The month of April marks the 95th anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide. An unusual television documentary shows what motivated the murderers and why Germany, and other countries, remained silent...
Between 1915 and 1918, some 800,000 to 1.5 million people were murdered in what is now eastern Turkey, or died on death marches in the northern Syrian desert. It was one of the first genocides of the 20th century...
Turkey, on whose territory the crimes were committed, continues to deny the actions of the Ottoman leadership. Germany, allied with the Ottoman Empire in World War I, and the Soviet Union, well-disposed toward the young Turkish republic, had no interest in publicizing the genocide...
Because of Ankara's political and strategic importance in the Cold War, its Western allies did not view a debate over the genocide as opportune. And the relative lack of photographic and film material -- compared with the Holocaust and later genocides -- has made it even more difficult to examine and come to terms with the Armenian catastrophe...
This Friday, to mark the 95th anniversary of the genocide, Germany's ARD television network will air the elaborately researched documentary "Aghet" (Armenian for "Catastrophe"), which brings the words of diplomats, engineers and missionaries to life...
The film also offers an oppressive description of the current debate over the genocide, which is only now erupting in Turkey, almost a century after the crime. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan blusters that Turkey will never admit that genocide took place. During an exhibition on Armenia, ultra-nationalists angrily rip photographs from the walls, and then, as if they've lost their minds, they attack a car in which Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, is being taken home after a court appearance -- because he dared to express what historians had proven long ago.
Further details at
Der Spiegel. Photo credit AP/Armenian National Archives.
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