West Salem Coulee News
May 17 2009

HILLTOP VIEW: When will killing finally end?

By ZACH LEVONIAN

On April 15, 1909, a college professor, more than a dozen church
leaders and a number of others were locked into a church in Osmaniye,
Turkey. The church was lit aflame, and all inside perished when the
roof collapsed. Within the next few hours, sixty additional Christian
Armenians were hunted down and killed. That day, 93 people were
killed.

The college professor was my great-great-grandfather, Sarkis Hoja
Levonian, who died in the church beneath the oppressive weight of
burning timber.

The killings in Osmaniye were matched in other towns and villages
throughout Turkey, and six years later the extermination of those
Armenians living in Ottoman Turkey began in earnest. From 1915 to
1923, the Armenian Genocide took the lives of up to 1.5 million
people.

The Armenian Genocide was a horrific event, yet details and facts
regarding its perpetration are not widely known. This is not
surprising; the Turkish government refuses to accept the killings that
occurred as genocide, and says the number of people who died was no
greater than 500,000.

However, nations around the world, as well as 43 U.S. states, have
found the vicious massacres of the time to be nothing short of
intentional genocide. Wisconsin passed its own piece of legislation ‘
April 24 is officially recognized as `Wisconsin Day of Remembrance for
the Armenian Genocide of 1915 to 1923.’ More simply, consider it
Armenian Memorial Day.

The events of the Armenian genocide were gruesome, and the
organization and methods utilized were similar to those employed by
Nazi Germany 20 years later. Armenians were deported to concentration
camps or marched into to the desert, where rape, beatings, disease,
starvation and hard labor would take their toll.

Those who escaped scattered to nations around the globe, and today
many descendents of those killed in the Armenian Genocide live in
America, as my family does.

Genocide is a dark word, one largely unreal to Americans and teenagers
today. Imagine this: 30 La Crosse-sized cities of people gone, forced
into camps and then killed.

During the Holocaust, imagine 120 La Crosse-sized cities of people
gassed in small, airtight chambers. It is difficult to imagine
genocides taking place and even harder to acknowledge they are not
just a thing of the past.

Right now in Darfur, genocide continues. Before he was deposed, Saddam
Hussein massacred the Kurdish people of northern Iraq. In Sri Lanka,
the government has been accused of genocide for massacres of the Tamil
people.

Genocide is happening now, and it will probably happen in the
future. Humans need to do everything in our power to stop
genocide. The first step of prevention is awareness of genocides that
have happened and are happening. Take a moment to research a place
like Darfur: find it on a map, try to understand the situation there,
and consider lending a helping hand to a relief group.

We can’t take away the pain of those lost in genocide, but we can at
least ensure no such event will ever happen unnoticed and
uncondemned. On Armenian Memorial Day, remember those 1.5 million
people lost in the Armenian Genocide, and also reflect on those around
the world who are facing genocide.

Zach Levonian is a junior at Onalaska High School.

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