Statement from our Executive Director on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day
On April 24, we call on the world to remember the genocide of the Armenian people.
109 years ago, during the First World War, Ottoman authorities arrested hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). At the time, the Ottoman Empire was under the control of the relatively new leadership of the Young Turks; a party that had sought to create an ethnically homogenous Turkish state – a state that would have little space for the millions of Armenians then living in that empire.
"I hope the Jewish diaspora realizes," says [USC Shoah Foundation executive director Dr. Robert] Williams, "that there are allies at this moment and there is always an opportunity to turn the tide."