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See No Evil, Hear no Evil by Rosario Teixeira Watertown, MA - It is rush hour on Mount Auburn Street in Watertown. On the way home from work, people grab a few groceries at the corner store, others hurry home without looking back. A woman with deep set eyes crosses the street towards the bakery. The aroma of delicacies and spices from the near east bring memories of home. Smoke swirls up from the chimney toward the Armenian Genocide billboard. "What do you think of the billboard?" I ask her, and she replies "Another year passed... how many more are left?..." "Say no Evil, Hear no Evil" is the title of the drawing on the billboard that carries a simple sentence "Recognize the Armenian Genocide, April 24, 1915." On the roof top of the bakery, an image of deep set eyes, wide open eyes, are framed by hands that cover their mouths in silence, witnesses of horrors no one dares to hear. This is not the silence of complacency but rather the silence that screams from above with outrage and remembrance. There's profound sadness in some of the faces, desperation and fear in others, but "they are all bound together in their suffering" said Ben Hutchins, a student from New York. |
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The image on the billboard portrays "fear, struggle, perseverance, persistence. There's deep darkness but then there's a bit of light" said Caroline Echegoyen, a student from Connecticut. The light of hope that one day the Armenian Genocide will be recognized by the international community, the hope that no more genocides will ever be committed against humanity.
No one should wait for the last survivor to pass on, for the last witness to bear testimony to vanquish from this earth, for the Armenian Genocide to be forgotten. It is engraved in the psych of Armenians, it is part of their heritage, and their history which can not be rewritten. Like all historical events, it may become a faded photograph with thorn edges but its relevance is deeply engraved and it will not vanish from the collective memory of a nation.
Saturday afternoon, in front of the billboard at the corner of Elton Avenue and Mount Auburn Street in Watertown, an Armenian businessman stated that the billboards are an important tool to remember and to call for recognition of the Armenian Genocide. He said that contrary to the Jewish community, who run adds on the daily radio to advance its cause, the Armenian community doesn’t have the financial resources to do the same. “Are you Armenian?” asked me the gentleman. I replied that I’m Portuguese of Jewish descent, but I write about the Armenian Genocide because so many write about the Holocaust and very few write about the Genocide, aside from Armenians, there aren’t many people writing about it.
Eighty nine years have passed since over a million Armenians were forced to leave their homes and their lands, killed because of their ethnicity and their religion. A whole nation was deported, some were tortured and killed by government weapons, others left to die an horrible death. The Syrian desert engulfed the bodies of Armenians fleeing for their lives, dying of starvation and thirst, leaving children clinging to the dead bodies of their mothers... With each passing year, the last survivors pass on until no one is left to bear testimony to the unspeakable crime. Twenty five years after the Armenian Genocide, Hitler justified the "Jewish Solution" as viable because no one remembered the Armenians The international community can not afford to forget until universal recognition is attained. The woman looks up to the billboard and asks me "Do you have children? The children will keep the memory alive." Then she adds "for now we remember...”