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Armenian men, being hung...
...and then buried.
"...Feet, hands chests were nailed to a pien of wood, nail
of fingers were torn out, eyebrows were pulled out, feet were
hammered with nails as they do with horses, others were living
with their feet up and heads down over closets...Oh! How one
would wish that all these facts were not true."
H. Morgenthau (U.S. Ambassador in turkey)
in "The Tragedy Of Armenia"(1918)
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In the eve of April 24, 1915, the darkest night in the Armenian history, the young turks
put the word out on the streets that turkey was at war and needed the helping hand of the
"fellow" Armenians, aged 16 to 60. Armenians feeling grateful to the young turks for
providing them a the promised "good life", followed the turks, "blindly", in the back of
trucks with covers on them...so they wouldn’t know where the turks were taking them.
Little did they know that their "fellow" turks were not leading them to
war, but instead, to torture camps, equipped with
"murder". All the Armenian men,
including doctors, lawyers, politicians, authors...the "brains" of each Armenian
community...were tortured (nails plucked out, eyes burned by iron rods, blazing with
heat), dismembered (ears, noses, lips, fingers, toes, limbs and even their heads cut off),
burned in "cave" ovens, and crushed to death (they were forced into a cave, which the
turks blew up, making the caves collapse).
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Women and children driven to an
Unknown Destination
(picture taken by a German officer)
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The turks did not stop there. The only Armenians left now were the helpless women,
children and elders, who were absolutely ignorant as to what had happened to their husbands,
fathers, brothers and sons. They were easy preys to the vicious turks. All of them were
forced to flee their homes with "promises" of going to a "safer" place...away from the
war. Little did they know they were going to be forced south, to Syria, through the
infamous Dier-el-Zohr desert, where famine, dehydration and death awaited them.
Convoys consisting of the
women, children and elders set out to the desert. During the
long march, women were being raped. Those who wanted to avoid it, jumped in the rivers
or committed suicide, as did the women who couldn’t bear the shame and humiliation. Children, most of them
orphans now, were sold into slavery. Those who
were very young, were given away to turks, to be raised as turks. Elders
who couldn’t keep up with the convoy, were shot to death right there, in front of their
families.
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A million and a half Armenian
were exterminated by 1916.
The world was largely indifferent
to their fate. (Shermer, p.135)
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The turk’s goal was very simple, yet very heartless and barbarous: To
kill every single
Armenian except for only ONE to be displayed in the Museum of Ancient Civilizations.
2.2 million Armenians
experienced this horror...
1.5 million of those Armenians
were
slaughtered... |
