“The Armenian genocide
must not be forgotten”

“Armenian Memory cannot leave us indifferent”. So the president of the Italian Rabbinical Assembly Rabbi Alfonso Arbib on the recent anniversary of the Metz Yeghern, “The Great Evil Crime”, as the genocide of the Armenians, carried by the Ottoman Empire during World War I, is known.
That massacre is still an open wound in Europe’s conscience and an uncomfortable memory for Turkey, which still denies those bereavement and suffering. However, we must remember, pointed out Rabbi Arbib in a note. “The Armenian genocide, whose memory is fundamental and precious, requires a commitment from all of us with firmness and clarity”.
“Any Memory – he added – is always specific and inherent to particular facts, processes and contexts that need to be known, assumed, understood, and efforts must be made in order to dispel the risk of undue generalizations so that universal moral and political lesson could be drawn”.
The Rabbi also recalled how in the Jewish world there has been a longtime commitment to not forget the Metz Yeghern. “Among these Jews, we remember the jurist Raphael Lemkin, who reflecting on the Holocaust and the mass massacre suffered by Armenians, coined the neologism ‘genocide’”.