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Remembering for the future

By Hilary Earl, Special to CTV.ca

April 24, 2005 marks the 90th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. On
this day in 1915, the Young Turk Government rounded-up elite members
of the Armenian community in the Turkish capital of Constantinople and
thereby set in motion the genocide.

The round up of the Armenian intelligentsia was, as one witness
observed, the preliminary step in the murder of an entire nation.

During the next few years nearly a million Armenian men, women and
children were identified, deported and murdered. The tragedy that
befell the Armenian people (an Orthodox Christian group that had
resided in eastern Turkey for centuries) during World War I is
historically significant, as it was the first genocide of the
twentieth century and thus ushered in the modern world.

For such a historically important event, it is surprising that until
relatively recently, it was also a forgotten history.

Unlike the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide has never permeated the
consciousness of the public. Auschwitz is a symbol of the Nazi
genocide of Europes Jews. Yet, there is no such comparable metaphor
for the murder of Turkeys Armenian population in 1915.

Why? In part, because of Turkeys national amnesia, but also because
the world has chosen to forget as well. Why should we remember an
event that took place nearly a century ago?

What relevance does it hold for the people of the twenty-first
century?

The answer is obvious. The lost history of the Armenian genocide is
one of those instances that prove the veracity of that old adage about
forgetting history and repeating it. Sadly, it seems we have not
learned the lessons of the past. The twentieth century, more so than
all others, was a century of war and genocide and the twenty-first
century has started out no more peacefully. Forgetting the past has
not prevented genocide in the present, nor has it helped the victims
come to terms with their past, perhaps the solution, then, is
remembering.

Overcoming the past is no simple feat as Germans can attest, but it is
crucial to confront (and remember) if countries such as Turkey want to
move forward.

Acknowledging past transgressions can help provide a solid moral
footing for the youth of a modernizing country such as contemporary
Turkey. More importantly, I would suggest that victims are entitled to
the opportunity to heal and that the silence that has characterized
the past century is tantamount to re-victimization. We must
acknowledge the crimes of the past so that the victim group has the
opportunity they were denied nearly a century ago, to face the
psychological consequences of their traumatic history and build a new
future.

As leaders in the movement for international justice Canadians have an
obligation to remember the past so that they will know how to contend
with such crimes if they occur again. Justice was not done nearly a
century ago; perhaps it is this generations duty to rectify the
mistakes of the past so that the victims and the world can move
forward.

Hilary Earl is Assistant Professor of History at York University in
Toronto. She studies contemporary genocides.