Robert M. Morgenthau: Armenians firm in quest for self-determination

Robert M. Morgenthau: Armenians firm in quest for self-determination

PanARMENIAN.Net - A luncheon in honor of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan took place on September 30, at the Capitol Visitor Center, Washington DC, where the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation posthumously bestowed the Raoul Wallenberg medal to Henry Morgenthau Sr. into the hands of his grandson Robert M. Morgenthau.

As Morgenthau further noted in his speech, “I am honored in more ways than I can recount to be asked to accept the Wallenberg Medal on behalf of my grandfather. The legacy of Raoul Wallenberg holds a very personal significance for my family. My father, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., was Secretary of the Treasury during the Holocaust. At a time when as many as 12,000 Hungarian Jews were being deported to certain death every day, he established the War Refugee Board to resettle the refugees and save their lives. It was Raoul Wallenberg who ultimately would run the Board, and it was his courage and tireless effort that saved 200,000 lives – and provided a model for the kind of humanitarian sacrifice that the world so needs today.

I am honored as well to be in the presence of President Serzh Sargsyan. I can assure you that my grandfather would be especially pleased to know that one day his grandson would share the podium with the President of an independent and free Armenia.

This year, the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, has brought an unprecedented level of awareness of the slaughter and deportation of the Armenians, and of my grandfather’s humanitarian efforts to stop the killings. What is less well known, but what consumed my grandfather equally, is the sad history of the betrayal of the Armenian people in the quest for self-determination.

I have said on other occasions that the principles that have largely animated my own life in public office are those that my grandfather brought back from his service in Anatolia. I commend them to one and all. Among those values are all of the freedoms that would later be included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But there is yet one more value that he taught us, one that gives life to all the rest: a commitment that, on issues of justice, we shall never give up.”

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