“I am unwelcome in Turkey because I teach about the Armenian Genocide,” said Dr. Hero as he addressed a room full of solemn students, “and I got off easy. Some of my friends are sitting in jail in Turkey for speaking out against it.”
    Dr. Hero said this after a presentation on the Armenian Genocide given by guest speaker Shant Mardirossian, the director of the Near East Foundation, eighth and ninth period in the library. Every year a guest speaker talks to Midwood students in order to commemorate the victims of genocide.   
    The word genocide means “race killings.” It occurs when a group of people is targeted and then exterminated. During what we now call the Armenian Genocide, the term had not even been invented. The genocide started at the beginning of the 20th century, and Mr. Mardirossian, among other historians, credit it with opening the doors for the genocides committed later by Hitler.      
    The Armenian Genocide took place over a span of about eight years; however, Armenians were killed before then starting in 1895. During the Armenian genocide the Turkish government created laws declaring that Armenians were enemies of the state. Armenians in the army were slaughtered, and the Turkish government ordered that all Armenian men below the age of 50 were to be killed and the women and children converted to Islam. According to the presentation around 1.5 million Armenians were killed.
    The guest speaker, Shant Mardirossian, has a direct connection to the Armenian Genocide. He read out loud a memoir from a survivor, a story about an eight year-old girl named Mari Libarian whose parents both died in the genocide.
    “The oldest of us was my sister Takouhi who was only 15, and she was taking care of all of us the best that she could.” This is an excerpt from Mari Libarian’s personal memoir.
     Mari Libarian and her siblings were being held in a concentration camp and managed to escape to a nearby town before they could be forced on a long death march to the Syrian desert. They ended up in an orphanage where they had to survive by eating grass. The memoir says, “In the orphanage there were some children who were close to death and they were left in the basement,” is an example.
        Students gasped when Mr. Mardirossian revealed that Mari Libarian was his grandmother.  
        “The reason I do this is to make sure people remember the victims of genocide,” said Mr. Mardirossian, “I also do it in respect for my grandparents who are survivors.”
        The Near East Foundation was created during the Armenian Genocide in order to help rescue Armenian people. It helped rescue 132,000 Armenian orphans. Today, the organization works to develop countries such as Morocco and Sudan by building schools, and other important infrastructures.
     After the presentation a couple students who were struck by the presentation gathered to talk to him. Mr. Mardirossian said that one of the most horrible things about the Armenian genocide is that the present Turkish government denies that  the extermination of  Armenians was deliberate. He told one student, “It is up to your generation to keep up the fight.”
    He said “The worst act that could occur is genocide. It is all the worst crimes that humans commit, rape, murder, torture, theft, added up and against a whole group of people.”