| Children of Armenia: A Forgotten Genocide and the Century-long Struggle for Justice |  | Author: Michael Bobelian
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
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Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 84,121
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 1416557253
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.620154
EAN: 9781416557258
ASIN: 1416557253
Publication Date: September 1, 2009
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Product Description
From 1915 to 1923, the ruling Ottoman Empire drove 2 million Armenians from their ancestral homeland; 1.5 million of them were viciously slaughtered. While there was an initial global outcry and a movement led by Woodrow Wilson to aid the "starving Armenians," the promise to hold the perpetrators accountable was never fulfilled and a curtain of silence soon descended on one of the worst crimes of modern history. Now, almost a century later, the Armenians are still fighting for justice.After uncovering his family's experiences during the Genocide, Michael Bobelian struggled to rationalize how an event as widely reported as the Genocide -- more than a hundred articles ran in The New York Times in 1915, with a typical headline exclaiming "Wholesale Massacres of Armenians by Turks" -- could fade from public consciousness. Why was the Genocide ignored, forgotten, and, worse, relegated to fiction for so long? What role did America's national self-interest play in helping Turkey evade public accountability? Why did Armenians themselves initially stand silent? Based on years of archival research and personal interviews, Children of Armenia is the first book to trace this post-Genocide history and reveal the events that have conspired to eradicate the "hidden holocaust" from the world's memory. At the close of World War I, the upsurge of support for the Genocide's survivors, considered one of the world's first international human right movements, inspired the few remaining Armenian leaders -- such as Simon Vratsian, the ravaged nation's last prime minister, and Vahan Cardashian, Armenia's chief advocate in the United States -- to seek relief and justice for their people. But despite their tireless efforts, the promises made to them by the war's victors were systematically cast aside during postwar negotiations. In the end, the Armenians received nothing, not even an apology, and decades of silence would pass before the Genocide's survivors -- dispersed, stateless, and on the verge of extinction -- would produce a new generation of activists who would renew their fight for justice. In Children of Armenia, we meet Gourgen Yanikian, a seventy-seven-year-old terrorist bent on revenge, whose act of terrible violence in Southern California galvanized a movement for recognition; Vartkes Yeghiayan, a lawyer who brought a class action suit against New York Life, seeking to win a judgment for thousands of unclaimed policies; and Van Krikorian, who teamed up with Senator Bob Dole to gain public acknowledgment of the Genocide from the U.S. government. From the initial acts of revenge-fueled terrorism to the birth of an organized movement seeking recognition for these unacknowledged crimes -- including political maneuvering to get a resolution passed by the U.S. Congress -- this is a groundbreaking account of the Armenian struggle to seek redress in the face of recalcitrant perpetrators and an indifferent world. Bobelian delivers a powerful lesson on the price that is paid when injustice goes unacknowledged and a moving story of a people living in the shadow of a century-old genocide.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Thorough and Gripping September 17, 2009
M. Schneider (New York, NY)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
Mr. Bobelian delivers a thoroughly researched and documented account
of the Armenian people's struggle for justice to avenge the genocide
of their ancestors by Turkey, almost a century ago. Though well
documented by the global press and foreign governments at the time,
the Turkish government, with the aid of the U.S. and European
governments, has acted to deny and all but extinguish the world's
memory of this tragedy. Bobelian illuminates the complex power
struggle between morality, justice, and historical fact on the one
hand, and national security, politics, and corporate interest on the
other. First with the establishment of U.S. corporate interests, and
then with the establishment of national security interests, the U.S.
has created a relationship with Turkey that is so tenuous, that
Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack
Obama have all refused to publicly acknowledge the genocide once they
were elected; not because they deny the near extermination of an
entire people, but because they fear angering the Turkish government.
By incorporating three different storylines of actual individuals
involved in this struggle, Bobelian creates a dramatic narrative that
is one part historical and one part legal thriller. As I read
Children of Armenia, I could not help but think about more recent
genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan and whether our national
interests will lead us to aid the denial of these atrocities in the
decades to come. Bobelian's deep and thorough research will resonate
with academia-focused readers, while his narrative style will resonate
with casual readers of history, making Children of Armenia a must-read
for anyone interested in the interplay between human rights, global
politics, and global economics.
 Much-Needed Work Fills Many Gaps October 24, 2009
John M. Evans (Washington, DC)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Until now, it has been far easier for an American reader to learn about the facts of the Armenian Genocide, which took place nearly a hundred years ago, than to trace the story of the Genocide's survivors: how they have variously attempted to seek revenge, justice, or at least acknowledgement of what happened to their families and forebears. Children of Armenia: a Forgotten Genocide and the Century-long Struggle for Justice, by Michael Bobelian, a Columbia-trained journalist and lawyer, fills in many of the gaps, and does so in a vivid and highly readable way. Episodes that Bobelian sheds particularly helpful light upon include the short-lived First Republic of Armenia (1919-20), the assassination of Archbishop Tourian in a New York Church on Christmas Eve 1933, the effects of the Cold War and the Truman Doctrine in changing the equities and the attitudes of the U.S. Government toward Armenia and the Armenians, the reawakening in the 1960s of Armenian consciousness and assertiveness concerning the Genocide, the period of terrorist assassinations of Turkish officials in the 1970s and 1980s, and the prodigious efforts of Armenians to win recognition of the fact of the Genocide in Washington, against the intense pressure of Turkish official denial and behind-the-scenes lobbying. This book in many ways picks up where Peter Balakian's 2003 The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response left off. It continues the story right up to our own time and the recent "football diplomacy" between Yerevan and Ankara. While I had a quibble with a turn of phrase here and there, Mr. Bobelian's overwhelming contribution is to have made a very complicated tale comprehensible to an outsider, and to have provided illuminating portraits of so many of the key actors (for example, Gourgen Yanikian, Senator Bob Dole, Van Krikorian, Vartkes Yeghiayan) in these interlocking dramas, all of which have roots in the Genocide, but each of which is in some way unique. I heartily recommend this book to anyone seeking to understand why it is that Armenians care so passionately about the Genocide.
A Gripping Story And A Seminal Text October 21, 2009
Arasmus
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
There are a number of books that describe the events of the Armenian Genocide, but there are no books, other than this one, that describe the struggle for recognition of that genocide between 1915 and 2008. This book is the seminal text on this topic.
At the outset, and of particular relevance to the general reader, I think its important to say that this is not a dry tome recounting facts and dates. On the contrary, it is a fast-paced narrative that tells the story of the struggle for recognition of the Armenian Genocide through the lives of three men. The book opens with Gourgen Yanikian, a 77 year old terrorist plotting the assassination of Turkish diplomats as his final act of revenge for the horrors that haunt him. We then meet Vartkes Yeghiayan, a lawyer who brought a class action suit against New York Life, seeking to win a judgment for thousands of unclaimed policies. The third character is Van Krikorian who together with Senator Bob Dole campaigned tirelessly to gain public recognition of the Genocide from the US government.
Within this accessible narrative, Bobelian unfolds, never-before-seen research into the reaction of the US government and individuals within the government to the cause of Armenian Genocide recognition. The compelling question Bobelian tries to answer is how the United States went from front-page outrage in the New York Times and other newspapers of record in 1915 to the failure to recognize the genocide as such almost 100 years later. Bobelian offers a balanced explanation, clearly explaining the geo-political role that Turkey has played in US foreign policy, especially since the Second World War, but also describing, in nail-biting detail, the frantic lobbying of US politicians by the Turkish government and the susceptibility of American politicians to, and complicity in, this seduction.
This book obviously has an urgent and deep significance for Armenians today. But it is also shot through with universal themes and insights that are compelling to non-Armenians. Firstly, the issue of genocide recognition, whether it be the Jewish Holocaust or the current genocide in Darfur, is obviously of the utmost urgency to all human beings. Echoing the well-known poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller, this book makes one reflect on one's own insecurity should one find oneself, or one's kin, the victims of savage, uncivilized, state-sanctioned thuggery, and buried for decades beneath an immoral geo-political calculus. Secondly, the book speaks to the role of memory in cultural identity. On the one-hand there are the Armenians whose cultural-identity is gripped by the need to remember, while on the other the modern Turkish identity seems to require a continuous forgetting. Thirdly, the context of this book in the life of its author is one to which many will relate and draw inspiration. Bobelian's family barely survived the Genocide. One cannot help but feel, from the immense amount of research (the copious footnotes span some 45 pages at the end of this 293 page text) that to read this book is to witness a dialogue through diligence between a modern urbane Armenian-American author living in the 21st century, and an unresolved past. As such it speaks to a universal human condition; our capacity for empathy with past injustice visited upon kith and kin, our inherited commitment to see justice done, the weight of that inheritance, and our own search for self-actualization and peace along the way.
Interesting and quite informative November 19, 2009
Kurt A. Johnson (North-Central Illinois, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, various ethnic groups came under deadly assault by Turkish authorities and people, and perhaps the group which suffered the most was the Armenia people. In the years after this first of all genocides, the Turkish authorities launched a campaign of denial about the events of the genocide, seeking to minimize or even completely whitewash the events. This is the story of the genocide, and the century-long struggle that the Armenians have had to wage to receive any sort of recognition of what happened.
Overall, I found this to be an interesting book. Instead of being a history of the genocide itself, the book gives no more than an introduction to it, instead focusing on placing it within the context of what was going on in Turkey at the time. Then the book goes on to tell the story of the Armenians and the Turks, as they moved through history - one seeking full recognition of the genocide, and the other seeking to deny it.
I found the book to be interesting, and quite informative on a subject that I must admit that I knew basically nothing about. The book was well-researched and written in an interesting manner. If you want to understand the modern Armenian people and their recent history, then you should read this book.
AREMENIAN GENOCIDE AFTERMATH October 3, 2009
TIZITA (ETATS UNIS)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A MUST READ FOR ALL WHO WANT TO PREVENT SYSTEMATIC KILLINGS OF SELECT GROUP OF PEOPLE. AND THE FORCED FADING OF FACTS AFTERWARDS BY POWERFUL NATIONS WHO IGNORE THE TRAGEDY.
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