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CR: 89th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide - Rep. Weiner

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  • CR: 89th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide - Rep. Weiner

    89TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

    The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
    gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner) is recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. WEINER. Mr. Speaker, this month many of us pause to remember the
    Holocaust in Yom Hashoah commemorations. But on April 24, 1915, the
    first genocide of the 20th century began. The Ottoman Empire began
    rounding up a group of more than 250 Armenian intellectuals and civic
    leaders. Then soldiers of Armenian descent who were serving in the
    Turkish military were moved to labor camps and eventually murdered.
    Across Anatolia, Armenian leaders were arrested and killed. So, too,
    were the most powerless, children, women, and the elderly, all driven
    from their homes into the Syrian desert. These mass deportations were
    in fact slaughters. They were death marches. Soldiers themselves not
    only permitted the attacks on the deportees but participated in the
    killing and rapes. The inevitable end was thousands upon thousands
    dying of starvation or simply being worked to death, but sometimes
    these victims were the lucky ones.
    When the Turks deemed deportations impractical, the genocide took
    other vicious forms. In communities near the Black Sea, Armenians were
    forced onto boats, driven out into the middle of the ocean, and
    drowned.
    In the end, 1.5 million Armenians were killed in the genocide as the
    world stood by. Henry Morganthau, the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, who
    pleaded with world leaders to intervene, described the Ottoman effort
    to eliminate the Armenian population this way: ``The whole history of
    the human race contains no such horrible an episode as this.'' An
    American diplomat stationed in eastern Anatolia cabled back to
    Washington that ``it has been no secret that the plan was to destroy
    the Armenian race as a race, but the methods used could not have been
    more cold-blooded and barbarous, if not more effective, than I had
    first supposed.''
    Like communities that survived the Nazis efforts at extermination,
    the Armenian community today is often faced by those who deny the
    Turkish effort to commit genocide ever occurred. Despite records and
    accounts preserved in our own National Archives, there have been those
    bent on erasing this horrible memory from the annals of history.
    We will not let that happen. That is why today's commemoration here
    in the United States Congress and those going on this week is so
    crucial. If the world fails to remember the Armenian genocide of the
    early 20th century, we do more than a grave injustice to those who
    perished. We do a disservice to the generations who have come after us
    who would be left without the collective memory that binds those who
    understand the depth of evil that one community is capable of
    unleashing upon another.
    Yet even as we remember and grieve, we thank those in the Armenian
    community for the contributions they have made around the globe since
    emerging from terror 89 years ago. One need not look too far to find
    Armenian-Americans who have become pillars of American society.
    Armenian-Americans are influential businessmen, like Kirk Kerkorian;
    famous writers, like William Saroyan; and international sports stars,
    like Andre Agassi.
    In New York, internationally renowned scholar and Carnegie
    Corporation president Vartan Gregorian spent 8 years as president of
    the New York Public Library. Arshile Gorky was a leader of the abstract
    expressionist school that flourished in New York during the 1940s. And
    I am particularly proud that Raymond Damadian, who invented the MRI,
    was not only a resident of New York but was a neighbor of mine in
    Forest Hills. His parents were survivors of the genocide.
    As we gather, we also pay tribute to those who have become famous
    public servants, football coaches, astronauts and others. As we gather
    to commemorate the Armenian genocide, we do so as a lesson to one
    another that we must not forget the lessons that were learned. We also
    gather to pay a message to those who would deny that the Holocaust ever
    happened. But perhaps most importantly, we gather to send a signal
    across the world that those who seek to deny the Armenian genocide do a
    disservice to all of us.
    We here in the United States House of Representatives should delay no
    further in making our voices heard in this debate. It is worth noting
    that the very same people who would deny this Holocaust actively push
    that we do not consider the resolution that the gentleman from
    California (Mr. Schiff) has proposed.
    We gather here today to pay tribute, but we also gather to put
    pressure on this United States Congress to finally designate what we
    all know to be the case as genocide. The first genocide of the 20th
    century was not the last, tragically; but it is time that we correct
    the history in the minds of many and finally declare the Armenian
    genocide the holocaust that it was.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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