Martyr's Day: Armenian Genocide

It has come to my attention that today is the Armenian Martyr's Day. On April 24th, 1915 the leaders of the Ottoman Empire began exterminating what would eventually become 1.5 million Armenians. This included women and children, and members of my family. My great-grandmother survived a death march and lived to tell the story of the atrocities inflicted upon the Armenian people during this time. Her entire family was murdered and if it hadn't been for a Turkish soldier rescuing her, she would have died a little girl and been buried in a mass grave in the middle of the desert beside her mother.
It's shocking the things that people can do to each other. How we can let things like race and nationality divide us and fuel hatred. But what I am taking away from today is not a reminder not how horrible humanity can be (because we all know that), but how one person, making their own choices, can change the world for the better. You'd think I would hate all Turkish people (especially because they still won't admit it was genocide, which I totally think they should). But that would only make me as ignorant as those who began the killing the first place. I don't hate all Turks, or any other ethnic group, I only despise the stupidity that persuades people to murder each other. I know hundreds of thousands of Turkish soldiers killed millions of Armenians. It's true, it happened. It is positively atrocious what they did, and I absolutely think they should be brought to justice for their crimes. But out of all those terrible men, there was one Turkish soldier who did something good. He saved a little Armenian girl. That's a fact too. And that's what I want everyone to think of today.
Our humanity, our ability to think, and decide, and reason, can trump ethnicity. Our ability to know and act against what is wrong, can overcome any order given to us by any person in authority. Our choices as small and insignificant as they may seem can have profound effects that we can't even imagine, if we only make them. That one man, and that one decision he made, made all the difference in my world. In fact he made my whole world possible. And he made me realize that while wars and massacres may be fueled by nationalism and racism, they are ultimately fought by individual men and women just like me, each of whom have a choice.