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Prove Hitler wrong
Remember Ottoman Turkey's slaughter of Armenian Christians:
Saturday October 23rd, 2004
World Magazine
http://www.anc.net.au/prove_hitler_wrong.htm
By Marvin Olasky
Editor's warning: This article contains graphic material.
VAN, Turkey -- As Turkey moves toward eventual membership in the
European Union (see Madisonian Turkey from this week's issue), this
Muslim nation should also come to grips with a terrible crime that has
gone largely unpunished.
Armenians, many of them Christian, lived in this area of what is now
eastern Turkey for about 2,000 years. Despite suffering massacres in
1894 and 1895 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, they still numbered
well over 1 million in 1914. Ten years later only scattered handfuls
were left.
Adolf Hitler used what is now called the Armenian holocaust as his
model for an even greater holocaust. Ottoman Turks developed
techniques later used by the Nazis, such as piling 90 people into a
train car with a capacity of 36, and leaving them locked in for days,
terrified, starving, and often dead.
Hitler was even more impressed with how the Turks got away with
genocide. When Hitler on Aug. 22, 1939, explained that his plans to
invade Poland included the formation of death squads that would
exterminate men, women, and children, he asked, "Who, after all,
speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
In recent years some have. Books such as Peter Balakian's The Burning
Tigris (HarperCollins, 2003) tell of the Armenian tragedy in a way
that also helps us to understand radical Islam. That's because the key
incitement to massacre came on Nov. 14, 1914, when Mustafa Hayri Bey,
the Ottoman Empire's leading Sunni authority, urged his followers to
commence a jihad: One pamphlet declared, "He who kills even one
unbeliever . . . shall be rewarded by Allah."
The jihad proclamation received wide dissemination. When a priest
asked a Muslim army officer how he could participate in killing
several thousand Armenian women, Captain Shukri's answer was simple:
It was jihad time, and after the murders he could "spread out my
prayer rug and pray, giving glory to Allah and the Prophet who made me
worthy of personally participating in the holy jihad in these days of
my old age."
The Ottoman Turk government set up and paid special killing
squads. The Ministry of the Interior gave instructions to "exterminate
all males under 50, priests and teachers, leave girls and children to
be Islamized." Historians and journalists have estimated that Turks
killed 800,000 to 1 million Armenians in 1915 alone, and an additional
200,000 to 500,000 over the next seven years.
Here in Van 89 years ago, provincial governor Jevdet Bey gained the
nickname "the horseshoe master" because he nailed horseshoes to the
feet of Armenians. Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador to
Turkey, described in 1918 testimony of torture he had heard: "The
gendarmes would nail hands and feet to pieces of wood--evidently in
imitation of the Crucifixion, and then while the sufferer writhes in
his agony, they would cry, 'Now let your Christ come help you.'"
Aurora Mardiganian, the only member of her family to survive, told of
killing squads that planted their swords in the ground, blade up, at
intervals of several yards. Killers on horseback each grabbed a girl,
rode their horses at a controlled gallop, and tried to throw the girl
so she would be impaled on a sword: "If the killer missed and the girl
was only injured, she would be scooped up again until she was impaled
on the protruding blade."
The silent film Ravished Armenia, based on Aurora Mardiganian's
account, caused a U.S. sensation--but British officials demanded
before showtime in London the deletion of a scene of Armenian women
being crucified. Miss Mardiganian agreed that the scene, which showed
the women being crucified on large crosses with their long hair
covering their nude bodies, was inauthentic.
The scene was inaccurate, she said, because the crosses in the film
were large, but in reality they were little and pointed: "They took
the clothes off the girls. They made them bend down. And after raping
them, they made them sit on the pointed wood, through . . ."
Americans, she said, "can't show such terrible things" (and I can't
write about them in full detail).
After the World War ended in 1918 several Turks, including "the
horseshoe master," were executed for war crimes. Hundreds of
perpetrators went free, and to this day Turkish textbooks cover up the
slaughter of Armenians, as they also cover up the slaughter of Greek
Christians in western Turkey during that same era.
Prove Hitler wrong.
Governments are to wield the sword to bring justice, so remember
Armenian and other victims of governments that killed their own
people, and thank God that the United States has worked to protect
innocent people in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan.
http://www.worldmag.com/displayarticle.cfm?id=9808
Copyright © 2005 Armenian National Committe of Australia
Remember Ottoman Turkey's slaughter of Armenian Christians:
Saturday October 23rd, 2004
World Magazine
http://www.anc.net.au/prove_hitler_wrong.htm
By Marvin Olasky
Editor's warning: This article contains graphic material.
VAN, Turkey -- As Turkey moves toward eventual membership in the
European Union (see Madisonian Turkey from this week's issue), this
Muslim nation should also come to grips with a terrible crime that has
gone largely unpunished.
Armenians, many of them Christian, lived in this area of what is now
eastern Turkey for about 2,000 years. Despite suffering massacres in
1894 and 1895 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, they still numbered
well over 1 million in 1914. Ten years later only scattered handfuls
were left.
Adolf Hitler used what is now called the Armenian holocaust as his
model for an even greater holocaust. Ottoman Turks developed
techniques later used by the Nazis, such as piling 90 people into a
train car with a capacity of 36, and leaving them locked in for days,
terrified, starving, and often dead.
Hitler was even more impressed with how the Turks got away with
genocide. When Hitler on Aug. 22, 1939, explained that his plans to
invade Poland included the formation of death squads that would
exterminate men, women, and children, he asked, "Who, after all,
speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
In recent years some have. Books such as Peter Balakian's The Burning
Tigris (HarperCollins, 2003) tell of the Armenian tragedy in a way
that also helps us to understand radical Islam. That's because the key
incitement to massacre came on Nov. 14, 1914, when Mustafa Hayri Bey,
the Ottoman Empire's leading Sunni authority, urged his followers to
commence a jihad: One pamphlet declared, "He who kills even one
unbeliever . . . shall be rewarded by Allah."
The jihad proclamation received wide dissemination. When a priest
asked a Muslim army officer how he could participate in killing
several thousand Armenian women, Captain Shukri's answer was simple:
It was jihad time, and after the murders he could "spread out my
prayer rug and pray, giving glory to Allah and the Prophet who made me
worthy of personally participating in the holy jihad in these days of
my old age."
The Ottoman Turk government set up and paid special killing
squads. The Ministry of the Interior gave instructions to "exterminate
all males under 50, priests and teachers, leave girls and children to
be Islamized." Historians and journalists have estimated that Turks
killed 800,000 to 1 million Armenians in 1915 alone, and an additional
200,000 to 500,000 over the next seven years.
Here in Van 89 years ago, provincial governor Jevdet Bey gained the
nickname "the horseshoe master" because he nailed horseshoes to the
feet of Armenians. Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador to
Turkey, described in 1918 testimony of torture he had heard: "The
gendarmes would nail hands and feet to pieces of wood--evidently in
imitation of the Crucifixion, and then while the sufferer writhes in
his agony, they would cry, 'Now let your Christ come help you.'"
Aurora Mardiganian, the only member of her family to survive, told of
killing squads that planted their swords in the ground, blade up, at
intervals of several yards. Killers on horseback each grabbed a girl,
rode their horses at a controlled gallop, and tried to throw the girl
so she would be impaled on a sword: "If the killer missed and the girl
was only injured, she would be scooped up again until she was impaled
on the protruding blade."
The silent film Ravished Armenia, based on Aurora Mardiganian's
account, caused a U.S. sensation--but British officials demanded
before showtime in London the deletion of a scene of Armenian women
being crucified. Miss Mardiganian agreed that the scene, which showed
the women being crucified on large crosses with their long hair
covering their nude bodies, was inauthentic.
The scene was inaccurate, she said, because the crosses in the film
were large, but in reality they were little and pointed: "They took
the clothes off the girls. They made them bend down. And after raping
them, they made them sit on the pointed wood, through . . ."
Americans, she said, "can't show such terrible things" (and I can't
write about them in full detail).
After the World War ended in 1918 several Turks, including "the
horseshoe master," were executed for war crimes. Hundreds of
perpetrators went free, and to this day Turkish textbooks cover up the
slaughter of Armenians, as they also cover up the slaughter of Greek
Christians in western Turkey during that same era.
Prove Hitler wrong.
Governments are to wield the sword to bring justice, so remember
Armenian and other victims of governments that killed their own
people, and thank God that the United States has worked to protect
innocent people in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan.
http://www.worldmag.com/displayarticle.cfm?id=9808
Copyright © 2005 Armenian National Committe of Australia