Armenian Orphan Rug Photo Credit: Dr. Hagop Martin Deranian
(JNS.org) After nearly a year of protests, the Obama administration has
finally agreed to permit a rug connected to the Armenian genocide to be publicly
displayed. The long ordeal of the Armenian Orphan Rug, held hostage to fears of
angering Turkey, has finally ended.
Or has it?
The controversy began in the autumn of 2013, when the Smithsonian
Institution announced it would hold an event featuring a new book, “President
Calvin Coolidge and the Armenian Orphan Rug,” by Hagop Martin
Deranian.
The 18-foot long rug was woven 1925 by 400 Armenian orphan girls living
in exile in Lebanon. They were survivors of the Turkish slaughter of
approximately 1 million Armenians. The girls sent the rug to President Calvin
Coolidge as a gesture of appreciation for America’s assistance to survivors of
the genocide. Coolidge pledged that it would have “a place of honor in the White
House, where it will be a daily symbol of goodwill on earth.”
Instead, it has become a daily symbol of politics taking precedence over
combating genocide.
The White House refused to loan the rug to the Smithsonian. Neither the
White House nor the State Department would give an explanation as to why they
were keeping the rug locked up. The only plausible explanation is pressure from
the Turkish government, which to this day denies the genocide
occurred.
As a presidential candidate in 2008, then-Senator Obama said, “America
deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian genocide.” Yet the
statements that President Obama has issued each April on Armenian Remembrance
Day have never included the G-word. Instead, he has used an Armenian
expression—“Meds Yeghern,” meaning “the great calamity.” Fear of displeasing the
Turks appears to be the only plausible motive for that rhetorical
evasiveness.
Armenian-Americans are not the only ones who should be outraged. American
Jews should be up in arms, too. Not only because of the sympathy that all
victims of genocide naturally share—but also because if the White House can
permit political considerations to take precedence over recognition of the
Armenian genocide, there is a danger that memorialization of the Holocaust could
one day suffer a similar fate.
Indeed, Adolf Hitler reportedly once assured his subordinates that their
atrocities would not be remembered since “Who, after all, speaks today of the
annihilation of the Armenians?”
Last week, after numerous protests, the Obama administration announced
that it will permit the rug to be displayed for six days in November—kind of a
week-long furlough from its imprisonment in a White House closet.
But there is a catch. A big one.
The rug will not be part of a display concerning the Armenian genocide.
Instead, it is being mushed together with other foreign gifts to the White
House, in a display called “Thank You to the United States: Three Gifts to
Presidents in Gratitude for American Generosity Abroad.”
The genocide rug will be sandwiched in between a Sevres vase presented by
France to the United States after World War One, and a piece of artwork called
“Flowering Branches in Lucite” sent by Japan after the 2010 tsunami.
Grouping victims of genocide together with those who drowned in a tsunami
or were left homeless by World War One disguises what happened to the Armenians.
It blurs the distinction between something that was inevitable and something
that was not. Weather-related disasters and damage caused by wars are
inevitable. But the Armenian genocide was different: it was an act of mass
murder, systematically planned and implemented by evil men driven by religious
and ethnic hatred.
The Armenian Orphan Rug is a work of great beauty. But the point of
displaying it is not for the sake of its aesthetic value. Its power is its
message. Its significance is as a symbol. It is a reminder of the genocide that
the Turks perpetrated against the Armenians. Six days in an exhibit about gifts
to the White House is no victory. On the contrary—it is a defeat for everyone
who cares about historical truth and everyone who seeks to learn the lessons of
the past so that they will not be repeated.===================
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Here is a closer look at the rug....
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