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  • Tarsy: Truth in the face of genocide

    Wicked Local, MA
    April 29 2012


    Tarsy: Truth in the face of genocide

    By Andrew Tarsy/Guest columnist
    MetroWest Daily News


    The Armenians of the Ottoman Empire were victims of genocide: the
    deliberate extermination of a culture and people. This month
    communities worldwide commemorate these events to remember what was
    lost and illuminate with historical accuracy the events that took
    place. On occasions like this one (and the world has too many), we
    seek a way forward that both honors the dead and increases the safety
    of the living. Five years ago, I was executive director of the
    Anti-Defamation League of New England. With a series of events that
    began in Watertown and came to include communities all over
    Massachusetts and beyond, I learned a painful lesson about the power
    of words. I spent months in 2007 struggling to understand my
    employer's refusal to acknowledge directly and with candor the factual
    historical events we mourn and commemorate as the Armenian genocide.
    The details are not important. It is sufficient to say that given its
    position on this issue, ADL's fitness to be a community partner was
    questioned in a great number of cities and towns. After lots of
    listening, reading and with the support of family,

    friends and my regional board of directors, I broke with ADL and
    stated publicly that I would no longer support the organization's
    position. I told the community then and still believe that we must be
    candid about history, or we dishonor the dead and endanger the living.

    To withhold the use of the term genocide to describe the war on the
    Armenian people in the Ottoman empire is a deliberate calculation that
    values short term political stability over truth. Make that bargain
    once or twice in a few extreme situations and maybe we will get by for
    the moment; but before long it will undermine the foundation of
    everything else we believe in. At that point, nothing important to us
    will be safe.

    The world knew what was happening to the Armenians at the time the
    genocide took place. In 1915 alone, there were 145 articles in the
    `New York Times' about policies and campaigns of deportation and mass
    killing. The Ottoman Turkish regime intentionally and systematically
    wiped out more than a million of its own citizens, shattered the
    Armenian culture and scattered the survivors into diaspora, under the
    cover of war. Years of effort by the Turkish government and the
    willingness of its allies to play along produced doubt and confusion
    about these events only after the fact.

    The Armenians of the Ottoman Empire were victims of genocide: the
    deliberate extermination of a culture and people. This month
    communities worldwide commemorate these events to remember what was
    lost and illuminate with historical accuracy the events that took
    place. On occasions like this one (and the world has too many), we
    seek a way forward that both honors the dead and increases the safety
    of the living. Five years ago, I was executive director of the
    Anti-Defamation League of New England. With a series of events that
    began in Watertown and came to include communities all over
    Massachusetts and beyond, I learned a painful lesson about the power
    of words. I spent months in 2007 struggling to understand my
    employer's refusal to acknowledge directly and with candor the factual
    historical events we mourn and commemorate as the Armenian genocide.
    The details are not important. It is sufficient to say that given its
    position on this issue, ADL's fitness to be a community partner was
    questioned in a great number of cities and towns. After lots of
    listening, reading and with the support of family, friends and my
    regional board of directors, I broke with ADL and stated publicly that
    I would no longer support the organization's position. I told the
    community then and still believe that we must be candid about history,
    or we dishonor the dead and endanger the living.

    To withhold the use of the term genocide to describe the war on the
    Armenian people in the Ottoman empire is a deliberate calculation that
    values short term political stability over truth. Make that bargain
    once or twice in a few extreme situations and maybe we will get by for
    the moment; but before long it will undermine the foundation of
    everything else we believe in. At that point, nothing important to us
    will be safe.

    The world knew what was happening to the Armenians at the time the
    genocide took place. In 1915 alone, there were 145 articles in the
    `New York Times' about policies and campaigns of deportation and mass
    killing. The Ottoman Turkish regime intentionally and systematically
    wiped out more than a million of its own citizens, shattered the
    Armenian culture and scattered the survivors into diaspora, under the
    cover of war. Years of effort by the Turkish government and the
    willingness of its allies to play along produced doubt and confusion
    about these events only after the fact.

    The spotlight on ADL gave me opportunities and privileges for which I
    am deeply grateful. My understanding of why genocide happens is as
    inadequate as anyone's. But my awareness of its lasting and
    intergenerational impact has been magnified. Over the past five years
    I have had the privilege to visit with Armenian communities around the
    United States and in Canada and Israel. I have told my story and
    participated in discussions about the power of words and the legacy of
    the Armenian genocide on university campuses, in synagogues, in
    teacher training programs and among family and friends. I met with the
    Armenian Archbishop in Jerusalem and with his Holiness the Katholikos
    of all Armenias when he visited Boston. I even had the opportunity to
    share my experiences in the Hague at the International Criminal Court,
    where I spent two months observing war crimes trials and listened to
    lawyers and judges debate whether to apply this same word - genocide -
    to the destruction of the people of Darfur in the Sudan.

    This year the annual commemoration created an opportunity for me to
    convey to the Armenian-American community of Massachusetts my deep
    condolences and my respects for the losses and insults you have
    suffered. Together, we call on our governments and our ethnic,
    religious and cultural institutions at all levels to join us in a
    clear voice to say that we know what happened and we know that our
    work to address its intergenerational damage has hardly even started.

    For more than 200 years the House chamber in the Massachusetts State
    House has been a forge where democratic ideals have been formed into
    actions that are taken in the name of the people of Massachusetts. We
    are awed by its physical beauty and by the vastness of the issues
    debated here and resolved more often than not for the betterment of
    our society. I am grateful that the government of the Commonwealth
    recognizes and commemorates the genocide together with its citizens in
    such a fitting location.

    We also need to remind ourselves that a proclamation or pronouncement
    by government is one small part of the equation when it comes to
    remembrance and prevention. I am reminded of what President Harry
    Truman said: `the highest office in the land is that of citizen.' I
    believe the measure of a healthy community, state, or nation is not
    just whether painful or ugly events happen, but how we respond.

    We have an obligation of vigilance and diligence to honor those we
    have lost and to protect those among us and those yet to come.

    Andrew H. Tarsy, former regional director of the New England ADL, is
    president of the Alliance for Business Leadership. This piece is
    adapted from prepared remarks delivered April 20 at the Armenian
    Genocide Commemoration, in the Massachusetts State House.



    http://www.wickedlocal.com/hudson/news/opinions/x677627603/Tarsy-Truth-in-the-face-of-genocide




    From: A. Papazian
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