Genocide as History, Legal Flashpoint

A lawsuit questions how Massachusetts schools portray
the Armenian tragedy. But for victims on the 91st
anniversary, there can be no doubt.

By Elizabeth Mehren
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

April 25, 2006

BOSTON – She was only 3 when her family fled their Turkish homeland 91
years ago. Alice Shnorhokian and her brother were too small to walk
the long road to safety in the Syrian desert, so their parents
strapped them in boxes on the sides of a donkey that carried the
family possessions.

On the eve of what came to be called the Armenian genocide,
Shnorhokian saw fellow Armenians trying to escape from every village
she passed. There was no food, water or shelter, she said. Babies and
old people were dying along the way. Eventually, about 1.2 million
Armenians would perish.

“In Turkey, in genocide times, we Christian Armenians had three
options,” Shnorhokian said. “We paid a heavy tax, became Muslim or
died.”

The retired nurse-midwife offered her recollections as this region’s
large Armenian community gathered at the Massachusetts statehouse
Monday on the anniversary of the 1915-1918 massacres. The observance
this year took on new weight in the wake of a lawsuit pending in
federal court here that addresses how the Armenian genocide should be
portrayed in Massachusetts public schools.

Griswold vs. Driscoll was filed last fall by high school senior Ted
Griswold, two of his teachers and a Turkish-American advocacy
organization. The plaintiffs contend that Department of Education
Commissioner David P. Driscoll and other state officials violated the
1st Amendment by removing material from a human rights curriculum that
questioned whether the mass killings nearly a century ago constituted
genocide.

“It’s a case of academic freedom,” said Griswold, who lent his name to
the suit to show his support for freedom of speech, and who admitted
he knows little about Armenia or the genocide.

“A greater perspective makes the truth easier to find,” he said,
adding: “This is nothing personal about the Armenians. I realize it is
an emotional issue for them.”

Six years ago, the Massachusetts Legislature mandated that high
schools offer a curriculum on genocide and human rights. Topics
included the Holocaust, the Irish potato famine, the trans-Atlantic
slave trade and the genocide in Armenia.

At first, the syllabus about the Armenian genocide included opposing
views from several Turkish scholars and organizations – many of whom
dispute whether genocide took place. As recently as this month, when a
public television show on the subject was aired, Turkish Ambassador
Nab Ensoy called the events of 1915 “an unresolved period of world
history.”

In a statement from his embassy in Washington, Ensoy said: “Armenian
allegations of genocide have never been historically or legally
substantiated.”

Several months after the curriculum was introduced, the Turkish
interpretation was removed when a state legislator said the dissent
opened the door to denial of a historical tragedy.

Harvey A. Silverglate, the Boston lawyer who brought the suit, said
the case is about allowing all sides to be heard, not genocide denial.

“Whether there was or was not a genocide is of no importance in this
case,” he said. “Each of my clients has their own personal points of
view. But this is not about their viewpoint. It’s about the right to
have other viewpoints expressed.”

He said the case has special significance in an era of culture wars,
“where each side would like to shut the other side up.”

But UCLA historian Richard Hovannisian said the freedom-of-speech
argument permits “rationalizing or relativizing of what happened.”
Hovannisian, author of many volumes on modern Armenian history, said
the Armenian genocide had become an embarrassment to many Turks.

“They went through a long period of amnesia,” he said.

He dismissed the suggestion that opposing camps are entitled to equal
time in historical analysis. “This is about politics, and the
geopolitical importance of Turkey,” he said. “It is revisionism,
state-sponsored and state-organized.”

The case has drawn attention, especially in California, with the
world’s largest concentration of Armenians. Massachusetts has this
country’s second-largest Armenian population, with at least 25,000
residents claiming Armenian descent in the most recent U.S. census.

Shnorhokian remembered that as her family set off on its involuntary
exodus, her mother hid money in her children’s clothing. In case they
became separated from the family, they would thus have the means to
pay for food or shelter. Along the route of their journey, Shnorhokian
related, her father prayed and sang, asking God’s help.

Ultimately, Shnorhokian landed in Beirut, where she was educated and
married. With her husband and children, she immigrated to
Massachusetts, where her husband was a pastor.

The Armenian experience must be remembered, she said, “so it will not
be repeated. That was the call, that we should remember always, and we
should teach our children. And everybody should know. The whole world
should know. Well, how can you forget?