A very dear friend of mine who I grew up with in Massachusetts is a first generation Armenian. His parents fled the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire. The story of the Armenians is a woefully tragic tale every bit as evil as the genocide of the Jews in Germany. The story is seldom recounted by today's media. Here is a link describing this horrible history.
When we foolishly consider ourselves 'enlightened,' we must never forget the many sordid tragedies in the 20th century. Among them:
The Armenian Genocide
The Jewish Holocaust
The Cambodian Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide
The Darfur Genocide
Millions of people were systematically slaughtered by their governments for no reason other than their ethnicity or their religion. They were considered somehow inferior by their governments and destined for death.
Consider these tragedies and then try to convince me and yourself that man's nature is not inherently evil.
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The People God Forgot
April 24th will come and go.
There will be no front page stories depicting the horror that the Armenian population of Ottoman Turkey endured.
There will be no stories of survivors telling first hand how their parents were buried alive on forced marches from historic Armenian villages to destinations in Syria.
There will be no stories of how Ottoman Empire soldiers would bet on the sex-gender of an unborn child being carried by a pregnant woman, then would slash her abdomen open with a bayonet to determine the winner.
There will be no mention of the village Doctor, an Armenian, who tended to both Turkish and Armenian patients, who was crucified upside down on the front door of his home-office.
April 24, 2005 denotes the 90th Anniversary of the attempted extermination of the Armenian population of Ottoman Turkey. A population that had occupied the territory since at least 200 years BC. More than 1,500,000 Armenians lost their lives. The survivors were scattered throughout the Middle East. Families were splintered. The surviving generation was never to know their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
Their crime? Being Armenians.
Hitler said it in 1936 in Munich.
"After all, who remembers the Armenians?"
Adolph Hitler said it in context when he was outlining his plan for the extermination of the Jewish population of Germany.
And he knew of the Armenians and he remembered - enough to use as a pattern for his own genocidal actions.
It is chronicled that German officers, in Turkey to advise their Turkish allies during the genocidal attack on the Armenian population, and those same officers are said to have advised Hitler on the extermination of the Jewish population.
A New York Times Columnist, in writing of the survival of the Armenian church, in Etchmiadzin, Armenia, erected in 331 AD, and a symbol of the nation, the first to embrace Christianity as a nation in 301 A.D., dubbed the Armenians, "the people God forgot."
The State Department refers to it as an alleged Genocide-Massacre. The Washington Post, until recently, used the same terminology, yet history tells us otherwise.
The U.S. Congress attempted to pass a mandate in 1918 to protect the newly established Republic of Armenia. The mandate failed. The Soviet Union attacked from the east and Turkey attacked from the west. The republic crumbled. A Soviet state survived in the east, which today is the Republic of Armenia.
Franz Werfel wrote about the genocide in his book "The 40 Days of Musa Dagh."
Missionaries of the time wrote about it. The then U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau wrote about it.
Who then are the Armenians?
William Saroyan said it best. They are a resilient, energetic, industrious people who have risen from ruin. Put two Armenians in a room, and they will sing and dance and work diligently to create a life.
Who are the Armenians?
Their survivors and children of the survivors are industrialists-The Masco Corporation, entrepeneurs,-MGM Corporation, inventors-the MRI machine. They are lawyers, and doctors, and college professors, businessmen, and scientists.
They survived and thrive.
They are the Ottoman Empire's successors' worst nightmare, for they have not forgotten.
On April 24th, they will march on the Turkish embassy in Washington. They will march in New York, and in California and in Rhode Island and in Michigan and in Illinois. There are not many survivors. Many with their horrific memories are buried, but their children and grandchildren are striving to keep the memory alive.
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