MORGENTHAUS VS. GENOCIDE
By Rafael Medoff

The Jewish Daily

March 5 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).