“Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Adolf Hitler, 1939

Every year, on April 24, Armenians and non-Armenians alike gather to commemorate the nearly one and a half million victims of the Armenian genocide. On this day in 1915, Armenian intellectuals and community leaders were rounded up throughout eastern Anatolia, forcibly removed from their homes, jailed and executed. For the next three years, the Young Turk government executed its plan of genocide against its Armenian subjects. Armenians suffered through long marches in the Syrian Desert, bandit raids, starvation and rape as part of a brutal policy of mass extermination.

From 1915 to 1918, over a million and a half men, women and children perished in what constituted the first genocide of the 20th century. However, the U.S. federal government does not acknowledge the tragedy as genocide due to geopolitical concerns. Efforts are underway in Congress to ensure that the United States fully recognizes this documented historical fact as what it was: genocide. For the United States to have the moral authority to condemn human rights abuses globally, it must first recognize the century’s first genocide.

Victims of the Armenian genocide also included Greeks, Syrians and other minority groups living in the region. Armenians made up a sizable portion of the empire’s non-Muslim subjects and had been living in eastern Anatolia for thousands of years. The Armenian genocide attempted to destroy this vibrant and prosperous community. And yet, the Armenian people are a living testament of survival. Their mere existence is a reminder of the will to triumph in the face of hardship.

Today, the Republic of Turkey does not refer to this tragedy as genocide. Rather, it works assiduously to ensure that the subject is both covered up and forgotten. Several members of the European Union, countless U.S. states and numerous local governments have recognized the incontrovertible fact of the Armenian genocide. It is now the federal government’s turn to do so.

If remembering the past helps to keep us on our guard so that we will not forget the truth, or to allow others to deny the reality of other horrors we read of today, then the lessons of the Armenian genocide and other such crimes against humanity will not have been in vain. If this in any way leads to the awareness that governments that commit such crimes must be held accountable, then perhaps in the future such crimes can be prevented. The United States should recognize the Armenian genocide, as should other countries throughout the world who stand for human rights, justice and truth.

The failure to understand and appreciate the Armenian genocide has allowed this horrendous crime to continue: The Holocaust, Rwanda and Darfur are painful reminders of man’s brutality. As the international community works to prevent the crime of genocide and prosecute its architects, we must never forget the impunity with which the Armenian genocide was carried out. The U.S. government has the moral obligation to recognize the genocide as such if it is to stand with any authority and conviction in condemning human rights abuses today. Hitler’s quote reminds us of our collective responsibility to remember this atrocity and ensure that it never happens again.

Sevan Angacian is a senior in the School of Foreign Service and the president of the Armenian Students Association.