Steve Lynch: “I rise today to join with Armenians throughout the United States, Armenia, and the world in commemorating the 87th…”

“I rise today to join with Armenians throughout the United States, Armenia, and the world in commemorating the 87th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, one of the darkest episodes in Europe's recent past. This week, members and friends of the Armenian community gather to remember April 24, 1915, when the arrest and murder of 200 Armenian politicians, academics, and community leaders in Constantinople marked the beginning of an eight-year campaign of extermination against the Armenian people by the Ottoman Empire. Between 1915 and 1923, approximately 1.5 million Armenians were killed and more than 500,000 were exiled to the desert to die of thirst or starvation. The Armenian genocide was the first mass murder of the 20th century, a century that was sadly to be marked by many similar attempts at racial or ethnic extermination, from the Holocaust to the Rwandan genocide to the recent ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia. In the 87 years since the beginning of this genocide, we have learned the importance of commemorating these tragic events. In 1939, after invading Poland and relocating most Jews to labor or death camps, Hitler cynically defended his own actions by asking, 'Who remembers the Armenians?' Just a few years later, six million Jews were dead. Now is the time when we must answer Hitler's question with a clear voice: We remember the Armenians, and we stand resolved that genocide is a crime against all humanity.”