"IF WE HAD ALL BEEN ABLE TO SAY, ‘WE ARE ALL JEWISH’, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO HITLER"

Hurriyet, Turkey
Feb 25 2007

Speaking at a conference about coming to term with the past, Aleida
Assman of Konstanz University in Germany said that the lessons and
spirit of Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian journalist who was felled
by a sniper’s bullet last month, lived on.

"We still hear his voice, and aim for his beliefs to continue to
exist," she told attendees at the "From the Burden of the Past to
Societal Peace and Democracy" international conference at Bilgi
University in Istanbul.

Drawing attention to the "We are all Armenian" slogan carried by
those attending Hrant Dink’s funeral in Istanbul, Assman said that
"synagogues, homes and goods belonging to the Jewish minority were
ransacked in Germany in 1938. If we had been able to say, "We are
all Jewish," would Hitler have been able to do this?"