The Armenian Genocide of 1915 is a seminal event in modern history. It resulted in the extermination of 1.5 million people and gave birth to a new concept of genocide, the systematic destruction of entire peoples. While Raphael Lemkin coined the term "genocide" giving the Armenian experience as a prime example, the lessons of the Armenian Genocide were also not lost on Adolph Hitler who prefaced his destruction in Nazi Europe with the words, "After all, who today remembers the extermination of Armenians?"

The genocide of Armenians was carried out with cold blooded calculation by a chauvinistic government which had a vision of a world without Armenians and other minorities. The first physical victims were young Armenian men and community leaders, followed by women, children and elderly. Over 2,000 communities were targeted and destroyed in less than one year. The Ottoman government knew the criminal nature of its program and even tried to conceal it as best as it could, much like the secrecy of the Final Solution of Nazi Germany. The Armenians Genocide is considered as the first "modern genocide" because it was executed by a modern bureaucratic state using sophisticated technology to achieve its aim of total annihilation of an entire people.

The genocides of Armenians, Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Rwandans and others--not to mention native American nations--took place because the world allowed them to take place. The memorialization of such genocides ensures that the lessons of the past are not forgotten and history is not repeated.