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In the spring of 1915, an Ottoman vice-governor showed Grigoris Balakian a letter from Ottoman Empire Interior Minister Talaat Pasha. The letter asked how many Armenians had been killed, and how many were still alive.

Balakian's companion at the meeting, Armenian newspaper editor Diran Kelekian, asked the vice-governor the exact meaning of the telegram.

"You are supposed to be intelligent. You are an editor-in-chief," the vice-governor responded. "The telegram means: Why are you waiting? Kill them all."

Grigoris Balakian was a survivor of the Armenian genocide. His testimony at the trial of Taalat Pasha's assassin was included in a book about the trial. That is where, nearly 70 years later, Grigoris Balakian's great-nephew read those words.

Peter Balakian grew up in a heavily Jewish suburban Teaneck neighborhood. A celebrated poet who teaches at Colgate University, he discovered his forebears' life in Armenia under Ottoman rule and during the genocide, which became the driving force behind his memoir, "Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past."

In the wake of the flotilla incident, we once again heard murmurs that the U.S. and Israel -- less enamored of protecting Turkish interests in the West -- would recognize the Armenian genocide. To me, I told Balakian this week, there is no clearer indication of the necessity of recognition than the fact that we are suggesting it only after discarding our concern for the ego of the Turkish nation-state.

"That seems very fundamental and clear," Balakian responded. "I don't think there would be any anxiety anywhere in the world about acknowledging the Armenian genocide properly and representing this history in every way possible if it weren't for Turkish bullying."

Based on the testimony of witnesses, on research, and on impartial investigations, the mass extermination of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I fits the definition of genocide to the letter. But more than that, it fits the description of an event we refuse to forget: the Holocaust.

The Armenians living in Ottoman Turkey were first disarmed; they were then taken from their homes on a death march into the Syrian desert. Here is the description from Henry Morgenthau Sr., the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire:

"Before the caravans were started, it became the regular practice to separate the young men from the families, tie them together in groups of four, lead them to the outskirts, and shoot them. ... At [Ankara] all Armenian men from fifteen to seventy were arrested, bound together in groups of four, and sent on the road in the direction of Caesarea. When they had traveled five or six hours and had reached a secluded valley, a mob of Turkish peasants fell upon them with clubs, hammers, axes, scythes, spades, and saws. Such instruments not only caused more agonizing deaths than guns and pistols, but, as the Turks themselves boasted, they were more economical, since they did not involve the waste of powder and shell. ... In Trebizond the men were placed in boats and sent out on the Black Sea; gendarmes would follow them in boats, shoot them down, and throw their bodies into the water. When the signal was given for the caravans to move, therefore, they almost invariably consisted of women, children, and old men."

Hitler found not only inspiration in such a "solution," but also justification for the brazen grandiosity of his plans for the Jews.

As Balakian reminded me: "Hitler did say, eight days before invading Poland in 1939, 'Who today, after all, speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?' And Hitler was not only inspired by the fact that the Young Turk government -- the CUP, the ruling government of Turkey in 1915 -- had succeeded in exterminating its Armenian population in a planned and deliberate way, in a way that led Raphael Lemkin to call it genocide. But also, Hitler was inspired by the fact that what had been the largest international human rights issue of the second decade of the 20th century had fallen down the memory hole into relative disappearance by the late 1930s."

Each time a resolution officially recognizing the Armenian genocide gets any momentum in Congress or in the Knesset, Turkish "interests" are invoked and the resolution is forgotten.

This is shameful for the United States, supposedly the last bastion of true Western national morality. It is maddeningly hypocritical for Israel -- the Jewish state -- which has made Holocaust denial a crime. And it is iniquitous and unjust for both.

"Genocide scholars have said repeatedly that the denial of genocide is the final stage of genocide," Balakian said. In other words, the crime, on our watch, is still being committed.

Balakian spoke correctly of the "common history" between Armenians and Jews. He noted that Jewish scholars have been profoundly beneficial to the cause of recording and recognizing the Armenian genocide. And Balakian believes both Armenians and the Turkish people can only gain from the recognition. "You can't have reconciliation without truth," he said.

The Auschwitz of this genocide was the Syrian desert town of Der Zor. Balakian made his way, finally, to Der Zor. Outside a chapel of white stone in the middle of quite literally nothing, Balakian put his hands in the ground, sifting away the sand to reveal the bones of his ancestral people.

And so I ask, slightly rephrasing Hitler's question: Who today, among us, will speak of the annihilation of the Armenians?

Seth Mandel is the managing editor of The Jewish State.