Words That Forbid Us from Looking Away from Genocide

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Words That Forbid Us from Looking Away from Genocide

by Lawrence Kadish

January 26, 2022 at 5:00 pm


The late French singer Charles Aznavour, on January 9, 1977. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)



The words are haunting, as if a mourner's lament and offered prayers for the dead. "They Fell," written by Herbert Kretzmer, Charles Aznavour, and George Garvarentz, is a song that remembers the victims of the Armenian genocide, where as many as 1.2 million living under Ottoman rule died during World War I.



But the lyrics speak to every bloody ravine that was turned into a mass grave. The words speak to the terror all genocide victims must have experienced in their final moments. The emotion of Aznavour's voice reveals the despair of viewing the incomprehensible inhumanity inflicted on those targeted for extinction.



Tomorrow, as we observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it is more important than ever to memorialize the six million Jews who were put to death and all those who have been targeted for genocide. It is equally important to understand how mass murder on an industrial scale can be repeated time and again as loving human beings are reduced into something subhuman by a regime that deems them worthy of destruction. Equally chilling is how, who, and why there are co-conspirators in the heinous act of genocide.



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