In 2008, an attempt was made by New York Life Insurance Company to locate the descendants/heirs of unpaid insurance policies held by Greeks living in the Ottoman Empire prior to 1915. A similar effort in 2004 resulted in a payout of $53 million to Armenians who held such policies.

New York Life Insurance Company, headquartered in New York City since its founding in 1845, began selling policies in the Ottoman Empire in 1882 and withdrew from the region during World War I. During the Greek Genocide, attempts were made by the Turkish state to profit from those individuals who they had massacred. In his memoirs, Henry Morgenthau Snr, American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, recounted a meeting he had with Mehmet Talaat Pasha, the Ottoman Minister of the Interior. Morgenthau wrote:

“One day Talaat made what was perhaps the most astonishing request I had ever heard. The New York Life Insurance Company and the Equitable Life of New York had for years done considerable business among the Armenians. The extent to which this people insured their lives was merely another indication of their thrifty habits.
‘I wish,’ Talaat now said, ‘that you would get the American life insurance companies to send us a complete list of their Armenian policy holders. They are practically all dead now and have left no heirs to collect the money. It of course all escheats to the State. The Government is the beneficiary now. Will you do so?’
This was almost too much and I lost my temper.
‘You will get no such list from me,’ I said, and I got up and left him.”

Click here to download the list of the 1031 Ottoman Greeks whose insurance policies were eligible for payment by New York Life.

 

Download a list of 1031 Ottoman Greeks who had life insurance policies prior to the genocide http://t.co/2jHauhEWgT pic.twitter.com/wkT8zmhJ8D

— The Greek Genocide (@greek_genocide) February 1, 2015