[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 54 (Wednesday, April 24, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4091-S4092]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               THE 81ST ANNIVERSARY OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

 Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, George Santayana wrote that ``those 
who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'' We have an 
obligation, just as our forebears had, to teach following generations 
what occurred in the world before they were born. It is this passing of 
information from generation to generation that weaves the fabric of our 
collective history and serves as a guide for the future. We can never 
change the facts of history, but we can work to make sure that 
injustices are not repeated out of ignorance of those facts. It is only 
through the constant and vigilant education of our children and each 
other that we can hope to end man's inhumanity to man.
  When Adolf Hitler was planning the Jewish Holocaust he said, ``Who 
today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?'' I am here today 
to bear witness to the fact that we do remember the Armenians who fell 
prey to genocide and we will continue to work to spread that knowledge 
so that similar events never again occur.
  Today, April 24, 1996, we commemorate the 81st anniversary of the 
1915-1923 genocide of the Armenian people. In a world that sometimes 
seems to have gone mad with random violent acts, we must remember the 
victims of a government organized terror, the genocide perpetrated by 
the Turkish Ottoman Empire against the Armenian people.
  Eighty-one years ago this week, the 8-year-long savagery against the 
Armenian people began. Each year we remember and honor the victims and 
pay respect 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.
  For the most part, nations did not learn from history--the world 
looked

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away during the Armenian genocide and those horrors later revisited the 
planet. As Elie Wiesel said, the Armenians ``felt expelled from 
history.'' 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 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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