Insurers Owe Armenians Billions in Genocide-Era Benefits, Study Shows: Ongoing Liability Documented in Major Armenian Forum Article

Insurers Owe Armenians Billions in Genocide-Era Benefits, Study Shows

Ongoing Liability Documented in Major Armenian Forum Article

Princeton, N.J. (7 August 2000)—New York Life, the Equitable, and other major insurance companies issued life insurance policies to several thousand Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Almost all the policyholders—and their beneficiaries—were sent by the Turkish government to die in 1915–16. The benefits, which amounted to over 20 million 1915 dollars, remain due and payable, according to a study appearing in the journal Armenian Forum.

The first to draw attention to the insurance policies was Henry Morgenthau, the American envoy to Turkey in 1915. In his memoir, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, he recounted a haunting conversation with Interior Minister Talaat, one of the architects of the Armenian Genocide. Talaat wanted American life insurance companies to submit "a complete list of their Armenian policy holders. They are practically all dead now and have left no heirs to collect the money. It of course all escheats to the State. The Government is the beneficiary now."

The state did not succeed in collecting the information or the money. Nor did anyone else. Since the publication of Morgenthau’s memoir in 1918, the number of policies, the amount of benefits, and their final disposition have remained a mystery.

Now Professor Hrayr S. Karagueuzian of UCLA, working with newly declassified documents, has found answers to these lingering questions. His findings appear in a 56-page article in Armenian Forum.

Karagueuzian has found that New York Life alone had more than ten thousand outstanding policies in the Turkish empire in 1915. These policies were worth over ten million dollars. The numbers for the French Union-Vie are similar. The Equitable had around one thousand policies. Other American and European insurers were also active.

The insurers were acutely aware of their liability and scrambled to find ways out of it, Karagueuzian has shown. The president of the Equitable, Judge W. A. Day, for example, insisted on death certificates issued by local civil authorities. The perpetrators of the Genocide, however, were not in the habit of issuing such certificates.

The insurance companies also tried to shift liability for payment of the policy benefits onto Turkey. On this matter, Karagueuzian draws attention to a parallel case, also arising in 1915: the sinking of the Lusitania by Germany. In this case it was established that the perpetrators and the insurers bear separate and independent legal and financial obligations to the victims.

Karagueuzian notes that insurers stonewalled on Holocaust-era claims until legislators and insurance commissioners threatened their business. Similar pressure is building up, especially in the California legislature, to address claims arising from the Armenian Genocide.

In addition, a class-action lawsuit has been filed in federal district court in California. The lawsuit demands that New York Life release additional information about unclaimed policies issued in the Ottoman Empire.

The information uncovered in the Armenian Forum article makes it possible to vigorously pursue these claims, which have remained unpaid for eighty-five years.

The article, "Unclaimed Life Insurance Policies in the Aftermath of the Armenian Genocide: Legal and Historical Bases of Claims," appears in Armenian Forum, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 1–56.

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