Episode 4 – Franz Werfel : How a Writer Was Duped by an Armenian Bishop into Writing the “40 Days Of Musa Dagh”

My friend, Franz Werfel, of Vienna, Austria, a writer, wrote a book entitled THE 40 DAYS AT MUSSA DAGH, a history of the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. The story was told him by his friend, the Armenian Bishop of Vienna and Werfel never doubted the Bishop’s account. He did not investigate what he wrote. Years later, when the true facts about Musa Dagh were established by the research of neutral investigators – which was never denied by the Armenians – Werfel discovered that he had been duped by his friend, the Bishop, with a concocted story. Werfel confessed to me his shame and remorse for having written that story, in which he had blamed the Ottomans as the aggressors and terrorists.