Guest Column

Dove Award

Recognizing Genocide

la

n April 24,1915, the Turkish
Ottoman Interior Ministry
issued an order for the
arrest of Armenian political and com-
munity leaders in Turkey. On that day,
approximately 1,800 intellectuals and
community leaders, mostly in Istanbul,
were arrested and eventually put to
death. It is the start of the Armenian
Genocide. The long, wretched cara-
vans from the provinces of Sebastia,
Moush, Erzerum,
Kharpert and Der Zor
were horrific journeys
of disease, starvation or
attacks that led to con-
centration camps or the
Syrian desert, and ended
in the destruction of 1.5
million people.
By 1919, for every
Armenian who survived,
two did not. The "aban-
doned" assets and prop-
erties were seized by the
state or by Turks, under new laws of
appropriation and formed part of the
wealth on which the modern Turkish
state is founded.
My grandfather Hagop Oshagan,
one of the leading writers of Armenian
literature, would tell of a knock on his
door on the night of April 23 by an
unknown young man who warned him
not to stay there that night. On the
run for the next two years, he finally
made his way to Bulgaria and was able
to survive. Almost all Armenians liv-
ing in the diaspora today have a story
of relatives who were able to escape.
The individual stories of survival
weave together the narrative of the
nightmare for all the voices that were
silenced.
In the past 100 years, scholars in
genocide and Holocaust studies have
amassed an impressive record of
research into the Armenian Genocide,
from archival documents to forensic
evidence, to oral histories.
Even as it was occurring, German,
French, British and Russian diplo-
mats referred to it as a crime against
humanity, often imploring their gov-
ernments to intercede.
After World War I, U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson was personally
involved in drafting official compensa-
tion to Armenians, while the British
set up a tribunal to punish the Turkish
perpetrators. That it all came to
naught is a testament to political
expediency. Turkey's geopolitical posi-
tion has served it well.
The Armenian Genocide was

planned in detail and executed with
precision, and the evidence of geno-
cide is indisputable. Truth and politics,
however, do not always go together.
Over the past few decades, Turkey
has engaged in a state-funded and
organized official campaign of denial
of the genocide. And many of its
political allies, including the U.S., have
gone along under constant threats of
Turkish reprisal.
The euphemisms of "con-
flict," "controversy" and
"massacres" have long
become the language of our
State Department. Senators
John Kerry, Joe Biden and
Barack Obama all acknowl-
edged the genocide, but in
brazen displays of moral fail-
ing, the secretary of state,
vice president and president
avoid it. The amnesia extends
into Turkey itself, where
denial is state rhetoric, part
of official school curricula, and where
Section 301 of the criminal code tries
to jail any Turk publicly affirming the
genocide (as Nobel Prize winning
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk found
out in 2005).
This month, Armenians worldwide
commemorate the 100th anniversary
of the genocide. It is both a solemn
moment of remembrance as well as a
political moment of activism. It should
not be this way.
It is difficult enough to remember
one's lost family, to see old photos of
smiling faces who were never to grow
up, to hear the heartbreaking stories
of loss and the silent moments
of quiet longing. It is all the more
difficult when we also have to
struggle for truth and justice.
Along with the memorials will
be demonstrations, marches
and protests in front of Turkish
embassies, consulates and in
Turkey itself as well as in Times
Square in New York City and cit-
ies across the world. There will
be resolutions and declarations
in parliaments and governments
worldwide, and in the European
Union, to recognize the geno-
cide. The genocide recognition
bill in Congress is Resolution
154. We should all support it.
This is also the time when
Jews commemorate the
Holocaust. Our two peoples are
joined by our national experi-
ences of tragedy, barely 20
years apart. We all know of

Susan Brown Lewis
to be feted May 5.

Hitler's Obersalzberg speech to the
Wehrmacht commanders on Aug. 22,
1939. Arguing for living space (leb-
ensraum), Hitler ends his speech by
asking rhetorically, "Who, after all,
speaks today of the annihilation of the
Armenians?"
And it was the Jewish jurist Raphael
Lemkin who coined the word "geno-
cide" in 1944, in reference to the
Armenian and Jewish mass killings,
for which there was no word.
But in truth, we are joined by a
great many people, for what happened
starting in 1915 and 1933 were crimes
against all of humanity. And we have
all learned something since. We have
learned that there is no peace without
justice, that there can be no lasting
peace anywhere where there is injus-
tice, where there is no accountability
and no responsibility. This is impunity.
And this has become the basis of an
entire system of transnational justice,
whereby all the nations and peoples
of the world share a responsibility to
each other to prevent genocides and
to punish perpetrators of gross viola-
tions of human rights.
Turkey's impunity for the crime
of genocide will eventually come
to an end. Turkey needs to accept
its history, recognize the genocide,
apologize for it and come to a dis-
cussion of reparations. This is what
Armenians demand. We should all
demand it.

❑

Hayg Oshagan is president of New Michigan

Media and director of Media Arts & Studies

at Wayne State University, Detroit.

Dry Bone

UN SAYS ISRAEL, NOT
NORTH KREA, OR
VIOLA T OR
IRAN,
WORST
SYRIA
OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN
THE WORLD!

e001 111

c Atfoi

Ted had no doybt that watching
the news was driving him crazy.

www.drybones.com

he Jewish Hospice and
Chaplaincy Network will pres-
ent the Grand Circle of Women's
2015 Dove Award to community activist
and JHCN board member Susan Brown
Lewis on Tuesday, May 5, at the Berman
Center for the Performing Arts in West
Bloomfield.
The tribute will take place at 7:30
p.m., followed by a
special screening of The
Embrace of Dying, How
we deal with the end of
life. This is the final film
in an explorative series
on aging and dying
created by 10-time
Michigan Emmy Award
Susan Brown
recipient Executive
Lewis
Producer Keith Famie.
Lewis is a commu-
nity philanthropist whose commitment
to elderly Jews was instilled in her by
her parents, the late Dorothy and Peter
Brown. When her parents founded
the Dorothy and Peter Brown Jewish
Community Adult Day Care Program,
Susan and her husband, Bart, also par-
ticipated. The Lewises continue to endow
the Brown Adult Day Care Program, and
Susan sits on its board.
Dorothy, Susan and Bart founded and
dedicated the Dorothy and Peter Brown
Memory Care Pavilion in memory of
Peter Brown at the Fleischman Residence,
a home for Jewish elderly with demen-
tia or memory impairments. A lifelong
Detroiter, Susan Lewis is also active
in Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit, AIPAC and ADL in Florida.
The Grand Circle of Women's purpose
is to develop and sponsor educational
programming on Jewish hospice issues
for women by women. Andi Wolfe is the
group's founder and first recipient of the
GCOW Dove Award. Dana Burnstein is
the current GCOW chair.
The evening will also celebrate the
many women professionals and volun-
teers who work with the JHCN team to
serve the community's terminally ill.
Gail Danto is the event chairperson.
Tribute co-chairs include Gloria Colton,
Ellen Kirsch, Lainie Lipschutz, Elizabeth
Giller, Rose Rita Goldman, Barbara
Nemer, Marilynn Weiss, Julie Winkelman
and Nancy Zide.
A patron-only pre-screening dinner
is scheduled. Patron tickets range from
$180-$3,600. A dessert afterglow is also
planned. Tickets begin at $36 for the
film screening, program and afterglow.
For patron or film screening tickets, call
(248) 592-2687.

❑

JN

April 23 • 2015

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