Document 6

THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE (1915-16): OVERVIEW

Sometimes called the first genocide of the twentieth century, the Armenian genocide
refers to the physical annihilation of Armenian Christian people living in the Ottoman
Empire from spring 1915 through autumn 1916. There were approximately 1.5 million
Armenians living in the multiethnic Ottoman Empire in 1915. At least 664,000 and
possibly as many as 1.2 million died during the genocide, either in massacres and
individual killings, or from systematic ill treatment, exposure, and starvation.

The origin of the term genocide and its codification in international law have their roots
in the mass murder of Armenians in 191516. Lawyer Raphael Lemkin, the coiner of the
word and later its champion at the United Nations, repeatedly stated that early exposure
to newspaper stories about Ottoman crimes against Armenians was key to his beliefs
about the need for legal protection of groups (a core element in the UN Genocide
Convention of 1948).

Ottoman authorities, supported by auxiliary troops and at times by civilians, perpetrated

most of the persecution and mass killing. The Ottoman government, controlled by the
Committee of Union and Progress (CUP; also called the Young Turks), aimed to solidify
Muslim Turkish dominance in the regions of central and eastern Anatolia by eliminating
the sizeable Armenian presence there.

Mass atrocities and genocide are often perpetrated within the context of war. The
destruction of the Armenians was closely linked to the events of World War I. Fearing
that invading enemy troops would induce Armenians to join them, in spring 1915 the
Ottoman government began the deportation of the Armenian population from its
northeastern border regions. In the months that followed, the Ottomans expanded
deportations from almost all provinces regardless of distance from combat zones.
The victims of the Armenian genocide include people killed in local massacres that
began in spring 1915; others who died during deportations, under conditions of
starvation, dehydration, exposure, and disease; and Armenians who died in or en route
to the desert regions of the southern Empire [today: northern and eastern Syria,
northern Saudi Arabia, and Iraq]. In addition, tens of thousands of Armenian children
were forcibly removed from their families and converted to Islam.

US Ambassador to Constantinople Henry Morgenthau Sr. was deeply troubled by the

atrocities committed against the Armenians and was among those who sought to rouse
the world's conscience in response. The plight of the Armenians triggered an
unprecedented public philanthropic response in the United States, involving President
Woodrow Wilson, Hollywood celebrities, and many thousands of Americans at the
grassroots level who volunteered both domestically and abroad and raised over $110
million (over $1 billion adjusted for inflation) to assist Armenian refugees and orphans.

The Armenian genocide cast a long shadow into the Holocaust era. Ambassador
Morgenthau's son, Henry Morgenthau Jr., was secretary of the treasury in the
administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In part due to his memories of the Armenian
genocide, Morgenthau Jr. was a key advocate for the establishment of the War Refugee
Board which rescued as many as 200,000 Jews from Nazi Europe. Perhaps most
hauntingly, a novel about Armenian self-defense (Franz Werfel's The Forty Days of
Musa Dagh) was secretly passed from hand-to-hand among Jews imprisoned in ghettos
during the Holocaust, who saw in it an inspirational analogy to their plight and a call to
resistance.