[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 69 (Thursday, April 27, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S5853]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

 Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, Sunday, April 23, marked the 
commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the 1915-1923 genocide of the 
Armenian people.
  In a world that seems to have gone mad with violent acts of maniacal 
individuals, from Oklahoma City to Tokyo, we must remember the victims 
of a government organized terror, the genocide perpetrated by the 
Turkish Ottoman Empire against the Armenian people.
  Eighty years ago this week, the 8-year-long savagery against the 
Armenian people began.
  Each year we remember and honor, the victims, and pay respects to the 
survivors we still are blessed to have in our midst.
  We vow to remember, to always remember the attempt to eliminate the 
Armenian people from the face of the earth, not for what they had done 
as individuals, but because of who they were.
  History records that the world stood by, although it knew. It knew.
  Our Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, telegraphed 
the following message to the American Secretary of State on July 16, 
1915:

       Deportation of and excesses against peaceful Armenians is 
     increasing and from harrowing reports of eyewitnesses it 
     appears that a campaign of race extermination is in progress 
     under the pretext of reprisal against rebellion.

  Later, when Ambassador Morgenthau wrote a book about his experiences, 
he wrote:

       When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these 
     deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a 
     whole race: they understood this well and in their 
     conversations with me they made no particular attempt to 
     conceal the fact.
       I am confident that the whole history of the human race 
     contains no such horrible episode as this. The great 
     massacres and persecutions of the past seems almost 
     insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian 
     race in 1915.

  Oh, there were a few voices, there were a few leaders like Winston 
Churchill who tried to warn us. Churchill wrote the following in 1929:

       In 1915, the Turkish Government began and carried out the 
     infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in 
     Asia Minor . . . the clearance of the race from Asia Minor 
     was about as complete as such an act, on a scale so great, 
     could be. There is no reasonable doubt that this crime was 
     planned and executed for political reasons.

  But, for the most part, nations did not learn from history--the world 
looked away and genocidal horrors revisited the planet.
  As Elie Weisel said, the Armenians ``felt expelled from history.''
  Hitler counted on the world forgetting the Armenian genocide when he 
undertook the extermination of the Jewish people.
  So the genocide we remember each April, the century's first 
genocide--is the genocide the world forgot, to its shame and for which 
it paid dearly.
  Each year we vow that the incalculable horrors suffered by the 
Armenian people will still somehow not be in vain.
  We make this solemn vow because we believe that it is within our 
power to confront evil in the world, and to prevent genocidal attacks 
on people because of who they are.
  That is surely the highest tribute we can pay to the Armenian victims 
and how the horror and brutality of their deaths can be given redeeming 
meaning.


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