Principles – The Humiliation of History – 2/5/2015

   Each page of history’s records carries gleaming moments and gloomy shivery nights that represented a shock for all humanity. All the crimes committed against humanity are considered a real deviation of God’s plans for us and a flagrant miscarriage of justice along with religious and human values.

   One of the hardest moments in history is the Armenian genocide and casting them out of their own homeland since the dawn of history. Those crimes led to the death of nearly million and a half dispersing the rest here, there and everywhere. However, strangely enough, Armenians didn’t cease to exist as it was planned; 10-thousand Armenian are living safe and sound inside and outside Armenia nowadays.

   The historical events of suppression and humiliation are lessons for us to learn and live accordingly. However, people who don’t study history well or learn from it will face more suppression that may turn to be the reason of their destruction; as death leads to nothing, but death. This is what history has reported. The Armenian genocide was in 1915 and no one objected or rose up against it. Thus, history repeated itself in 1939 when Hitler said, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”The result was new genocides “The Holocaust”. Hence, when history is forgotten, more disasters repeat themselves.

   Though Armenian genocide is one of the gloomy historical periods, it has its gleams too showing that some humans still have affectionate hearts feeling for those who are in pain and suffering.

   Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, wrote that, it is highly desired to take care of the Jacobite Armenian sect living within their tribes and regions asking his people to support them and facilitate all what they need.

   Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922), wrote a letter on 10/9/1915 to the Ottoman Sultan and a part of it included that “The Armenian people have already seen how the majority of their children were sent for punishment. Some of them are sent to jail and exile including many of clergy men and even some bishops. We now learn that the entire population of villages and towns must abandon their homes, in order to reach—with unspeakable difficulties and torture—distant places where poverty and hunger will be added to their psychological suffering.”

   Henry Morgenthau, US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (1913-1916) commented on that genocide saying “I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this”.

   Life is meaningless without human principles. As thanks to them, people can be truly humane toward one another. Their principles also made them memorable, as the saying goes” Principled people live hundreds of years” As they affect others by their deeds not words. Be humane as God created us to feel for others as feeling for others is the gift of the pure-hearted people who were tested by pain.

General Bishop

Head of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center