Former French Ambassador to Armenia Jonathan Lacôte touched upon the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on his Facebook page.
“April 24th is the day or remembrance for the Armenian Genocide.
“Who will remember the extermination of the Armenians?
[Hitler to his generals, August 22, 1939]
“I told to the Silence the story of the extermination of the Armenian people. I made the Silence attentive to the fact that it was of paramount importance to talk about it openly. I say: everyone should know about it! Because how will we be able to prevent a new extermination, if everyone claims to have known nothing and to have prevented nothing because these are things that we cannot even imagine?”
[Edgar Hilsenrath, "The Story of the Last Thought"]
“Why is a man punished when he kills another man? Why is the murder of a million people a lesser crime than the murder of a single individual? [Raphael Lemkin, after the Tehlirian trial]
These three quotes seem to form a fictitious dialogue between Hitler, the German-Jewish writer Edgar Hilsenrath and the jurist Raphael Lemkin (born in Lviv and creator of the word “genocide”) and remind us that genocide is the work of those who commit it but also of those who deny it, of those who leave it unpunished and of those who forget it.
To this day Armenians are threatened because they are Armenians. To this day peoples are threatened with genocide.
Stand on the right side of memory, truth and justice,” Lacôte wrote.
