[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 43 (Monday, April 20, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Page S3302]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              THE 83D ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

 Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I rise today to commemorate the 83rd 
Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Each year we remember and honor 
the victims, and pay respect to the survivors we are blessed to have 
with us today.
  April 24, 1915 serves as a marking point for the government-
orchestrated carnage that took place under the Turkish Ottoman Empire. 
On this date, over 5,000 Armenians were systematically hunted down and 
killed in Constantinople. This number includes some 600 Armenian 
political and intellectual leaders who were taken to the interior of 
Turkey and systematically murdered. During the eight year period from 
1915 to 1923, approximately 1.5 million Armenians were killed and 
hundreds of thousands were driven from their homes. Many of these 
deaths were among the elderly and very young as they were forced on 
death marches with little food and no medical treatment.
  History records that the world stood by as the Armenians suffered, 
although there was ample evidence of what was taking place. Our 
Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, stated that, ``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.''
  Not only did the world stand by while atrocities took place, but 
unfortunately it refused to learn the awful lessons that were taught 
during this period. When Adolf Hitler was planning the Jewish Holocaust 
he said, ``Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?'' 
However, most of the world has come to acknowledge the Armenian 
Genocide. In 1929, Winston Churchill wrote the following: ``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.''
  Each year we vow that the incalculable horrors suffered by the 
Armenian people will not be in vain. That is surely the highest tribute 
we can pay to the Armenian victims and a way in which the horror and 
brutality of their deaths can be given redeeming meaning. I ask my 
colleagues to join me in remembering the Armenian Genocide.

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