Text of Schiff-Radanovich-P allone-Knollenberg Dear Colleague letter
The Armenian Genocide:
Facts vs. Fees
July 18, 2007
Dear Colleague:
Yesterday, you may have received an e-mail from our former colleague, Bob Livingston, regarding the Armenian Genocide. In the email and the embedded video attached to it, Livingston seeks to cast doubt on the facts of the first genocide of the Twentieth Century.
Livingston claims that there is a question among historians as to whether the genocide was, in fact, genocide. The truth is that there is near unanimity among historians and genocide experts that the murder of 1.5 million Armenians from 1915-23 was genocide.
Livingston claims that the mass murders that took place were “localized” and took place in the confusion of World War I and that they were not directed by the central government of the Ottoman Empire. The truth is that the Armenian Genocide was orchestrated at the highest levels of the Young Turk government and that several of the central perpetrators were tried by the Turkish Government after World War I. As documented in thousands of pages in our National Archives, American diplomats and American journalists were well aware of what was happening while it was ongoing. America’s Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, reported on the massacres in great detail. Morgenthau was appalled at what he would later call the sadistic orgies of rape, torture and murder. “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and . . . made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.”
For the past seven years Mr. Livingston has been a paid lobbyist for Turkey, which has spent millions of dollars denying what the world knows to be true – that in the first decades of the last century a horrible genocide was committed against the Armenian people. The factual evidence supporting the Armenian Genocide is vast, and no effort to deny these facts – no matter the source of the denial – will ever change history. Attached to this email is an article from the current issue of The New Republic detailing the lengths to which Turkey will go to deny the undeniable. Also attached is an article from The New York Review of Books on the history of the genocide by noted Israeli historian Michael Oren. In his article, Oren notes:
"In contrast to Germany, which has publicly and often obsessively accepted culpability for the Holocaust, paid restitution to its victims, and released documents attesting to its guilt, the Republic of Turkey has never admitted its part in the mass murder of Armenians, much less compensated the survivors. Rather than encourage research on its past butchery, the Turkish government has promoted publications that exonerate it from any wrongdoing and portray the Armenians as traitors to the state who allied themselves with Russia and executed thousands of Turks."
We urge you to read the articles as you consider Livingston’s claims.
H. Res. 106 has been cosponsored by more than 220 of our colleagues and we are continuing to add additional cosponsors. We urge you to stand up for the truth and honor the memory of the dead by adding your name to the list of cosponsors. For more information, or to cosponsor, please contact Tim Bergreen in Mr. Schiff’s office or Chris Herndon in Mr. Radanovich’s office.
Sincerely,
Adam Schiff
Member of Congress
George Radanovich.
Member of Congress
Frank Pallone
Member of Congress
Joe Knollenberg
Member of Congress
http://www.anca.org/press_releases/press_releases.php?prid=1233