Paul S. Sarbanes: “Today marks the 79th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. Every year at this time we pay tribute to the memory of 1/2…”

“Today marks the 79th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. Every year at this time we pay tribute to the memory of 1/2 million Armenian men, women and children who perished as a result of the brutal and systematic policy of extermination orchestrated by Ottoman rulers. Countless victims and survivors have attested to what can be characterized as one of the darkest periods and most tragic human episodes in this century. Incredibly, the Armenian genocide, which followed years of recorded massacres under Ottoman rule during the latter part of the 19th century, continues to be denied as a matter of course by modern day Turkish governments, despite a wealth of historical and contemporaneous documentation and accounts by scholars and historians. In 1918, Henry Morgenthau, the distinguished U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, gave us valuable testimony in this regard. He wrote: Whatever crimes the most perverted instincts of the human mind can devise, and whatever refinements of persecutions and injustice the most debased imagination can conceive, became the daily misfortunes of this devoted people. I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this.”