April 24: Commemoration of the 1915 Armenain Genocide

[Access]

Every April 24th commemorates the day in 1915 when the Turkish government under the rule of the crumbling Ottoman Empire systematiacally massacred 1.5 Million Armenains living in Turkey. This massacre was the first genocide of the 20th century. Men, women, and children were all sent out into the deserts and killed. Women were raped and killed, Men and children were tortured, beated an killed.

What is still more disturbing is that this genocide was not known to the world and is still today is being denied by the Turkish government. Out of all of the major powers in the world today only France has formally recognized the events of the 1915 genocide. Had the world recognized the genocide sooner, it could have prevented the Holocost and other mass genocides that followed since 1915 in other places in the world.

"Who after all is today speaking about the destruction of the Armenains?" - Adolf Hitler from his 'Obersalzberg speech', 22 August 1939

Remebering the Genocide is personally important to me because so much of my family was killed in the genocide. My grandfather was just a young boy when it happened and his parents were able to escape the genocide by fleeing to Russia the day before Turkish soldiers started raiding villiages. Had they not escaped with the help of thier kind Turkish neigbours, i would not have been here today.


Today is the 87th anniversary of the forgotten genocide. There's a candelight vigil taking place tonight at Queens Park if anyone's interested in hearing more or paying their respects. There's also a canned food drive happening there too.

If anyone wants more info, there's a really good website called
http://www.theforgotten.org

RIP: all those who perished in the 1915 Genocide

 

[Rosey]

RIP - i'd never heard of that, i think a lot of people haven't.

 

[Access]

its definately understandable that most people haven't heard of the 1915 Armenain Genocide since it happened so long ago. Even while it was happening the rest of the world was too pre-occupied with fighting the first world war to notice what was happening. I remeber doin a project about the genocide in highschool and my teacher hadn't even heard of it.

Its unfortunate that stuff like this still goes on in the world today and goes largely unnoticed by most of the world. In this day in age it would be hard to pull off such a large scale genocide, but any amount innocent people being killed should be recognized.

 

[kprior]

its great that you brought this to people's attention... I knew about the massacre, but only learned about it in a thrid year university class. What I find interesting is how there are so many events like this in the 20th Century, and few people are aware of them.

Cambodia? People know about it somewhat, between 3 - 4 million people were murdered by the Khmer Rouge over three years.