Hearing on Act Concerning Genocide Education held in Mass.

November 20, 2013 - 11:41 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Late last month, the Joint Committee on Education of the Massachusetts State Legislature held a public hearing on H. 420, “An Act Concerning Genocide Education”, which received support from the Armenian National Committee of Massachusetts (ANC-MA).

The bill was introduced by State Representative Jonathan Hecht (D-Watertown) and requires that genocide studies, including at least two case studies, be included in the history curriculum for all public schools.

While the teaching of genocide and human rights has been part of the history and social studies curriculum since an earlier bill in the 1990s, inclusion of genocide is currently optional and not required.

ANC-MA Chairman Dikran Kaligian testified in support of the bill, noting the limited awareness of most cases of genocide among high school graduates. He stressed the importance of the bill in the case of the Armenian Genocide; it is unique, he said, in that is has a foreign government conducting an international campaign to deny it ever happened.

“The long arm of the Turkish government’s denial campaign has reached here into Massachusetts. Not just in the denialist testimony we heard earlier today, but also in the lawsuit against the Massachusetts Department of Education, initiated by an affiliate of the Turkish government, that was dismissed in federal court,” testified Kaligian.

Erkut Gomulu of the Turkish American Cultural Society of New England had testified in support of the bill but against the inclusion of any reference to the Armenian Genocide, using standard denialist talking points. He claimed that legislators cannot make judgments about historical events because they “only cover the Armenian side of events.”

Rep. Hecht testified that, since the only required subjects in the social studies curriculum are basic civics, and since the Department of Education has already issued guidelines for the teaching of genocide, adoption H. 420 is not only essential but also has readily available instructional materials.

Pauline Getzoyan, the co-chair of the Rhode Island branch of the Genocide Education Project, submitted written testimony to the committee, giving the example of Rhode Island, where half of the public school systems include genocide education in their curriculum.

Eric Cohen, the president of the Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur, testified on the need for genocide education to build a permanent constituency to combat human rights violations. Five students from Harwich High School, members of Massachusetts STAND, the student-led movement to end mass atrocities, testified about the urgent need to raise awareness about genocide, and warned that genocide could happen again if despotic leaders believe they can get away with it. Awareness and genocide education is the way to ensure that they know they cannot.

The Joint Committee on Education is currently considering the bill. The committee is co-chaired by Representative Alice Hanlon Peisch (D-Wellesley) and Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz (D-Boston), who presided over the hearing.

The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres and deportations, involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.

Present-day Turkey denies the fact of the Armenian Genocide, justifying the atrocities as “deportation to secure Armenians”. Only a few Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and scholar Taner Akcam, speak openly about the necessity to recognize this crime against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide was recognized by Uruguay, Russia, France, Lithuania, Italy, 45 U.S. states, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Argentina, Belgium, Austria, Wales, Switzerland, Canada, Poland, Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia, the Vatican, Luxembourg, Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, Paraguay, Sweden, Venezuela, Slovakia, Syria, Vatican, as well as the European Parliament and the World Council of Churches.

The Holocaust

The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.

The slaughter was systematically conducted in virtually all areas of Nazi-occupied territory in what are now 35 separate European countries. It was at its worst in Central and Eastern Europe, which had more than seven million Jews in 1939. About five million Jews were killed there, including three million in occupied Poland and over one million in the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands also died in the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Yugoslavia and Greece. The Wannsee Protocol makes clear that the Nazis also intended to carry out their "final solution of the Jewish question" in England and Ireland.