Memorial sought for Mountain Jews

May 7, 2007
Jewish Telegraphy Agency

Is the Azeri propaganda machine working overtime to blacken the Armenians, specially in the eyes of Jewish Americans in order to get them to side against the resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide in both the Congress and Senate? How much support and encouragement is Azerbaijan receiving from Turkey? And why is JTA publishing this story? Wouldn't Jews know about other Jews? Why do they need to wait and so long for Azerbaijan to tell them?

Azerbaijan's Jewish leaders sought permission to put up a memorial for the several thousand Mountain Jews they say were murdered by Armenians in 1918. The Baku Sun reported that the Jewish leaders made the request to President Ilham Aliyev at a gathering last month at the Human Rights Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan.

The Jewish leaders cited research saying that some 3,000 Mountain Jews, along with tens of thousands of Azeris, were murdered in the region of Guba by Armenian bandits and nationalists -- an incident marked March 31 by the Azeris as genocide. Historians are still investigating the killings, which they say where were covered up by for decades by the communist regime.

Perhaps 40,000 Mountain Jews remain scattered about the remote passes of the mostly Muslim Caucasus.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.