Peter Torkildsen: “I rise with my colleagues, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone], the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter], and…”

“I rise with my colleagues, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone], the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter], and many others to remember the Armenian genocide. Last week Members of Congress, the Nation and the world observed Yom HaShoah to honor and remember the millions of Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Sadly, one tragic truth about the Holocaust is that it occurred 20 years after the Armenian genocide, which took the lives of over 1 million Armenians. In fact, it was Hitler who uttered the infamous statement, ``Who remembers the Armenians?'' Today we stand here in this Chamber and in places around our Nation to do just that, to remember the Armenians, remember the martyrs, to say we will always remember them and we will never let the world forget the Armenian genocide that occurred at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. It was just over 81 years ago that 1.5 million Armenians were systematically murdered and another 500,000 were driven from their homeland during the 8-year genocide. Revisionist historians have sadly doubted the historical reality of the genocide. The Armenians were not killed indiscriminately or at random. The Armenians murdered between 1915 and 1923 were the victims of a calculated extermination through starvation, torture and deportation, a genocide in every cruel meaning of the word and nothing less.”