[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 44 (Wednesday, April 20, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
     COMMEMORATING OF THE 79TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

  Mr. WOFFORD. Mr. President, today marks the 79th anniversary of the 
Armenian genocide. We commemorate here today the 1\1/2\ million 
Armenian men, women, and children whose lives were taken between 1915 
and 1923 by forces of the Ottoman empire, and indeed, the hundreds of 
thousands slaughtered or forced into exile in the years preceding. 
Untold thousands suffered exhaustion unto death in work camps, walked 
into oblivion on death marches, suffered rape and degradation, 
starvation, torture, mutilation and murder. It was, to recall the words 
of the American Ambassador, Henry Morganthau, a campaign of race 
extermination conducted under the pretext of reprisal against 
rebellion.
  This heinous act brought to a virtual end, the 3,000-year-old 
heritage of the Armenian people of the region. Today, the survivors can 
be found across the globe, from the cities and towns of Pennsylvania to 
Europe, and to the cities of the Middle East, and beyond. More than 
130,000 Armenian orphans were taken in by the United States, filled 
with fear and the memories of horror they never forgot.
  Mr. President, we have said many times that the world should never 
forget. However, we have forgotten, and time and time again, the world 
has witnessed history repeat itself in different places with different 
peoples, all with the same terrible purpose. The destruction of the 
Kulaks, Jewish Holocaust, Pol Pot's extermination of millions of 
Cambodians are but a few that come to mind. Even today, Saddam Hussein 
attempts to erase the marsh Arabs and Kurds, and the Serbs continue to 
practice their own form of ethnic cleansing.
  It is fitting that today we commemorate the Armenian genocide. 
However, how even more fitting it would be if we could mark this sad 
occasion knowing that we had done all that was in our power to put such 
outrages behind us. How fitting it would be to remember such 
anniversaries as a thing out of our dark past, rather than as a scourge 
of our own time, or a foreboding preamble to our children's future.

                          ____________________