The Armenian National Institute (ANI) recently praised renowned historian and Yale University professor Jay Winter for his pivotal role in the publication by the prestigious Cambridge University Press of a vital new book on the US response to the Armenian Genocide.

The book, America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915, is the product of a conference co-sponsored by the Library of Congress and the Armenian National Institute in cooperation with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2000.

Commenting on the recent publication, ANI Board Chairman Aram Kaloosdian thanked Dr. Winter "for his leadership in pulling together all these critical works of scholarship."

"The official, public, philanthropic, and media response to the Armenian Genocide is now thoroughly documented. There can be no denial of the extent of US public knowledge about the atrocities against the Armenians. The American government was fully aware of the nature and the extent of the crime," Kaloosdian said.

In his introduction, which brings together the key scholarly papers presented at the two-day conference, Dr. Winter underlines the fact that the 317-page volume sheds new light on how Americans have historically related to the phenomenon of genocide, adding that the volume’s "particular reference is to American responses to the first genocide of the 20th century [and] the Turkish genocidal campaign against its Armenian population."

The three-part book brings together the scholarly works of 12 experts including renowned Churchill biographer and Holocaust expert Sir Martin Gilbert, the pre-eminent Genocide specialist Vahakn N. Dadrian, Wilson Administration expert John Milton Cooper, University of Nebraska professor Lloyd E. Ambrosius, ANI director Rouben Adalian, historian Suzanne Moranian, historian Susan Billington Harper, Colgate University Professor Peter Balakian, UCLA Professor Richard Hovannisian, Senate Historian Donald A. Ritchie, and UC Berkeley Professor Thomas C. Leonard.

In his introduction, "Witness to Genocide," Dr. Winter explains that "the structure of this book reflects the multiple facets of the Armenian Genocide, and the complex dimensions it revealed." In the first part, Sir Martin Gilbert locates the story of the Genocide in the history of the 20th century.

In his chapter, Dr. Winter places specific emphasis on the context of total war as a critical element in the unfolding of the crime. Dr. Dadrian then provides an interpretation of the Genocide as a cluster of crimes of different kinds and different origins, many of which foreshadow the Holocaust of World War II.

The second part of the book elucidates the way American politicians, intellectuals, and social activists responded to the atrocities. John Milton Cooper and Lloyd Ambrosius both discuss President Woodrow Wilson and the evolution of his policy, coming to different interpretations of the reasons why he was unable or unwilling to act effectively in response to the Genocide.

Rouben Adalian shows that the information available to Wilson and other political figures was voluminous, detailed, and damning. The National Archives have materials which simply place out of the court of human opinion any effort at holocaust denial. The intellectual, cultural, and social response to the holocaust is the subject of the following three chapters.

Peter Balakian shows how widely discussed these crimes were among American writers and literary figures, and both Susan Billington Harper and Suzanne Moranian point out how many Americans were deeply engaged in direct assistance to those who were in danger or who managed to survive it.

"Many Americans bore witness, and some shared the sufferings of the victims. Their voices emerge powerfully and movingly from these chapters," wrote Dr. Winter.

Post-war commissions and congressional inquiries, as Richard Hovannisian and Donald Ritchie show, reinforce our sense of an open and vivid discussion of these issues in the US both during and after the war. Together with Thomas Leonard’s chapter on the press, they underscore the view that the Genocide was scrutinized and analyzed virtually everywhere at the time.