Where is Armenia?
Armenia
Here’s a close-up view.
What do you know about
Armenia?
Yes, I know
they’re
Armenians!
But what
else do you
know
about
Armenia?
Facts About Armenia
Armenia Today
•
•
•
•
Population: 3.3 million
Capital: Yerevan
Language: Armenian and Russian
Religion: Armenian Orthodox (a branch of
Christianity)
• Currency: Dram
• Life Expectancy: 72 years-old
• Literacy Percent: 99%
• Armenia is the smallest of the former Soviet republics.
• Armenia lies landlocked and earthquake-ridden in
rugged mountains.
• In A.D. 301, Armenia became the first Christian nation;
today it is almost surrounded by Islamic nations.
• During World War I, the Ottoman Turks brutally forced
out Armenians, causing an exodus to foreign havens.
• Armenia gained independence in 1918, but succumbed
to invasion in 1920.
• In 1988 a devastating earthquake killed 25,000 people,
and conflict erupted with Azerbaijan over NagornoKarabakh (a region of 140,000 ethnic Armenians).
• Armenia won independence in 1991; by 1994 the
Armenians had defeated Azeri forces and had control
of Nagorno-Karabakh—but the dispute remains
unresolved.
Armenia’s Economy
• Industry:
– Metal-cutting
machine tools,
forging-pressing
machines,
electric motors,
tires
• Agriculture:
– Fruit (especially
grapes),
vegetables;
livestock
• Exports:
– Diamonds,
mineral
products,
energy
The Armenian Flag
Genocide
Genocide is a crime against humanity. As a result of the nature of the subject, some of the
footage in this presentation includes disturbing images and testimonies.
Objective
• Our objective is to know the meaning of
genocide, to understand that genocide is not
an isolated phenomenon, but a method of
oppressing human rights that occurs
throughout history, and to identify warning
signals and attitudes that may lead to
genocide.
What is genocide?
Do you know of any
examples of genocide in history or
in current events?
Discuss
• Define genocide.
– Genocide is a method used to oppress human rights and
occurs throughout history.
• Give examples of the danger signals, attitudes, and
behaviors that can lead to genocide.
– Examples include dictatorship, racist or super-nationalistic
ideology, use of minorities as scapegoats for societal
problems, especially during wartime, or during
disintegration of a nation or empire.
• What are the consequences of human rights violations,
which are allowed to go unchallenged.
– Attitudes and behaviors that can lead to genocide include
ethnic discrimination, vandalism, racial slurs, hate crimes,
religious bigotry, and, ultimately, death or extermination.
• More than 50 million people were
systematically murdered over the past 150
years–it has been a century of mass murder.
• In sheer numbers, these and other killings
make the Twentieth Century the bloodiest
period in human history.
• National Geographic, 2006
Geno - cide
• Geno- from the
Greek word
Genos, which
means birth, race
of a similar kind,
tribe, family
• Cide- From the
Latin word Cida,
which means to
kill
Genocide is
any of the following acts committed with intent
to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic,
racial or religious group, as such:
killing members of the group,
causing serious bodily or mental harm,
deliberately inflicting conditions of life for
physical destruction in whole or in part,
imposing measures intended to prevent births
within the group, and/or
forcing the transferring of children of the group
to another group.
• The Armenian Genocide
and the Holocaust are
the most typical
instances of total
genocide in the
Twentieth Century.
• The Armenian Genocide
of 1915 went unchecked
and was quickly forgotten
by the world. Today,
some groups deny that it
ever happened.
• The Armenian Genocide
of 1915 was the first
major genocide of the
Twentieth Century and
the forerunner for
subsequent genocides.
Armenian Genocide, 1915-1923
1.5 million people were murdered.
Does genocide happen accidentally?
Genocide
•
•
Genocide is a process that develops in eight stages that are predictable.
At each stage, preventive measures can stop it.
1. Classification - All cultures have categories to distinguish people into "us and
them" by either ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality.
2. Symbolization - give names or other symbols to these classifications
3. Dehumanization - One group denies the humanity of the other group.
4. Organization - Genocide is always organized. Intentional plans are made for
genocide killings; it’s never accidental
5. Polarization - Extremists drive the groups apart.
6. Preparation - Victims are identified. Death lists are drawn up. Victim groups are
forced to wear specified identifying symbols. Victims are segregated into
ghettoes, forced into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region
and ultimately starved.
7. Extermination
8. Denial
The following quotation has been
attributed to Pastor Martin Niemoller in
Nazi Germany:
“...First they came for the Communists, but I was not a
Communist, so I said nothing. Then they came for
Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat. So I
did nothing. Then they came for the trade unionists,
but I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the
Jews, but I was not a Jew… so I did little. Then they
came for me. And there was no one left who could
stand for me.”
How does this quote relate to genocide?
Purpose
• Each student will recognize and interpret the
importance of the Armenian Genocide as:
- an example of unchecked human rights violations,
- the first major genocide of the Twentieth Century,
- the precursor of the Jewish Holocaust, and
- a model for subsequent genocides.
A Brief Introduction to
the Armenian Genocide:
The Century with Peter Jennings
• Genocide is a crime
against humanity. As a
result of the nature of
the subject, some of the
footage in the film
includes dead bodies,
beheaded figures, as
well as the stories of
murder that occurred.
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx2l0nQIwaQ
Let’s take a closer look:
• The Armenians had lived under the Ottoman
Turks since the Fourteenth Century.
• They were the religious minority in the area as
they were Christians.
• The Turks’ goal was to destroy the Armenians’
culture and murder as many of the individuals
who comprised it as possible.
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire
• The Armenians lived as
subjects of the sultan
who
ruled
the
Ottoman Empire.
• They
had
been
allowed
to
wear
certain colors and
styles of clothing that
would
distinguish
them from the Muslim
majority.
• However, they were
forbidden
from
wearing silk, furs,
turbans, and other
valuable materials.
Living Under Sultan Rule
• They were seen as infidel people living under
Muslim sovereignty.
• The Armenians had limited civil and religious
rights.
• They did have the privilege of being allowed to
practice their Christian religion but were forced
to pay a special tax that was not levied on the
Muslims.
• They were allowed to administer their own
school systems and also legislate matters of
marriage and inheritance within their community.
Rights in the Ottoman Empire
• In an Ottoman court, the Armenians had almost no
legal rights.
• In all things Armenians had to show deference to
Muslims.
• They could not ring church bells within hearing
distances of worshipers in a mosque.
• They could not remain mounted on a horse if a Muslim
was passing.
• They could not build a house that was higher than that
of a Muslim.
• All of these restrictions were the result of deep
religious prejudice.
Military Service
• Armenian
men
could
hardly be trusted to
defend Islam in times of
war, so they were exempt
from military service.
• Yet a long practice of the
Ottomans had been the
“collection” of boys from
Christian families for the
purpose of converting
them to Islam.
• Youth could be put to work
serving in the Ottoman
military and civil service.
• The taking of the young
boys from their families
was known as devshirme.
Housing Turkish Army Units
• The Ottoman rulers demanded that
Armenians house Turkish army units, often for
long periods through the winters.
• The soldiers received the families’ best lodging
space and food.
• The soldiers often abused their privileges by
committing theft and rape.
The Breaking Point
• Centuries of Armenian frustration and silence
reached a breaking point in the mid– to late
1800s, as progressive ideas from the West seeped
into the vast Ottoman domain.
• Contacts with Europe, made through reading,
study, and travel, acquainted members of the
repressed minority with the principles of human
rights and liberty.
• The U.S. contributed to the enlightenment as
well, as American missionaries began to circulate
through the Armenian communities of the
Ottoman Empire.
The Rise of Armenian Activism
• Liberal thought gave rise to Armenian
activism.
• Secret societies and openly revolutionary
political parties sprang up.
• They wanted their nation to be self-ruled.
• They wanted a noncorrupted form of
constitutional government from the Ottoman
overlords.
The Sultan Concedes
• During WWI the Ottoman Empire sided with the
Germans against the other European super
powers in an effort to rid its status as “the sick
man of Europe” because its fortune had been
declining for over 500 years.
• In an effort to restore the empire’s wealth and
glory and to expand it in an easterly direction as
well, a group of reforming patriots popularly
known as the Young Turks forced the sultan to
concede political power to them.
The Young Turks
• The Young Turk Party was formally known as
the Committee of Union Progress (CUP).
• The Young Turks fiercely favored an expanded
Turkey and to be “cleansed” of all non-Turkish
peoples.
• “Ethnic cleansing” would be applied because
according to the party, “Turkey belongs only to
the Turks.”
The Armenian Genocide of 1915-1918
• By the spring of 1915, with WWI already in
progress, the Turkish government launched its
plan to liquidate the 2 to 3 million Armenians.
• The methods they used included:
– Roundups of able-bodied men who were shot en
masse by killing squads or marched away for
deportation.
– The women, children, elderly, and infirmed were
instructed to prepare to leave their homes, taking
only a minimum of possessions.
• Often, they were given vague promises of being
allowed to return when the war was over.
The Armenian Women, Children,
Infirmed, and Elderly
• Their fate, however, was to
be driven forever from their
villages and to lose their
lives through death marches
(forced by the military to
plod on without food or
water until they collapsed)
and
massacres
within
Turkey’s borders, through
being forcibly drowned by
the overlords in the Black
Sea, and through exile into
the harshness of the Syrian
Desert.
• More
Armenians
are
believed to have died in
Syria of thirst, starvation,
and disease than anywhere
else.
The Armenian Men
• Although Christian Armenian men were
prohibited from serving in the military years
before, it had been decided at the beginning of
WWI that they would be useful as labor
battalions.
• They had been forced into being road laborers
and pack animals to carry army supplies of all
kinds.
• They were driven by whips and bayonets of the
Turks.
The Slaughter of Armenian Men
• By February 1915, however, following a
humiliating defeat at the hands of the Russians,
the Turkish government ordered the massacre of
Armenian men in the army’s labor battalions, on
the grounds that they had been supportive of the
Russians.
• They were shot en masse and buried naked
because the Turks stole their clothes.
• The Armenians were forced to dig their graves
before they were shot.
• This was only the beginning of the genocide.
The Turkish Killing Squads
• Cleansing Turkey of its
Armenian
population,
destroying schools, homes,
churches,
appropriating
Armenian property and other
holdings, and blotting out all
evidence of Armenian culture
required the creation of a
governmental body known as
the Special Organization (SO).
• How else were the on-site
exterminations, the death
marches, the deportations in
cattle cars, and the sinking of
barges filled with Armenian
refugees in the Black Sea to be
carried out?
The SO
• The duty of the SO was the formation of killing squads.
• The killing squads were commanded by military
officers but were made up of ex-convicts, outlaws, and
the Kurds.
• Efficient killing operations would lead to the acquisition
of Armenian booty and spoils. They took all property
and wealth.
• They also searched the garments of their victims for
money and treasures that had been sewn into the
seams of the clothing.
• Arrests and deportations of Armenian citizens were
committed by the SO as well.
• The SO can be compared to the Gestapo of Hitler’s
Germany.
The Genocide Continues
• Deportations were carried out on foot and occasionally
by rail.
• Political leaders and intellectuals were rounded up and
killed.
• Torture on all levels was common. An example is the
bastinado which was inflicted by beating the soles of
the feet with a thin rod until they swelled and burst.
– Other examples include hairs were pulled from eyebrows
and beards one by one, fingernails and toenails were
extracted, and hands and feet were nailed to pieces of
wood in a mocking reminder of the crucifixion of Christ.
• It is believed that at least 1.5 million Armenians were
exterminated.
As the World Looked On
• Although the U.S. did not enter WWI until 1917, no
other nation was more deeply aware of the ongoing
atrocities of the Armenian genocide or more
concerned with the rescue and relief efforts.
• America’s interest was due in large part to the work of
the missionaries in the area as well as church
personnel, medical workers, educators, and general
observers such as ambassadors and American consuls.
• Turkey rejected the American concerns and complaints.
• President Woodrow Wilson only declared war on
Germany and Austria, but refused to declare war
against Turkey.
• Wilson felt that human aid to the Armenians was
sufficient.
The War Ends
• When the war ended in 1918 with an Allied
victory, it was Great Britain, followed by
France and Russia, that led the demand for
tribunals to punish the guilty members of the
Turkish leadership for crimes against
humanity.
• The U.S. did not take part. It had, after all,
never declared war on Turkey.
The Tribunals
• Only a handful of
death sentences by
hanging were carried
out.
• Other guilty parties
received jail sentences
with hard labor.
• Several high-ranking
Turkish officials had
been granted asylum
in Germany where
they lived incognito.
One Armenian’s Revenge
• On March 14, 1921, Mehmet Talaat, a former Young Turk,
was shot to death on a Berlin street by twenty-four-yearold Armenian genocide survivor, Soghomon Tehlirian.
• “This is to avenge the death of my family!” the young man
cried as he placed the mouth of the pistol against the back
of Talaat’s head.
• In 1915, Tehlirian had been part of a deportation march on
which his sister had been raped, his brother’s head had
been split open with an axe, and his mother had been shot.
After receiving a blow on the head that rendered him
unconscious, Tehlirian awoke amidst a pile of corpses. His
entire family had been murdered.
• He was acquitted of murder on the grounds of temporary
insanity and lived the rest of his life in California. He had
seen his act as the culmination of a pledge for the
redemption of the human conscience.
Soghomon Tehlirian
http://www.musepictures.com/iWeb/Muse%20Pictures/Tehlirian.html
It is because of
Armin Wegner
and his
courageous
acts that we
know the
Armenian
Genocide
happened.
Armin Wegner
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•
•
•
•
•
Germany and Turkey were allies
during World War I.
Wegner was a medic in the
German army stationed in Turkey.
His photographing the massacred
Armenians was an act of treason,
but his photographs were sent to
Germany and the United States
which alerted the world to what
was taking place in Turkey.
He was later arrested and
eventually sent back to Germany.
He has provided definitive proof
of what the Ottoman government
tried to keep secret; his
photographs
provide
an
irrefutable rebuttal to the
continued denial by Turkey’s
present-day government.
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/photo_wegner.html
Currently
• Although the present-day Republic of Turkey continues
to adamantly deny the genocide of the Armenian
people during WWI, the U.S. maintains close relations
with Turkey for the purpose of keeping naval and air
bases in that volatile region.
• What do you think now?
Let me introduce
you to our novel
and the author.
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/adam-bagdasarian-aya/
Forgotten Fire
• Adam Bagdasarian, an ArmenianAmerican, was inspired to write
Forgotten Fire after hearing a
recording his great-uncle made
about his experiences during the
Ottoman Turks’ attempt to
exterminate the Armenians in
1915.
• This novel is a brief glimpse into
the history of brutality and of
lonely courage.
• Forgotten Fire was Bagdasarian’s
first novel, and it is a National
Book Award finalist.
Bagdasarian wrote
Forgotten Fire
so that the world
will never forget.
It’s your time to
let the world
know!