Tweet
New film follows a witness to history
US ambassador reported genocide of the Armenians
New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is the man best known for the criminal case he built against Tyco International CEO Dennis Kozlowski, who was convicted in 2005 of stealing $150 million from the global manufacturing firm.
After the decision, Morgenthau wrote, "This verdict is an endorsement of the principle of equal justice under the law. Crimes committed in corporate offices will be treated according to the same standards as other crimes."
The concept of equal justice is hardwired into the Morgenthau bloodline. His grandfather, Henry Morgenthau, was the US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, and in that role he was witness to the rise of nationalism in Turkey and the deportation and massacre of Armenians. Henry Morgenthau brought news of the genocide to the US government, which declined to get involved. He published his accounts in 1918 as "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story" and dedicated himself to providing privately funded resettlement help to Armenian and Greek orphans and other refugees.
Morgenthau is a hero in the Armenian community, and his story has been given a new telling in the documentary "The Morgenthau Story," by Peabody filmmaker Apo Torosyan.
Torosyan is a native of Istanbul whose father was Armenian and whose mother was Greek. He came to Boston in 1968 and launched a visual design company; he sold the company in 1987 and devoted his full attention to art - drawing and painting first, then multimedia. He pulled from his family history: his grandparents, who starved during the Armenian genocide; his father, who as a 5-year-old child had to look through garbage cans for food.
In 2003, Torosyan picked up a camera. He visited Edincik, a Turkish village where his father grew up, and made his first movie, "My Father's Village." "Voices" and "Witnesses" followed; both are collections of interviews with Armenian survivors.
That brought him to Henry Morgenthau's story, one of the few bright lights in a sea of darkness.
Interviewed in the 56-minute film are Henry Morgenthau III, born in 1917 and the grandson of Ambassador Morgenthau. He's a television producer who spent the later part of his career at WGBH-TV. District Attorney Robert Morgenthau also appears, as well as Dr. Pamela Steiner, the ambassador's great-granddaughter and a senior fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and project director of HHI's Inter-Communal Violence and Reconciliation Project, where she focuses on improving the relationship between Turkish and Armenian populations.
Last month, Torosyan traveled to Athens for the world premiere of his film at the Cultural Center of Constantinopolitans.
"I felt on top of the world," says Torosyan of the trip. Over 200 people attended the gathering, which included discussions about Morgenthau and about current reconciliation efforts.
"I told the crowd how proud I was with my Turkish and Kurdish friends," he says. Their ancestors may have killed his, but people today are open to talking about the injustice. "Let us hope and not hate."
"The Morgenthau Story" will screen at a half dozen venues in the region over the next month including Salem State College on Monday and Endicott College, in Beverly, on Friday; the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, in Belmont, on Nov. 6; and Studio Cinema, in Belmont, on Nov. 10. Visit www.aramaifilms.com.