Book Reveals Incriminating records of the Turkish Islamic genocide of Armenians and the efforts of insurance companies to cover up the slaughter
The 20th century spawned the word "genocide," if not the concept, and was marked by unprecedented slaughter: from the Arab Muslim massacres of non-Arab Sudanese in Darfur to Stalinist pogroms and, of course, Hitler's "Final Solution" which resulted in the extermination of 6 million Jews.
But an enlightening new book by Southern California medical researcher Dr. Hrayr S. Karagueuzian makes the disturbing case that it is possible to heap astounding "insult" onto the unimaginable injuries inflicted during genocide.
In his new book, "Genocide and Life Insurance: The Armenian Case," Dr. Karagueuzian, using documents obtained from the U.S. National Archives and those derived from class-action insurance settlements in the past couple of years, chronicles the Armenian genocide orchestrated by Islamic Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1923.
More than half of the 2 million Armenians in what would become modern day Turkey perished in the slaughter, and the rest fled the country (or were forcefully Islamized) to avoid extermination. And while the details of the Armenian genocide are not as widely known as those of other mass slaughters, Dr. Karagueuzian delves deeply into its diabolical aftermath, as the Islamic Ottoman Turks tried to cash in on life insurance policies held by the families of the murdered Armenians.
"This book is a plea for human justice, perhaps a voice to counter the political control of knowledge," Dr. Karagueuzian said. "I would hope this book will result in legal and political remedies to prevent the victims of genocide, and their survivors, from becoming twice victimized."
Dr. Karagueuzian's quest began when he discovered documents in the national archives that detail what he calls the "cunning, yet spectacular, deceit on behalf of both the insurers and the perpetrators. My book is the first account of life insurance policy claims in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide."
The documents led to the eventual settlement of class action insurance claims in which the heirs of the slaughtered Armenians received from two insurance companies $34 million. That amount is close to the face value of the policies at the time of the genocide, but woefully short of the billions of dollars those policies would have been worth when the settlement was hammered out in 2004 and 2005 in the Los Angeles court system, Dr. Karagueuzian said.
The dispute began when the Islamic Ottoman Turks tried to collect the insurance money and were rebuffed by the insurers who rightly noted that the Turks caused the genocide and should be compensating the victims. But the dispute evolved into what Dr. Karagueuzian argues became a Faustian business deal between the West and Turkey, in which the language and facts of the genocide were whitewashed. All allusions to the Armenians were scrapped and the attorneys involved agreed to delete the word "genocide" from the settlement papers, and to refrain from commenting on the bloody events in the future.
"This self-serving, lawyerly deal is a clear insult to human intellect and a blasphemy to the souls of the victims," Dr. Karagueuzian said. "I would hope that by shining a spotlight on the settlement, and the decades of duplicitous behavior that produced it, that the victims and their heirs will receive some additional recompense in the court of public opinion."
Dr. Karagueuzian's book also offers some lessons for those involved in present-day efforts in the U.S. to hold German and European insurers responsible for the similar injustices done to Jews and others exterminated on the orders of Adolf Hitler.
"Genocide and Life Insurance: The Armenian Case" is "powerfully suggestive of all the work, the scholarship and litigation, and perhaps political activism, facing those who believe that justice can still be done for the memory of the victims of the Armenian genocide and the nation they represented," said Dickran Kouymjian, a professor of Armenian Studies at Cal State-Fresno, who penned the forward of Dr. Karagueuzian's book.
"My book is aimed at universities, genocide scholars, politicians, insurance companies and regulators, Armenian and Jewish charitable associations and any others who may be in a position to learn from this disturbing chapter in human history, and especially those in a position to prevent a recurrence of such injustices in the 21st century and beyond," Dr. Karagueuzian said.
About the author: Dr. Hrayr S. Karagueuzian is a research scientist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and a professor of medicine at UCLA. He has spent more than 20 years researching the Armenian genocide at the hands of Islamic Ottoman Turks during the early 20th century.
This story comes to you via UmmaNewsLinks.com .
1) Book Reveals Incriminating records of the Turkish Islamic genocide of Armenians and the efforts of insurance companies to cover up the slaughter
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