By Israel W. Charny

Once and For All for History:

Repeatedly, there are articles that report or suggest that the milestone First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide in 1982 never took place at all or, alternatively, it is reported that the conference deteriorated severely and just about evaporated.

Thus, the California Courier (June 14, 2018) republished an editorial by the New York-based Jewish Week Media Group (June 6, 2018) in which it was reported that “in 1982, Israel, under pressure from Turkey cancelled the Holocaust conference in which Armenian’s would have described their people’s genocide.  Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel pulled out of the gathering, reportedly after Turkey threatened reprisals against Turkish Jews.”

Thus, too, in a review of a new book in Hebrew by Professor Yehuda Bauer (An Insolent People in the Global Village), a senior correspondent, Hanoch Marmari, wrote correctly in the Haaretz Book Review Magazine that the opening of the conference that had been planned to take place at Yad Vashem was cancelled in response to the demand of Israel’s Foreign Ministry — which was responding to the pressures of the Turks to prevent the participation of Armenian scholars and deliberations about the Armenian Genocide.  However, Marmari then continued, “In the wake of the cancellation of the program at Yad Vashem, the majority of scheduled participants in the conference cancelled, among them the Holocaust historian who was already well-known at the time, Yehuda Bauer.  Even if several spontaneous sessions did take place, the conference as a whole evaporated.”

The following is intended as a decisive formal correction and restatement of the accurate facts of the important success that the conference achieved even in the face of extreme pressures by the government of Israel which, as noted, was complying with the demands of the Turkish government.

For the Formal Record

The pioneering and famous conference on “Holocaust and genocide” in 1982 did take place outstandingly successfully despite very intense efforts on the State of Israel to bring about its cancellation in favor of Turkey’s demands that there be no recognition of the Armenian Genocide.  What is more – all the Armenian scholars who had been invited DID participate.  Terrence des Pres wrote in the Yale Review, “The heroes of knowledge withstood the minions of power.”

What really happened to the conference which I had initiated and was directing in association with a noted Israeli psychiatrist who specialized in treating Holocaust survivors, Shamai Davidson, together with Elie Wiesel who had agreed to be the president of the conference, is that the intense pressures of the Israeli government led to Wiesel’s announcement to the New York Times correspondent in Paris that he was withdrawing. Nonetheless it is extremely important to note that until his resignation Wiesel did not waver from his agreement with Davidson and myself to oppose the demands of the Israel Foreign Ministry to exclude the speakers on the Armenian Genocide and thus to allow the conference to go on.

The Paris bureau of the New York Times called me to confirm that the conference was aborted given Wiesel’s resignation, but I replied – in full kitsch but with resolute intent – that the conference would take place even if only a proverbial ten people were to attend (referring to the Jewish tradition that requires a minimum of ten men to be present for proper prayer in the synagogue).

The conference took place with an attendance of 300 people – out of an earlier expectation of an attendance of 600 before the Israeli government literally called people listed in the preliminary program urging them to cancel. The conference included the screening of films on the Armenian Genocide by Michael Hagopian, and 6 papers by scholars including Richard Hovannisian, Vahakn Dadrian, and Ronald Suny.  We were extremely proud and happy with our success – which was fully reported in the world press, including the New York Times and Jerusalem Post. In addition to praiseworthy editorials and columns in newspapers, it was hailed in many professional articles, books and magazines as a sterling victory for academic freedom. Moreover, the conference was especially celebrated by the world Armenian community as the first academic conference in the world up until that time that gave recognition to the Armenian Genocide. We also enjoyed a very large number of salutes of respect and appreciation from a great number of participants from all over the world.

Nonetheless, as noted there are periodic references in the press and even in scholarly articles declaring that the conference died. It’s a little like the obscenities of denials of the Armenian Genocide or the Holocaust, or whichever genocides of other peoples.

Israel W. Charny is Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem.  Most recently he has published the award-winning The Genocide Contagion: How We Commit and Confront Holocaust and Genocide which looks at human beings years before a Holocaust or genocide.