Armenians call on Deutsche Bank to return assets

The European Armenian Federation has called on Deutsche Bank to return more than USD 20 mln in assets held by the German firm since the Armenian Genocide era. The Federation announced that legal proceeding are under way to seek justice for heirs of those who assets stolen.
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.