Martin Snapp: there's no punishment severe enough to fit genocide

PanARMENIAN.Net - Two inexpressibly sad anniversaries are coming up next week. On May 1 Berkeley will join cities all over the world in observing Holocaust Remembrance Day, mourning the six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis. But the Holocaust wasn't history's first genocide. And, as more recent mass murders in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur and other countries have sadly proved, it wasn't the last, either, Martin Snapp writes in Contra Costa Times.

“On April 24 Armenians will mourn the Genocide of their people during World War I, when Turkish troops forced more than a million Armenian civilians on a death march in the Syrian desert with no food or water. Anyone who lagged behind was shot,” the article says.

“Unlike the Holocaust, which happened so recently that many survivors are still here to bear witness, the Armenian genocide happened so long ago that no eyewitnesses are left. So the stories have been handed down in each family from generation to generation. I talked with some Cal students of Armenian descent a few months ago, and they still feel the pain as if it had happened yesterday,” Snapp writes.

“Like the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide has its deniers, including the Turkish government, which claims it either never happened, or the numbers are exaggerated, or it was just collateral damage. But more objective observers, including contemporary reports in the New York Times. Neither Jews nor Armenians are asking for vengeance. We can't even expect justice because there's no punishment severe enough to fit the crime.”

“But there is one thing we must do: Never forget,” he concludes.