Thread by @PoliticoCharlie

Friends have asked me about the #ArmenianGenocide my entire life – I’m typically the only Armenian they know. Every time this surfaces as a contentious DC issue, newsroom colleagues ask what’s the big deal. 2/

Until now, presidents have declined to formally apply the term “genocide” for fear of sparking a backlash from Turkey, which vigorously denies it. #ArmenianGenocide 3/

This denial comes in spite of a massive historic record of evidence. You can start here if you want to know more. bit.ly/3gyQeUn

The more you go down this historic rabbit hole, the more heart-wrenching it gets. 4/ #ArmenianGenocide

Today’s declaration represents an important step toward fulfilling America’s commitment to human rights across the world. At home, it begins to close the open wound at the center of the Armenian American experience. 5/ #ArmenianGenocide

Every American of Armenian descent — indeed, every Armenian in the global diaspora — lives with the ghosts of the #ArmenianGenocide. We learn the harrowing family stories at an early age. We’re shown photographs that we can never forget.

6/

The soundtrack to our lives is Der Voghormia, the haunting liturgical hymn “Lord have mercy.” #ArmenianGenocide 7/

Have a listen

What binds us together is a pride and joy in our ancient heritage, but also a sense of shared sadness over this brutal piece of unfinished historical business. #ArmenianGenocide 8/

We have been trapped in a mourning period with no end, a funeral cortege with no destination, so long as the truth of what happened in 1915 was denied and the searing experiences of loved ones went unrecognized 9/ #ArmenianGenocide

America occupied an important role in this epic tragedy. Its missionaries and diplomats were among those who courageously raised the alarms about the atrocities unfolding thousands of miles away to a little-known Christian people. 10/ #ArmenianGenocide

Those who were lucky enough to make their way to America were grateful until their dying days. This country gave them so much — a chance to recover, to rebuild, to live without fear. 11/ #ArmenianGenocide

America was their beacon in a murderous and impossibly cruel world, a place that gave them more opportunity and hope than they could have ever imagined just a few short years before. 12/ #ArmenianGenocide

My grandfather was one of those survivors. He arrived here a penniless, orphaned teenager from the other side of the world, the only one in his family to make it out alive. 13/ #ArmenianGenocide

His love for America eventually burned so brightly that he proudly sent his two sons off to war for his adopted country. 14/ #ArmenianGenocide

Survivors like him were nearly always too traumatized to look backwards, for fear of what they might see. There was no time to focus on the past; they were too immersed in the immigrant struggle. They left that burden for the generations to come. 15/ #ArmenianGenocide

But an accounting of the genocide, a moral reckoning led by the United States, never arrived. Other nations — Germany, France, Russia among them — made clear the massacres were state-sponsored genocide. But not America. 16/ #ArmenianGenocide

In the U.S., efforts to secure that declaration were dismissed as the attempted settling of some ancient tribal feud, a dispute that America had no business being a part of. But it had every reason to exert its moral authority. 17/ #ArmenianGenocide

This was the first modern genocide, so devious and effective in its design that even Adolf Hitler spoke of it admiringly. Almost every Armenian knows the line by heart. 18/ #ArmenianGenocide

“Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Hitler said in his infamous Obersalzberg speech in 1939, one week before the German invasion of Poland. 19/ #ArmenianGenocide

Now people will speak of it. America has officially recognized the #ArmenianGenocide 20/20