St. Apkar Armenian Church

Last week a group of us went to St. Apkar Armenian Church, we were taking a small step towards learning what it means to show solidarity with our brothers and sisters who suffered so much.  So we went to their church and watched a movie with them and listen to them tell us stories about their grandparents were the few who survived the Genocide so that they now have life.  They shared the wonderful contributions that the Armenian people have made to culture and society throughout the generations.  It was a beautiful night, we made new friends and we were strengthened by their testimonies and genuine hospitality.  

Me and Father Zacharia Saribekyan

More than one million Armenians perished as the result of execution, starvation, disease, the harsh environment, and physical abuse.  A people who lived in eastern Turkey for nearly 3,000 years [more than double the amount of time the invading Islamic Turks had occupied Anatolia, now known as “Turkey”] lost its homeland and was profoundly decimated in the first large-scale genocide of the twentieth century.  At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000….  Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present.

Let us lament and mourn with our brothers and sisters as they 

prepare to remember genocide 100 years later, this April 24th.  

Eight-hundred-year-old laments: a church fresco in the proto-Armenian capital of Ani, Turkey.