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As you were saying...
Lessons of Armenian Genocide must never be forgotten here
On the eve of the worst conflict in human history, Adolph Hitler invoked murderous precedent to justify the imminent slaughter of Europe's Jewish population. He boldly declared: "Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?"
The answer is this: Although 86 years have passed since the systematic deportation and murder of 1.5 million Armenians and many people remember the Armenian Genocide, the road to recognition has been long and hard.
Throughout the 19th century, the Armenian people survived a denial of rights and culture at the hands of the Turkish government. That century of hostility concluded with the massacres of 1894-95, when forces of the Turkish government murdered 150,000 to 300,000 Armenians.
During World War I, the Turkish government carried out a deliberate plan to systematically exterminate the Armenian people, which Hitler's final solution consciously emulated. The Turkish government began the genocide by arresting Armenian political, religious and intellectual leaders in Istanbul on April 23-24, 1915. Turkish forces methodically rounded up Armenians town-by-town and village-by-village and drove them from their homes. The deportations separated men and women, husbands and wives, children and parents. The men, many of whom served the Turkish army in forced labor battalions, were summarily executed. Women and children marched to "relocation centers" where, if they survived the months of trudging through both mountain and deserts deprived of food and water, they died of exposure.
Despite the heinous nature of this slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians, testimony from survivors, the eyewitness accounts of foreign officials and nearly a century of fighting for recognition, the Turkish government still denies the Armenian Genocide ever happened.
Beyond the denial, the Turkish government spends millions of dollars every year on public relations firms and high-powered lobbyists to perpetuate this fallacy.
Due to our strategic relationship with Turkey, the United States has never officially recognized the actions of the Turkish government as genocide. In fact, members of Congress presented a resolution to Congress last year to finally recognize the genocide, but President Clinton requested the resolution be withdrawn. The president claimed that American lives were at risk if we jeopardized our relationship with Turkey, and Congress subsequently abandoned the resolution. This is a troublesome and unfortunate position.
American non-recognition of the Armenian genocide holds history hostage to politics, but also gives license to potentially genocidal regimes in the hope their friends will not criticize them for political reasons.
The difficulties in the nearly century-long struggle for universal recognition undoubtedly frustrate Armenians and non-Armenians alike. Thus far only a handful of governments, including Russia, Greece and the Vatican, have acknowledged this episode in history. This year, however, marks a major victory on the road to recognition. France became the first nation to have both its legislative and executive branches formally recognize the Genocide.
Massachusetts is one of 25 states that recognize the Armenian Genocide and annually marks the event with a State House ceremony, this year featuring remarks by the French counsul-general to Boston.
We invite the public to honor the memory of the victims and the suffering and perseverance of survivors by joining us on Friday.
We as individuals must do our part to ensure that the memories and lessons of the Armenian Genocide will never be forgotten.
Steven A. Tolman (D-Brighton) is a member of the Massachusetts
Senate. As You Were Saying is a regular feature of the Boston
Herald. We invite our readers to contribute pieces of no more than 600
words. Mail contributions to the Boston Herald, P.O. Box 2096, Boston,
MA 02106-2096, fax them to 617-542-1315 or e-mail to
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