CALL
ON DEUTSCHE BANK TO RETURN ASSETS TO ARMENIAN GENOCIDE VICTIMS
More than $20,000,000 stolen
by the German firm during Genocide era
Legal proceedings under way
to seek justice for heirs of those who assets
were stolen Thousands
of Armenian deportees were reduced to slavery on Deutsche Bank's road
works The European
Armenian Federation calls the descendants of Armenian Genocide
survivors, defenders of human
rights, European leaders, and all Euro
citizens to protest Deutsche Bank's refusal to accept
responsibility for the crimes
it committed in 1915 and continues to profit from today.
In a manner consistent with
the U.S-based New York Life Insurance Company
and the French AXA Life Insurance Company, Deutsche Bank illegally
appropriated funds and property from genocide victims and, as such,
played a unconscionable role
in Ottoman Turkey's destruction of the Armenian
population between 1915 and 1923.
Recent estimates by experts
in the field show that Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire were, at the time of the Genocide, owned more than 20
million dollars that were held in trust by the German company.
Deutsche Bank never returned these
amounts to the heirs of genocide victims.
Compounding Deutsche Bank's
intransigence was its use of Armenian deportees
as slave workers on the
construction of its Berlin-Baghdad road works. In
similar fashion, nearly 30 years later, IG Farben exploited the
forced labour of Jewish
deportees from Birkenau-Monowicz. Following their slave labor,
these Armenians were exterminated during deportations into deserts of Syria.
The Federation notes that the
current president of Deutsche Bank congratulates
his company for fulfilling "its social responsibilities," a
statement that stands in sharp contrast to both its genocidal complicity
in 1915 and its refusal to
accept responsibility for its crimes today.
The European Armenian
Federation, noting that New York Life and AXA have
been condemned for their crimes, welcomes the fact that similar
proceedings are under way
against Deutsche Bank.
Consequently, the Federation
calls on all EU citizens to call on Deutsche
Bank to live up to its own standards by accepting responsibility
for its wrongdoing and fairly
compensating those whose families it has stolen from.
You could fax the letter
below by clicking on this link
www.deutschebankprotest.eu
, or you could send it at the following
address:
Dr. Josef Ackermann
Deutsche Bank AG
Taunusanlage 12
60262 Frankfurt am Main
Germany
November 22, 2006
Dr. Josef Ackermann
Deutsche Bank AG
Taunusanlage 12
60262 Frankfurt am Main
Germany
Dear Dr. Ackermann,
I am writing this letter
because I am outraged by Deutsche Bank's conduct
towards the Armenian people in specific and to humanity in general.
Particularly, I am shocked at
how your bank has looted the assets of
Armenians murdered during the Armenian Genocide of 1915. I am also
shocked that Deutsche Bank
used the Armenian deportees as slave workers for the
Bagdad Bahn from 1915 to
1917.
It is reprehensible that a
financial institution which is trusted by its
patrons with their livelihood would breach that trust. On your
website you specifically
tate that nobody can or should neglect social
responsibilities. However, how can you state this when your company
has
done just the opposite by
neglecting its social responsibilities to its own
depositors.
I ask you to fulfil your
obligation by returning the looted Armenian
assets
and thereby making right
Deutsche Bank's historic wrong. Now is the time
for Deutsche Bank to follow the example of New York Life Insurance
Company and AXA Life
Insurance Company and to return what it has wrongfully
withheld for nearly a century.
Sincerely,
