North Shore Sunday, MA
Sept 8 2007
Massacre or genocide? ADL controversy renews war over words
By Barbara Taormina/North Shore Sunday
GateHouse News Service
Sat Sep 08, 2007, 12:28 PM EDT
NORTH SHORE –
Last May, when Andrew Tarsy gave the commencement speech at
Governor’s Academy in Byfield, he offered up some of that
inspirational advice you hear a lot at high school graduations.
Tarsy, the director of the New England chapter of the Anti-Defamation
League, gave the graduates several suggestions, including the
well-worn tip that it’s always best to follow your principles. He did
mention that it’s tough to be true to your beliefs, but it was a
graduation ceremony and odds are no predictions about possible
adversity were enough to dampen a day generally filled with parties,
congratulations and great gifts.
But if the graduates of Governor’s Academy were keeping up with the
news over the summer, they saw Tarsy live up to his own advice. On
Aug. 17, Tarsy was fired after he broke ranks with the national ADL
leadership and acknowledged that the systematic killing and
deportation of a million and a half Armenians living in Turkey in
1915 was, in fact, genocide.
Despite the personal accounts of the death marches, the horrific
photos of murder victims and refugees and the thousands of newspaper
clips and documents that recount the tragic episode, the ADL has long
been involved in a carefully nuanced dance on the issue. They have
consistently called for reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia
over what they have referred to as `the massacres.’
But, because the league did not want to jeopardize the political
alliances between Turkey, a moderate Muslim nation, and Israel, it
backed away from the word `genocide.’ And it did a complete duck and
cover when it came to a Congressional resolution that would have the
United States formally recognize the Armenian genocide.
But last month, the ADL was forced to confront the issue when Tarsy
told Abraham Foxman, the national director of the league, that the
ADL’s position was `morally indefensible.’ Tarsy then went on to
publicly acknowledge the Armenian genocide – a move that ended up
costing him his job.
The ADL leadership offered the excuse that it doesn’t tolerate its
employees making public statements that defy the League’s position.
But when the ADL came face to face with the hue and cry from Armenian
groups, Jewish supporters and other human rights organizations who
supported Tarsy, they blinked. By late last week, Tarsy was back at
his desk issuing public statements and trying to heal fresh wounds.
`I am proud that the ADL has made a very significant change
confronting a moral issue and acknowledging the Armenian genocide for
what it was,’ says Tarsy. `The Anti-Defamation League has important
work to do on such vital concerns as anti-Semitism, hate crimes,
civil rights, immigration reform and interfaith relations, and I look
forward to helping ADL make the world a better place.’
Meanwhile, Foxman was issuing his own apologetic statements and
trying to control the damage.
`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,’ says Foxman in one of several prepared
statements. `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.’
The question now is whether the phrase `tantamount to genocide’ is
enough to quell the controversy. Many seem to feel it’s not. And for
Armenian Americans who have been waiting for 92 years for recognition
of their history and for some public acknowledgement and support, the
ADL flare-up may, in fact, be the breeze that finally blew open the
door.
A history of sidestepping
Controversy surrounding the ADL position on the Armenian genocide
isn’t new. Beverly resident Judy Klein, a former editor of the
Salem-based Jewish Journal, remembers several years ago when the ADL
took out a full-page ad in the New York Times commending Turkey for
75 years of democracy and for the country’s record on upholding human
rights. In the editorial from its April 13, 2001 edition, the Journal
slammed both the ADL and Foxman for the ad.
`… Turkey also did everything in its power to annihilate an entire
people and, unlike Germany, has never offered an apology, expressed
remorse, or even admitted wrongdoing,’ reads the piece. `In fact,
while ADL and other Jewish groups decry Holocaust deniers, Turkey
continues to be unyielding in its denial of the Armenian Genocide.’
The Journal went on to say the ADL’s potion was hypocrisy, an
`ethnocentric myopia,’ that’s bad for the image of Jews in the world
and bad for Jewish kids who see their supposed role models using
double standards for right and wrong.
Even today, that ad still makes Klein, who is now the communications
director of Governor’s Academy, bristle.
`We as Jews have an obligation to recognize other acts of inhumanity
like the ones we have suffered,’ she says.
And Klein has a particular interest in promoting that solidarity
between the Jewish and Armenian communities. She is married to John
Soursourian, whose grandmother is a survivor of the Armenian
genocide. Soursourian’s grandfather was killed by the Turks – Klein
says he was probably marked for death because he was a photographer
capable of visually documenting what was happening in Turkey in 1915.
Soursourian’s grandmother survived a death march, and like other
Armenians, escaped to Syria and eventually made her way to the United
States.
`Our kids are half Jewish and half Armenian and this is certainly
something we feel strongly about as a family,’ says Klein, who, like
many, believes more needs to be done to tell the Armenian story. She
has spoken with history teachers at several area high schools and
insisted that when students study 20th century events and the
Holocaust that they also discuss the Armenian genocide.
`I’m still disappointed that history teachers don’t know more about
it,’ she says. `I am hoping what Andy has done will force educators
to recognize the importance of this. We are grateful to him.
Armenian reaction
Klein isn’t the only local person who’s grateful to Tarsy for taking
a stand. Many Armenian organizations, newspapers and leaders have
expressed thanks to Tarsy, including Peabody artist and filmmaker Apo
Torosyan, who for years has been telling the story of the Armenian
genocide through his painting and films.
`I feel it’s like when they dumped the tea in the harbor,’ says
Torosyan of the ADL controversy. `It was a tip of the iceberg that
started a revolution. It’s a miracle that scholars and the Jewish
lobby have come to the rescue of the Armenians. I feel grateful for a
gift like that.’
Torosyan, who grew up in Turkey, graduated from Istanbul’s Academy of
Fine Art in 1968. That same year, he emigrated to the United States
where he built a successful visual design company. In 1986, he sold
the business so he could devote his time exclusively to his own art,
which for decades now has been focused on the Armenian genocide.
During the ’70s Torosyan began working on a series of paintings and
constructed collages that used bread as a central theme, a universal
symbol of life. But as his `Bread Series’ developed, so too did its
political meaning. What began as a symbol or object of life for all
people became more personal.
`The bread, which is the staff of life, was taken away from my
ancestors,’ Torosyan writes. `It represents victims of oppression.
They died in starvation, including my grandparents. I immortalize the
bread within my concepts. It is an organic metaphor. It is the cycle
of life.’
The same type of progression can be seen in Torosyan’s films. In
2003, he produced `Discovering my Father’s Village’ which offers a
personal account of the destruction that took place during the
genocide. In a second film, `Witnesses,’ Torosyan interviews two
Armenian women who survived and lets them tell their stories.
But in the new 40-minute film `Voices,’ which premiered last April,
Torosyan went even further. The film features interviews with four
survivors of the political regime in Turkey during the early years of
the 20th century.
As children and young teens, they saw their homes being sacked and
burned. They watched as people in their villages were rounded up and
killed. And they had family members who were herded on death marches
where many died of starvation.
Torosyan has always stressed that he is an artist and not a
politician and that the goal of his work is to open up an honest
conversation about the past. But it’s been difficult.
For decades, the only time people seemed interested in the genocide
is in late April when Armenian communities throughout the United
States hold commemorative services to remember the one and half
million victims who were killed. The ADL controversy, as ugly as it’s
been, has at least focused some attention on the past.
`To see this recognition and exposure of the story which is
unbelievable but true is tremendous,’ says Torosyan.
End of story?
While both Armenians and Jews are pleased that Tarsy has been
reinstated, and thankful that the truth is being acknowledged, they
are not blindly optimistic about the next step – the Congressional
resolution that officially recognizes the genocide.
So far, 15 countries have acknowledged the suffering that took place
in Turkey. France and Switzerland have gone one better and called for
criminal charges against those who deny it was genocide.
But the United States has refused to take that stand and the ADL,
even with its conciliatory statements, continues to warn against such
a move.
`A Congressional resolution on such matters is a counterproductive
diversion and will not foster reconciliation between Turks and
Armenians and may put at risk the Turkish Jewish community and the
important multilateral relationship between Turkey, Israel and the
United States,’ says Foxman in one of his statements.
Although the ADL controversy may have given those pushing for a U.S.
resolution some momentum, Torosyan remains skeptical. He’s a realist
and the odds of the U.S. taking the high road when political
interests are at stake aren’t good.
Turkey’s official position on the genocide is that it was essentially
the government cracking down on a group of militant Armenian
revolutionaries. They blame the widespread death and destruction –
which in their version of events wasn’t so widespread – on the chaos
of World War I. That’s their story and they’re sticking to it.
And because of Turkey’s strategic location, its healthy economy, its
appetite for military hardware and its political position as a Muslim
ally of western democracies, Congress has, so far been unwilling to
pass the resolution.
`Money often wins and the U.S. isn’t going to bend to a tiny country
the size of Rhode Island,’ says Torosyan. `But I do hope there will
be some type of international law that will force recognition of the
Armenian genocide.’
But for now, Torosyan is thankful that people are at least talking
about what happened 92 years ago.
`We should share our history, even with all its pain,’ he says.
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