The Kennebec Journal

March 9

Taking sides over genocide

MATTHEW STONE, Staff Writer

AUGUSTA -- Andrew Tarsy made international headlines in 2007 when he publicly broke ranks with the organization where he had worked for seven years.

At issue: a disagreement over the Anti-Defamation League's refusal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide.

Tarsy, the league's New England regional director, made his disagreement with national leadership public, and he lost his job for it.

"In the New England region, we decided we knew it was a genocide and we were going to say so," Tarsy said Monday during a lecture at the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine on the University of Maine at Augusta's campus.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is a national organization that fights anti-Semitism and other discrimination through a variety of educational programs. The group, however, hadn't recognized the Ottoman Empire's massacres of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1918 as genocide.

But the league's New England regional board backed Tarsy up on calling it genocide. A number of Boston-area Jewish organizations did, too.

"We felt that this was an issue of principle," Tarsy said. "We did what we think was right."

The Anti-Defamation League later revised its stance on the massacres. And a week after firing Tarsy, the organization hired him back.

Tarsy accepted, but stayed on only a few months more.

He's now the executive director of the Boston-based Progressive Business Leaders Network. Last year, he spent three months as a visiting professional at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands.

"What I was told was, 'You made your point. Don't talk about it anymore,'" he said. "When I wanted to build a relationship with the Armenian community, it was clear that that was going to be a real challenge."

The term "genocide" first started appearing in popular English in the 1940s after Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined it to describe the Armenian massacre. "Genocide" refers to the intentional destruction of a national or ethnic group.

The word has the power to "bring validation, to bring justice, to bring prevention," Tarsy said.

It's an offense, for example, that a group of people can be held accountable for in court, he said.

"Even if the case never comes up, your behavior is changed by knowing what will happen to you if you break that rule," Tarsy said.

But preventing future genocides will take more than widespread knowledge of the concept, he said.

"The answer of how we really prevent all of these things is human behavior," said Tarsy. "How can a court help drive normal human behavior in these countries? Through education."

While the Anti-Defamation League now acknowledges the Armenian genocide, the organization opposes efforts in Congress to pass a national resolution recognizing it as genocide.

Turkey has withdrawn its U.S. ambassador from Washington, D.C., over the prospect of the resolution's passage, which the Turkish government says could endanger efforts between Turkey and Armenia to normalize relations.

The Anti-Defamation League says passing the resolution stands to endanger Turkey's Jewish community and relations among Turkey, Israel and the United States.

Matthew Stone -- 623-3811, ext. 435

mstone@centralmaine.com