A congregation of Assyrians gathered in Washington, D.C., on June 6 to give their backing to a bill that would recognize a massacre of their people by Iraqi Muslims during the mid-20th century.
Assyrians hail from northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and parts of Turkey. Almost entirely Christian due to the early evangelizing efforts of St. Thomas the Apostle, Assyrians are one of the oldest cultures in the world, responsible for world wonders like the Gates of Nineveh, recently destroyed by the Islamic State, and renowned classics like “The Epic of Gilgamesh.”
Though they once lived peacefully in their ancestral homelands, where some communities have persisted for over 5,000 years, the political upheavals of the 20th and 21st centuries shattered this comfort….