay.
- [08:34]
Kamal Karabalut
So now we go take a look at it.
- [08:36]
Joe Dunthorne
Oh, wow. Kemal took us to a covered wooden shelter at the back of the building Behind a locked fence wrapped in plastic sheeting. Having completed its long journey from DSIM via Istanbul was a large boulder, 3 tons of sandstone with a single fracture running right through the middle of it. Could you talk about the text? Presumably there's going to be a text accompanying the memorial. What will it say?
- [09:17]
Kamal Karabalut
So it's not completed because they were afraid that it wouldn't be released from Turkish customs.
- [09:24]
Joe Dunthorne
So you were waiting for the stone to arrive?
- [09:26]
Kamal Karabalut
They were waiting for the stone to arrive here before they.
- [09:32]
Joe Dunthorne
Back in 2013, construction was almost complete on a large scale memorial in the mountains of Dersim. When the project was abruptly shut down, the stones remained there, unmarked and unfinished, stripped of significance, except as a reminder of what shouldn't be said. That this Dersim memorial was being built 1600 miles away from Dersim itself told its own story. But there were other reasons the stone had ended up in Berlin.
- [10:07]
Belent Bilmez
My English I have no problems in.
- [10:09]
Joe Dunthorne
Understanding, but some discussions are not easy.
- [10:14]
Belent Bilmez
So I prefer German. Okay.
- [10:17]
Joe Dunthorne
Yeah. Kai Akbalut, a German Kurdish politician based in Berlin, came to Germany as a child.
- [10:25]
Kamal Karabalut
So she arrived in 1990 as a refugee child here in Germany. And part of her family was forced into exile in 38. So she's always had a relationship with Dersim. There are around 200,000 people who are from Dersim living in Germany. In 2017, she became a member of parliament and has been working for various committees within it. And at the heart of that has always been for rights and activism of Kurdish people in the Kurdish community and for remembering this history, for honoring this history and having that be closely looked at and investigated.
- [11:01]
Joe Dunthorne
Girkay was one of a group of politicians and organisers who brought questions about the Dersim massacres to the German parliament, the Bundestag, in 2019.
- [11:12]
Kamal Karabalut
In April, they sent in this request, which was done together with the Dersim Foundation. And they had many questions about the response, responsibility, the role of Germany, which was quite a challenging and difficult process within itself.
- [11:29]
Joe Dunthorne
They asked, what knowledge does the federal government have of previously unseen documents from Turkish state archives about the ordering of chemical weapons from Germany? By then, Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
- [11:44]
Kamal Karabalut
Germany is responsible in the sense that there was chemical, gas, military weapons before it came to genocide.
- [11:53]
Joe Dunthorne
They wanted the German government to lead the investigation into which company supplied the chemical weapons used in Dersim. And that would mean a thorough search through the records of companies like the Auer Gesellschaft, where my great grandfather worked. The government's reply was carefully worded and avoidant. The federal government recognizes the suffering of the victims and their descendants. However, the process of historical and political reckoning must primarily take place within Turkey. We wrote to the Bundestag asking if this position had changed since 2019, but they told us their answer remained the same.
- [12:38]
Kamal Karabalut
It was a very frustrating experience for the people, for the community. There is so much proof, there are so many witnesses, and Germany refuses to take its responsibility. And the German government itself wants nothing to do with it. They're removing themselves from the equation. They're not looking at archives that exist. They're not providing access to them either. So they're frustrated.
- [13:04]
Joe Dunthorne
After showing us the monument wrapped in plastic, Kamal took us back to his office.
- [13:10]
Kamal Karabalut
Please don't be shocked by his desktop because he said this is his preparation work and he wants to quickly jump into everything. He's now going to show what's on the stone. So it says, we condemn all genocide that has happened in the history of humankind and we share the suffering of all communities that have experienced It.
- [13:43]
Joe Dunthorne
He's obviously been working on this for a long time. How does he feel to finally have the stone here in the memorial almost open?
- [13:52]
Kamal Karabalut
So in his childhood and beyond, he's walked through the spaces where German gas was used, and he's seen bones, he's seen horrific things. So he feels like he can finally share this weight and share this pain with the world. So he said, I feel. You asked me how I feel, and I feel like a winner because I'm excited that finally this pain that I've been born with that's been living in my heart can be shared to the outside world and shown to the outside world. And there's a sense of relief in that.
- [14:32]
Belent Bilmez
Then we have this Velcro mode.
- [14:52]
Joe Dunthorne
Kemal's phone rang, and I watched a tear run down his cheek while he continued to deal with the many complex practicalities for the protest. While showing us the memorial stone, he'd mentioned in passing that he knew which German company supplied the chemical weapons to Turkey in 1937.
- [15:15]
Belent Bilmez
Oranimbuk.
- [15:16]
Joe Dunthorne
Oh, yeah. That's the hour.
- [15:18]
Esgy Kuluncasla
Yeah.
- [15:18]
Belent Bilmez
In Weltfer.
- [15:20]
Kamal Karabalut
The main production was in North Berlin, in Oranienburg. And your great grandfather worked for this company?
- [15:33]
Joe Dunthorne
That's right, yeah. That's incredible. And how does he. Where did you know about the. I haven't heard that before. I realized I hadn't asked him what I most needed to ask.
- [15:44]
Kamal Karabalut
He said he likes Kego Interact. Okay, great.
- [15:46]
Joe Dunthorne
And now we were running out of time for our interview. I do have last questions, but how much time does he have?
- [15:52]
Kamal Karabalut
He inside times enough.
- [15:54]
Joe Dunthorne
He has kain sight.
- [15:55]
Kamal Karabalut
He has no time.
- [15:56]
Joe Dunthorne
He has no time. My personal family story was understandably not his number one priority. But I couldn't stop thinking about what he'd said. I'd never really considered that the gas used in Dersim might have come directly from my great grandfather's laboratory in Oranienburg. That was a level of accountability I couldn't bring myself to live with. With our interpreter, Francesca, we walked with Kemal along the canal to his next meeting. If my great grandfather's company did supply the poison gases to Turkey, I'd always assumed that it would all have come from the larger org acid factory south of Berlin, which was capable of producing hundreds of tons of mustard gas each month. It occurred to me now that since the Turkish government had only ordered 20 tons, that was well within the production capabilities of my great grandfather's smaller laboratory in Oranienburg. You mentioned. We talked briefly about the Auger Zellschaft and the chemical weapons being sold to Turkey. Could he tell us? He obviously knows things that I don't know. Could he tell us what he knows about German chemical weapons going to Turkey in 1937 or 38? On his phone he showed us a photo of the headquarters of the Auer Gesellschaft, the company for whom my great grandfather worked.
- [17:35]
Kamal Karabalut
So the gas was put into large trucks, sort of pickup trucks or minivans, and that was brought to this building that he was referring to. And this building has in front of it like a small port. And then it was transported onto small ships and these small ships drove to the oste.
- [17:55]
Joe Dunthorne
It was strange to hear Kemal in his offhand way, while halfway to another meeting, appearing to answer the most important question about my family's history. Does he think from his research that the Aur Gazelle shop were the German company who supplied the gas that was used then in the Dersim massacres?
- [18:26]
Kamal Karabalut
So he's saying he came to this thought because through documentations and conversation with the Berlin Embassy, that he found out that this specific gas was only produced here in Oranienburg, in this building. So he followed his research and spoke with the head of this company in Bavaria and asked, does he know awa? Does he know is it possible to sort of receive information and archive material? And this head of the company laughed and said, it's so long ago, of course it doesn't exist. We've laughed it off.
- [19:05]
Joe Dunthorne
After speaking to Kemal, we did try and fail to locate the company he'd spoken to. We also took his claims to Professor Johannes Preuss, an expert on German chemical weapons production who was unable to verify them, at least not yet. Professor Preuss told us he would investigate, but it would take time, he said. I admit I was relieved. I realised how much I needed that little bit of doubt all along. Through my research, I'd needed to believe that I might soon learn I'd got it all wrong and there was nothing to worry about. I only understood how important to me that doubt was now that I'd met someone who didn't have any. I saw Kamal again the next day at the protest near Alexanderplatz. There were a few hundred people with placards around a small stage, while police officers stood well back, observing. I found him in a yellow, high visibility waistcoat near the front of the crowd, stretching out a banner. It was too noisy to chat, but he smiled and hugged me, then patted my sides in a way that I found indescribably comforting. It was Sunday 4 May in Berlin, a windy day in an ordinary park beside a four lane road. The monument stone itself was loosely wrapped with a shawl around its shoulders. The atmosphere was reverent, but social groups of people hugging and chatting. While the Dersim Federation had opened up their building to offer strong coffee in baklava, Kemal gave the first speech of the day. And all the while the covered stone felt like an almost human presence, silent and waiting.
- [21:03]
Tanner Akcam
This is the first monument to remember the Darsim genocide in the world. I mean, in Turkey they cannot remember, they are lost, they cannot remember, they are not allowed politically. They are still under pressure. I hope that this will be an important place for the Arsemi people and for all people from Turkey to come and remember the human rights abuses in Turkish history.
- [21:30]
Joe Dunthorne
This was Professor Tanner Akcam. He was the person I'd first spoken to about my great grandfather's possible involvement in bringing German chemical weapons to Turkey and who helped me understand the the significance of my great grandfather's actions. From the stage, Tanner introduced his speech in German, then switched to Turkish. We are morally obligated to remember the victims, he said, and to restore their human dignity. To carry out mass killings, perpetrators must first strip their victims of their humanity. What makes murder possible is the ability to say, I didn't kill a human being. The Nazis defined Jews as microbes and bacteria. In 1937-38, they coded the Kermansh and Zazar peoples of Dirsim as harmful weeds or tumors to be destroyed. This is not mere hate speech. It is the psychological infrastructure of mass murder. Monuments are like gravestones for those whose resting places we do not know. At 4pm the crowd moved closer and the monument was unveiled. The shawl pulled back, revealing the two halves of the broken stone. Then slowly, the plinths on which they stood were turned so that the fracture was laid open.
- [23:14]
Esgy Kuluncasla
My name is Esgy Kuluncasla. I am the artist who did the monument. The monument comes from this very simple idea. The stone would break, I mean, with this pain. This stone comes from the place where there were lots of massacre. One of the big massacre was happening. And I believe like that things can keep the memory. And so the stone as well, like it has a memory.
- [23:46]
Joe Dunthorne
People stepped forward to lay their hands on the surface of the stone.
- [23:51]
Esgy Kuluncasla
I just look at the people's eyes. I think it's. I cannot describe, you know, because you see this deep pain, but you see that they have a connection with this stone and find this way to start to heal.
- [24:15]
Joe Dunthorne
Some people laid roses beside it and everyone took a photo on Their phone. The pictures then got forwarded on, rippling out in the group chats, so that the stone, which had already crossed borders to get here, now travelled even further. Later on, I kept thinking about Professor Akcam's speech and its opening lines. Anthropologists say that the primary reflex of human memory is to forget. It's impossible for individuals or societies to remember everything they've experienced. Forgetting is a necessary condition for new action. The real question is, out of all the events doomed to be forgotten, which ones should we choose to remember and through what mechanisms should we make them unforgettable? An unspoken trauma is like a lump caught in the throat, he wrote. It suffocates relationships. If you cannot speak about your past, you cannot build your future.
- [25:27]
Belent Bilmez
It's for me still now, too early to know or to think of this as two grandchildren from two sides are now sitting together, okay, talking to each other or not as bullet. Who is from that region whose grandparents were killed by the Turkish state by. During that genocide, some of which might have been killed by those chemical weapons your grandparent was involved in producing, transporting, or in one way or other that could be only realized, like meeting face to face, talking about it, facing the past and dealing with the past. You should read history reading, rather than.
- [26:28]
Joe Dunthorne
Listening to me, listening back to all.
- [26:31]
Belent Bilmez
The interviews to learn this properly.
- [26:34]
Joe Dunthorne
Yeah. I was struck that what felt most honest in my responses. Well, I'm just after the good stories, really, Granny, was my inability to respond. Right, okay, that's interesting. When I was sitting there twisting and spinning in my discomfort.
- [26:53]
Tanner Akcam
You're a great grandfather or grand enemy to his grandfather.
- [27:00]
Joe Dunthorne
Correct. Failing again and again to turn the past into something neat or make an ending out of it. And then I felt like I just shut down and had to. I'd like to crawl underground for a bit. It was within those evasions, hesitations and silences that I could feel the shame I kept trying to avoid to make me cry. And then when he was so kind to me, I was just.
- [27:34]
Ophelia Byrne
I just.
- [27:35]
Joe Dunthorne
Yeah, couldn't take it. The bits I wanted to edit out were the bits I needed to keep. Half Life was written and presented by me, Joe Dunthorne, and based on my book, Children of Radiance. This podcast was produced and sound designed by Eleanor McDowell and mixed by Mike Woolley. The translator in Berlin was Francesca Schweiger. The music was composed by Jeremy Walmsley. The story consultant was Sarah Geiss, and the executive producer was Alan Hall. The commissioning editor was Daniel Clark. It was a Falling tree production for BBC Radio 4 and the History Podcast.
- [28:51]
Ophelia Byrne
I'm Ophelia Byrne and from BBC Radio Ulster and BBC Radio 4, this is assume Nothing Killer Dust, the story of how a 1960s headline about a secretive factory opening just outside Belfast led me on a trail into corporate espionage, cover up and death. From New York to Northern Ireland and countless UK factories in between, few towns are left untouched by the legacy of asbestos. Newly discovered documents reveal who knew what and when, and perhaps explain why workers at that curious factory opening had to sign oaths of secrecy. Assume Nothing Killer Dust. Listen first on BBC Sounds.