On this Yom Hashoah, let us also remember the Armenian genocide of 1915

This year Yom Hashoah falls on April 23-24. April 24 is also the day of remembrance of the Armenian genocide, which began on that date in 1915. The “Committeee of Union and Progress,” a faction of the “Young Turks” who were “reforming” the Ottoman empire, formulated and carried out the policy to drive Armenians off their land and onto a death march through the Syrian desert, where over a million starved or were murdered by Ottoman soldiers.

How right is it to mix remembrance of the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide? Not only is it right, it is necessary and important. Because if the world had said “Never Again” after the Turkish genocide of the Armenians, the Jews and Romani murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators might have been saved.

Hitler himself, may his bones be blasted and his name rot, said this on August 22, 1939, in preparation for the impending invasion of Poland: “Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter – with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It’s a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command…that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children… Only thus shall we gain the living space (lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”*

Henry Morgenthau, who was American ambassador to the Ottoman empire during the time of the genocide, actively but unsuccessfully attempted to intervene.** Later Morgenthau wrote:

When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact… I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915.  ~ from “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story” (1919).

The Germans later imagined their genocide of the Jews would be forgotten just as the Armenian genocide was forgotten. The confluence of the remembrance of both genocides on the same day is a painful reminder of that fact. The Turkish genocide of Armenians began on April 24 in 1915. Today of all days, remember, Zikhri – Zakhor! 

* This speech called for the annihilation of all Poles. Jews were already targeted by the Einsatzgruppen immediately after the Polish invasion. But it was later that the Nazi focus on murdering Jews and Romani become its highest priority.

** Some of this content comes from the quotes for today in the Omer Counter app.