‘If Winter Comes, Can Spring Be Far Behind?’

With these words Percy Bysshe Shelley concluded his “Ode to the West Wind,” and they serve as well to characterize the mood pervading the commemorations in Germany of the 100th anniversary of the Genocide. On the one hand, it is the grim facts of that murderous process that are being presented in a variety of forms; on the other, it is the triumph of life over death which is being celebrated. True, the Armenians were massacred, their lands, homes and possessions confiscated, the traces of their very presence erased in clumsy attempts to write them and their culture out of the history of what is current-day Turkey. But the experiment has failed. Armenians and Armenian culture are alive and well, and that is cause for celebration.Read Further...