My Truth, Unvarnished and Proud

I love being an Armenian American. It means being a part a diaspora that does amazing things. It is a unique way of connecting, belonging, and relating to the world. I wouldn’t trade being an Armenian American for *anything.* It is a wonderful existence to experience.

But it also means being raised in the shadow and pain of trauma, of knowing that there existed a people who hated you and your existence so much that you were targeted for complete extermination—simply for being Armenian.

Being Armenian means that collective memory is in your heart somewhere, and own heart is from a very particular place, one that was ripped from my family during the First World War—their home in the then-Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey).

On April 24, 1915, an order went out in Istanbul. The academics and merchants of the Armenian community in the city were to be arrested and executed. Within two weeks, my great-grandfather Krikor’s older brother, Mardiros, and father, Sarkis, would be dead. Another of Krikor’s brothers, Avedis, would be arrested and incarcerated. Krikor successfully escaped, first across Russia to Vladivostok, then to Yokohama, Japan and across the Pacific Ocean to the United States. My family still has copies of the ship's manifest as well as Satenig's passport. 

My great-grandparents, Krikor and Satenig, gave up almost everything they had in order to flee to the United States. That they survived at all was largely a testament to the relationships and resources their families had built and were able to rely upon to escape. Nearly one and a half million Armenians—three-quarters of the Ottoman Armenian population—were not so lucky.

Many of you know this about my family. Many more of you may not. If I had a nickel for every time I heard some variation of “I didn’t know any of that/get taught any of that in school!” whenever I shared my family’s story—and that of the 1.5 million men, women, and children murdered in the Armenian Genocide—my wife and I would have already paid off the thirteen-and-a-half years remaining on our mortgage.

I understand why this is the case because the Armenian Genocide isn’t something that is taught in school (I most certainly wasn’t taught it at all until college—I learned about it from my family). But that does not mean that is okay. It is not okay.

It is not okay because to know nothing of the Armenian Genocide is to know nothing of a truly seismic event in a war in which the United States fought.

It is not okay because to know nothing of the Armenian Genocide is to know nothing of one of the largest human rights abuses of all time.

It is not okay because to know nothing of the Armenian Genocide is to know nothing of an event that, in no small part, paved the way for the Nazi Holocaust’s propaganda and execution.

It is not okay because to this day, Armenians both in Armenia and the diaspora have been denied the justice of acknowledgement of the crimes done against them. The government of Turkey—the modern-day state that came from the Ottoman Empire—not only denies the genocide but has prosecuted public figures who acknowledged the genocide. The federal government of the United States continues to punt on acknowledging the genocide, mostly due to realpolitik concerns, as the Turkish government has a lengthy track record of retaliating against states whose governments recognize the Armenian Genocide.

And it is not okay because Armenians continue to have to bat down the lies, ignorance, and prejudices that come from over a century of falsehoods, gaslighting and violence—all of which reminds us of just how much some in the world still hate us…

“Do you know what still causes so much pain? It’s not the people we lost, or the land. It’s to know that we could be so hated. Who are these people, who could hate us so much? How can they still deny their hatred? And so hate us, hate us even more?” --Charles Aznavour, in the 2002 film Ararat

The quest for truth and justice continues in spite of those who hate us. But it means the backlash and hate continue, too.

Our demands for recognition of the history of our families and the genocide they endured have been treated as negotiable by one Congress after another and one president after another (President Obama’s abdication on this was especially egregious because he explicitly campaigned on Armenian Genocide recognition as a presidential candidate. I never held out any hope that Bush 43 would recognize the genocide, as neither Clinton or Bush 41 did before him).

We painstakingly debunk genocide denial dressed up in academic prose that gets cranked out by faculty members at American universities, many of them with vaunted brand names like Princeton and Louisville and published by well-known media outlets like the Huffington Post and The Nation, and by academic presses like the University of Utah.

When The Promise, one of a bare handful of movies ever to be set in the era and place of the Armenian Genocide, came out a year ago, it had to compete with another film that offered a revisionist, denial-driven interpretation of the genocide. This film, The Ottoman Lieutenant, was made mostly to troll The Promise and, for some inexplicable reason, managed to get both Josh Hartnett and Sir Ben Kingsley to star in it.

This is just a small sampling of the denial of our stories. And that denial must change. If we are not seen for who we are, people will not care about what and who was taken from us, and why.

And whether it’s out of simply lacking the knowledge, or out of not wanting to deal with truths that are uninteresting or inconvenient to them, there are an awful lot of people with the influence to actually change minds who simply do not talk about how there has yet to be any justice or reconciliation for who and what we have lost in an unrecognized genocide.

It’s brutal, but true: April 24 has mostly served for me as an exercise in re-learning all over again how little many on both the right and the left understand about one of the biggest human rights abuses of all time, and about how its consequences continue to this day.

And I have to confess: it pains me. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, it hurts. As Aznavour’s character says, it hurts to know that you can be so hated, and it hurts to realize that people in power neither know or care that you can be so hated.

Look—we all can do better. There’s a lot we don’t know, and a lot we have left to learn. If everything I have said so far is news to you and you are genuinely interested, in good faith, in hearing from what my family’s story of genocide survival has to offer, I would love nothing more than to answer any and all questions that you have, without any judgment whatsoever. I am an open book and will always try to be. That is how we learn to do better and be better.

But if you really cannot be bothered to do better and be better, at least be honest with yourself and the world about it. Because the consequences of apathy are not limited to Armenian genocide recognition. The issues inherent in Armenian genocide recognition are not limited to this one genocide. This all connects to wider and larger debates.

Twenty-five years ago, Holocaust scholar Kenneth Stern said, “That the Armenian genocide is now considered a topic for debate, or as something to be discounted as old history, does not bode well for those who would oppose Holocaust denial.”

I don’t know if y’all have noticed or not, but Holocaust denial has most certainly been much more in vogue over the past couple of years.

It should never have been. But allowing the Armenian Genocide to go denied, and to slip from public memory, is a signal to neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and anti-Semites that Holocaust denial will go relatively unpunished as well.

A Washington Post article revealing the increased ignorance of the scope and scale of the Holocaust went viral earlier this month on Yom HaShoah, a day of remembrance in Judaism of the Holocaust. That cannot be our future. Ours cannot be a world in which genocides go forgotten. I will not let that happen to the Holocaust. And I will not let that happen to the Armenian Genocide. Who my ancestors were, and what my family survived so that I might one day live is too important to be forgotten. I love them too much to let them be forgotten.

I love being Armenian. I love having that connection to a people and an ancestral home. And I love being in a diaspora because the diversity I encounter and contribute to is valuable and worth my while.

But in the midst of that diversity, on this one day out of the year, please, friends, take a moment out of your day to educate and advocate for Armenian Genocide recognition. There is so much you can do:

You can read about a survivor’s story, or hear it told from their descendants (like me!).

Watch a film which addresses the genocide, like the aforementioned Ararat or The Promise.

Once you’ve immersed yourself a bit in the stories and facts, if you ever see or hear genocide denial arguments made—and those arguments aren’t always as overt as “the genocide didn’t f*cking happen,” but often are more like, “hey, it was an armed rebellion and the government had to put it down, casualties happen”—then, please, speak up and debunk it. Especially today, when racist Twitter is apparently having a field day dehumanizing us after the ghastly van attack in Toronto.

Call, write, or tweet your Congressional representatives and ask them whether they believe Congress should recognize the Armenian Genocide. If they give *anything* other than an unequivocal yes, ask them why.

Christian friends—investigate to see whether your denomination recognizes the genocide. If they don’t, organize a resolution through whatever proper protocols exist in your tradition to do so. One of the proudest moments of my life was to speak in favor of my denomination’s genocide recognition resolution in 2015, the centennial of the start of the genocide, and in doing so, to tell just a tiny bit of my family’s story.

That story is here. That story will always be here. Its truth stands before you today, unvarnished and proud, demanding to be seen, heard, and acknowledged.

May it one day find the justice it has sought for so very long, and has far too rarely found.

Vancouver, Washington

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day 2018