President Serzh Sargsyan was honored with a reception organized by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation at the United States Congress.

Two dozen U.S. Congressmen, including Ed Royce, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congressmen Adam Schiff, Brad Sherman, Jackie Speier, Robert Dold, Jim Costain-Dave Trott, David Valadao, Judy Chu, as well as Armenian community representatives attended the event.

Robert M. Morgenthau, grandson of Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr., who served in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, was a special guest at the event. The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation posthumously bestowed the Raoul Wallenberg medal to Henry Morgenthau Sr. into the hands of his grandson Robert.

During the congressional reception, the President delivered an address.

The presidential address reads,

“It is a great honor be here today. This event is paying tribute not only to the victims, survivors, and their descendants, but also to the entire Armenian nation.

This is yet another opportunity to state that tolerance, pluralism and equality in rights are the basis for human values. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner, said: “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.”

In this respect, the initiative to posthumously award the International Raoul Wallenberg Medal to Henry Morgenthau, Sr. is important. I am delighted to have Mr. Robert Morgenthau here with us today.

“[Henry Morgenthau Sr.] was the first American to tell the world of the mass atrocities that the Young Turks perpetrated against the Armenian people, characterizing them as a “campaign of race extermination”. Serving as the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and having witnessed the nightmare first hand, he wrote in his Story: “I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared with the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915. … For all I know this represents a new crime pursuing wholesale extermination.” Subsequently, Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide to define the crime that Morgenthau detailed.

Henry Morgenthau’s name is indelible for every Armenian: as a champion who put the truth above silence, he preferred the selfless and sometimes unsafe task of helping those who were in peril. It is not surprising that the memorial wall next to the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute contains an urn with soil from Morgenthau’s grave.

Several months ago I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, a most compelling and articulate testimonial to the crime of genocide. Museums on crimes against humanity convey a clear message to present and future generations: never forget the dark chapters of history. Still, museums and memorials are not enough. Remaining faithful to the motto “We Remember,” we must take every possible, and the impossible steps, to secure a safe future for the coming generations. We should unite our efforts to keep the memory of the Genocide victims alive, to build a world free of violence. The prevention of the crime of genocide and fighting its denial is an important pivot in this pursuit.

I would also like to thank the people of the United States, and the U.S. Congress for the humanitarian assistance to Nagorno Karabakh over the years. This comes to testify, time and again, that the Nagorno Karabakh Republic has not been forgotten in its efforts to build an independent and democratic state while countering the persistent provocations of Azerbaijan, which has chosen to perfect its tyranny. The Nagorno Karabakh people’s path to freedom, determination to build a democratic society is irrevocable. In this context, your continued support is indeed crucial.

I’d like to conclude in an optimistic key: besides agony and genocide in this world, we also have Wallenberg and Morgenthau. Their names stand for all the humanitarians of this world, whether Christian or Muslim, female or male, kin or alien, who jeopardize their existence, saving Armenians and Assyrians, Greeks, Jews, and Darfurians.”