The Struggle towards Remembrance of the ‘Forgotten Genocide’

Bobelian’s account pays tribute to many individual Armenians who fought tirelessly in their people’s cause to achieve not only the moral recognition of the Armenian Genocide, but also the political reality of its statehood.
Among them were Armen Garo, who in 1896 led the takeover of the Ottoman Bank; Avedis Aharonian, who represented the Armenian Republic in the post-World War I peace talks, and who signed the Treaty of Sevres in 1920; Krikor Zorab, an Armenian member of the Ottoman Parliament who was murdered in the early stages of the Genocide; Michael Minasian, who led the efforts in California in the 1960s to build a Genocide memorial; Van Z. Krikorian, who lobbied ceaselessly in the 1980s for the passage of a resolution in the US Congress to recognize the Genocide and Vartkes Yeghiayan, who filed the successful class-action lawsuit against the New York Life Insurance Company for the settlement of policies issued to Armenians during the period of the Genocide.

There are also accounts of Armenians who chose violence to avenge wrongs, in particular of Soghomon Tehlirian, who assassinated Talaat Pasha in Berlin in 1933. Bobelian provides an extended description of the assassination in 1973 of two Turkish diplomats in California by Gourgen Yanikian. In his portrayal of Yanikian, he underlines how frustration and rage at the lack of justice can influence an individual’s mental state.

Bobelian also traces the interdependence between the United States and Turkey back to the efforts of Admiral Mark Bristol after World War I to defeat the Armenian mandate and to champion Turkey’s interests in increased trade with the US and diplomatic relations with the new nation of Turkey formed under the leadership of Kemal Ataturk.

With the absorption of Armenia into the Soviet Union, the Armenian cause faltered, and those who had escaped the Genocide found themselves in new countries, faced with the challenge of rebuilding their lives. Many tried to put the horrors of the Genocide behind them. Some individuals even changed their names, denying their Armenian identity.
It was not until 1965 — the 50th anniversary of the Genocide — that the Armenian community began to unite in its efforts to achieve recognition. Since that time, memorials have been built, more than a handful of nations have recognized the Genocide, and yearly resolutions have been filed in the US Congress for recognition. But geopolitical interests have continued to trump moral concerns. With Turkey a member of NATO and a convenient base for US interests in the Middle East, the congressional resolution has been defeated every time up to the present.

Still, Bobelian can point to some positive developments: the statements by such leading Turkish intellectuals such as Taner Akçam and novelist Orhan Pamuk that acknowledge the Genocide, the holding of a conference on Turkish soil to discuss the Genocide and a spate of newly-published and widely-distributed books that highlight the facts of the Genocide.

He notes, “Few mainstream works other than Franz Werfel’s Forty Days of Musa Dagh touched the subject.” [the Genocide]. In contrast to the Holocaust, which was written about by a host of talented eyewitness writers such as Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, to name but two, the Genocide, for many decades, remained largely the province of amateur accounts, many of which were not translated from Armenian. Those who might have written more eloquently and persuasively were among the first victims of the Armenian Genocide — the intellectuals.