Justice Denied by Robert Tanenbaum

hard-charger, good political connections.”
    â€œI wish I was impressed,” said Karp. “I never heard of the guy. I was expecting a promotion—one of Tom’s people.”
    â€œGo figure,” said Marlene, “and speaking of blabbing, I was just telling Paul about your doubts on Tomasian.”
    Karp’s face crinkled in disbelief. He glared at her and said in a strained voice, “It’s not my case, Marlene.”
    She ignored the tone and said, “Paul doesn’t care about the legal details. It’s the Armenian connection.”
    â€œI don’t understand,” said Karp.
    Ashakian was more than willing to dispel his ignorance. “That’s the whole point. The Armenian community is really bent out of shape about this. I was at a meeting the other night at the Tomasians’ house He put both hands to his plump cheeks and shook his head. “You would’ve thought the Turks were beating down the doors. Pandemonium. It was like, years of paranoia were sitting there, just waiting for something to spring it, and this was it.”
    â€œParanoia?”
    â€œYeah, about the Turks,” said Ashakian, and then seeing the incomprehension on Karp’s face, sighed, as if he had explained something far too often, and continued, “Turks and Armenians? Cowboys and Indians? Nazis and Jews? The Turks killed a million and a half Armenians between 1915 and 1920, including one of my grandparents.”
    â€œAnd they’re still doing it? Killing them, I mean.” Karp considered himself something of a connoisseur of murder, both mass and individual, and he was vaguely aware of having heard something about the subject the young man had opened, but he was blank on the details. Nor could he understand what it had to do with the case at hand.
    â€œNo, they’re not. They got them all, or they ran. Some were rescued by Europeans after the first war, some went to Soviet Armenia.”
    â€œI don’t get it, then. What’s the point of the terrorism? Or are you saying there aren’t any Armenian terrorists?”
    â€œOh, there are Armenian terrorists, all right,” said Ashakian grimly. “The point is that the Turks won’t admit it ever happened. There wasn’t any genocide, according to them. They won’t acknowledge it, won’t pay reparations to survivors, nothing, zip.”
    â€˜That’s impossible,” said Karp. “It’s like those nuts that claim Auschwitz never happened. Hell, the physical evidence—”
    â€œNo, it’s not the same. Thousands of witnesses saw the Nazi camps. The camps were captured while they were still in operation. It was obvious what was going on, and the Germans kept good records. But the Turks didn’t do it that way. They drafted the young Armenian men and massacred them in their barracks. They drove the rest of the population out into the countryside and marched them to nowhere until they all died of starvation and disease. Women and children! Babies tossed into ditches!
    â€œNo photographs, of course. Shit, there were probably about twelve cameras in Turkey in 1915. No records either. The only witnesses were German civilians, and the German government didn’t do anything about it while it was going on because the Turks were their allies. After the war, all they had was oral testimony from survivors, Armenians. Suspect, obviously.”
    â€œI can see where it could be hard to believe,” said Karp judiciously. Ashakian’s face had flushed as he warmed to the subject, and a glint of fanaticism had appeared in his eye. Karp looked at Marlene for conversational support, but she was obviously enjoying the lecture and was not averse to seeing Karp discomfited. He had endured any number of lectures on the Holocaust from childhood onward, often with a we-Jews-have-to-stick-together-or-else subtext from people looking for emotional or substantive favors. He was