Remembering the Armenian Genocide

REMEMBERING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE -- (Extensions of Remarks - April 28, 2004)

SPEECH OF
HON. BRAD SHERMAN
OF CALIFORNIA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28, 2004

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I join with my colleagues tonight in somber remembrance of the Armenian Genocide. Early in the 20th Century, during World War I and its aftermath, the Ottoman Empire attempted the complete liquidation of the Armenian population of Eastern Anatolia.

We must come down to the House floor tonight not only to remember this tragic event, but we must also proclaim that the Armenian Genocide is an historical fact. There are many who deny that this first genocide of the 20th Century actually took place.

The American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1919 was an eyewitness. In his memoirs, he said, "When the Turkish authorities gave the order for these deportations they were merely giving the death warrant to an entire race. They understood this well and in their conversations with me made no particular attempt to conceal this fact."

He went on to describe what he saw at the Euphrates River. He said, as our eyes and ears in the Ottoman Empire, "I have by no means told the most terrible details, for a complete narration of the sadistic orgies of which they, the Armenian men and women, are victims can never be printed in an American publication. Whatever crimes the most perverted instincts of the human mind can devise, whatever refinements of persecution and injustice the most debased imagination can conceive, became the daily misfortune of the Armenian people."

We can never forget that 8 days before he invaded Poland, Adolf Hitler turned to his inner circle and said, "Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?" The impunity with which the Turkish government acted in annihilating the Armenian people emboldened Adolf Hitler and his inner circle to carry out the Holocaust of the Jewish people.

It is time for Turkey to acknowledge this genocide, because only in that way can the Turkish government and its people rise above it. The German government has been quite forthcoming in acknowledging the Holocaust, and in doing so it has at least been respected by the peoples of the world for its honesty. Turkey should follow that example rather than trying to deny history.

It is also time-indeed it is far overdue-for our Congress to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Mr. Speaker, I again call on my colleagues to recognize the Armenian Genocide and to urge my fellow Americans to remember this tragic event.

END