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[Armine]

Morgenthaus vs. Genocide
Opinion
By Rafael Medoff
Published March 04, 2009, issue of March 13, 2009.

Robert Morgenthau’s announcement that he will retire after more than three decades as Manhattan’s district attorney caps an impressive career in law enforcement. With his latest case, against banks illegally aiding the governments of Iran and Sudan, three generations of Morgenthaus have now confronted perpetrators of genocide — which is as tragic a commentary on the persistence of human rights abuses in modern times as it is a tribute to a remarkable family that has fought those abuses.
It began with Robert Morgenthau’s grandfather. A lawyer and realtor in turn-of-the-century Manhattan, Henry Morgenthau Sr. was an unlikely crusader for human rights. His life took a surprising turn when his support for the long-shot presidential candidacy of Woodrow Wilson was rewarded with the post of American ambassador to Turkey.
Under the cover of World War I, the Turkish authorities embarked on a campaign of mass murder against their Armenian citizens. Morgenthau’s desperate cables to Washington about this “attempt to exterminate a race” — relaying details of the wholesale deportations, massacres and rapes — are among the most important evidence of the atrocities.
The ambassador persuaded The New York Times and other news media to report on the “race murder,” as he called it; he inspired charity groups to raise relief funds for the survivors. But the Wilson administration, anxious to remain neutral in the war, rebuffed Morgenthau’s appeals to intervene. Morgenthau resigned in frustration in early 1916.
While Morgenthau was unable to save the Armenians, his example has stood as a beacon to generations of activists determined to stop genocide. Morgenthau’s experience fills the opening section of Samantha Power’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.” Now a senior foreign policy adviser to President Obama, Power regards “the American nonresponse to the Turkish horrors” as “establishing patterns that would be repeated” throughout the ensuing century. Power, according to recent media reports, is now attempting to break the pattern by urging active American intervention against the genocide in Darfur.
Two decades after Henry Morgenthau Sr. resigned his post as ambassador, a twist of fate put his son in a position to act against genocide. As the proprietor of apple orchards in New York’s Dutchess County, Henry Morgenthau Jr. became friends with his neighbor Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1934, Roosevelt named him secretary of the treasury.
Under ordinary circumstances, the Treasury Department would not deal with matters affecting Jews in Hitler’s Europe, but in 1943 Jewish groups asked the department for permission to send funds into Axis territory to ransom Jews. The State Department’s attempt to stall the rescue plan aroused the ire and curiosity of a senior Morgenthau aide named Josiah DuBois. His investigations revealed that the State Department had been suppressing news of the Holocaust and sabotaging rescue opportunities so America would not have to deal with what one official called “the burden and the curse” of having to care for refugees.
In early 1944, Morgenthau confronted Roosevelt with the evidence and urged him to create a government agency to rescue Jews. Just then, leading members of Congress, galvanized by the activist Bergson Group, were pressing the president to establish such an agency. The pressure convinced a reluctant Roosevelt to create the War Refugee Board. During the final 15 months of the war, the board helped save an estimated 200,000 Jews.
Like his father and grandfather, Robert Morgenthau chose a career path that one would not expect to embroil him in international affairs. As Manhattan’s district attorney since 1975, Morgenthau prosecuted the usual array of criminals, from muggers to Mafia bosses to white-collar swindlers.
Last month, however, Morgenthau announced the results of what is perhaps his most important investigation: His office caught 10 major international banks laundering “billions of dollars” for Iran and Sudan. Part of the money purchased goods that international sanctions prevent Tehran and Khartoum from acquiring. Some of the money was channeled to terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah.
Ironically, Morgenthau’s bank investigators have been collaborating with the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control — the same office that, under the direction of Josiah DuBois, his father worked with during the Holocaust.
Three generations of Morgenthaus were unexpectedly thrust into the international arena and rose to the challenge. Henry Sr. exposed the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. Henry Jr. helped interrupt the Nazi genocide. Now the Sudanese regime that is carrying out genocide in Darfur and the Iranian regime that dreams of genocide against Israel are facing their own Morgenthau. The family’s legacy has come full circle.
Rafael Medoff is director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and the author of “Blowing the Whistle on Genocide: Josiah E. DuBois, Jr. and the Struggle for a U.S. Response to the Holocaust” (Purdue University Press, 2008).

[Yervant1]

PanArmenian, Armenia

July 12 2018

 

 

Henry Morgenthau III, longtime friend of Armenians, passes away at 101

July 12, 2018 - 11:27 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Henry Morgenthau III, a longtime friend of the Armenian people, who dedicated himself to honoring the memory of his grandfather, Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, passed away on July 10, report the Armenian Assembly of America and Armenian National Institute.

In countless public presentations, in television appearances, and in numerous publications, Henry Morgenthau III recounted his recollections of his grandfather with whom he lived in New York City. He was honored on many occasions by Armenian organizations across the country.

The Armenian National Institute and the Armenian Assembly of America shared the distinction of organizing Morgenthau's trip to Armenia in 1999 where he was honored by the National Academy of Sciences, the Armenian Genocide Museum, and the City of Yerevan.

Morgenthau was joined by his sons Dr. Henry Ben Morgenthau and Kramer Morgenthau, as well as Armenian Assembly President Carolyn Mugar, longtime personal friend of Henry from the time of his residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Kitty Dukakis, wife of the former governor of the state of Massachusetts and a board member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

"My grandfather frequently told me that his attempts to save Armenian lives at the time of the Genocide and the establishment of the Near East Relief effort were the achievements that meant the most to him," Morgenthau explained.

Ambassador Morgenthau served as President Woodrow Wilson's emissary to the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

With Henry Morgenthau III's endorsement, in 1996 the Armenian Assembly of America established the Henry Morgenthau Award for Meritorious Public Service which is given out to public officials in recognition of their contributions in defense of human rights. Recipients of the Assembly's Morgenthau Award include the first U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Armenia Harry Gilmore and U.S. Ambassador John Evans who publicly called for official U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

A friend also of the Armenian National Institute (ANI), Henry Morgenthau III encouraged the organization with symbolic gifts of $1915 and joined with supporters and Armenian Ambassador to the U.S. Tatoul Markarian in the opening of the ANI Library, to which he contributed his grandfather's library.

Henry Morgenthau III was an author and television producer. His family history, Mostly Morgenthaus, won the 1992 National Jewish Book Council prize for best memoir. He was a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University. Morgenthau's shows on Boston's public television station, WGBH, won Peabody, Emmy, UPI, EFLA and Flaherty Film Festival awards. Morgenthau also updated his grandfather's memoir, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, with a lengthy postscript about the Ambassador's life in the 2003 edition of the book published by Wayne State University Press.

Henry Morgenthau III's brother, Robert Morgenthau, also a vocal advocate for Armenian Genocide recognition, served as District Attorney for New York County in Manhattan. Their father, Henry Morgenthau II, was Secretary of the Treasury under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"The Armenian people have lost a true friend with Henry's passing. His grandfather Ambassador Henry Morgenthau played a critical role as the first opponent of genocide on the world stage as he defended the Armenian people. With his first-hand familiarity of his grandfather’s legacy, Henry stood with the Armenian people throughout his life, always ready to step up immediately to lend his gravitas in support of all essential issues for Armenians,” stated Armenian Assembly President Carolyn Mugar.

"Despite his advancing age, Henry continued to participate in Armenian Genocide commemorative and advocacy events. He was honored at the community-wide Centennial Genocide Commemoration in Washington, D.C. in 2015, where he walked on stage surrounded by his children and grandchildren. The Morgenthaus are legendary within the Armenian community, who are grateful that this noted family validated their traumatic history as a people by informing the entire world,” she continued.

Carolyn added: “Henry was exemplary in carrying on Ambassador Morgenthau’s commitment to genocide recognition and prevention. We all honor him for his total resolve to relentlessly stand up and speak out against injustices of the past. He used his voice to deepen people’s recognition of the importance of acknowledging the truth in history and thereby using this truth to prevent the recurrence of atrocities.”

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[MosJan]

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