Remember the Armenians

 It was Germany, 1942 - a nation wracked by the death-grip of a tyrannical organisation. For years - ever since they got into power - the Nazis who smeared Germany's reputation have tyrannised the Jewish community, forcing them to wear yellow stars, imposing curfews, and all but making life intolerable. In fact, in Eastern Europe and more lawless regions, vigilantes called Einsatzgruppen had taken to murdering Jews. The German government turned a blind eye, but it did not condone the legal killing of Jews - until now.
   The paper detailing the "Final Solution" - the legalising of the Holocaust - was pushed across Adolf Hitler's desk. Adolf Eichmann had done all the paperwork; Joseph Goebbels had forced it down the people's throats; all it needed now was the Fuhrer's signature. This was the culmination of his dream, the rabid anti-Semitism he had harboured since his time as an art student in Vienna. Accordingly, he dipped his pen in the ink, raised it to the paper - and stopped. How would history remember him? If he put his signature to the paper, would history remember him as a murderer? The Fuhrer considered this for a moment - then put pen to paper and scribbled his signature, saying the words: "Who remembers the Armenians?"
   People often don't understand history. Which is fair enough: how is knowing that Basil Bulgaroctonus killed 20,000 nomads at the Battle of Kleidion in 1014 going to help anyone, in any way, ever? It's true: alone, that fact is not going to help anyone. In essence, they think - maybe rightly - that history is, basically, for people who like it. The education system, for example, has no business forcing it on the rest of the world.
  But my anecdote, I think, proves this viewpoint wrong. Who, in fact, remembers the Armenians? Even those who know that the Young Turks slaughtered thousands of Armenians would be surprised to know that, in addition to the Armenians, thousands of Assyrians and other Eastern Christians were also slaughtered. The reason history is important is that we have to remember and, more importantly, learn from our mistakes.
  It's a chilling story. The very ignorance of history alone killed six million people. But, thankfully, today, we are better educated: we have the glaring example of the Holocaust to etch into our memories the terrible, terrible consequences of forgetting our past. Today, we know about our mistakes.
   But do we? Everyone remembers the Jewish holocaust, and everyone forgets the millions of Poles, Russians, Romas, gays and others slaughtered by the Nazis. The figure jumps from six million to seventeen million.
    It's a sobering thought, and, I hope, an elucidation of why history is important.