Mirrorspectator. Dr. Taner Akçam and Dr. Michael Bazyler spoke at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) on “Nazi Looted Art Recovery as a Model for Recovery of AGLA: Armenian Genocide Looted Art” on May 5. They gave similar talks in New Jersey and New York a few days earlier.
NAASR Director of Academic Affairs Marc Mamigonian greeted guests and announced that the evening constituted the first annual Rev. Vartan Hartunian Lecture. Members of the Hartunian family, who established this annual lecture, were acknowledged as they were in the audience. Mamigonian spoke about the life of Rev. Hartunian, including his translation of his father Rev. Abraham Hartunian’s memoirs, titled Neither to Laugh Nor to Weep, which was published in 1968, and his service as pastor of the First Armenian Church in Belmont from 1959 to 1990.
Mamigonian also noted that the series of three Northeastern talks were co-sponsored by the Armenian Genocide Research Program (AGRP), the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC) at the CUNY Graduate Center, NYC Times Square Armenian Genocide Committee, St. Leon Armenian Church, and the NAASR / Calouste Gulbenkian Series on Contemporary Armenian Issues.
He briefly introduced the two speakers, starting with Akçam, who is the inaugural director of the Armenian Genocide Research Program of the Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA. His most recent publication is as editor of ‘The Great Crime’ by Aram Andonian: Talaat Pasha’s Orders on the Armenian Genocide and Naim Bey’s Testimony (2026).
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Bazyler is professor of law and the 1939 Law Scholar in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies at Chapman University. Mamigonian said, “He is one of the leading experts on the use of American and European courts to redress genocide and other historical wrongs.” Bazyler’s books include Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America’s Courts (2003) and Holocaust, Genocide and the Law: A Quest for Justice in a Post-Holocaust World (2016).
Akçam Introduces the Topic
Armenians only have gone through the first stage in part.
The AGLA research project was launched at UCLA with the intention of being part of a broader Armenian Genocide restitution movement. Akçam said that institutions like NAASR, the Ararat Eskijian Museum, the Fresno State Armenian Studies Program and the Armenian Film Foundation, along with scholars in the field like Michael Bazyler, Jonathan Petropoulous, a historian of Holocaust looted art, Lauren Fielder from the University of Texas School of Law, Levon Chookaszian, chair of the History and Theory of Armenian Art at Yerevan State University, and Christina Maranci, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University, are working with AGLA.
The group compiled a list of Armenian art objects held in American museums, as this had never been done before, and are now uncovering the provenance of various objects, which, he said, “will attract broader public attention.”
“Our guiding principle,” he said, “is simple: whatever has been done for the Holocaust should also be done for the Armenian Genocide. And in fact, not only for Armenians – but for all cases of mass violence.” A framework could be established for identifying, cataloguing, and pursuing the restitution of Armenian cultural property and legislation enacted creating a legal foundation for claims.
However, he declared, “Without a strong political movement and the necessary institutional structures, none of these goals can be achieved….Following the Jewish example, we must build the institutional foundations of a restitution movement if we want to move forward.”
Akçam also noted what he called a significant gap: those engaged in lobbying activities in Washington have not pursued binding legal initiatives in states like California similar to the 2016 Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act of Congress (Congress recently expanded its scope).
Holocaust Restitution Movement as a Model
Bazyler, as he spoke about how the Holocaust’s restitution movement could be a model for the Armenian Genocide, accompanied his talk with slides.
He declared that every mass atrocity, and in particular every genocide, incorporates not only mass murder but also mass plunder. He recalled that he learned about the Armenian Genocide as an undergraduate student at UCLA seeing commemorations of the event and learning more about it from various professors. Later, he had Armenian students in courses that he himself taught. He expanded the course he created in 2000 at Chapman University called the Holocaust and the Law in its second iteration to also include the Armenian Genocide.
He recalled that in the late 1990s during the Clinton Administration lawsuits began to be filed in American courts concerning the plunder of Jewish property during the Holocaust in Europe, which forced the defendants to pay attention to this issue. President Bill Clinton appointed Stuart Eizenstat as his special representative and Eizenstat began negotiations with various institutions throughout the world, including on Nazi looted art. Later in 2003, Eizenstat published a book about this called Imperfect Justice, while Bazyler as an academic wrote his own aforementioned book about the same topic.
Eizenstat convened a conference in 1998 which led to the Washington Principles, which are an 11-point nonbinding international code or framework on how to identify and return Nazi-looted cultural property. This process would start with the creation of a central registry of looted items. Bazyler said that this is what he and Akçam are trying to initiate with AGLA.
Bazyler said that litigation would be the last resort in this process to achieve restitution. The experience with Holocaust cases have shown that often museums or private owners acknowledge that items they possess were looted from Jewish families but are reluctant to give them up and insist that they now belong to them.
Photo by Aram Arkun: Dr. Taner Akçam, at left, with Dr. Michael Bazyler during the question-and-answer session
Aram Arkun
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