Millions Were Lost in Armenian Genocide
The February 2 letter “Armenian Genocide Not Legally Founded” is completely irresponsible. The denial of the Armenian genocide by Turkish descendants is notorious. Turkey, as a nation, refuses to admit to the slaughter of the Armenians. They have been denying it since it happened in 1915.
Thousands of books have been written on the reality of the Armenian genocide by people more prominent than Hillary Clinton or any of those referenced in the letter. It is well known that Hitler based what he did to the Jews on what the Turks did to the Armenians. He ended his speech on invading Poland with “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” One of the most educated commentaries about the Armenian Genocide was published in the L.A. Times, noting that the Armenian genocide was the first genocide of that century, and had the world interfered, that would have set the precedent that genocide is unacceptable by nations. The Times writer believed that would have prevented every other genocide of that century.
The authors of the letter say the Armenian genocide should not be taught in schools. Personally, I do not believe that children are capable of understanding man’s inhumanity to man. The subject should be taught to older students, in the context of genocide, along with all of the other instances of genocide. But, this does not mean that I am in any way denying the Armenian genocide. That would be a negation of history.
The Armenians were the first nation of people to accept Christianity from the Emperor Constantine, in 301 AD. They lived secularized in the Ottoman Empire, surrounded by the Muslim Turks. The Ottoman Empire was tolerant of the Christians in their midst. When the Ottomans were overthrown by the “Young Turk Guard,” that tolerance was over. The Turk Guard slaughtered millions of Armenian Christians to ethnically cleanse their realm. The atrocities are compared to the Holocaust and are the second-most-studied genocide. I encourage readers to contact the Museum of Tolerance in L.A. to learn the truth.