The political struggle over U.S. recognition of the Armenian genocide was set in motion during the presidency of Jimmy Carter in 1976. Carter came to the job with a commitment to protecting human rights. That commitment was soon tested by the longstanding strategic relationship between the U.S. and Iran, which was ruled by the Shah with an iron fist. By late 1977, U.S.-Iranian relations were deteriorating after Carter sent mixed signals about the Shah’s dictatorship and his abuse of Iranians’ human rights.
In 1978, Carter’s fraught relations with the Shah weakened the Iranian leader’s hold on power. Popular protest movements mounted, culminating in the Shah’s overthrow in 1979, the Iranian fundamentalist revolution and the American hostage crisis.
The criticism at home about the Carter-Shah relationship and American Jews’ reluctance to support Carter’s administration convinced the president and his staff members to re-promote human rights through American foreign policy.
Their strategy: Use the Holocaust as a universal lesson for genocide prevention to help reinforce ties with Jewish voters.
Holocaust remembrance
While the Iran crisis was playing out, on Nov. 1, 1978, Carter launched the President’s Commission on the Holocaust. Carter requested that the commission submit a report addressing the “establishment and maintenance of an appropriate memorial to those who perished in the Holocaust.”
The commission included American Holocaust survivors like Elie Wiesel and Benjamin Meed. The commission’s September 1979 report recommended special days of remembrance for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, a dedicated education program, and the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a national memorial.
The museum, the report said, should be focused on one specific aspect of the Nazis’ many crimes: the “unique” and unprecedented nature of the murder of the Jews – even over other Nazi victims.
“Millions of innocent civilians were tragically killed by the Nazis. They must be remembered. However, there exists a moral imperative for special emphasis on the six million Jews. While not all victims were Jews, all Jews were victims, disdained for annihilation solely because they were born Jewish,” wrote the commission.
This approach clashed with Carter’s views on the universal lessons of the Holocaust. It also aroused the opposition of representatives of other victims of the Nazis, such as the Roma and the gay community, who pressed for inclusion in the Holocaust museum.
A ‘campaign to remember’
Another heated debate was taking place about who should pay for the museum, which was estimated to cost US$100 million.
The land allocated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was a contribution by the federal government. But the remaining funds to build the museum were to be donated mainly by the American public through a “Campaign to Remember.”
This was the moment – the convergence of Carter’s vision of human rights protection and the “Campaign to Remember” – that the organized American-Armenian community believed could bring the almost-forgotten memory of the Armenian genocide back to public consciousness.