As leaders of Minnesota's Armenian and Jewish communities, joined by the director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, we applaud the U.S. House for this week overwhelmingly approving H.R. 296 affirming that it should be the policy of the U.S. to "commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and remembrance."
We are grateful to Rep. Betty McCollum for co-sponsoring this resolution, and for the support of every other member of Minnesota's delegation — other than Rep. Ilhan Omar, who inexplicably voted "present."
As far back as 2007, both our local Armenian and Jewish communities have supported passage of this resolution.
Praising the vote, Gov. Tim Walz rightly tweeted that "the #ArmenianGenocide is historical fact, and the denial of that fact is a continuation of the genocide. As a member of Congress, I sponsored this legislation. The memory of the victims and the commitment to the survivors demands that history acknowledge the lives lost."
Armenians first came to St. Paul in the 1890s, as Jews had done in the 1840s. The Armenian and Jewish communities share a love of family and education. We are committed to our respective churches and synagogues and dedicated to the greater community. We are diaspora communities who are loyal Americans and care deeply about events abroad.
We also share in the suffering from terrible atrocities of the 20th century. That said, whether it is the Armenian Genocide or the Holocaust, genocide does not define us peoples. It does, however, provide us parallel and intersecting responsibilities to teach our histories so that the horrors of the past are not repeated.
Even the term "genocide" binds us together, as it was coined by Jewish Holocaust survivor Raphael Lemkin in part to describe what had happened to Armenians in 1915 and in part as a response to the murder of his own family at the hands of Nazi Germany.
This is why our communities, along with the center, partner to remember our tragedies, as well as to support each other at our times of need. For example, our local Armenian community's traveling exhibit "Treasures of Memory and Hope," which features ordinary belongings of survivors of the Armenian Genocide who resettled in Minnesota, was inspired by the Jewish Community Relations Council's "Transfer of Memory" project, a touring exhibit of portraits and stories of Holocaust survivors who rebuilt their lives here.
