Immigrants from Armenia

About this module: This is one of six modules created for DMRS-El Paso's immigration history project. The modules focus on the people and agencies that helped (or tried to help) immigrants to the United States.

Immigrants from Armenia were rare in the US until the late 1800s, when they fled their homeland after a series of genocidal massacres called the Armenian Holocaust. Armenian immigrants to America are notable for having gone to extraordinary lengths to preserve their culture after it was nearly exterminated by the Turks.

Armenia

The Armenian people lived for many centuries in a great mountain plateau in an area called eastern Anatolia.1 Armenia today is a small country in the Caucusus mountains of western Asia that was once part of the Soviet Union. From 1918 to 1920, Armenia was a republic, but before that it was part of the Moslem Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. For part of its long history, Armenia was one of the largest and richest kingdoms in the Middle East.2 It was also the first country to adopt Christianity. 

Most of the Armenian people are Christians, belonging to the Armenian Apostolic Church; three of the four countries that border Armenia (except for Georgia) are Moslem.3

Waves of emigration

From the 1600s on, Armenian merchant traders traveled all over Europe and Asia, but very few came to the Americas before the late 1800s. The number of Armenians in the US before 1890 was between 1,500 to 3,000, mostly unskilled laborers. This was followed in 1915-1920 by the government-orchestrated genocide of a million more Armenians during World War I. 

From 1890 to 1914, 64,000 Turkish Armenians fled to America before World War I. 

After 1920, some 30,771 survivors fled to the United States. Armenians continued to arrive until 1924, when the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act cut the annual quota to 150 Armenians.4

In more recent times the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989, led another migration of Armenians to the US.

The “push” for the big waves of immigration was a series of violent attacks on Armenians in their home country, starting in the 1890s and culminating in the horrors of the Armenian Genocide in 1919. 

The great Armenian migration to America began in the 1890s. During these troubled final years of the Ottoman Empire, its prosperous Christian minorities became the targets of violent Turkish nationalism and were treated as giavours5 (non-Moslem infidels).6

Earliest immigrants

Some Armenians were among the earliest Europeans to settle in North America.7 Before 1870, there were fewer than 70 Armenians in the United States, most of whom planned to return to their homes in the Ottoman Empire after completing college or mastering a trade.8

Increasing anti-Armenian violence

The biggest push factor in Armenian immigration was an alarming increase in anti-Armenian violence in Turkey. The Turks, Kurds, and other Moslems living in the area were prejudiced against the Armenians for several reasons: the Armenians were percieved as wealthier and more worldly than their neighbors, some were actively pushing for independence, they were a religious minority, and they were supporters of other ethnic groups seeking independence from Turkey.

Armenians used family and home-town connections to become an important part of the world-wide import/export business. In their homeland, they were more likely to run businesses and manufacturing plants than their Moslem neighbors. As farmers, the Armenians adopted modern agricultural methods and machinery to increase production. The Armenians’ success made them the object of jealousy and fueled anti-Armenian feelings among the Moslems.

By the late 1800s some Armenian nationalists began to push for an Armenian state independent of Ottoman Empire. These activities were seen as a serious threat by the Ottomans.9

An important factor in anti-Armenian feelings was religion. The Ottoman Empire was theoretically the main protector of the Moslem faith. Islam permits non-Moslems who believe in God—Jews and Christians—to live in Moslem countries if they pay a special tax. Permission, however, is not the same thing as acceptance. When the Ottoman sultan was replaced by a government of nationalist “Young Turks” the Armenian Christians (and other ethnic minorities) became targets of more prejudice.10 

In the first decades of the 1900s, rebellions agains the Ottomans broke out in Europe (the Balkans), north Africa (Lybia), and the Caucuses. Some Armenians supported these nationalist movements by other people in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Army that was sent to put down these rebellions was defeated. The Armenians were blamed for supporting Turkey’s enemies.

All these factors contributed to strong anti-Armenian feelings that resulted in mass killings and drove the survivors to emigrate.

Armenian Massacres

In the late summer of 1894, Armenians in the Sassoun mountains region refused to pay an oppressive tax. They formed an Armenian militia, but were no match for the Ottoman troops and their allies, Kurdish tribesmen, who killed thousands of Armenians in the region.11It was estimated casualties ranged from 80,000 to 300,000,12 resulting in 50,000 orphaned children13. Many Armenians fled to Europe, America, and parts of Turkey where they thought they would be safe. After the violence, there was a concerted effort by both local and central Ottoman authorities to cover it up.14 

More than 12,000 Armenians emigrated to the US throughout the 1890s. News of the massacres had traveled all over the world by telegraph. In the US, Americans learned about Armenian nationalist organizations in the Ottoman Empire and read about the many activity of American missionaries who were sympathetic to the Armenian cause. Christian organizations worked to make emigration somewhat more bearable for the Armenians. Because of the involvement of the church, Armenian immigrants settled in the northeastern cities and industrial areas, including New York City; Providence, Rhode Island; Worcester, Massachusetts, and Boston.15

In April 1909, another massacre occurred. Armenian Christians were murdered by Ottoman Muslims in the city of Adana in the Adana Vilayet (province) followed by a series of anti-Armenian riots throughout the province. Reports estimated that the Adana Province massacres resulted in the deaths of as many as 20,000–30,000 Armenians. It was reported about 1,300 Assyrians were also killed during the massacres.

1915-17 Armenian Genocide16

In 1915, while the European powers were entangled fighting World War I, the Ottoman government set in motion a plan to expel and massacre Armenians. By the early 1920s, when the massacres and deportations finally ended, between 600,000 and 1,500,000 Armenians were dead, with many more forcibly removed from the country.

In 1914, when World War I began, the Ottomans had entered the war on the side of the Central Powers against the Allies.17 (At the same time, Ottoman Moslem religious authorities declared a holy war against all Christians, except their allies.)18

In January 1915 the Ottoman Turks lost a big battle with Russia—the worst Ottoman defeat of the war—due to poor generalship and harsh conditions.19 The Ottoman government blamed Armenian treachery. Armenian soldiers (and other non-Muslims in the army) were disarmed and systematically murdered by Ottoman troops. Around the same time, irregular Ottoman Turkish forces began mass killings in Armenian villages near the Russian border.20

The Ottoman government passed the Tehcir (Relocation and Resettlement) Law in 1915 authorizing the deportation of the Empire’s Armenian population. The law was in effect from June 1, 1915 to February 8, 1916.21 The “resettlement” campaign resulted in the Armenian Genocide. The Turks saw the Armenians as traitors; they believed that, if the Armenians thought an Allied victory would bring Armenian independence, the Armenians would fight for the enemy. 

“Removal”

When the Ottoman Turks realized that Armenians were volunteering to help the enemy Russian army in the Caucasus, the government decided to “remove” Armenians from war zones where they could help the Russians. “Removal” became a euphemism for murder. According to “Armenian Genocide” in History:

“On April 24, 1915, the Armenian genocide—the deliberate mass murder of an ethnic group—began. That day, the Turkish government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals. Then ordinary Armenians were turned out of their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water. The Armenian marchers were stripped naked and forced to walk under the scorching sun until they dropped dead. Anyone who stopped to rest was shot.

“…a “Special Organization,” created “killing squads” or “butcher battalions” to carry out, as one officer put it, “the liquidation of the Christian elements.” These killing squads were often made up of murderers and other ex-convicts. They drowned people in rivers, threw them off cliffs, crucified them and burned them alive. In short order, the Turkish countryside was littered with Armenian corpses.

“Records show that during this “Turkification” campaign, government squads also kidnapped children, converted them to Islam and gave them to Turkish families. In some places, they raped women and forced them to join Turkish “harems” or serve as slaves. Muslim families moved into the homes of deported Armenians and seized their property.

Though reports vary, most sources agree that there were about 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the massacre. In 1922, when the genocide was over, there were just 388,000 Armenians remaining in the Ottoman Empire.”22

Ronald Grigor Suny in “Armenian Genocide” says “Conservative estimates have calculated that some 600,000 to more than 1,000,000 Armenians were slaughtered or died on the marches. The events of 1915–16 were witnessed by a number of foreign journalists, missionaries, diplomats, and military officers who sent reports home about death marches and killing fields.”23

Resistance and Rescue

Some Armenians resisted and fought back. In July 1915, the Ottoman government’s deportation orders for the Armenian population reached the six Armenian villages of the Musa Dagh region near Antioch and the Mediterranean coast. As Ottoman forces converged upon the area, the populace, aware of the impending danger, refused to be deported and fell back to defensive positions on Musa Dagh mountain. They held out for fifty-three days, until they were rescued by a squadron of French ships and carried to safety. A total of 4,058 people were rescued and carried to safety in Port Said, Egypt.24

Immigration during World War I and after

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 slowed immigration of Armenians to a trickle. The war made it impossible for Armenian men in America to return to Turkey to their families. 

The Armenian Genocide of 1915-1916 resulted in the deaths of the majority of Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Before 1919, the Armenian immigrants were mostly men, many of whom went back and forth between North America and their Armenian homeland several times. Almost all of them traveled in 3rd class, or steerage. Some wives and children also came to join their husbands and fathers and settle in North America.25 

After the end of the War in 1918, some Armenians who survived the massacres—and many more women and children—managed to join their families in North America and Europe.26

According to the Bureau of Immigration (ancestor of today’s US Immigration and Naturalization Service), 54,057 Armenians entered the US between 1899 and 1917. The largest Armenian American communities were in New York City; Fresno; Worcester, Massachusetts; Boston; Philadelphia; Chicago; Jersey City; Detroit; Los Angeles; Troy, New York; and Cleveland.27

Around 78,000 Armenians lived in the US in 1919 and many more immigrated in 1920. Armenians were one of many groups that were prevented from coming to the US by the Immigration Act of 1924. A total of 81,729 Armenians entered the US between 1899 and 1931.28

Since World War II

Another wave of immigration to America began following World War II, as the 700,000 Armenians who had been forcedout of Turkey into other parts of the Middle East faced rising anti-Armenian movements, spurred by Arab/Turkish nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, or socialism. As a result of discrimination and protests that made them feel unsafe, Armenians emigrated from Egypt (1952), Turkey again (1955), Iraq (1958), Syria (1961), Lebanon (1975), and Iran (1978). Tens of thousands of prosperous, educated Armenians flooded westward toward the safety of the United States.29 

The influx of newcomers caused a growth of Armenian American institutions starting in the 1960s. Armenians who were foreign-born started new ethnic organizations—day schools, churches, media, political, and cultural organizations—which now attract native as well as immigrant Armenians.30

Help for immigrants

The world was aware of the Ottoman persecution of the Armenians, from the 1894 Hamidian massacres to the 1915 Genocide. Efforts by other countries and religious groups to stop the massacres of Armenians during World War I failed. The Turks ignored outside pressure for several reasons:

• Turkey was fighting a war on the side of Germany and Austria, so pleas for mercy from England, France, and the United States were disregarded. 
• There was little danger that any of the countries fighting the war would intervene directly to help the Armenians. 
• The attacks on Armenians took place in a war zone where the Turkish military was in control. Even if an effort to rescue the Armenians had been made, help could not reach the Armenians in the war zone. 
• It’s not clear if offers of money or other things of value were made to get the Turks to stop the killing; if they were, they failed. 
• Some Armenians were fighting for Russia against Turkey, so the Turks considered all Armenians traitors who deserved to be killed.31 
• The Turkish leaders were determined to make their country all Moslem, which, to them, justified exterminating Christians, especially the Armenians. To some Turks, this was a holy war.32
• For many years the Turks had dehumanized and looked down on the Armenians as a hostile ethnic group of second-rate citizens; killing Armenians, to the Turks, wasn’t like murdering people.

Dozens of reports in appeared throughout 1915 of deportations, massacres, and atrocities committed against Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks across Anatolia. American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau tried to persuade the Turks to stop the slaughter and failed.33 Outrage at the slaughter and the deportation of the Armenians was widespread.34

The plight of the Armenians spurred many American and international efforts to help the survivors, and some were successful. But the overwhelming humanitarian crises caused by World War I (and the wars that followed involving Turkey, Greece, Syria, and Russia) drained energy and enthusiasm from those trying to help the Armenians.

The organizations that tried to help the Armenians differed in the kinds of help they offered. Some tried to send aid directly to the survivors of the genocide in refugee camps, others worked to help them emigrate to safety the US and other countries, and others gave aid to those to came to the US. Many continue operating today, preserving Armenian culture, advocating for the rights of those who were persecuted, and teaching Armenians living in diaspora (dispersed from their homeland) about their heritage. A few examples discussed here include The American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (ACASR), (which later became the Near East Relief (NER), and then Near East Foundation (NEF), Armenian Relief Society, 

Armenian National Committee of America, Armenian General Benevolent Union, and Christian organizations that offered assistance.

American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (ACASR)
{Near East Relief} {Near East Foundation}

The American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (ACASR) was formed in 1915 after American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau35 sent a cablegram to the Secretary of State in Washington DC on September 6, 1915, stating, “Destruction of the Armenian Race in Turkey is progressing rapidly”. Morgenthau asked prominent Americans to raise funds and provide emergency humanitarian aid to suffering minority populations in the Ottoman Empire.36 

As a result, philanthropist Cleveland Hoadley Dodge (1860–1926) and Protestant missionary Dr. James Levi Barton37 (1855–1936) created ACASR. The organization was called The American Committee for Near East Relief from 1918-1919. After World War I it was renamed Near East Relief (NER) and its directors were William Howard Taft, Charles Evans Hughes, and Elihu Root.38 In 1930, it became the Near East Foundation (NEF) <https://www.neareast.org> directed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Allen Dulles. 

With the help of then-President Woodrow Wilson, NEF started a small-scale relief operation and began to solicit donations from the American public.39 ACASR got grassroots support from the American public for humanitarian efforts in the Near East in an ambitious nationwide campaign that began in 191540 when millions were displaced, and over a million and a half died as a result of deportation, forced marches, starvation, and execution. The number would have been significantly higher had it not been for Henry Morgenthau and the NEF.

These fundraising appeals proved immensely successful. In 1921, the organization raised approximately $70 million, which was used to save at least a million people41, to treat more than six million patients in NEF-run clinics; and to set up orphanages and schools for over a hundred thousand Armenian orphans.42 By the end of the war, the organization had transformed into a vast aid campaign that focused on orphans and the social rehabilitation of the region.

1916 The U.S.S. Caesar

In late 1916, in the middle of World War I, the ACASR organized a shipment of food, medicine, money and clothing worth $250,000 to counteract the growing famine among refugees in Mount Lebanon the coming of winter. The US Navy provided a ship—USS Caesar, a collier, or bulk cargo ship—which had already been used once to carry refugees from Jaffa to Egypt. At this time, the United States was neutral and not directly involved in the fighting, but the Allies had set up a naval blockade and threatened to sink any ships headed for the countries controlled by the Central Powers. After some negotiation, ACASR’s leaders used their influence to loosen the Allied blockade and got permission from German and Ottoman officials for the ship to make a delivery of humanitarian aid.44

Caesar left New York on December 19, 1916, scheduled to arrive in Beirut in late December 1916 (hence its nickname, “The Christmas Ship”). But Ahmed Djemal Pasha, known as Jamal Basha as-Saffah or Jamal Pasha the Bloodthirsty)45 demanded that they unload the ship in Haifa where he would oversee the distribution of the aid himself. ACASR’s leaders refused to comply. The cargo was eventually sold and the cash used for aid in Greece.46 

Caesar sailed on to the Philippine islands, where she served as part of the US Navy’s Asiatic Fleet until the end of World War I.47 

NER Programs for Armenian Orphans

In 1918, NER aid programs were redirected to solely focus on women and children. Displaced Armenian orphans were of special concern since—unlike local orphans, they could not return to their home communities to be reunited with relatives. The Near East Relief (NER) programs cared for over 130,000 orphans in many shelters in the Middle East.

After the war, many shelters that had been run by the Ottomans or other local groups were taken over by NER, and others were handed over to Armenian organizations. The large Armenian orphanage in Antelias (north of Beirut) was turned over the Armenian Church.

In Syria, such programs were channeled through Bayard Dodge (1888-1972) of the Syrian Protestant College (after 1920, the American University of Beirut), who had coordinated shelters and soup kitchens Lebanon. After the war, Syrian NER projects housed 45,000 orphans, many of who were distributed to local communities, organizations or resettled with family.48

Armenian Relief Society, Inc. {Armenian Red Cross}

The Armenian Relief Society (also called the “Armenian Red Cross”) is still active today as “an independent, nonsectarian, philanthropic society serving the humanitarian, social, and educational needs of Armenians and non-Armenians alike.”49

Before World War I, women in Armenia formed the “Armenian Red Cross” to care for the wounded and provided food, shelter, clothing, and medicine to Armenian victims of pillage and plunder. In September 1910, Armenian journalist and political activist Edward Agnouni toured the United States and encouraged Armenian women here to take a more active role in the service of the Armenian people. He organized existing women’s groups and founded the ARF Red Cross in America.

The number of chapters grew rapidly and in Boston, Massachusetts in May, 1915 (during the First World War) they held a national convention to discuss fundraising to assist suffering Armenians world-wide; a clothing drive for Armenian refugees in the Caucasus; training nurses to be sent to the war zone to care for the wounded. They also wanted to keep their culture alive, so for Armenian-Americans they offered Armenian language courses and Armenian schools. 

They met again in Boston in June, 1919, first to welcome the creation of the Armenian Republic and then to formally recognize the Armenian Red Cross of the Republic. They also decided to raise funds to create a hospital in the Republic of Armenia and unify all existing charitable and philanthropic organizations serving the Armenian nation under the same name. The primary concentration of the ARC continued to be emergency relief to refugees, establishment of dispensaries, and food and clothing distribution centers. Preserving Armenian culture continued to be important and ARC started educational, cultural and social programs world-wide.

The ARC continues to this day, working in the Artsakh (Karabagh) area, where whole Armenian communities have been uprooted from Azerbaijani cities and where war broke out in 2020.

American Committee for the Independence of Armenia (ACIA) {Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA)}

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) began as the American Committee for the Independence of Armenia (ACIA) in 1918 and became ANCA in 1941. ACIA was founded by Vahan Cardashian (1882–1934), an Armenian immigrant who had worked for the Ottoman Empire Embassy in Washington, DC. The goal of ACIA was the independent Armenia based on a proposal by President Woodrow Wilson.50 

The ACIA evolved into the Armenian National Committee of America, which expanded its activities to include public relations efforts to acquaint local communities about Armenian issues including the Armenian Genocide and Armenian National aspirations. Other activities included April 24 commemoration activities, public forums, voter registration efforts, support for local and state political candidates, and updating the local community on Armenian issues.51

Today, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) is the largest and most influential Armenian American grassroots political organization. According to their website, “The main goals of the ANCA are:

• To foster public awareness in support of a free, united and independent Armenia;
• To influence and guide U.S. policy on matters of interest to the Armenian American community;
• To represent the collective Armenian American viewpoint on matters of public policy, while serving as liaison between the community and their elected officials.

Armenian General Benevolent Union

The Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) started in Cairo, Egypt on April 15, 1906 to preserve the Armenian identity even as Armenians were persecuted and leaving their homeland. Today AGBU continues as a non-profit organization devoted to upholding the Armenian heritage through educational, cultural and humanitarian programs.52

Christian organizations that offered assistance

A list of some of the efforts made by Christian houses of worship, clergy, and parishioners that offered support and financial assistance to the Armenians appears in AMERICA’S RESPONSE TO THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE; NEAR EAST RELIEF by the Presbyterian Church USA; Presbyterian Mission.53 Some of this aid went to refugees in the Middle East and some was used to help Armenian immigrants. Entries include items like these:

Presbyterian Church in the United States of America: raised money in Washington State and Alaska to care for Armenian orphans.

Congregational Church: American Congregational minister and the international commissioner of the NER Rev. Dr Lincoln L. Wirt, made relief efforts an international dimension. While visiting Australia in 1922, Wirt stated that his aim was to “form a chain of mercy from one end of the world to the other”—and his mission was a great success. By 1923, Wirt had helped establish Armenian relief committees in Hawaii, Japan, China, Korea, the Philippines, Cuba, and New Zealand. 

Methodist: Ministers showed the Near East Relief’s 1921 silent movie “Alice in Hungerland” in Kansas and raised money in Oklahoma. According to the Near East Relief Museum website, “Young Esther Razon was living in a Jewish orphanage in Constantinople when she was selected to play the main role in Alice in Hungerland. The silent film tells the story of an American child who stows away to Constantinople to visit her father, a Near East Relief worker. Many children paid “admission” to see Alice in Hungerland with a can of condensed milk — a dietary staple in Near East Relief orphanages due to its nutritional content and ability to travel well.”55

Armenian Catholic Community: The diocese of Mardin of the Armenian Catholic See was, with its 22.000 believers, subjected to deportation and murdered in 1915. The nuns of the Armenian Order of the Immaculate Conception also suffered losses in 1915, but they took over the care of 100 orphans in the orphanage opened by the Pope's Apostolic Delegate Angelo Dolci in the Shishli district of Constantinople in 1918.

Episcopal: Alabama organized a group of ten volunteer speakers who gave talks to raise awareness about the plight of people in Near East and raise money. In Maine money was raised to help NER. The Synod of the province of New England of the Episcopal Church met in Vermont and voiced support for NER’s work.

Baptist: Oklahoma churches sponsored the care of orphans. A Christmas gathering of an interdenominational group in Vermont held a benefit for NER.

First Church of Christ: In Ohio they raised thousands of dollars for orphans.

Church of Latter Day Saints: The President of the Church pledged $34,500. In Arizona, they set out donation boxes in stores and raised enough to care for 1,000 orphans.

Pope Pius XI: blessed the NER and appropriated funds for relief.

Many other donations were collected by churches, Sunday schools, and other religious and community organizations.

Armenian Relief Collapses

In 1918, with the end of World War I, Americans took up the Armenian cause for a brief time. It was a time of international sympathy for Armenian suffering and the end of the fighting led to a sense of optimism. In a burst of energy and goodwill, took up the Armenians’ cause. For a few years, Americans delivered speeches, wrote letters, exchanged ideas, and donated millions of dollars. But it didn’t last. Within ten years the Armenian cause was irreparably splintered and largely forgotten. 

Historian Mark Malkasian studied what happened and found that the various groups advocating for the Armenians disagreed on key issues, that they had very different objectives, and that the American activists were too far away from the reality of the Armenian situation and actual conditions in the Near East. “Most importantly”, Malkasian says, “the fissures that crippled the Armenian consensus in the United States were also products of domestic factors. Armenian nationalists fought American missionaries, Republicans battled Democrats, and the State Department grappled with philanthropic interests. The Armenian consensus inevitably unraveled in the process.”56 

You may not know about Armenian immigrants - Reparations

The horrific slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 was accompanied by rampant looting and theft of the Armenians’ property. 4 The Genocide resulted in a near absolute mass expropriation of Armenian property, the estimated value of which amounts to trillions of dollars.57 The modern-day country of Turkey has refused to accept any responsibility for what happened, going to far as to deny that the genocide ever happened. Turkey has never offered to pay reparations58 for the what the Armenians lost.

At this writing, in 2021, the question of whether the Turkish government owes anything to the descendents of the genocide has still not been resolved. Such reparations might be of financial, estate or territorial nature, and could cover individual or collective claims as well as those by Armenia.59

Should Turkey be held liable for crimes committed by the Ottoman Empire? A majority of scholars of international law agree that Turkey is what is called a “successor state” or continuation of the Ottoman Empire.60 Some add that the Republic of Turkey continued the Ottoman Empire's wrongful acts against Armenians, such as confiscation of Armenian properties and massacres.

Does the fact that all this happened more than 100 years ago make a difference? Former Secretary of the UN Human Rights Committee, Professor Alfred de Zayas, of the Geneva School of Diplomacy, stated that “[b]ecause of the continuing character of the crime of genocide in factual and legal terms, the remedy of restitution has not been foreclosed by the passage of time”.61

What does international law say about reparations? On 16 December 2005 the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 60/147 on the “Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law”.62 The UN said that “reparation includes: restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition, whereby

Satisfaction should include, where applicable, any or all of the following: ..

• Public apology, including acknowledgement of the facts and acceptance of responsibility;

Commemorations and tributes to the victims;

• Inclusion of an accurate account of the violations that occurred in international human rights law and international humanitarian law training and in educational material at all levels.
• Guarantees of non-repetition should include…Providing, on a priority and continued basis, human rights and international humanitarian law education to all sectors of society and training for law enforcement officials as well as military and security forces”63

It is still possible that the survivors’ families will receive reparations from the Armenian genocide. In 2004, family members of the Armenian genocide settled a case with New York Life for approximately 2,400 life insurance policies written on Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire which had never been paid. The settlement provided $20 million, of which $11 million was for heirs of the deceased, $4 million to the plaintiffs' attorneys, $3 million to educational and social welfare organizations, and $2 million to administer the settlement.64

Around 1918, the Turkish government made a feeble attempt to recover for the people it had killed, arguing that because there were no identifiable heirs that the proceeds should be· paid to the government. The California legislature passed a law in 2000 called the Armenian Genocide Insurance Act to help the heirs of policyholders by suspending the statute of limitations. But, in 2012, the 9th US Circuit Court in California found that the law, “intrudes on the federal government’s exclusive power to conduct and regulate foreign affairs.”65 In 2013, the US Supreme Court declined to review the lower court’s decision.

An Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group (AGRSG) was created in 2007 with a grant from the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun.66 Four experts in different areas of reparations theory and practice worked together to produce a 140-page report called “Resolution with Justice—Reparations for the Armenian Genocide” that came out in 2015, 100 years after the attacks.

The AGRSG report is a broad analysis of the many legal, historical, political, and ethical issues raised by reparations for genocide. It includes specific recommendations for what could be in a complete reparations package. The authors conclude that, even though “the quest for reparations for the Armenian Genocide, especially a return of land, is very unlikely to succeed and is thus impractical” it should continue.

You may not know about Armenia - Caucasians

The Armenian homeland is a mountainous region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and currently occupied by Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, which gave rise, more than 200 years ago to the term “Caucasian” as a way of referring to white Europeans.

How this came to be is described by historian Nell Irvin Painter, author of A History of White People in a June, 2020 essay for NBC online news:67

“Whiteness has a history whose meanings change. Neither scholars nor ordinary people have been able to agree upon the definition of white people — who is white and who is not — nor on the number of races that count as white. Disagreement reigns and has reigned since the modern scientific notion of human races was invented in the 18th-century Enlightenment. 

“Before the Enlightenment, people classified themselves and others according to clan, tribe, kingdom, locale, religion and an infinity of identities dependent on what people thought was important about themselves and others. Before the Enlightenment, Europeans could see human difference, they could see who was tall, who short, who light-skinned, who dark, differences they explained according to religion, cultural habits, geography, wealth and climate, among the most usual characteristics, but not race. 

“But Enlightenment68 scholars started to classify humanity into groups that came to be called races, defined according to bodily measurements such as eye color, skin color, height, and skull dimensions. The most enduring classification came from Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840), a professor in the German University of Göttingen. Blumenbach based his classification on skull measurements and divided humanity into five “varieties,” which he laid out according to his aesthetic preferences.

“At the two extremities Blumenbach placed the skulls he considered ugly, the African and the Asian. Next to the African was the Tahitian. Next to the Asian was the Native American. In the middle was Blumenbach’s “most beautiful skull” — of a young Georgian woman who had been a sex slave in Moscow, where she died of venereal disease. Her beautiful skull became the basis for the name given to white people; a native of the South Caucasus (between the Black and Caspian Seas), she inspired the label “Caucasian.”

Steven B. Zwickel, 2021

1 Anatolia consists of most of Turkey, excluding the desert area in the southeast and the mountainous area to the east, which included the Armenian homelands. Asia Minor refers to the large peninsula that is now Turkey. The Ottoman Empire was much larger than modern-day Turkey. In 1915 it included much of modern-day Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, the west coast of Arabia, and the western portion of the Armenian homeland. Although it contained many other countries, the Ottoman Empire was ruled by a Turkish Sultan.

 2 Hartunian, Abraham H. Neither to Laugh nor to Weep, A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide (1986, Armenian Heritage Press)

3  Turkey is to the west, Georgia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran to the south.

4  Takooshian, Harold “Armenian Americans”<https://www.everyculture.com/multi/A-Br/Armenian-Americans.html>

5  This term is now considered extremely offensive and implies that the people described are less than human

6 Takooshian, Harold “Armenian Americans” World Culture Encyclopedia—Countries and Their Cultures (2020 Advameg, Inc.) https://www.everyculture.com/multi/A-Br/Armenian-Americans.html#ixzz6fUWxQqoD

7 Malcom, M. Vartan The Armenians in America. (1919, Pilgrim Press; Boston, Mass) ISBN 1112126996 Ch II. THE PIONEERS (1618-1894) p. 50 {Available online at https://archive.org/details/cu31924032752200} 

8 Takooshian, Harold “Armenian Americans” gives two examples: Armenian pharmacist Kristapor Der Seropian, who introduced the class book concept while studying at Yale. He was the inventor of the special green ink that is still used to print American money. Another was Armenian Khachadur Osganian, who graduated from New York University and became a reporter for the New York Herald he was elected President of the New York Press Club in the 1850s.

9 Suny, Ronald Grigor “Armenian Genocide” in Britannica: Turkish-Armenian history https://www.britannica.com/event/Armenian-Genocide/Genocide 

10 Marasco, Matthew “What Were the Main Causes of the Armenian Genocide?” (2018, Armenian Weekly) https://armenianweekly.com/2018/04/24/what-were-the-main-causes-of-the-armenian-genocide/

11 Suny, Ronald Grigor “Armenian Genocide”

12  wikipedia.org entry for “Hamidian massacres” cites Akçam, Taner A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility p. 42, (2006, Metropolitan Books, New York) ISBN 978-0-8050-7932-6

13 "Fifty Thousand Orphans made So by the Turkish Massacres of Armenians”, The New York Times, December 18, 1896, p.3 “The number of Armenian children under twelve years of age made orphans by the massacres of 1895 is estimated by the missionaries at 50,000”

14 Miller, Owen “Rethinking the Violence in the Sasun Mountains (1893-1894)” {Repenser les massacres du Sassoun (1893-1894)} Études arméniennes contemporaines, 10 (2018, mis en ligne le 10 septembre 2018, http://journals.openedition.org/eac/1556 

15 Bakalian, Anny Armenian Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian. (1993, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers). ISBN 1-56000-025-2.

16 Much has been written about the Armenian Holocaust, which Turkey still denies ever happened. Two videos explaining what happened and the consequences are The Tower of Babel “Facing the Genocide” youtu.be/mjf29OC9FRQ in Turkish with English subtitles (YouTube Video: 2015) in which two Turkish Intellectuals discuss recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the Republic of Turkey and EB Presents: “The History of the Armenian Genocide” https://www.britannica.com/video/215759/History-Armenian-genocide

17 During the First World War, the Central Powers were Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria. The Allies (Entente Powers) were France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and (after 1918) the United States.

18 History.com Editors “Armenian Genocide” in History (2020, A&E Television Networks) https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/armenian-genocide

19 The losing general was Turkish Minister of War Ismail Enver Pasha (1881–1922) director of the secret Special Organization (SO), whose mobile killer units carried out the systematic massacres of the deported Armenians. https://www.armenian-genocide.org/enver.html 

20 Suny, Ronald Grigor “Armenian Genocide”

21 wikipedia.org entry for “Tehcir Law”

22 History.com Editors “Armenian Genocide” in History (2020, A&E Television Networks) https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/armenian-genocide The Empire ended when Mehmed VI, (1861—1926), the last sultan of the Ottoman Empire, abdicated in 1922. Within a year the empire was replaced by the Turkish Republic lead by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

23 Suny, Ronald Grigor “Armenian Genocide”

24 A long novel that paints a powerful picture of the seige is Franz Werfel’s The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (German: Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh) (1933, Paul Zsolnay Verlag, AG; Berlin & 1934, The Viking Press, Inc. Translated by Geoffrey Dunlop)

25 Arslan, Mark B. Armenian Immigration Project <http://markarslan.org/ArmenianImmigrants/shiplists.html>, 2015

26 Arslan, Mark B. Armenian Immigration Project <http://markarslan.org/ArmenianImmigrants/shiplists.html>, 2015

27 Malcom, M. Vartan The Armenians in America. (1919, Pilgrim Press; Boston, Mass) ISBN 1112126996 cited in wikipedia.org entry for “Armenian Americans”

28 wikipedia.org entry for “Armenian Americans”

29 Takooshian, Harold “Armenian Americans”

30 Bakalian, Anny P. Armenian-Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian (1992, Transaction: New Brunswick, NJ) cited in https://www.everyculture.com/multi/A-Br/Armenian-Americans.html#ixzz6cbjpcnKt

31  “Turkish Armenians in Armed Revolt: were ready to join Russian invaders, having drilled and collected arms” The New York Times November 13, 1914

32 “Erzerum Fanatics Slay Christians: Holy War proclamation followed by destruction of Armenians’ buildings” The New York Times November 29, 1914

33 “Appeal to Turkey to Stop Massacres: Ambassador Morgenthau Instructed to Make Representations on Request of Russia” The New York Times August 28, 1915

34 “1,500,000 Armenians Starve: Relief Committee Asks Aid for Victims of Turkish Decrees” The New York Times  September 5, 1915

35 Morgenthau was also the author of a widely-read article, accompanied by horrifying photographs, in The Red Cross Magazine that spurred more people to act. Morgenthau, Henry “The Greatest Horror in History: An Authentic Account of the Armenian Atrocities” The Red Cross Magazine Vol. XIII, No. 3 (March, 1918) p.7 <https://www.academia.edu/3549645/The_Red_Cross_March_1918>

36 Karpanian, Noushig AMERICA’S RESPONSE TO THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE; NEAR EAST RELIEF (Presbyterian Church USA; Presbyterian Mission) <http://pma.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/jinishian/pdfs/awty_for_pcusa.pdf>

37 No author “A Quiet Leader: James L. Barton” The Near East Relief Digital Museum (August 3, 2015) https://neareastmuseum.com/2015/08/03/a-quiet-leader-james-l-barton-2  “Beginning in 1917, Barton asked American missionaries who were leaving Ottoman Turkey to send him detailed, signed narratives of their experiences. These eyewitness accounts of the Armenian Genocide were instrumental in raising awareness and funds in the United States for relief work overseas.”

38 Near East Relief Committee Records, 1904 – 1950 https://library.columbia.edu/content/dam/libraryweb/locations/burke/fa/mrl/ldpd_10126110.pdf 

39 Near East Foundation (NEF) https://www.neareast.org/where-we-work/armenia/

40 No author, Connecticut Digital Newspaper Project: GUIDES TO NEWSPAPER CONTENT/WARS American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief in World War I-Era Connecticut · May 27, 2016 https://ctdigitalnewspaperproject.org/2016/05/american-committee-for-armenian-and-syrian-relief-in-world-war-i-era-connecticut/ 

41 “Near East Relief Has Saved 1,000,000; Report to Congress Says Operations Have Amounted to Total of $70,000,000,” The New York Times, July 16, 1922.

42 Barton, James Story of Near East Relief (1930, New York: Macmillian) p. xii

43 Brand, Tylor: “Near East Relief” in 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, et al. (2004, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin) https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/near_east_relief/2014-10-08 

44 Brand, Tylor: “Near East Relief” in 1914-1918-online.

45 Ahmed Djemal Pasha (1872–1922) was an Ottoman military leader and one-third of the military triumvirate known as the Three Pashas that ruled the Ottoman Empire during World War I and carried out the Armenian Genocide. -wikipedia.org entry for “Ahmed Djemal Pasha”

46 Brand, Tylor: “Near East Relief” in 1914-1918-online. 

47 USS Caesar (AC-16) in Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (DANFS)

48  Brand, Tylor: “Near East Relief” in 1914-1918-online. 

49 Armenian Relief Society <https://ars1910.org/>

50 Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) https://anca.org/

51  wikipedia.org entry for “Armenian National Committee of America”

52 Armenian General Benevolent Union https://agbu.org 

53 Karpanian, Noushig AMERICA’S RESPONSE TO THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE; 

54 “Honoring Alice Duryea Kinney” Near East Relief Museum | American Genocide Response (November 19, 2015) https://neareastmuseum.com/2015/11/19/honoring-alice-duryea-kinney/ {No prints of the movie “Alice in Hungerland” are known to exist}

55 Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Foundation <http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/index.php> 

56 Malkasian, Mark “The Disintegration of the Armenian Cause in the United States, 1918-1927” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Aug., 1984), (1984, Cambridge University Press) pp. 349-365 https://www.jstor.org/stable/163045 

57 H. C. Theriault (2014a) “Legal Avenues for Armenian Genocide Reparations”, International Criminal Law Review, Vol. 14 (2): 219–31; cited in Guibert, Nolwenn and Kim, Sun. “Compensation for the Armenian Genocide…”

58 Reparations make amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to, compensating, or otherwise helping those who have been wronged. In jurisprudence (the theory of law), reparation is the replenishment of a previously inflicted loss by the criminal to the victim. Monetary restitution is a common form of reparation.

59 Theriault, Henry (May 6, 2010). "The Global Reparations Movement and Meaningful Resolution of the Armenian Genocide". Armenian Weekly. Archived from the original on 10 May 2010. Retrieved May 11, 2010. in wikipedia.org entry for “Armenian Genocide reparations”

60 Latino, Agostina (2018). "The Armenian Massacres and the Price of Memory: Impossible to Forget, Forbidden to Remember". The Armenian Massacres of 1915–1916 a Hundred Years Later: Open Questions and Tentative Answers in International Law. Springer International Publishing. pp. 195–236. ISBN 978-3-319-78169-3. in wikipedia.org entry for “Armenian Genocide reparations”

61 De Zayas, Alfred (December 2007). "The Genocide against the Armenians 1915–1923 and the relevance of the 1948 Genocide Convention" http://alfreddezayas.com/Law_history/armlegopi.shtml in wikipedia.org entry for “Armenian Genocide reparations”

62 Guibert, Nolwenn and Kim, Sun. “Compensation for the Armenian Genocide: A Study of Recognition and Reparations” in Demirdjian A. (eds) The Armenian Genocide Legacy. Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide. (2016; Palgrave Macmillan, London) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-56163-3_7 

63 wikipedia.org entry for “Reparation (legal)” 

64 Brophy, Alfred L. Reparations Pro and Con (2006; Oxford University Press) p.120

65 “Ninth Circuit Strikes Down California Law on Armenian Genocide-Era Insurance Claims” Armenian Weekly (2012, February 23) https://armenianweekly.com/2012/02/23/ninth-circuit-strikes-down-california-law-on-armenian-genocide-era-insurance-claims/ {California Attorney General Kamala Harris defended the law in court} 

66 “Resolution with Justice—Reparations for the Armenian Genocide” 2015; Armenian Genocide Reparations https://www.armeniangenocidereparations.info 

67 Painter, Nell Irvin “White identity in America is ideology, not biology. The history of 'whiteness' proves it” NBC online news (nbcnews.com) June 27, 2020 (Think/Thought Experiment) https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/white-identity-america-ideology-not-biology-history-whiteness-proves-it-ncna1232200

68 Roughly from 1715 to 1815 C.E.