Russ Feingold: “Today people around the world are pausing to remember and honor the victims of the Armenian genocide, which began 88…”

“Today people around the world are pausing to remember and honor the victims of the Armenian genocide, which began 88 years ago in what is now Turkey. Between 1915 and 1923, one-and-a-half million Armenians--roughly 60 percent of the total Armenian population--were systematically murdered at the hands of agents of the Ottoman Empire, and hundreds of thousands more were forced to leave their homes. At that time, the word ``genocide'' had not yet entered our vocabulary. Now, 88 years later, this brutal episode of violence against the Armenian people is considered to have been the first, but unfortunately not the last, genocide of the 20th century. Two decades later, in 1939, as Adolph Hitler, confident that history would exonerate him, prepared to send his armies into Poland with instructions to slaughter people indiscriminately and without mercy, he rhetorically asked his advisers: ``Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?'' That is precisely why I speak today, and every year on this date, to honor the Armenian people who lost their lives nearly a century ago and to remind the American people that the capacity for violence and hate is still prevalent in our world today.”