When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in the launching of World War II some 80 years ago, more than 6 million civilians were killed on Hitler's orders — Polish and Jewish.
Modern democratic Germany has not brushed its past aside though it was the crime of the Nazi regime and its fanatic leaders. And has repeatedly repudiated its past world crimes as a lesson for humankind.
In a somber observance of the start of the war, the president of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeir, spoke from the heart when he stressed "this was a German crime."
The crimes were initiated on Hitler's orders. Some years ago, British statesman Winston Churchill said when a nation forgets its past, it has no future.
While in Warsaw for the 80th observance, the Associated Press said the German president then shared his own personal look at the past when he said: "I bow in mourning to the suffering of the victims and ask for forgiveness for Germany's historical debt. I affirm our lasting responsibility."
Yet during the political spat over building a wall on our southern border with Mexico, a member of the anti-Trump leftist squad bearing the Democrat banner referred to the detention camps as concentration camps. There's only one _expression_ for that sickening gaffe — wash your mouth.
Plus, the camps were built on orders of President Obama to protect children and their mothers from sexual traffickers.
The German apology is a lesson for many, especially modern day Turkish President Erdogan who still denies the Armenian genocide that led to the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians and thousands sent to their deaths while forced to march into the steaming hot Der Zor desert in Syria.
A book entitled "Resistance: A Diary of the Armenian Genocide 1915-1922" published in London, Ontario, Canada, brought back memories to me of the genocide during my trek in 1969 through Turkey's occupied portion of historical Western Armenia.
In the diary, author Misak Seferian concentrated on the battle for Erzurum as the Turkish army fought a force of Armenian volunteers, sacking the historic Armenian city where my mother was born and raised through her teen years before the family escaped the Turkish hunt for her father, a tailor by day and militant fighter at night.
In Seferian's vivid descriptions of Erzurum, I relived the several days I spent in the old city unable to find any surviving Armenians.
While in western-occupied Armenia, now barren of its original inhabitants dating back to the birth of Jesus Christ, I also walked the paths of Keghi and Moush, the birthplaces of my father and my wife's parents.
Through the years, the question of the Armenian genocide is openly debated and discussed, especially so on April 24 when it was launched by government edict. Turkish leaders say the Armenians were not loyal members of the Ottoman Empire and that the so-called genocide, if true, took place in the Ottoman Era, not the modern Republic of Turkey.
When Polish-Jewish lawyer intellectual Raphael Lemkin was assigned by the United Nations in 1946 to draft the intent of government executed genocide, Lemkin cited the 1915-1922 Armenian massacre as a genocide. Thus the birth of the terminology of genocide, a government execution of a race of people.
In a Sept. 20 statement released by Joe Biden, the former vice president said it was time for the United States to recognize that the massacres of over a million Armenians were victims of a genocide. I believe Turkey's Erdogan needs to talk to Biden and the president of Germany, especially in stressing: "I ask for forgiveness and affirm our lasting responsibility."
In a presidential race, candidates address the Armenian genocide but once in the White House, they suffer a memory lapse — both Democrats and Republicans. But Armenians have no other choice and must not back off in getting the United States to make it officially recognized.
As Lemkin said, it was genocide.
Allen Park resident Mitch Kehetian is a retired editor of The Macomb Daily, a sister publication of The News-Herald, and a former board trustee at Central Michigan University.