It gets dark a little sooner, now

Today I visited Tsitsernakaberd. For the uninformed, "tsitsernakaberd" is Armenian for "Fortress of small swallows." It is the national memorial to the Armenian genocide, located close to my home in Yerevan. It is moving and elegant, bringing tears to the eyes of my Armenian-American classmates. There is a tall spike, an eternal flame, and a small museum dedicated to photographs, print, and statistical evidence of the genocide that took place in Eastern Turkey from 1915-1918. In Turkey, it is known as the "Armenian Relocation" or "Deportation of the Armenians," which they claim to be the mass deportation of the Armenian people to the Syrian desert as a result of skirmishes between the Armenian and Turkish peoples- skirmishes that resulted in deaths on both sides, which is why they insist on calling it a war, not a genocide. The politics are complicated, regardless of what the Turkish government or Armenian Diaspora (the politicultural group of people of Armenian descent living all over the world) might wish one to believe.

But this is background information.


Today was difficult. It is never easy to stand witness, even nearly a century later, to atrocities. It is even more difficult because I have come to know, and adore, the descendents of the perpetrators. Now, nobody hates the Germans for the Holocaust. But in Germany, it is a crime to deny the genocide- in Turkey, it is a crime not to (it is under the law criminalizing "insulting Turkishness"). It's difficult to know that so many people are so angry at a group of people that I've come to love. It's difficult because all the people I knew had no part in the genocide, and were taught from an early age that it did not happen. How can anyone fault them for believing what every teacher, every mentor, everyone they know has told them that it is a cruel lie designed to dishonor their grandparents and great grandparents? At the same time, I look at the memorial and want to shake people, my own government and every other one that has not recognized the genocide for what it was- a horrible attempt to destroy an ancient group of people. Politics are never clear or staightforward, and solutions are never easy.

I've spoken with the Armenian foreign policy advisor, the deputy Minister of Justice, the US Ambassador, and several other high-ranking political persons here in Armenia. No one has any more answers than I do.