International"A Perfect Injustice" documents the fate of stolen Armenian wealth
Published: Thursday September 10, 2009
Hrayr Karagueuzian and Yair Auron, A Perfect Injustice: Genocide and Theft of Armenian Wealth.
A Perfect Injustice: Genocide and Theft of Armenian Wealth
Except for a short period after the end of the First World War and the ensuing armistice, Turkey has consistently denied that it ever employed a policy of intentional destruction of Armenians. The 1913–14 census put the number of Armenians living in Turkey at close to two million. Today only a few thousand Armenians remain in the city Istanbul, and almost none elsewhere in Turkey. Armenian sites in Turkey, including churches, have been neglected, desecrated, looted, destroyed, or requisitioned for other uses, while Armenian place names have been erased or changed.
As with the Holocaust, Armenian properties that were seized or stolen have not been restored. Sixty and 90 years after these terrible events, Jewish and Armenian victims and their heirs continue to struggle to get their properties back. There has been only partial restitution in the Jewish case and virtually no restitution at all in the Armenian case.
"The authors accumulated the material item by item and slowly began to piece together the story of a massive injustice towards the victims of genocide. . . A fascinating investigation, a book rich in details and full of documents," said Dickran Kouymjian, who is Haig & Isabel Berberian Professor Emeritus of Armenian Studies at California State University in Fresno.
No adequate reparation for the deeds committed against the Armenians can ever be made. But resolving claims with respect to stolen property is a symbolic gesture toward victims and their heirs. This is unfinished business for Jewish heirs and survivor of the Holocaust, as it is for Armenians.
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