Armenian Genocide

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Armenian Genocide

• The Forgotten Genocide

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Where is Armenia?
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Background

• Armenians (Minorities) were Christians in a
  Muslim Empire controlled by the Ottomans
• Minorities wanted their own states.
• Armenians were accused of supporting Russian
  plans against the Ottoman Empire at a time when
  the Ottoman Empire was at War with Russia

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• Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire (Turks)
  were the target of persecutions by the Ottoman
  government
• The persecutions lasted for 3 decades
• Why was nothing done over 30 years to stop this?
• World at War
• Non-Western Countries
• Thought to be a civil war
• no term for genocide at the time, therefore it
  didnt exist

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• http//www.theforgotten.org/intro.html

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Fact Sheet

• Armenians all over the world commemorate this
  great tragedy on April 24, because it was on that
  day in 1915 when 300 Armenian leaders, writers,
  thinkers and professionals in Constantinople
  (present day Istanbul) were rounded up, deported
  and killed. Also on that day in Constantinople,
  5,000 of the poorest Armenians were butchered in
  the streets and in their homes.

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Fact Sheet

• The Armenian Genocide was masterminded by the
  Central Committee of the Young Turk Party
• The Armenian Genocide was directed by a Special
  Organization (Teshkilati Mahsusa) set up by the
  Committee of Union and Progress, which created
  special "butcher battalions," made up of violent
  criminals released from prison.
• The Armenian Genocide occurred in a systematic
  fashion

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Fact Sheet

• First the Armenians in the army were disarmed,
  placed into labor battalions, and then killed.
• Second, Armenian political and intellectual
  leaders were rounded up and killed
• Finally, all remaining Armenians were called from
  their homes, told they would be relocated and
  then marched off to concentration camps in the
  desert

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Fact Sheet

• April 24, 1915 hundreds of Armenian religious
  political and intellectural leaders were rounded
  up, deported, and killed.
• 5,000 of the poorest Armenians were butchered in
  the streets and in their homes.
• 1.5 million Armenians were killed out of 2.5
  million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire

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Present Day

• The Turkish government still denies that there
  was an Armenian genocide
• Explained as Civil War
• Fewer than 100,000 declared Armenians remain in
  Turkey today.
• War Crimes Trial held and Leaders of the Young
  Turk government were found guilty of murder.

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QUESTIONS

• What human rights abuses can you identify from
  the video?
• In what way did the Forgotten Genocide help
  Hitler during WWII?
• What were the Ottomans governments reasons for
  eliminating the Armenians?
• What was the Ottoman governments plan for
  destroying the Armenian people?

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Go to Textbook

• Page 419
• Document based assessments

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Document A

• As it got worse, all of us, and all the people,
  began gathering in our school. The word came
  around that the Turks were going on the streets
  and killing all the Armenians and leaving them on
  the streets. I, myself, was in school already, so
  I simply stayed there. Then orders came from the
  school that we, too, should run away. But where?
  All the buildings were on fire! The Turks were
  burning everything. There was a whole group of
  us running away from the school.
• From whos point of view is this reading?

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Experiences by Arnold Toynbee

• The Massacre of Armenian subjects in the Ottoman
  Empire in 1896was amateur and ineffective
  compared with the largely successful attempt to
  exterminate them during the First World War in
  1915This genocide was carried out under the
  cloak of legality by cold-blooded governmental
  action. These were not mass-murders committed
  spontaneously by mobs of private people
• According to this document, the 1915 massacre of
  Armenians
• a) went unpunished
• b) was ineffective and unsuccessful
• c) was not was well documented as 1896
• d) was committed with the knowledge of the
  Turkish government

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• What evidence do we have from our text supporting
  this answer?
• This genocide was carried out under the
  cloak of legality by cold- blooded governmental
  action