The view from the 49th Parallel: Truth be told

FROM THE DESK OF AVI BENLOLO
By AVI BENLOLO
04/17/2015 18:54

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. From
1915-1918, over two decades before Adolf Hitler implemented “the Final
Solution to the Jewish question”, a group of political activists from
Turkey, known as the Young Turks, embarked on a campaign of mass
slaughter of 1.5 million Armenian citizens. The Young Turks had a
vision of a new Turkish Empire, and believed the minority Armenian
population stood in the way of achieving their ambition. Despite
recognition by the Pope, to this day no Turkish government has
accepted responsibility for the deliberate and systematic butchery of
the Armenian people.

This week also marked Yom HaShoah, a day to commemorate the most
meticulously planned and executed genocide in all of human history. A
private letter by Adolf Hitler, acquired by the Simon Wiesenthal
Center, describes in detail his efforts to find a legal path to
exterminating the Jewish people. Though decades apart, the tragedies
are intimately tied by the most banal of human vices: apathy.

In 1939, while still in the planning stages of his campaign of horrors
and in the midst of deliberations on how the world could be carved up
between himself and Stalin, Hitler infamously noted, “Who, after all,
speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

Emboldened by the global deafness to the slaughter of the Armenian
people, and cognizant of the smaller genocide perpetrated by Germany
against more than 100,000 members of the Herero and Nama tribes (1904
– 1908) in its colony in Southwest Africa (now Namibia), Hitler felt
confident the world would also ignore his genocidal actions against
the Jewish people. He was, by and large, correct; the international
community had given Hitler the permission he needed to launch the
Shoah.

In a recent speech to students at Niagara College, Ontario, I
explained the Holocaust is a product of antisemitism that took
centuries of hate against the Jewish people to manifest. It had its
roots in the Spanish Inquisition, the black plague and the burning of
Jews held responsible, Eastern European programs and defamatory
libels.

I discussed the rise of antisemitism today, and provided examples of
terrorist attacks in Europe. I also referenced the hate spreading
across the globe, including 147 Christian students murdered at a
university in Kenya earlier this month by Al-Shabaab, the 300 young
Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, and the ongoing tragedy in
Syria.

Finally, and most importantly, I told them they have the power to make
a positive difference right here and now; as Simon Wiesenthal
emphasized, our freedom cannot be taken for granted. We must work to
preserve the values and liberties we cherish.

Today it is important to confront both official Turkish blindness to
the genocide as well as growing Holocaust distortion and denial. After
100 years Armenians around the world still wait for justice while,
just 70 years later, Jewish communities confront a renewal of the
vicious antisemitism that led to the Holocaust and the death camps.

The international community can no longer afford the luxury of benign
neglect. It is all too clear where turning a blind eye leads.