Reading Moregenthau

by Kay Mouradian

Published: Friday February 06, 2009

Prior to writing my novel, A Gift in the Sunlight: An Armenian Story, I spent several months researching the life of Henry Morgenthau, Sr., in an effort to learn more about the Armenian Genocide and the harrowing experiences of my family during the Catastrophe.

As the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, Morgenthau championed the Armenian Cause, and I wanted to know more about him. What kind of man was he and how much of what he said about the events of 1915 could be trusted, considering there were those who had tried to question his motives?

After reading through ten microfilmed reels of Ambassador Morgenthau's State Department papers in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, I went to Hyde Park, New York, to spend a week researching Morgenthau's personal papers, which had been donated to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library. That particular adventure took my breath away because the documents had not yet been microfilmed.

As a researcher delving into history, my very act of touching and feeling the texture of the paper on which those personal letters were written jolted me back into Morgenthau's family - as if I had been there watching and observing.

I quickly read the letter on top of the first stack of papers presented to me. It was a short note to her father from Helen, Morgenthau's eldest daughter, who at the time was ten years old. The family was vacationing in the Pocono Mountains while Morgenthau continued working through the hot and humid summer in New York City. As I read the salutation, "To my sweet little Papa," my eyes welled. I felt the deep love of a child for her father and a tear rolled down my cheek. Helen then complained that her mother said she was getting fat and wouldn't let her eat in between meals. "She's making me starve," Helen wrote and underlined the word "starve." She ended the letter with, "Your loving daughter, Helen."

The next letter that graced my hands was from Morgenthau to his wife. He advised her not to mention Helen's weight gain but instead to encourage the youngster to play tennis and ride horses, and then the weight would take care of itself. That pragmatic advice told me much about him. In fact, the more I read as the days progressed, the more I realized Morgenthau had an acute ability to see the long view and that astuteness guided the choices he made throughout his life. He became a diplomat extraordinaire and a noble humanitarian, and his power resonated from steadfastness in truth.

As I scoured those reels of microfilm from the Library of Congress, I read and reread Morgenthau's succinct explanation of the Armenian Question in reel 22. Here he discussed the Armenian religion and churches as well as the numerous Armenian massacres. In relating the acts of oppression, he categorized them as political, economic, social, and religious, and depicted the methods used by the Ottoman Turks to exterminate the Armenian population. "The Turks want Turkey for the Turks alone," he stated. "Therefore by all imaginable means they have tried to exterminate the Armenians. A misconceived, narrow, nationalism - combined with a fanaticism of the blindest and darkest kind - has been one of the chief causes of these unprecedented persecutions."

There have been those who have suggested that one of the reasons for the Genocide was the fact that the Armenians' outstanding cultural and commercial achievements and, ultimately, great affluence created resentment among the Turkish masses. I never felt that reasoning constituted the relentless depth of threat felt by those Turks in power who feared losing Armenia just as they had lost the Balkans in 1912. But Morgenthau suggests that the progress of the Armenians in Asia Minor did play a role and cites the example of the Province of Sivas, where the Armenian population was not as large as in some other vilayets. He writes:

"Of the 153 factories in the vilayet of Sivas, 130 belonged to Armenians, 20 to Turks.

"The number of workmen amounted to 17,000, of these 14,000 were Armenians.

"Of 316 merchants, 268 were Armenians, 36 Turks, and 12 Greeks.

"Of 37 bankers, 32 were Armenians and five Turks.

As the Turks could not overtake the Armenians, the government would periodically organize massacres and hamper them all the time in order to check their progress."

Morgenthau also mentions differences in education. Just before the deportations, there were "785 Armenian schools in Turkey, with an attendance of 82,000 students, while there are only 150 Turkish schools, with an attendance of 17,000.

"The Kurds do not have a single school.

"This ignorance of the Turks, coupled with religious prejudices, has been another cause of disagreement between the Turks and the Armenians, and has rendered the masses of the Turks a ready tool of persecution in the hands of wicked leaders."

In 1878-79, Sultan Abdulhamit II had been forced to cede two-fifths of Ottoman territory. Between 1908 and 1913, under the Young Turks, another 425,000 square miles, or over one-third of the remaining empire, was lost. Resolved not to give up more land after the Ottomans were defeated in the Balkan War, Interior Minister Talaat Pasha told Morgenthau, "We will not lose Armenia." Today what used to be Western Armenia is part of Turkey.