Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Relatives of massacred Armenians win New York life insurance claims

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Relatives of massacred Armenians win New York life insurance claims

    Agence France Presse -- English
    January 30, 2005 Sunday 5:25 AM GMT

    Relatives of massacred Armenians win New York life insurance claims

    YEREVAN

    Just a kindergartner during the 1915-1917 massacre of Armenians,
    Petros Petrosyan, who saw his parents and baby sister killed in the
    dying years of the Ottoman Empire, never expected a big Manhattan
    life insurance payout.

    But Petros knew little of a New York policy his father took out in
    those brutal days that could now pay off after nearly a century and
    so many generations.

    Petros's daughter-in-law Anaid is trying to cash in on an
    extraordinary case that has startled the Manhattan bankers and
    thrilled the survivors of a period in history that nearly erased much
    of Christian Armenia from the map.

    For the New York Life Insurance company has finally pledged to pay
    back what it owed to relatives of those killed during one of the
    starkest periods of World War I.

    "When we found the name of my husband's grandfather in the insurance
    company's lists, we were surprised and thrilled," the 50-year-old
    Anaid confessed.

    "None of us could hope that there would come a day when the victims
    and their families could reclaim at least a straw from the haystack
    we lost in west Armenia," she added.

    According to a US court ruling of July 30, 2004, the New York Life
    Insurance would have to honor its obligations to all who can prove
    their blood ties to those named in the company's lists.

    Armenia's justice ministry has arranged for a group of lawyers to
    help those seeking to apply for the compensation to put together the
    required documents and dispatch them to New York before the February
    28 deadline.

    However, the work launched in September proved hard, with many
    survivors having escaped with only clothes on their back, leaving all
    documents and insurance policies behind.

    "We accept applications from people, we open cases, seek proof in the
    archives," the ministry's spokesman Ara Sagatelyan said.

    Such proof includes birth and marriage certificates, letters,
    photographs, and books published in those times and telling of
    various families and people.

    "As of now over 700 people applied to us, having found their
    relatives in the US company's lists, and only nine of those still had
    the policies. There are also cases of people that have the policies
    but their names are not listed," Sagatelyan said.

    Over 180 ready applications had already been sent on, he said.

    The New York Life Insurance had pledged to pay a total of 20 million
    dollars, with the victims' relatives due to receive 11.9 million,
    three million to be handed over to Armenian charity groups, and the
    rest given to the Armenian Church.

    However, it was not yet clear how much money would be claimed, as
    many of those listed perished along with their whole families.

    Turkey, which formed the nucleus of the former Ottoman Empire, has
    disputed the scale and nature of the killing of Armenians, and railed
    against the term "genocide" used by surviving Armenians and their
    descendants.

    An estimated 1.5 million Armenians are believed to have died between
    1915 and 1917 in the last years of the Ottoman empire.

    "In refusing to admit the fact of genocide, Turkey also fears that
    Armenians would call for compensation of their lost property and
    reclaim the money Armenians held in Turkish banks for their heirs,"
    Turkey expert Akob Chakryan told AFP.
Working...
X