PRESS RELEASE
National Association for Armenian
Studies and Research (NAASR)
395 Concord Avenue
Belmont, MA 02478
Tel.: 617-489-1610
E-mail: [email protected]
COMPARISON OF PLUNDER OF PROPERTIES DURING
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND HOLOCAUST IN NAASR LECTURE
Umit Kurt of Clark University will present a talk entitled
“‘Legal’ and ‘Official’ Plundering of Armenian and Jewish Properties
During the Armenian Genocide and Holocaust: A Comparative
Perspective,” on Thursday, March 5, 2015, at 7:30 p.m., at the
National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) Center,
395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA 02478.
The state-orchestrated plunder of Armenian and Jewish property
immediately impoverished its victims; this was simultaneously a
condition for and a consequence of the Armenian Genocide and
Holocaust. As the historian of Nazi looting and plundering of Jewish
property Martin Dean writes, ethnic cleansing and genocide usually
have a “powerful materialist component: seizure of property, looting
of the victims, and their economic displacement are intertwined with
other motives for racial and interethnic violence and intensify their
devastating effects.”
A series of laws and decrees as well as complex bureaucratic
mechanisms were created in the Ottoman-Turkish Republican and Nazi
Germany periods concerning the administration of the belongings of the
deported or killed Armenians and Jews. This presentation aims at
analyzing and comparing the processes of expropriation of these two
victim groups. In doing so, it will examine how the properties of
Armenians and Jews changed hands under a veneer of legality. The
presentation will discuss similarities and differences between the two
dispossession processes.
Umit Kurt is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Clark University and
a lecturer at Sabancý University. A 2014 recipient of a Gulbenkian
Foundation Armenian Studies Scholarship, his main area of interest is
the confiscation of Armenian properties and the role of local
elites/notables in Aintab during the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1921. He
is the author of numerous historical and political articles in
scholarly journals and newspapers including Nations and Nationalism,
Turkish Studies, Turkish Review, Culture and Religion, Turkish Policy
Quarterly, Turkish Journal for Politics, Tarih ve Toplum Yeni
Yaklaþýmlar, Birikim, Toplumsal Tarih, Cogito, Taraf, Radikal, and
Bianet. He is the author of several books in Turkish and co-author
with Taner Akçam of Kanunlarýn Ruhu: Emval-i Metruke Kanunlarýnda
Soykýrýmýn Ãzlerini Sürmek (The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of
Wealth in the Armenian Genocide), to be published in English in April
2015 by Berghahn.
For more information about Umit Kurt’s talk contact NAASR at
617-489-1610 or [email protected].
Belmont, MA
Feb. 12, 2015