NORTH GRAFTON, Mass.—On Oct. 24, from 1-4 p.m., the Assyrian American Association of Massachusetts (AAAM) will commemorate the Centennial of the Assyrian Genocide at the Assyrian Cultural Center, at 10 Overlook St. in North Grafton. United States Congressman James McGovern (D-MA 2nd District) will deliver the keynote address. Other speakers include Mary Jane Rein, the executive director at the Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, Clark University; and Marc Mamigonian, the director of academic affairs at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) in Belmont. Sabri Atman, the founder and director of the Assyrian Genocide and Research Center (Seyfo Center), will deliver his message through a video.
A monument dedicated to the Centennial of the Assyrian Genocide will also be unveiled at the commemoration. The monument, entitled “HOPE,” is the work of Assyrian artist Ninos Chammo.
Below is AAAM’s statement on the Centennial of the Assyrian Genocide.
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In the aftermath of the first genocide of the 20th century, Assyrian survivors began to arrive in Massachusetts, now one of the oldest Assyrian communities in the United States. They found work in Lowell, Watertown, and Worcester in the many factories producing textiles. They came following the persecution of non-Muslims that escalated during the 1890’s in Ottoman Turkey but culminated in a protracted struggle in which Turks, Kurds, Circassians, and other Muslim groups nearly succeeded in removing all Christians from eastern Turkey.
By 1915, persecution had turned into full-blown genocide. Few recognized the early warning signs that led to the direct and indirect murder of about two-thirds of the entire remaining Assyrian population that had managed to exist for nearly 2,000 years as Christians in isolated plateau villages and high mountain terrain in southeast Turkey. Together with Armenians and Greeks, the Assyrians lost everything, often even the shoes on their feet and the clothes on their bodies.
Because this genocide between 1914-23 has become known and increasingly well documented from the Ottoman archives, in particular, especially at one of Massachusetts’ leading educational institutions—Clark University’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies—it is appropriate that the Assyrians of Massachusetts remember, in the company of their American and multi-ethnic friends, the Centennial of this genocide that encouraged the evil that followed, 20 years later, in Europe.
In dedicating this monument to the Assyrian Genocide, at the site of an Assyrian church and cultural center, we honor the lives that were lost and the memories of horror that haunted the girls and boys, men and women, who witnessed their families tortured, their children sold as slaves, their women raped, and their men murdered, 100 years ago.
Today we witness, with anguish, a recurrence of similar events in Syria and Iraq. Because extremist crimes have been denied for 100 years, the violence extends to Americans and local Muslims: Journalist James Foley, aid worker Kayla Mueller, and the elderly Muslim archeologist Khaled Al-Asaad are victims, too.
We cannot forget that the evil that spawned genocide 100 years ago has been justified for a century, and therefore is occurring again.
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