Thursday, 4/24/97 Past injustices have lesson for everyone to
learn Atrocities won’t heal while still denied, ignored or
forgotten by rest of humanity
By Nima A. Fahimian For those who wonder why a Jew cares for
what happened to Armenians less than 100 years ago, I have a story
to tell. Following the aftermath of the Turkish government’s
heinous crimes against the Armenians, survivors reflected on the
horrors of the Armenian genocide: "I saw with my own eyes one of
the Zaptiehs take out his sword and split open the abdomen of a
pregnant women who was lagging behind. She died on the spot. The
fetus burst open and was left to die"(Elise Hagopian Taft,
"Rebirth"). "The soldiers said that they could not bother with
them. When children lagged behind (during the deportations), or got
out of line to rest, the Zaptieh would lift them on their
(bayonets). Mothers who saw their young ones killed in this way for
the sport of guards could not protest …"(H. Gates, "The Auction
of the Souls"). "(Officers, Turkish and German, after raping) sent
for some of the girls in the house and then standing them sideways
shot at them with their pistols, using their breasts as targets"
(H. Gates, "The Auction of the Souls"). On Aug. 22, 1939 Adolph
Hitler, while addressing his commanding generals, asserted in
reference to his anticipated final solution against the Jews: "Who,
after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" A
few years later, Adolph Hitler joined the ranks of the Turkish
Empire, only he modernized the methods of his Turkish counterparts
in the name of humanity: "At Auschwitz, the largest extermination
and forced labor camp, cyanide gas (Zyclon B) was used for
efficiency and ‘humanitarian’ reasons – the speedy death of
victims. Jews arrived in cattle cars. Many were sent to the gas
chambers; Jewish prisoners were then removed gold teeth and hair
(to be used in mattresses) and burned bodies in great ovens …
Others simply died from the imaginative Nazi punishment, such as
packing many into a tiny cell without an air supply" (Ervin Staub,
"The Roots of Evil"). The massacre of an entire nation, one of the
richest cultures of the Middle East, was committed in the early
20th century by the desperate Turkish government (Ottoman Empire).
Yet every day of their lives, the survivors and their descendants
live the ongoing, hunting nightmare of the horrible, inhumane acts
against their race. While this devastating nightmare chips at the
edge of every Armenian soul, the Turkish officials nurture the
monster of the Armenian nightmare by denying the cruel and
irrational action of their predecessors. Perhaps, if my parents and
grandparents had committed such barbaric acts of inhumanity, I too
would be wishing that it never happened; nonetheless, I would have
never denied it, for denying it would only make me more evil than
the perpetrators – an aggressor fully conscious of his inhumanity
and cruelty. Ironically, though, my Jewish grandparents were the
victims of such savageness only a few decades later by the Nazis.
Although the Nuremberg trials procured some closure to the
endlessly painful experience of the Jews, the burden still stays
with us. In other words, a wounded soul never heals. But is this
really why we still carry the burden? And if so, what burden? The
burden of remembering, and the burden of preventing – not just
remembering the Holocaust, but remembering any act of savagery
against any race or color. It is only in this sense that I don’t
consider the Nuremberg trials as a final closure or retribution to
the Jewish question, because the Armenians are still denied of
their basic right – the formal acknowledgment of the butchery
committed against their race. I demand more than the Nuremberg
trial; I expect a worldwide recognition of what happened to two
million innocent women, children, and men. To me, as long as the
Turkish government denies the barbaric actions of their
predecessors, as long as the Bosnians are tortured and murdered
senselessly, and as long as most people don t know or are not aware
of what has happened, the Nuremberg trials only serve as a minor
retribution – like a Band-Aid on a deep wound that would never heal
without a surgical procedure. The burden is on me and the burden is
on you as long as we allow the ruthless actions that threaten the
very basic foundation of our humanity to go unnoticed. It is true
that as humans we have this great ability to separate ourselves
from the misery of others, and, of course, I don’t expect those who
are fortunate enough to have not experienced such brutality against
their existence to feel as passionate as I do. But I do expect us,
as our nature dictates us – being animals of experience – to learn
from the past and stop history from repeating itself. Only now, the
question that should be asked is not: "Why should a Jew care about
what happened to millions of Armenians about 100 years ago?" The
question should be: "Why shouldn’t everybody care about what
happened?" This is not an Armenian problem. It is our problem, and
it will remain so long as we don’t scold ignorance. This is a
question of human nature and our ability to commit the most heinous
crimes of all, overlook them, deny them, yet have the audacity to
still regard ourselves as conscientious moral animals worthy of the
name "humans." When one comes to think on the meaningless torture
and butchery of the Armenians, the mass execution of the Jews, the
slavery of the African Americans, the genocide of the Cambodians,
the torture of the Bosnians and many more, I seriously doubt
whether we have earned the title of "humans" after thousands of
years of evolution. But what really sinks our already regressing
ship is our ability to rest our heads on our pillows every night
and ignore or show apathy towards the execution of an entire race.
This is not an Armenian problem. It is our problem, and it will
remain so long as we don’t scold ignorance. Fahimian is a
fourth-year biochemistry and sociology student.