Armenian Church of Our Saviour

The subject of the essay was "Why is it important to remember the Armenian Genocide?"

"Genocide" is a word that goes beyond its formal definition; it is a concept, a sick and disgusting concept, containing the extermination of a race, the calculated destruction of a part of history. The Armenian Genocide in particular stands out because a vast majority of the world does not recognize it for what it was – the first genocide of the twentieth century. In April 1915 and the years before and after, Turkish gendarmes drove innocent people from their homes into deserts and left them to die because they were Armenian. Homes were destroyed, churches were burned, children were stabbed, and families were broken apart – in some cases, for the rest of their lives.

How can a person do that to another person? How does someone hate another so much that they want to wipe out any evidence that they exist? Even worse than butchering and slaughtering innocent people is denying such an act was committed. Hate is a strong word, yes – but perhaps cowardice is stronger, for the Turks' hatred of the Armenians is hidden behind a curtain of denial. This is absolutely unacceptable.

Remembering the Genocide is important for so many reasons; first and foremost out of respect to the martyrs. What they died for is what so many Armenians consider one of the most important things in their lives – their culture and their religion. Without them, the Armenians wouldn't be here today. If I died at the hands of a soldier for what I believed in, I would want the people who survived to remember me. The martyrs, for their bravery and spirit, deserve the utmost respect and admiration, and not just from their descendents.

As a proud Armenian myself, it is also my belief that the descendents of the martyrs must also remember the genocide out of respect to themselves as Armenians. It has been said again and again, "to know your future, you can't forget your past." The past cannot be buried. It always manages to tear its way out. If Armenians don't honor their ancestors for everything they did so we could be in church on Sunday, then how do we expect the rest of the world too? This genocide cannot be forgotten. The past provides the foundation for the present and the future. History repeats itself unless the human race learns from it. Six million Jews and five million gypsies, communists, and other groups suffered at the hands of Adolph Hitler and his Nazi party because, as he said, "Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?"

But it's not just Armenians who must remember their history. The entire human race must remember it, so it won't happen again. There is so much hatred in the world, and the only way to even attempt to stop it is to educate people about what hatred does. About how it destroys a person's spirit and everything that made them human. About how, in the most extreme cases, it can motivate someone to plan the most convenient way to extinguish an entire ethnic group. Tell people you know what happened to the Armenians in 1915, the Jews in the 1940s, the Cambodians in the 1970s, and what is happening in Darfur today. Share the books you've read on the subject, and show the films that have been made, because knowledge is power – and we, as humans, have the power to spread awareness of the sufferings of so many innocent people – 1.5 million Armenians and countless others.

The Armenian Genocide was both a horrible and regrettable destruction of more than half the 1915 Armenian population. I can not stress enough how important it is that we remember the Armenian genocide. It is an extremely significant point in the history of my family, and certainly most, if not all the rest of the Armenian families. Even as I write this I am thoroughly disgusted with the things I’ve read and seen online. And I am absolutely horrified that people would try to cover up a moment like this in history. It is an insult to the dead, the survivors, and the many families of the people who died in the Armenian genocide.
I have only recently sat down and read about the Armenian genocide, and I am thoroughly devastated. I’ve always heard of it, but I never understood what a terrible tragedy it really was. It is nearly torturous to think of the same form of affliction coming upon my family, and my friends. I would be absolutely horrified to see my world burned down in front of me, only to be cast out of my own country as everyone around me dies. I can only thank God that it didn’t happen to me, and that I’m living here now in America. I can only imagine the burden that must be felt by the living survivors of the genocide.
According to my research the Turkish government, not the Turkish people as a whole, have been denying the Armenian genocide ever happened for over 85 years. I truly pity the people who claim that it didn’t happen. How could 1.5 million people simply vanish? Why are there over 40 books written about this terrible tragedy? These are not fairy tales. Books filled with hundreds of accounts of the bloody massacre such as : The Thorny Path to an Armenian-Turkish Rapprochement, by Elizabeth Fuller; United States Official Documents on the Armenian Genocide (Archival Collections on the Armenian Genocide)Vol 1-5, by Ara Sarafian; Neither to Laugh Nor to Weep; A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, by Abraham Hartunian, etc. Obviously the Armenian people were slain.
The ongoing lies of the Turkish government are the reason that we have to remember the Armenian Genocide. Look what has stemmed from it. Can we not blame all the following genocides on this one event? The fact that the Turkish were able to pull off a mass genocide sends a message to figures like Hitler. It makes people feel like they can cover up violent, tyrannical, brutality. Events like Vietnam, Rwanda, and Darfur could very well be results of the Armenian genocide. This is why it can not be forgotten. We have to bring it into light to express the deep sadness that is felt for the dead, so that one day genocides are at least controllable, or preventable.
It is quite possible that the Armenian Genocide gave Hitler a sense of invincibility. "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"-Adolph Hitler. This quote is irrefutable proof of a genocide. The first step to ending massacres is to expose them. We can all learn from this depressing turn of events and do everything in our power to prevent genocide, or we can pretend nothing ever happened and let mass killing erase our history and our people.

WORCESTER— Three generations of Armenians — a 99-year-old woman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a high school essayist — spoke from differing perspectives but shared one message during the 93rd anniversary of the Armenian genocide recognition yesterday at the Armenian Church of Our Saviour: “Honor the truth of the past because denial makes it more likely that genocide will happen again.”

Heghine Minassian was 6 years old the day Turkish soldiers went house to house and emptied all the buildings in her village. She said most Armenians were marched into the desert, where they were left to starve to death; but some of the women, like her aunt, were kept as slaves.

“My grandparents were in the attic hiding,” Mrs. Minassian said in Armenian through an English interpreter, Van Aroian. “My grandmother’s sister yelled, ‘Don’t open the door. Don’t go out.’ But the (soldiers) gave the order to come down and they came down.”

Within three years, Mrs. Minassian would be an orphan, the same age of many of the children in church who participated in a candle-lighting ceremony in honor of their family members who had died in the genocide. Looking out at the young faces in the front pews, Mrs. Minassian said, “Don’t forget our struggle.”

Stephen A. Kurkjian, a reporter for the Boston Globe for 38 years, has written about many high-profile events. However, sharing the story of his father’s family was not one of them.

“I was not an appreciating Armenian until 1992, when I accompanied my 83-year-old father to the village where he was born,” Mr. Kurkjian said at the Martyrs’ Day commemoration. “The sadness hit me like a sledgehammer. I started asking, ‘How could this happen?’ ”

“I came back and wrote an article called ‘Roots of Sorrow.’ But now I’d add to that title, ‘Seeds of Hope.’ ”

Mr. Kurkjian’s father lost his father, brother and sister in the genocide of 1915; he survived after making the 300-mile trek to Syria with his mother, and later to America.

“My father would say out of tragedy there was opportunity for liberty and religious freedom. There was education and economic opportunity in America. I would have never had the successes I’ve had. Instead I would have worked at a small weekly in a mountain village.”

“I asked my Der Hayr (priest), ‘How this could happen?’ ” Mr. Kurkjian said. “He said, ‘God would not have allowed the first Christian church to not have survived.’ That’s as good an answer as you are going to get.”

With the internal awakening about his heritage, Mr. Kurkjian has traveled to Turkey and watched pressure build on the Turkish government to reassess its position that downplays references to the genocide.

Robin Garabedian, a junior at Doherty Memorial High School whose family has been with the Armenian Church of Our Saviour since her grandmother’s family immigrated to Worcester, said she was 7 years old when her father told her about the genocide. In reading her award-winning essay, “Why Remembrance of the Genocide is Important,” she quoted Adolf Hitler as saying, “Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?” as rationalization for the Holocaust.

“How does someone hate someone else so much?” Robin asked in anger. “If the world had stood up (against) the Armenian genocide, there wouldn’t have been genocide of the Jews, or in Cambodia in the ’70s, or in Darfur today.”

26.04.2008 16:08 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Khachkar dedicated to the memory of the Armenian Genocide victims in Budapest was desecrated by the unknown a few hours before the ceremonies of the 93rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, independent French journalist told PanARMENIAN.Net.

The vandals pulverized of black painting in this crowned day of April 24, 2008.

In the back of the monument painting entirely covers the word “Genocide” engraved in Armenian. The word “Lie” is overwritten in Hungarian.

The memorial was erected in Budapest in 2000. It’s the first time that such an act of vandalism is perpetrated against the symbolic Armenian monument.

The Armenian presence in Hungary goes up at 1000 years.

inscription on the monument base, independent French journalist Jean Eckian told PanARMENIAN.Net.

The Coordination Council of the French Armenian Organizations from Drome-Ardeche area’s (COADA) deposited a complaint to the Police office of Valence.

7 Armenian memorials - in Saint-Chamond, Creteil, Lyon, Valence (France), Cardiff (UK), Budapest (Hungary) and Lviv (Ukraine) - have been desecrated since January