Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Armenians remember century’s first genocide

Despite overwhelming evidence that the Turkish government killed nearly 2 million Armenians in eastern Turkey in 1915, there are still those who say the first genocide of the 20th century never occurred.

So said Lawrence Ovian, retired professor of education at Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts, to a group of 100 Armenians at St. John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church on Sunday afternoon.

Ovian's talk coincided with Wednesday's 81st anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian genocide.

It was on April 24, 1915, according to historians, that the "Young Turk" regime decreed that all the Armenians in Turkey would be killed.

Within a year, nearly 2 million Armenians were beaten, stabbed, burned or starved to death, according to historical records. This represented roughly 90 percent of the Armenian population.

"Genocide is a word that haunts us all," Ovian said. "The word rings with pain and suffering that still affects us all."

It is not enough to hope and pray that "there will be an acknowledgement of this terrible act" by the government of Turkey," Ovian said. "All of us Armenians must be constantly vigilant."

Ovian explained that there have been several books in recent years by authors who were influenced by the Turkish government that have downplayed the Armenian genocide as just another horrible consequence of war.

Worse, he said, there have been attempts to explain the massacres as warranted because of "civil unrest."

"The Turkish government has used the cover of the First World War to justify its actions," Ovian said.

But the reality is that the genocide was committed in front of the eyes of officers of the German military, allies of Turkey during World War I, Ovian said.

Ovian explained that the Turkish government tried to destroy all evidence of the genocide. Soldiers burned Armenian churches, destroyed records and buried bodies in mass graves with no markings.

"The Germans learned from this and they in turn became architects of mass extermination," Ovian said.

Ovian explained that Armenia, one of the world's ancient countries, was for centuries located in eastern Turkey, and that historians note that Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as its national religion more than 17 centuries ago.

"We owe it to our ancestors -- to our forebears -- never to forget," Ovian said.

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