Epigraphs are like little appetizers to the great entrée of a story. They illuminate important aspects of the story, and they get us headed in the right direction.
"Who does now remember the Armenians?" Adolf Hitler, 1939 in support of his argument that the world would soon forget the extermination of people.
Is Hitler right? (There's a question we'd never thought we'd ask.)
Before you go and get your defense on, we should ask you to take a good, hard look at this quote—because much as we hate to admit it (and we really hate to admit it), the guy's got a point. It's awful and unfair, but not all that many of us remember what happened to the Armenian people, let alone talk about it. It's a terrible—and super uncomfortable—truth, but we feel like we should call it how it is, instead of how it should be.
And in this case, the truth is that some terrible moments in history are not on our radar—and the Armenian genocide is a big one. We can place the blame on history books or teachers (or even the Turkish government) if we want, but when we really stop and think about it, we're all to blame.
There are some massacres and genocides that are hard to talk about, or that people sweep under the rug, and that's exactly what the book is pointing out to us. It's saying, "Hey, do you remember the Armenians?" And chances are decent that the answer is no—and if this is true, then Hitler is right. We don't remember the awful things that happened to people like Vahan and his family.
The good news? This book tries to change all that. It might not change our worldviews or tells us what to think about all wars out there, but it does ask us to remember what happened to these people. So the only question now is: Now that you know, will you remember?