Armenians seek place in museum
Wiesenthal center's lack of an exhibition on the 1915 genocide is
criticized. Museum says a display is in the works.By Christopher
Reynolds
L.A. Times Staff Writer
February 3 2003
Since the Simon
Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance opened its doors in 1993, its founders
have aimed to commemorate the Holocaust and to explore prejudice and persecution
worldwide -- a daunting dual mission that has won admirers from Jordan's King
Hussein to Hollywood's Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But as the institution's
10th anniversary approaches, a widening circle of critics has gathered to press
museum officials with a single question: Where are the Armenians?
The
museum, those critics assert, has backed away from its own pledges to include
the first genocide of the 20th century -- the Armenian genocide of 1915 -- as a
part of its permanent exhibition. That genocide is effectively absent, some of
those critics suggest, because of a 21st century political alliance between
Jewish leaders and the Turkish government whose predecessors carried out that
genocide.
"It's kind of ludicrous, if you're going to talk about the 20th
century, not to mention it. It's like teaching U.S. history and beginning with
the Civil War," said Ardashes Kassakhian, director of governmental relations for
the western region of the Armenian National Committee of America.
Ardashes Kassakhian (ANCA) and Liebe Geft meet at Museum of Tolerance.
(LittleArmenia.com Photo/Gevork Ambartsumyan)
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Museum
director Liebe Geft acknowledged that the Armenian genocide, once featured in an
introductory film, hasn't been part of the museum's permanent display or
introductory film presentation for five years. But she dismissed the criticism
as "unrealistic and erroneous."
Geft noted that the museum does recognize
the Armenian deaths as an act of genocide -- a view still contested by the
Turkish government -- and has taken many steps to acknowledge that. From 1993
until an update at the end of 1997, she said, the museum's introductory film
included the genocide. Temporary exhibitions have touched on the topic, she
said, and upon request, visitors will find that the museum's library and
learning center have at least 70 books and two videos about the Armenians. Geft
also said a display including the Armenian genocide will be added to the
institution's permanent exhibitions "very soon."
Most historians agree
that the genocide of 1915 brought the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians,
through executions, starvation and forced marches that occurred until the
Ottoman Empire fell in World War I and was replaced by a Turkish republic in the
early 1920s.
The Armenian deaths have received renewed attention in
recent months, following the release of the Atom Egoyan film "Ararat" and
publication of the book "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide"
by Samantha Power. Seizing the moment, Armenian American activists have
accelerated their campaigning.
The result is a thorny three-way
negotiation over history, memory and tragedy that touches an estimated 500,000
or more Jews, 150,000 Armenians and 5,000 Turks in Los Angeles County -- and
puts museum leaders under a microscope.
"There's a struggle that is going
on in the United States today about how to appropriately recognize the Armenian
genocide, and it's all tied up in politics with Turkey and NATO and the Middle
East," said John K. Roth, a professor of philosophy at Claremont McKenna College
and veteran of about 30 years studying the Holocaust and genocide.
"This
is the politics of memory," said Elazar Barkan, professor of cultural studies
and history at Claremont Graduate University. Whether or not the Armenian
genocide is present in the museum, he said, "it's a political statement. Either
way."
Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.
(LittleArmenia.com Photo/Gevork Ambartsumyan)
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The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a member-supported nonprofit
organization founded in the late 1970s by Rabbi Marvin Hier, spends about $28
million yearly on a mission of "education and social action related to racism
and prejudice within the context of the Holocaust." The center's ventures
include the museum in Los Angeles, plans for a New York Tolerance Center (to
open in mid-2003) and a Jerusalem Center for Human Dignity and Museum of
Tolerance (to open in 2006-07).
As a museum director, Geft said, she hews
to no political agenda, just a mandate to reach visitors, in part by remaining
topical. In recent years, she said, that has meant less attention not only for
the Armenians but also for issues such as the Cambodian genocide of the late
1970s.
For evidence of the museum's strategy, Geft said, visitors need
only look to its displays on civil rights in the U.S., its references to Rwanda
and the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, or its entire third floor, where the
museum on Feb. 11 will unveil a celebration of American diversity that traces
family histories of poet Maya Angelou, comedian Billy Crystal, musician Carlos
Santana and baseball player and manager Joe Torre.
However, Wiesenthal
Center officials do acknowledge that because of Turkey's historically benign
treatment of its Jewish population, and because of Turkey's status as an ally of
U.S. and Israeli interests in the Middle East, many U.S. Jewish leaders are
alert to Turkish sentiments. As recently as Nov. 10, the Wiesenthal Center
issued a release urging the European Union to admit Turkey as a
member.
"When you have a society that didn't throw you into ghettos,
there is a reservoir of goodwill toward Turkey among many Jews, including
myself," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, who serves as the Wiesenthal Center's
associate dean and has worked on museum projects since before its opening. In
the last five centuries of Jewish history, Cooper said, "interaction with Turkey
is one of the bright spots in an otherwise horrible, miserable period of
exile."
When the Museum of Tolerance opened in 1993, Cooper asked, "Were
the Turks happy that we put in a segment on the Armenian genocide in the Museum
of Tolerance? Absolutely not. We had letters and we had visits." But none of
those efforts played any role in any museum decisions, Cooper
said.
Meanwhile, in the Los Angeles Turkish Consulate office, Acting
Consul General Ozgur Kivanc Altan said that, in recent years, "obviously, there
has been contact between the consulate and the museum, but not in the dimension
you are mentioning."
Altan said the consulate has not contributed to the
Wiesenthal Center or the museum and has made no efforts to influence museum
exhibitions. However, he noted, he has visited the museum, and "our position is
well-known by the Armenians and also by the museum itself."
That
position, in a nutshell, is that the crisis that began in 1915 "would not merit
inclusion in the museum if it would be presented as Armenian genocide," Altan
said. "What we are saying is, yes, a terrible tragedy took place, and yes, many
Armenians lost their lives terribly. But also in that war, more than 2.5 million
Turks and Muslims lost their lives."
The conflict between Armenians and
Turkish leaders has persisted through nine decades and has spilled into Southern
California. Armenian militants assassinated two Turkish diplomats in Los Angeles
in 1973, and another in 1982.
Meanwhile, at colleges nationwide, Turkish
officials have pledged funding for professorships, drawing charges from
Armenians that the gift conditions will taint scholarship. UCLA's history
department, offered $1 million by Turkey in 1997, declined it on an 18-17
vote.
And at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.,
which opened two months after the Museum of Tolerance in 1993, lobbying by
Armenian, Turkish and Jewish groups was in full cry before visitors ever stepped
in.
In their book "The Holocaust Museum in Washington," that
institution's founding director, Jeshajahu Weinberg, and co-author Rina Elieli
recall intense lobbying by Armenian Americans seeking inclusion of the 1915
genocide, a counter-campaign by Turkish officials opposed to any mention of
Armenians, and further lobbying from the Israeli embassy, weighing in on
Turkey's behalf.
Ultimately, the Holocaust Museum's leaders included
three mentions of the massacre in permanent exhibits, including the display of a
quote attributed to Hitler on the eve of invading Poland in 1939: "Who, after
all, speaks today of the annihilation of Armenians?"
From its first days
as a proposed offshoot of the Wiesenthal Center, the Museum of Tolerance has
stood out as a likely new ideological territory for the Turkish-Armenian
struggle.
At first, the Armenians seemed to have the upper hand. In 1985,
when then-Gov. George Deukmejian, an Armenian American, granted $5 million for
the museum start-up, the legislation noted that Californians should be informed
about the hatred and prejudice "which have so adversely affected the lives and
well-being of so many human beings, through such mass murder as the Armenian
genocide and the Nazi Holocaust and other genocides."Also, in interviews before
the eight-level, $55-million museum opened in February 1993, Hier was quoted
repeatedly as saying that the Armenian genocide would be included. And so it
was, for the next four years. Though no permanent exhibit at the museum has
focused specifically on the Armenian experience, the events of 1915 were
included prominently in an 11-minute introductory film at the museum: "It's
Called Genocide." But at the end of 1997, museum officials made several changes,
including the replacement of that film with a new 8 1/2-minute documentary "In
Our Time," which omits Armenians and focuses more on horrors in the
1990s.
Former Gov. Deukmejian, now retired, said he had not visited the
museum recently, but the omission of the Armenian genocide would be "very
disappointing. It was my understanding that [the museum] would provide
information regarding not only the Armenian genocide but all genocides through
the world" in modern times. State Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles)
made similar points in a June 2001 letter seeking a permanent exhibit
recognizing the Armenian genocide "in keeping with the promises extended to the
Armenian community at the museum's inception."
In fact, said museum
director Geft, the museum has been planning such an exhibit for more than two
years, a "genocide wall," with information on many horrors through history,
including the Armenian deaths. That project had been delayed by financial
concerns and the press of other projects, Geft said, but should be completed
"very soon." She said she couldn't specify a timetable.
The museum's
critics, however, are unpersuaded.
"I have two reasons to suspect foul
play here," said Harut Sassounian, publisher of the Glendale-based California
Courier, an Armenian newspaper. "If it was an innocent rearrangement of
exhibits, and the leadership believed that the Armenian genocide was an issue,
they would have some kind of reference.... But it's totally eliminated," said
Sassounian. "And the second reason is knowing the degree of cooperation between
the Turkish government and various Jewish-American
organizations."
Samantha Power, executive director of the Carr Center for
Human Rights at Harvard, is more measured in her view, but said she, too, is
perplexed by the museum's choices.
"It's a mistake" to leave the Armenian
deaths out of any serious look at 20th century genocide, she said. Because of
Turkey's campaigning, the Armenian genocide is "the only hard one [for curators]
that's out there, and it's conspicuous that the hard one is missing."
Source: Los Angeles Times
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