My Turn
Dr. Israel Charny Condemns Denial of Armenian Genocide in British Parliament
In an earlier column I wrote about the special conference held at the British Parliament on May 7, organized by the British-Armenian All-Party Parliamentary Group. Dr. Israel Charny and I were invited as guest speakers. I spoke about "The Armenian Genocide and Quest for Justice." Dr. Charny could not attend due to illness, however, his prepared remarks were read by Peter Barker, a former broadcaster of BBC Radio.
Dr. Charny is an internationally-known authority on the Holocaust and the Armeni
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without sounding cranky, you need more Jews on your side, look what they’ve accomplished for Turkey…
Marty, I don’t think getting the Jews or any other ethnic group, politician or academic on our side is the panacea here. Over a span of about 100 years, Armenians have learned to trust our own for good reason and even then things are tentative at best (ex. the current Armenian governments reckless actions). I think as a community we’ve given up with this concept of instilling hope into others to make change on our behalf…ie. the Obama fiasco and his so called promise of change via Turkeys gag rules on Americas stance on genocide.
Don’t get me wrong, they could be a good leverage point as Dr. Charney and others have been but I wouldn’t depend on people like him or Jews in general or any other group to make headway in our cause. Marty, you make a good point that some Jews have accomplished a lot for Turkey as their surrogate liars but remember some Jews and the Jewish state in particular has much to account for as an accomplice to Turkey’s denial. One day they will have to acknowledge that Israel, after the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust and its ridiculous denials, fell into the trap of denial themselves for political expediency only to cheapen and dilute Israel’s own history and its supposed lessons learned.
Marty, cranky is not the word…delusional, maybe, cranky, no.
This is example on the comments
Genocide Victims in My Family
The story of our family. My grandfather, Mihran Dabbaghian (head of the
customs department), left for work and was never to be seen again. His
uncle, Garabed Dabbaghian, famous lawyer/judge, given the short name
Natick Effendi (“Mr. Speaker” in Turkish)—he and all his extended family
where slaughtered in Diyarbakir. We still have the official papers that state
we are owners of many lands in Diyarbakir.
Other related families are the Abrahamian (changed their surname to
Sabri to save their life—we recently discovered that their real surname
name was Abrahamian before the massacres of 1915), Chilingirian,
Kazandjian, Ouzounian, Misakian, and Simsarian (owners of silk factory
in Diyarbakir).
My granduncle’s wife, Katrina, the only survivor from Yousif Karagulla’s
family (feudal lord in Mardin), had a brother, Numan Karagulla, who was
graduated from the medical school of Harvard (1905?), and married to an
American woman named Stella. They raped his wife in front of him then
slaughtered him, his wife, and their son Philip. The genocide survivors are
American citizens. There are endless stories, so which one to tell?
My father’s family in Baghdad never experienced the same situation.
However, in Turkey, his two cousins (from the Ohanessian family) who
were medical students in Vienna (Austria) vanished when they came home
in April to Diyarbakir for the Easter holiday.
Sir:
Comment number 2446 submitted by Sylvia-MD-Poetry attracted my attention, since she mentioned that her granduncle’s wife Katrina, the daughter of Yousef Karagulla was the only survivor in his family.
Yousef Karagulla was my maternal great-grandfather. My father, now deceased, was born in Mardin, and spoke often of Katrina, Numan his uncle and of course Stella and their son Philip. Sadly, we have known about the tragic deaths of my great grandfather and also of his son Numan and Stella, although my father said that the latter two were massacred by local Kurds. Our family, though not Armenian, also suffered the massacres and loss of property.
Those murderers, those assassins, were COWARDS. They relied on their vast numbers and a tremendous supply of military superiority in arms, to massacre a minority Christian population, almost totally unarmed.
One little detail, Numan also had another son, who survived, and who in fact was brought by the Kurds to my grandmother (Yousef’s daughter), to be sold to her. My father said in fact that she did buy him (her own nephew), but that he died shortly afterwards beacause he was already in such terrible condition.
One last detail, Numan, graduated in surgery from Johns Hopkins University in 1905,not Harvard, and Stella was from Baltimore.
My father also met with Mr Gulbenkian, Mr. 5% as he was known at the IPC in Baghdad.
Keep up your good work.