The round up of the Armenian intelligentsia was, as one witness observed, the preliminary step in the murder of an entire nation.
During the next few years nearly a million Armenian men, women and children were identified, deported and murdered. The tragedy that befell the Armenian people (an Orthodox Christian group that had resided in eastern Turkey for centuries) during World War I is historically significant, as it was the first genocide of the twentieth century and thus ushered in the modern world.
For such a historically important event, it is surprising that until relatively recently, it was also a forgotten history.
Unlike the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide has never permeated the consciousness of the public. Auschwitz is a symbol of the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews. Yet, there is no such comparable metaphor for the murder of Turkey’s Armenian population in 1915.
Why? In part, because of Turkey’s national amnesia, but also because the world has chosen to forget as well. Why should we remember an event that took place nearly a century ago?
What relevance does it hold for the people of the twenty-first century?
The answer is obvious. The lost history of the Armenian genocide is one of those instances that prove the veracity of that old adage about forgetting history and repeating it. Sadly, it seems we have not learned the lessons of the past. The twentieth century, more so than all others, was a century of war and genocide and the twenty-first century has started out no more peacefully. Forgetting the past has not prevented genocide in the present, nor has it helped the victims come to terms with their past, perhaps the solution, then, is remembering.
Overcoming the past is no simple feat as Germans can attest, but it is crucial to confront (and remember) if countries such as Turkey want to move forward.
Acknowledging past transgressions can help provide a solid moral footing for the youth of a modernizing country such as contemporary Turkey. More importantly, I would suggest that victims are entitled to the opportunity to heal and that the silence that has characterized the past century is tantamount to re-victimization. We must acknowledge the crimes of the past so that the victim group has the opportunity they were denied nearly a century ago, to face the psychological consequences of their traumatic history and build a new future.
As leaders in the movement for international justice Canadians have an obligation to remember the past so that they will know how to contend with such crimes if they occur again. Justice was not done nearly a century ago; perhaps it is this generation’s duty to rectify the mistakes of the past so that the victims and the world can move forward.
Hilary Earl is Assistant Professor of History at York University in Toronto. She studies contemporary genocides. |
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