Hi everyone
My name is Jeff Lyons. I am a high school English language arts teacher from Maine, here on vacation. I am pleased to be with you all tonight for the premiere of this important movie, and I appreciate being asked to say a few words.
I am not here to tell you things you probably know better than I about the Armenian genocide and diaspora.
I'm here to talk about art and history and justice. I believe, as Dr. Martin Luther King said, "the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice."
Homer's Iliad includes a scene of a young father playing with his infant son and talking with his wife, a brief poignant interlude, since all, including the audience, know the father will soon die in battle, the wife will be raped and enslave, and the baby murdered.
Art gives a human face and a human voice to history.
Archaeology shows that Troy, located in modern-day Turkey, was destroyed repeatedly thousands of years ago. For the so-called civilizations of the time murder, looting, rape, enslavement, and displacement were normal attendants of war.
How far have we come?
Only a hundred and two years ago, not far from the site of Troy the same barbarities took place, while the so-called civilized nations of the world turned a blind eye and a deaf ear.
And in recent years conflict in nearby Syria is responsible for a third of all war deaths, displacement, and attendant barbarities in the entire world.
One could be forgiven for losing belief, for wondering if anyone listens or learns from the dead.
Only by speaking the truth about the past, can we honestly address the future.
In 1939 Hitler justified orders to murder men, women, and children in Poland by asking rhetorically, "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
We might ask the same today. But perhaps this film will change the answer, by giving a human face and a human voice to history.
For the last few years I share with my students the story of Raphael Lemkin. When he heard that Talaat Pasha lived free after overseeing the murders of a million and a half innocents, while Soghomon Tehliram was tried for killing Pasha, Lemkin was outraged at the injustice. Lemkin coined the term genocide and devoted his life to getting it recognized as a crime. He lost 49 members of his family in the Holocaust, and died at age 59 on his way to another meeting in his campaign.
Yet today, a lifetime later, many so-called civilized nations refuse to call the systematic robbery, starvation, rape, and murder that inspired the word by the name genocide.
One could be forgiven for losing faith, for wondering who speaks for the Armenians? Who speaks for the dead?
Many of my students, like young people everywhere, have a highly developed sense of justice. We have something called Civil Rights Teams at schools in Maine, and ours also has a chapter of Amnesty International. Our students learn a little about the Armenian genocide in sophomore English. Then they will compare more recent mass killings in Cambodia, Bosnia, Sudan, Syria to the definition of genocide. There are plenty to choose from.
One could lose hope. Who hears the dead?
However, in the past decade many of those responsible for genocide in Bosnia have been tried in International court and found guilty. And we are seeing international trials for more recent war crimes in Africa. And the real-time naming of genocide in Syria.
The voices of the dead are not silent.
Despite what the news sometimes seems, the past decades have seen a general reduction in conflicts and deaths world wide.
And now we have this important film to give human voice to the dead past.
Thank you for listening.
My name is Jeff Lyons. I am a high school English language arts teacher from Maine, here on vacation. I am pleased to be with you all tonight for the premiere of this important movie, and I appreciate being asked to say a few words.
I am not here to tell you things you probably know better than I about the Armenian genocide and diaspora.
I'm here to talk about art and history and justice. I believe, as Dr. Martin Luther King said, "the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice."
Homer's Iliad includes a scene of a young father playing with his infant son and talking with his wife, a brief poignant interlude, since all, including the audience, know the father will soon die in battle, the wife will be raped and enslave, and the baby murdered.
Art gives a human face and a human voice to history.
Archaeology shows that Troy, located in modern-day Turkey, was destroyed repeatedly thousands of years ago. For the so-called civilizations of the time murder, looting, rape, enslavement, and displacement were normal attendants of war.
How far have we come?
Only a hundred and two years ago, not far from the site of Troy the same barbarities took place, while the so-called civilized nations of the world turned a blind eye and a deaf ear.
And in recent years conflict in nearby Syria is responsible for a third of all war deaths, displacement, and attendant barbarities in the entire world.
One could be forgiven for losing belief, for wondering if anyone listens or learns from the dead.
Only by speaking the truth about the past, can we honestly address the future.
In 1939 Hitler justified orders to murder men, women, and children in Poland by asking rhetorically, "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
We might ask the same today. But perhaps this film will change the answer, by giving a human face and a human voice to history.
For the last few years I share with my students the story of Raphael Lemkin. When he heard that Talaat Pasha lived free after overseeing the murders of a million and a half innocents, while Soghomon Tehliram was tried for killing Pasha, Lemkin was outraged at the injustice. Lemkin coined the term genocide and devoted his life to getting it recognized as a crime. He lost 49 members of his family in the Holocaust, and died at age 59 on his way to another meeting in his campaign.
Yet today, a lifetime later, many so-called civilized nations refuse to call the systematic robbery, starvation, rape, and murder that inspired the word by the name genocide.
One could be forgiven for losing faith, for wondering who speaks for the Armenians? Who speaks for the dead?
Many of my students, like young people everywhere, have a highly developed sense of justice. We have something called Civil Rights Teams at schools in Maine, and ours also has a chapter of Amnesty International. Our students learn a little about the Armenian genocide in sophomore English. Then they will compare more recent mass killings in Cambodia, Bosnia, Sudan, Syria to the definition of genocide. There are plenty to choose from.
One could lose hope. Who hears the dead?
However, in the past decade many of those responsible for genocide in Bosnia have been tried in International court and found guilty. And we are seeing international trials for more recent war crimes in Africa. And the real-time naming of genocide in Syria.
The voices of the dead are not silent.
Despite what the news sometimes seems, the past decades have seen a general reduction in conflicts and deaths world wide.
And now we have this important film to give human voice to the dead past.
Thank you for listening.
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