A Difference of Opinion on a Memoir of Her Mother - New York Times

A Difference of Opinion on a Memoir of Her Mother - New York Times: "ost historians say the Ottoman Empire was responsible for the death of more than one million people around 1915 in a campaign intended to eliminate the Armenian population throughout what is now Turkey.

Ms. Ahnert said the disruption came as she answered a question from the crowd at the Barnes & Noble, at 240 East 86th Street near Second Avenue. Some of those who attended her talk were her friends, including former Gov. Hugh L. Carey and the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, whose grandfather, Henry Morgenthau, was the ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916.

“Someone in the middle of the back of the room stood up and said, ‘That’s not so,’ ” Ms. Ahnert said. “Five or six men started to pass out fliers of denial. I thought, oh, my goodness sakes, it’s like Holocaust deniers. I was completely taken aback.”

Mary Occhino, who was in the audience, said some of the people were shouting, “This is a lie, this is a lie, this never happened.”

“I got up and said, ‘Enough,’ ” said Ms. Occhino, the host of a call-in program on Sirius satellite radio. “Her mother lived through the genocide — that’s a"