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On the evening of April 24, 1915…. …hundreds of Armenian intellectuals from Constantinople were arrested and deported by the Ottoman Turks…. …over 800 writers, journalists, doctors, and clergymen had been sent into the sticks of Anatolia…. …others were simply hung in city squares.
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…hundreds of Armenian intellectuals from Constantinople were arrested and deported by the Ottoman Turks…
…over 800 writers, journalists, doctors, and clergymen had been sent into the sticks of Anatolia…
After the leaders and the intellectuals of the Armenian were out of the way, the remaining Armenians were called from their homes, told they would be relocated, and then marched off to concentration camps in the desert between Jerablus and Deir-Zor where they would thirst and starve to death in the burning sun.
“It is generally not known in the world that, in the years preceding 1916, there was a concerted effort made to eliminate all the Armenian people, probably one of the greatest tragedies that ever befell any group.” --Jimmy Carter
“. . . They took everyone away . . . and they struck me. Then I saw how they struck and cracked my brother's skull with an axe…” --Soghomon Tehlirian (Survivor of the genocide)
“I do not know how long I stayed there...When I opened my eyes, I saw myself surrounded by corpses…”
“…All the members of the caravan had been killed. Because of the darkness I could not distinguish everything. At first I did not know where I was then I began to realize that I was surrounded by corpses…”
During the years 1915 – 1919, three out of every four Armenians were killed.
Armenians were tortured in many ways, but a lot of them died from heartache, disease, and lack of food and water as they were marched into the deserts of the Ottoman Empire.
These Armenian deportees had to live in the open desert of the Ottoman Empire with bedding as their only shelter.
A whole family sharing a tent in the middle of the desert. A man resting under the hot desert sun.
Other Armenians were not so lucky. They were immediately tortured and killed.
The Turks cut off the hands of children and let them bleed and yell themselves to death. They buried children alive in ditches in the desert. They forced thousands of Armenians to march until they died or they were shot dead.
The report says that Armenians had been beaten with sticks. Doctors and high dignitaries of the Church had been hanged. Families were scattered to the four winds.
Children as young as 8 years, were either raped and shot in front of their families or taken as wives
Women were forced into the desert with infants in their arms. They were forced to leave their children by the roadside to die.
In order to save bullets, the Turks drowned countless Armenians in bodies of water.
The throats of the Armenian intellectuals were cut and their heads were decapitated. Their heads were then lined up on shelves.
The Turks surrounded churches that hundreds of Armenians had taken refuge in. They pour kerosene on the churches and burned them down with the people in it. Anyone who came out would be shot.
“They came and did the same thing to the church in which our family and hundreds of others had taken refuge. But we found a trench that the French army, during its stay in that area, had dug from that building to another area where the Armenians were defending themselves. That's how we escaped from that second burning church.” --Vartan Hartunian (survivor)
Armenians were not allowed to drink water, and sometimes were shot even if they sat down to rest.
Orphan children whose parents had been tortured and killed were sold into slavery.
The Armenians were forced into caves which the Turks would then blow up. The skulls of the slaughtered Armenians were found in the caves as evidence.
The Turks standing proudly behind the skulls of the Armenians they had just murdered.
Not only were the Armenians murdered in cold blood, all there property was destroyed and stolen. Hundreds of historical and architectural monuments and thousands of manuscripts were destroyed. Many sanctuaries of the people were desecrated.
Katherine Magarian's Story (A survivor of the Genocide)
“The Turks, they ride in one day and get all the men together, bring them to a church. Every man came back out, hands tied behind them. Then they slaughter them, like sheep, with long knives.”
“They all die, 25 people in my family die. You can't walk, they kill you. You walk, they kill you. They did not care who they kill.”
“My husband, who was a boy in my village but I did not know him then, he saw his mother's head cut off. The Turks, they see a pregnant woman, they cut the baby out of her and hold it up on their knife to show.”
“My mother and I, we run. My mother was hit by the Turks, she was bleeding as we go. We walk and walk, I say ''Ma, wait, I want to look for my little sister,'' but my mother slap me, say ''No! Too dangerous, we keep walking.'' It gets darker and darker, but we walk. Still, I don't know where. The Turks had taken over our city.” Children who have lost their parents
“Two, three days we walk, little to eat. Finally, we find my sister, who had run away. Then we walk to Harput, and I see Turks and want to run, but they are friendly Turks, my mother tell me. She say, ‘You go live with them now, you'll be safe,’ and I was.”
“I worked there, waiting on them, cleaning, but I was alive and safe. But I don't see my mother for five years. She was taken to the mountains to live, and she saw hundreds of dead Armenians, hundreds of them, who had been killed by the Turks, bodies all over.”
“Years later, my mother say to the Turks, ''I want to see my child,'' and they let her come back. She came to the house at night. She did not know me, but I know it was her. Her voice was the same as I remember it. I tell her who I am, she say, ''You are my daughter!'' and we kiss, hug, and cry and cry.”
“. . the Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey is to condone it . . . the failure to deal radically with the Turkish horror means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is mischievous nonsense.” --Theodore Roosevelt
“Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, the indigenous Christians, [the Armenians] without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention.” --Talatt Pasha Turkish Troops
“What on earth do you want? The question is settled. There are no more Armenians.” --Talatt Pasha (mastermind of genocide)
Turkish Cavalry "No Armenian can be our friend after what we have done to them." --Talatt Pasha
"I have accomplished more toward solving the Armenian problem in three months than Abdul Hamid accomplished in thirty years!“ --Talatt Pasha
“It was not war. It was most certainly massacre and genocide, something the world must remember... We will always reject any attempt to erase its record, even for some political advantage.” --Yossi Beilin (Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister)
"I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this… Henry Morgenthau, Sr. US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire
