Trans-generational Trauma

Do you know what it's like to scream in pain, in suffering and have no one come to your aid? Do you know what it's like to scream for one hundred years and be continuously silenced and denied? The Armenian people, for 100 years, have experienced the systematic falsification and denial of a tragic part of their history. Political puppetry has continuously and masterfully denied, forbidden, and wronged the remembrance of the Armenian genocide and left the wound unhealed. This open wound cannot heal until it is recognized and treated, as denial has only led to more suffering translated through generations.

To be born out of genocide is a mental and psychological experience that has left deep scars in generations of Armenians- but has also created a strong force of advocates for justice and truth. If we don’t persistently bring our history and the unrecognized injustices of our past into the public consciousness, who will? We are a people who refuse to disappear. The Ottoman Turks sought to silence us and exterminate all the genes of our race. They tried to bury us, but they didn't know we were seeds. 100 years have passed and the demand for justice is greater than ever.  As said by George Orwell, “In a time of universal deceit- telling the truth is a revolutionary action”.

The Armenian genocide, and the fact that there were no consequences for its perpetrators, laid the foundation for later atrocities. In premeditating the Holocaust, Hitler was quoted to have said, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” The acknowledgement of injustice can influence victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and their descendants. Crimes against humanity must be documented and condemned so that we may have a culture of international accountability. Ignoring the crimes of the past creates a stage for such crimes in the future.

For one hundred years, the Armenian people have bared the burden of genocide. Now that a century has passed, I ask myself, as an Armenian-American, why it is that I care about something that happened one hundred years ago to people that I never even knew. Well, it is in our blood. The smudge in our history is unavoidable. We were born as an aftermath of genocide. We have a responsibility to make it known to the world what happened to these people.  I wonder if the same atrocities happened to us, now, would we want our descendants, one hundred years later, to carry out our cries and screams for justice? Of course we would. Justice must prevail.  As an Armenian-American, I feel that I have the opportunities, resources, and the voice to make a difference. I feel that educating my peers and the people around me is the least that I can do. Our people have been silenced and pushed aside by the international community for far too long. Now, more than ever, it is important that we do not forget the torture that our people were put through and the attempt at the extermination of our ethnic genes. We must hold accountable the perpetrators of the genocide.

For your cultural identity to be a lifetime of resistance, a battle for truth, a battle to try to comfort the souls of your murdered ancestors, your great grandparents, is a phenomenon of trans-generational trauma.  Being Armenian wasn't the cool thing for the preceding immigrant generation. But now, young Armenians are proud of their culture, heritage, and homeland. It's "cool" to listen/dance to Armenian music, a privilege to be able to write and speak in Armenian, to travel to Armenia. In many families, children are now urging their parents to go visit- who, after seeing Armenia in it's hard times, don't want to go back because they refuse to believe that it's "different" now. Armenian (and non-Armenian for that matter) students are increasingly doing their projects, class presentations, papers, theses on Armenian issues. There is a refusal to forget and a strive to educate our peers and even our professors, even ourselves! Whether one's interest lay in environmental science, molecular biology, media, public health, or anthropology, we always come back to the root of our identity, our Armenian heritage. We are proud but we are also troubled with this trans-generational trauma, this anxiety of being forgotten.

I recently heard a Turkish saying that translates roughly to “you cannot cover the sun with mud, for the sun will always shine through". I've always identified with the underdog, always rooting for them in movies and cheering them on when identified in real life... I have come to realize why that is. It is because our Armenian people have always been the underdog. They say we will be extinct in 100 years. I laugh because they don't know us. They don't know our strength, our passion, and our relentlessness. As best expressed by writer William Saroyan, “Go ahead, destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia." 

I invite Armenians and non-Armenians alike, to go visit Armenia. See the beautiful historic churches, taste the sweet apricot fruit, gaze at the breath-taking Ararat mountain. See that we are so much more than a people victim of genocide. Our history did not begin nor end with the genocide. We are so rich with culture, language, and history.  Կանք պիտի լինենք եւ դեր շատանանք։