Gathering to Remember
This evening, about one hundred people gathered in front of Memorial Hall in Northampton, MA. Like their counterparts around the world, they were Gathering to Remember the Armenian Genocide. Many countries, including our own, do not want to recognize the killings of the Armenian people as genocide. However, the facts speak for themselves - 1.5 million Armenians died - over half the population of Armenians living in Turkey in the spring of 1915 were systematically killed. As we stood in the New England cold, Rev. Dr. Andrea Ayvazian gave a brief history of what has happened over the years to the Armenian people. She said, "My Dad called it 'the massacres;' my Grandmother called it 'the attocities.' Many scholars agree that the killing of the Armenian people was the first genocide of the 20th century." The crowd heard stories of those who had been martyred and those who had survived as well as heart-wrenching poetry by an Armenian ...
