“Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” - Adolf Hitler.
So queried the leader of Nazi Germany on August 22, 1939, as plans to invade Poland and ramp up the Final Solution were laid out in his famed Obersalzberg Speech. One-hundred years later, what many of us in Jewish community see as the intellectual forebear to the Holocaust remains denied vehemently by Turkey to the point of recalling Ambassadors from counties who accept the overwhelming evidence of genocide.
Today is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. Join me below the squiggle for some uniquely Jewish perspectives on an atrocity that not only inspired the Holocaust, but whose denial rings eerily similar to white supremacist Holocaust denial.
Almost eight years ago I called for the ouster of Anti-Defamation League President Abe Foxman for appeasing Turkey's denial of the Genocide. I wasn't alone in this--Jewcy.com ran a poignant editorial calling for Foxman to be fired. Jewcy's Joey Kurtzman wrote, in part:
It is a scandal of unprecedented proportion when one of the most prominent figures in our community, a man who claims to speak on our behalf, publicly challenges the historicity of another community’s genocide. Foxman’s ADL no longer represents the interests of the Jewish community. In fact, it seems the only interests it represents are its own.
Boston's ADL chapter was having
none of it. For his part, the New England Regional Director for the ADL, Andrew Tarsy, days after half-heartedly defending the position of the national organization, had enough and broke from the official position:
"I strongly disagree with ADL's national position," Tarsy said in an interview with the [Boston] Globe, declining to explain his change of stance. "It's my strong hope that we'll be able to move forward in a relationship with the Armenian community and the community in general."
For doing the right thing, Tarsy was
subsequently fired. In protest, Stewart L. Cohen, former chairman of Polaroid, and Boston City Councilman Mike Ross both resigned their positions on the New England ADL's board, and Jewish leaders in Boston went public with their anger.
I had the good fortune to meet Andrew Tarsy a few years later at a charitable fundraiser and told him how I supported his stance. Last week, Tarsy referenced the ADL saga in a Tablet Magazine column. The whole thing is worth a read, but I share his sentiment in particular on the following:
The American Jewish community would be wise to retire two morally and strategically bankrupt imperatives that have contributed mightily to this morass.
The first of these feckless imperatives is that anything said to be necessary for Israel’s safety and Jewish security can be justified without rigorous and transparent analysis. The days of deference to the individual judgments of national leaders on issues of strategic importance have to end, no matter how experienced those leaders are. Recent examples of the new landscape where individuals and communities make up their own minds and adopt a wide array of opinions are Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge in Gaza and the recent Israeli elections.
A second imperative we must fully let go of is that the Holocaust has to be insulated from comparison and even commemoration alongside other catastrophic crimes like the Armenian genocide. As media outlets have reported, the Anti-Defamation League has for decades had a policy prohibiting its regional offices from participating in Holocaust-related events jointly with organizations focused on the Armenian genocide. If the ban has been lifted, there is certainly no evidence of the organization moving beyond it today. Holocaust museums and genocide-studies programs have crossed this bridge already. They have rigorous methods for managing the analysis responsibly, and there is no sign of damage to any of the important histories that need to be remembered.
Tarsy's belief is a growing one in the Jewish community. Today
Ha'aretz reports that the Union for Reform Judaism (either a plurality or outright majority of US Jews are Reform) has called on President Obama to cease hemming and hawing on the issue and formally recognize the Armenian Genocide:
“Failing to call the slaughter of over 1.5 mission Armenians in 1915 ‘genocide,’ diminishes the suffering of those who were annihilated," said URJ President Rabbi Rick Jacobs
Much along the lines of Tarsy's piece, Jeffrey Salkin draws the obvious parallels between the Holocaust and its inspiration in Turkey in the
Washington Post:
Why should Jews be talking about this? Because when we look at the Armenians, it is as if we are looking in the mirror.
Here’s how it happened. In the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, the Armenians were seen as a foreign element in Turkish society — and, in this sense, they occupied the same place as the Jews of the Ottoman Empire.
Like the Jews, the Armenian Christians challenged the traditional hierarchy of Ottoman society.
Like the Jews, they became better-educated, wealthier and more urban.
Like “the Jewish problem” that would be frequently discussed in Germany, Turks talked about “the Armenian question.”
The sentiment is shared by Jewish-Armenian Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-CA), who is in Armenia today as part of the US government's official delegation. "I intend to speak the truth wherever I go. It is long past time for all nations, including the United States, to recognize the full horror imposed by the Ottoman empire and talk clearly about history,” said
Rep. Speier.
A central tenet of modern Judaism is the concept of "Tikkun Olam." The phrase literally means "world repair." It is commonly used to refer to the pursuit of social action and social justice. Part of that is giving the massacred their due. As for Abe Foxman and the ADL--they were convinced to see the errors of their ways shortly after L'Affaire Boston:
We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities. On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide. If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide.
I have consulted with my friend and mentor Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and other respected historians who acknowledge this consensus. I hope that Turkey will understand that it is Turkey's friends who urge that nation to confront its past and work to reconcile with Armenians over this dark chapter in history.
President Obama, if Abe Foxman can do this, so can you.
Tikkun Olam, heal the world. Recognize the Armenian Genocide. As we approach Shabbat on the East Coast, I can think of no greater mitzvah today.