Seeds of Genocide

• The Ottoman Empire was in decline, losing territory, wealth, and influence

• Nearly 500,000 Muslim refugees created by Balkan War settled in and around Constantinople

• Armenians were frequently subjected to massacres, kidnapping, rape and robbery

• As Christians, Armenians were second class citizens in Ottoman Turkey

• Some Armenians resisted this mistreatment and agitated for reforms

Preparation for the Genocide

• Special groups of Turks and Kurds, often made up of released prisoners, were created to carry out the massacres

• Most Armenian men were drafted into the army, then disarmed and put into labor camps

• Government officials, Muslim clerics and others spread rumors of Armenians betraying Turkey, calling for punishment of the infidels

• Community leaders arrested on April 24, 1915, and put to death soon after

Perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide

Talaat PashaInterior Minister

Enver PashaMinister of War

Jemal PashaMinister of the Navy

Leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress, or Young Turks

April 24, 1915• Hundreds of Armenian

intellectuals in Constantinople, Symrna, and elsewhere are arrested and later killed

• With its able-bodied men in the Army, and without its leadership, the Armenian population was defenseless

Use of new technologies• Women, children, and the elderly

were loaded onto trains and relocated, unable to return to their homes

• Refugees by the hundreds were forced into caves, fires were lit at the entrance and those inside were killed by asphyxiation in primitive gas chambers

Implementing the Genocide• Armed groups would come to a village,

and take remaining able-bodied males to the outskirts of town and massacre them

• Women, children and elderly then ordered to prepare for deportation, valuables were registered and stored for safe keeping

• Caravans preyed upon by marauding bands, stole remaining valuables, raped and killed

• Girls carried off, children enslaved or raised as Kurds or Turks

• Starvation and disease, exposure, brutality, massacre

• Most of those that make it to the desert are killed

Map of Deportation Paths and Killing Zones

Bursa

January 15th, 1916

To the Government of Aleppo:

We are informed that certain orphanages which have opened also admitted the children of the Armenians.

Should this be done through ignorance of our real purpose, or because of contempt of it, the Government will view the feeding of such children or any effort to prolong their lives as an act completely opposite to its purpose, since it regards the survival of these children as detrimental.

I recommend the orphanages not to receive such children; and no attempts are to be made to establish special orphanages for them.

Minister of the Interior,TA

September 16, 1916.To the Government of AllepoIt was at first communicated to you that the government, by order of the Jemiet, had decided to destroy completely all the Armenians living in Turkey… An end must be put to their existence, however criminal the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex nor to the conscientious scruples.Talaat Pasha, Minister of the Interior

August 22, 1939.Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness—for the present only in the East—with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians? Adolf Hitler