IV
106TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION
H. RES. 155
Calling upon the President to provide in a collection all United States records
related to the Armenian genocide and the consequences of the failure
to enforce the judgments of the Turkish courts against the responsible
officials, and to deliver the collection to the Committee on International
Relations of the House of Representatives, the library of the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and to the Armenian Genocide
Museum in Yerevan, Armenia.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
APRIL 28, 1999
Mr. RADANOVICH (for himself, Mr. ACKERMAN, Mr. ANDREWS, Mr. BERMAN,
Mr. BILBRAY, Mr. BLAGOJEVICH, Mr. BLILEY, Mrs. CAPPS, Mr.
CAPUANO, Mr. CLAY, Mr. COSTELLO, Mr. CROWLEY, Mr. DIXON, Mr.
DOOLEY of California, Ms. ESHOO, Mr. FRANKS of New Jersey, Mr.
HEFLEY, Mr. HINCHEY, Mr. HORN, Mr. KASICH, Mr. KENNEDY of
Rhode Island, Mr. KILDEE, Mr. KING, Mr. KLECZKA, Mr. KNOLLEN-
BERG, Mr. LARSON, Mr. LEVIN, Mr. LIPINSKI, Mrs. MALONEY of New
York, Mr. MARKEY, Mr. MARTINEZ, Mrs. MCCARTHY of New York, Mr.
MCGOVERN, Mr. MCHUGH, Mr. MCKEON, Mr. MCNULTY, Mr. MEEHAN,
Mr. MENENDEZ, Mr. MOAKLEY, Mr. MORAN of Virginia, Mrs. MORELLA,
Mr. NEAL of Massachusetts, Mr. OBEY, Mr. OLVER, Mr. PALLONE, Mr.
PORTER, Mr. ROGAN, Mr. ROTHMAN, Mr. ROYCE, Mr. RUSH, Mr.
SAXTON, Mr. SHERMAN, Ms. STABENOW, Mr. TIERNEY, Mr. THOMAS,
Mr. VISCLOSKY, Mr. WAXMAN, Ms. WOOLSEY, and Mr. WYNN) submitted
the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Govern-
ment Reform, and in addition to the Committee on International Rela-
tions, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each
case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of
the committee concerned
RESOLUTION
Calling upon the President to provide in a collection all
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United States records related to the Armenian genocide
and the consequences of the failure to enforce the judg-
ments of the Turkish courts against the responsible offi-
cials, and to deliver the collection to the Committee on
International Relations of the House of Representatives,
the library of the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, and to the Armenian Genocide Museum in
Yerevan, Armenia.
Resolved,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This resolution may be cited as the ‘‘United States
Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution’’.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
The Congress finds the following:
(1) The Armenian genocide was conceived and
carried out by Ottoman Turkish Governments from
1915 to 1923, resulting in the killing of 1,500,000
Armenian men, women, and children, the deporta-
tion of more than 500,000 survivors, and practically
succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year
Armenian presence of Armenians in their historic
homeland.
(2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, Eng-
land, France, and Russia, jointly issued a statement
explicitly charging for the first time ever another
government of committing ‘‘a crime against human-
ity’’.
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(3) This joint statement stated ‘‘[i]n view of
these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and
civilization, the Allied Governments announce pub-
licly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold person-
ally responsible for these crimes all members of the
Ottoman Government, as well as those of their
agents who are implicated in such massacres’’.
(4) The post-World War I Turkish Government
indicted the top leaders involved in the ‘‘organization
and execution’’ of the Armenian genocide and in the
‘‘massacre and destruction of the Armenians’’.
(5) In a series of courts-martial, officials of the
Young Turk Regime were tried and convicted, as
charged, for organizing and executing massacres
against the Armenian people.
(6) The chief organizers of the Armenian geno-
cide, Minister of War Enver, Minister of the Interior
Talaat, and Minister of the Navy Jemal were all
condemned to death for their crimes, however, the
verdicts of the courts were not enforced.
(7) The Armenian genocide and these domestic
judicial failures are documented with overwhelming
evidence in the national archives of Austria, France,
Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States,
the Vatican and many other countries, and this vast
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body of evidence attests to the same facts, the same
events, and the same consequences.
(8) The national archives of Turkey should also
include all of the records pertaining to the indict-
ment, trial, and conviction of the Ottoman authori-
ties responsible for the Armenian genocide.
(9) The Honorable Henry Morgenthau, United
States Ambassador to the Ottoman Turkish Empire
from 1913 to 1916, organized and led protests by
officials of many countries, among them the allies of
the Ottoman Turkish Empire, against the Armenian
genocide.
(10) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly de-
scribed to the Department of State the policy of the
Young Turk government as ‘‘a campaign of race ex-
termination’’, and was instructed on July 16, 1915,
by Secretary of State Robert Lansing that the ‘‘De-
partment approves your procedure . . . to stop Ar-
menian persecution’’.
(11) Senate Concurrent Resolution 12 of Feb-
ruary 9, 1916, resolved that ‘‘the President of the
United States be respectfully asked to designate a
day on which the citizens of this country may give
expression to their sympathy by contributing funds
now being raised for the relief of the Armenians’’,
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who at the time were enduring ‘‘starvation, disease,
and untold suffering’’.
(12) President Wilson concurred and also en-
couraged the formation of the organization known as
Near East Relief, chartered by an Act of Congress,
which contributed some $113,000,000 from 1915 to
1930 to aid the Armenian genocide survivors, includ-
ing 132,000 orphans who became foster children of
the American people.
(13) Senate Resolution 359, dated May 13,
1920, stated in part, ‘‘the testimony adduced at the
hearings conducted by the subcommittee of the Sen-
ate Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly es-
tablished the truth of the reported massacres and
other atrocities from which the Armenian people
have suffered’’.
(14) The resolution followed the April 13, 1920,
report to the Senate of the American Military Mis-
sion to Armenia led by General James Harbord, that
stated ‘‘[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death
have left their haunting memories in a hundred
beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that
region is seldom free from the evidence of this most
colossal crime of all the ages’’.
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(15) Setting the stage for the Holocaust, Adolf
Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to at-
tack Poland without provocation in 1939, dismissed
objections by saying ‘‘[w]ho, after all, speaks today
of the annihilation of the Armenians?’’.
(16) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term
‘‘genocide’’ in 1944, and who was the earliest pro-
ponent of the Genocide Convention, invoked the Ar-
menian case as a definitive example of genocide in
the 20th century.
(17) Raphael Lemkin described the crime as
‘‘the systematic destruction of whole national, racial
or religious groups. The sort of thing Hitler did to
the Jews and the Turks did to the Armenians’’.
(18) The first resolution on genocide adopted
by the United Nations at Lemkin’s urging, the De-
cember 11, 1946, United Nations General Assembly
resolution (96–1) and the United Nations Genocide
Convention itself recognized the Armenian genocide
as the type of crime the United Nations intended to
prevent by codifying existing standards.
(19) In 1948 the United Nations War Crimes
Commission 
invoked 
the 
Armenian 
genocide
‘‘precisely . . . one of the types of acts which the
modern term ‘crimes against humanity’ is intended
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to cover’’ as a precedent for the Nuremberg tribu-
nals.
(20) The commission stated that ‘‘[t]he provi-
sions of Article 230 of the Peace Treaty of Se´vres
were obviously intended to cover, in conformity with
the Allied note of 1915 . . ., offenses which had
been committed on Turkish territory against persons
of Turkish citizenship, though of Armenian or Greek
race. This article constitutes therefore a precedent
for Article 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo
Charters, and offers an example of one of the cat-
egories of ‘crimes against humanity’ as understood
by these enactments.’’.
(21) The United Nations Commission on
Human Rights adopted in 1985 a report entitled
‘‘Study of the Questions of the Prevention and Pun-
ishment of the Crime of Genocide’’, which stated
‘‘[t]he Nazi aberration has unfortunately not been
the only case of genocide in the twentieth century.
Among other examples which can be cited as quali-
fying are . . . the Ottoman massacre of Armenians
in 1915–1916’’.
(22) This report also explained that ‘‘[a]t least
1 million, and possibly well over half of the Arme-
nian population, are reliably estimated to have been
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killed or death marched by independent authorities
and eye-witnesses. This is corroborated by reports in
United States, German and British archives and of
contemporary diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, in-
cluding those of its ally Germany’’.
(23) The tragedy of the Armenian genocide has
been acknowledged by countries and international
bodies such as Argentina, Belgium, Canada, the
Council of Europe, Cyprus, the European Par-
liament, France, Great Britain, Greece, Lebanon,
Russia, the United Nations, the United States, and
Uruguay.
(24) The United States Holocaust Memorial
Council, an independent Federal agency, unani-
mously resolved on April 30, 1981, that the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum would include
the Armenian genocide in the Museum and has since
done so.
(25) President Reagan in proclamation number
4838, dated April 22, 1981, stated in part ‘‘like the
genocide of the Armenians before it, and the geno-
cide of the Cambodians, which followed it—and like
too many other persecutions of too many other peo-
ple—the lessons of the holocaust must never be for-
gotten’’.
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(26) In 1988 President Bush, speaking of the
Armenian genocide, stated ‘‘we must consciously and
conscientiously recognize the genocides of the past—
the enormous tragedies that have darkened this cen-
tury and that haunt us still. We must not only com-
memorate the courage of the victims and of their
survivors, but we must also remind ourselves that
civilization cannot be taken for granted . . . We
must all be vigilant against this most heinous crime
against humanity’’.
(27) President Bush stated further ‘‘[t]he
United States must acknowledge the attempted
genocide of the Armenian people in the last years of
the Ottoman Empire, based on the testimony of sur-
vivors, scholars, and indeed our own representatives
at the time, if we are to insure that such horrors are
not repeated’’.
(28) On August 13, 1992, President Clinton
stated ‘‘[t]he Genocide of 1915, years of communist
dictatorship, and the devastating earthquake of
1988 have caused great suffering in Armenia during
this century’’.
(29) Reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression
(later retracted) by the Department of State assert-
ing that the facts of the Armenian genocide may be
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ambiguous, the United States Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia in 1993, after a review of
documents pertaining to the policy record of the
United States, noted that the assertion on ambiguity
in the United States record about the Armenian
genocide ‘‘contradicted longstanding United States
policy and was eventually retracted’’.
(30) Despite the international recognition and
affirmation of the Armenian genocide, the failure of
the domestic and international authorities to punish
those responsible for the Armenian genocide is a
reason why similar genocides have recurred and may
recur in the future, and that a proper judicial and
firm response, holding the guilty accountable and re-
quiring the prompt enforcement of verdicts would
have spared humanity needless suffering.
SEC. 3. REPORT.
The House of Representatives calls upon the Presi-
dent to provide, not later than 6 months after the date
of the adoption of this resolution, in a collection all United
States records related to the Armenian genocide and the
consequences of the failure to enforce the judgments of
the Turkish courts against the responsible officials, to—
(1) the Committee on International Relations of
the House of Representatives;
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(2) the library of the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum for incorporation into its holdings
of official documentation on genocide and for pur-
poses of public awareness and education; and
(3) 
the 
Armenian 
Genocide 
Museum 
in
Yerevan, Armenia, in order to document and affirm
the United States record of protest and recognition
of this crime against humanity.
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