Armenian Example

Our Armenian friends have had an uphill road to tell the world about their national tragedy when in 1915 they were marched off on charges that they supported Russia in World War I (some did) and about half of those so herded to wherever died along the way, an estimated million and a half of them. Fifteen countries have recognized their tragedy as an act of genocide. The United States is not among them, because it values its relationship with Turkey, one of the main reasons for founding NATO having been to save that particular country from the blessings of Communism, where after ten years Saudi Arabia would have no doubt suffered a shortage of sand. This writer recalls how in 1982, when Israel hosted the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, Turkey was almost ready to declare war at the thought that there would be papers on the Armenian genocide. In 1978 the Third Committee of the United Nations adopted the Ruhashankiko report on genocide, which due to Turkish pressure left the Armenians out, but in 1985 another report by Ben Whitaker put them in. There are Ukrainian diplomats at the United Nations ready to follow suit on the basis of these earlier reports.

Most recently, the Armenians in the USA found lawyers, began a class action suit in California, and were awarded $20 million from the New York Life Insurance Company (Why them? Did they insure all those unfortunate Armenian victims?). Of course, the lawyers took a large part of the award, but our Armenian friends were not after the money. They wanted recognition, and at least a court in California gave it to them. This can only be welcomed.

Ukrainians also have their national tragedy, the Holodomor. There are also Ukrainian-Americans preparing to pursue an identical class action suit against whomever they might find among the companies doing business with the Soviet Union at the time and that might be said to have some responsibility for the death of millions of Ukrainians. The writer of these lines has no idea about who might be culpable except the now dead leaders of the then Soviet Union, but our Armenian friends showed an example that Ukrainians can follow. The dead victims deserve recognition, and our Armenian friends have blazed the trail. There are Ukrainians in America who already follow that trail (especially the Trident Foundation in California) and undoubtedly lawyers who will take half the money, should any be awarded. The money is not the point here. There is a 1987 book from Canada by the late Doug Tottle, Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard. The least we can do for those who suffered is to seek recognition that their sufferings were no myth.