Remembrance of Things Not Yet Past

GYUMRI, ARMENIA, January 3, 2001-Eight days before the Third Reich's gambit into Poland-a move that would ignite World War II-Adolph Hitler was questioned by an observer about his policy of Jewish extermination: How would he succeed in removing an ancient race from the face of the planet? The despot allegedly responded, "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

Who indeed. The Young Turks' systematic deportation and massacre of Armenians during the first world war has become the cruelest cover-up of recent times. In 1915, under the guise of relocation and in the midst of raging war, the Turkish government determined to rid itself of Armenians living within its borders. The upstart regime feared that the minority posed a threat to its nationalistic campaign and, during the next eight years, removed some 1.5 million Armenians with ineffable brutality.

In an age that gave us the Nazis in Germany, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and the villainous Milosevic, the actions of the Young Turks were seminal. They are, as Michael Arlen writes, "the source of the bloody river linking the great murderous events of our century." But they have become part of a forgotten past that we are condemned again and again for repeating. Though we have museums on both American coasts to commemorate the Jewish Holocaust, one must be an archivist to gain an understanding of the atrocities committed against the Armenians.

The silence is downright shameful. Until France and the Vatican summoned the courage in recent months, relatively few world leaders had even acknowledged the genocide. In October President Clinton urged Congress not to pass a resolution that would have required him to use the word "genocide" when referring to Ottoman killings of Armenians. Ankara, echoing a threat made in previous years, had warned of "dire consequences for U.S.-Turkish relations" if such a resolution were to pass.

There is no love lost between Armenia and Turkey, which have maintained a common border and animosity since 1918, when Armenia gained its first modern independence. Since then, the Turks have used wealth and ties to the United States to discredit their neighbor's claims. In recent years, they have gone so far as to infiltrate American academia, installing Turkish Studies departments in several colleges and universities, including stalwart Princeton. In this phase of neo-genocide denial, the chairs are intent on turning it into a subject for debate.

In the minds of Armenians, however, it is hardly that. Many Armenians are the granddaughters and grandsons of survivors. They have heard eyewitness accounts of the bludgeonings, burnings and drownings to which so many of their people succumbed. For them, this is not a topic upon which reasonable minds may disagree. They might understand the west's unwillingness to sacrifice military and economic interests for the sake of Armenia, but they are not ready to accept it.

American diasporans-resorting to politics-have put their pocketbooks behind an insistence that the United States use its moral authority to set the record straight. But a handful of Armenians remaining in the homeland have suffered through natural disaster, their benefactor's collapse, massive emigration and war. Though their feelings about Turkey are equally strong, Armenia's weak economy produces very little leverage. As Armenians in the States boycott Turkish foods and wines, those left behind are trying to remember which of the town bakers owes them a favor.

Despite the seemingly interminable war of words, hopeful signs are ambient. Turkish sojourners have brought flowers to the genocide memorial in Yerevan and Armenian young people seem more anxious than their elders to let bygones be bygones. Finally, we have the EU. If Turkey is to enter-a quantum leap in its efforts to become part of the West-stringent demands must be met, including a requirement that it tell the truth about the deportations during World War I.

For the past decade, American politicians have dickered about what to do; one day offering resolutions to assuage diasporan constituencies; the next, pulling them off the table and claiming to be "patriots first." In the end, though, the Armenian nation will have to resolve its grief from the inside out. But the United States, by denouncing the Turks' insolent revisionism, can help to restore dignity to a nation that has little remaining. Who speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians? A nation of survivors does. Perhaps it is because the evils are so unspeakable that the world has failed to hear them.