Memorial in Emerson, New Jersey
I remember when this memorial to the massacre of Armenians was erected in the mid 1960's on the site of the Armenian Home For The Aged in Emerson, NJ. As I recall it's about 30 feet tall. I used to pass this site on the way to my sister's house which was also on Main St.
I was stunned by the magnitude of the genocide. The only genocide I had learned about in high school was The Holocaust which was only mentioned briefly in an American History class. I had learned about the English Genocide of The Irish from my father after watching the movie, The Informer. on TV. He gave me a book on the history of Ireland to read. I was stunned at inhumanity of the English. I subsequently learned of other genocides around the world.
Curious about this memorial I went to my town library, two towns away from Emerson and found nothing. I asked the librarian about it and she knew nothing but said she would research it. This was pre-Internet. A couple of weeks later she called me. She had found some old articles. Some described villages being wiped out in pogrom like actions. Other articles refuted those claims describing the deaths as grossly exaggerated and those that did occur were incidental to battles being fought, today's "collateral damage". I asked the librarian how 1.5 million people could die as incidentals to battles. Turkey wasn't the site of prolonged major actions like Yipres, Somme, and others along the several 100 mile front of WWI. She couldn't fathom it either but noted that history is usually told by the winners. And more significantly she added that we were in a Cold War with the Soviet Union and Turkey was a strategic ally on the eastern front of NATO. Allies she noted tend not to speak ill publicly of other allies during wartime.
One day I stopped at the Armenian Home For The Aged and enquired. They had quite a bit of information. I asked why I had never heard of this before they erected their memorial. They pointed out they came from a small place far away. And unlike Irish-Americans there were not millions of their former countrymen in America. The person I spoke with also pointed out who writes the history books as well as Turkey's strategic value in the Cold War and the consequences of that relationship.
With the coming of the internet I learned much more. The end of the Cold War also saw WWI documentaries start to include the slaughter of Armenians as a consequence of the Turks losing battles battles and the Turkish government losing face and seeking a scapegoat for their military blunders.
