In a manner consistent with the US-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 labor 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.

Reference: Public Radio of Armenia