Artur Minasyan, a junior from Charlotte who is majoring in philosophy, recently placed first in the National Armenian Genocide Commemoration Essay Contest.
For this sixth annual competition, high school and college students addressed the question “Why is it Important for Schools Nationwide to Include the Armenian Genocide in the Core Curriculum?”
In his essay, Minasyan wrote ““The pressure of the past has been a heavy load for us to carry for almost one century and it is time to spread this load and share it with the world. Our children are ignorant of the Armenian Genocide and have only been taught to hate the offender: it our moral duty to teach and inform the younger generation of this major part of global history.”
Winners were recognized during an Armenian Genocide Commemoration in New York’s Times Square as part of Genocide Awareness Month. Organizers noted the commemoration paid tribute to the roughly 1.5 million Armenians who were killed during and after World War I by the Ottoman government in the territory constituting the present-day Republic of Turkey.