Setting the Record Straight: An Exchange

Martha Skrypuch (July 2, 2013)

Dear Mr. Antourian,

I read with interest your article about the Ottoman WWI Internees from Brantford and would like to clarify some of the points you've made. I am indeed a member of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association. In addition to the five novels I have written about the Armenian Genocide and the Georgetown Boys, I have written books about the internment of Ukrainians in WWI (my grandfather was an internee and my book Silver Threads was the first commercial book to ever be written on this topic). I also have written about the Holodomor, and have received hate mail and death threats for doing so.
I do not shy away from difficult historical topics.

The Internment Plot Thickens

Gary Antourian

Demonstrating “tolerance” toward others is an essential quality which every person and society should practice, but tolerance should be extended to people who have the courage to admit their crimes and repent for them. To demonstrate tolerance to the Turkish government and its denial machine is disservice not only to the victims of the Armenian Genocide but also to all victims of genocides. Various Turkish governments and their denial industries not only did not recognize their predecessors' crime against the Armenian nation but instead inflicted upon subsequent generations of Armenians the most heinous, inhuman, and cruel experience through a farcical denial policy. By extending tolerance, without atonement and compensation, we set a precedent and send a message to the perpetrators of Genocide, Holocaust, and crimes against humanity that if a criminal persists in denying his crime he can get away with it. As many Genocide scholars have stated, the last act of genocide is its denial.