Nita Lowey: “today I rise in commemoration of the 85th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, a horrible period in our history that…”

“today I rise in commemoration of the 85th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, a horrible period in our history that took the lives of 1.5 million Armenians and led to the exile of the Armenian nation from its historic homeland. My colleagues and I join with the Armenian-American community, and with Armenians throughout the world, to remember one of the darkest periods in the history of humankind. We owe this commemoration to those who perished because of the senseless hatred of others, and we need this commemoration because it is the only way to prevent such events in the future. We have already learned the lessons of forgetting. The Armenian Genocide, which began 15 years after the start of the twentieth century, was the first act of genocide this century, but it was far from the last. The indifference of the world to the slaughter of 1.5 Armenians laid the foundation for other acts of genocide, including the Holocaust, Stalin's purges, and, most recently, ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The lessons of the destruction that results when hatred is left unchecked have been too slowly learned. The world's indifference to the Armenian Genocide proved to Adolf Hitler that his plans to annihilate the Jewish people would encounter little opposition and would spur no global outcry. The post-Holocaust directive ``zachor,'' remember--lest history repeat itself, came too late for 1.5 million Armenians and 6 million Jews.”