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Photograph links Germans to 1915 Armenia genocide
Robert Fisk
Sunday, 21 October 2012
[Summary: Newly discovered picture shows Kaiser's officers at scene of
Turkish atrocity. The photograph is available at the link above.]
The photograph - never published before - was apparently taken in the
summer of 1915. Human skulls are scattered over the earth. They are
all that remain of a handful of Armenians slaughtered by the Ottoman
Turks during the First World War. Behind the skulls, posing for the
camera, are three Turkish officers in tall, soft hats and a man, on
the far right, who is dressed in Kurdish clothes. But the two other
men are Germans, both dressed in the military flat caps, belts and
tunics of the Kaiserreichsheer, the Imperial German Army. It is an
atrocity snapshot - just like those pictures the Nazis took of their
soldiers posing before Jewish Holocaust victims a quarter of a century
later.
Did the Germans participate in the mass killing of Christian Armenians
in 1915? This is not the first photograph of its kind; yet hitherto
the Germans have been largely absolved of crimes against humanity
during the first holocaust of the 20th century. German diplomats in
Turkish provinces during the First World War recorded the forced
deportations and mass killing of a million and a half Armenian
civilians with both horror and denunciation of the Ottoman Turks,
calling the Turkish militia-killers "scum". German parliamentarians
condemned the slaughter in the Reichstag.
Indeed, a German army medical officer, Armin Wegner, risked his life
to take harrowing photographs of dying and dead Armenians during the
genocide. In 1933, Wegner pleaded with Hitler on behalf of German
Jews, asking what would become of Germany if he continued his
persecution. He was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo and is today
recognised at the Yad Vashem Jewish Holocaust memorial in Israel; some
of his ashes are buried at the Armenian Genocide Museum in the
capital, Yerevan.
It is this same Armenian institution and its energetic director, Hayk
Demoyan, which discovered this latest photograph. It was found with
other pictures of Turks standing beside skulls, the photographs
attached to a long-lost survivor's testimony. All appear to have been
taken at a location identified as "Yerznka" - the town of Erzinjan,
many of whose inhabitants were murdered on the road to Erzerum.
Erzinjan was briefly captured by Russian General Nikolai Yudenich from
the Turkish 3rd Army in June of 1916, and Armenians fighting on the
Russian side were able to gather much photographic and documentary
evidence of the genocide against their people the previous year.
Russian newspapers - also archived at the Yerevan museum - printed
graphic photographs of the killing fields. Then the Russians were
forced to withdraw.
Wegner took many photographs at the end of the deportation trail in
what is now northern Syria, where tens of thousands of Armenians died
of cholera and dysentery in primitive concentration camps. However,
the museum in Yerevan has recently uncovered more photos taken in
Rakka and Ras al-Ayn, apparently in secret by Armenian survivors. One
picture - captioned in Armenian, "A caravan of Armenian refugees at
Ras al-Ayn" - shows tents and refugees. The photograph seems to have
been shot from a balcony overlooking the camp.
Another, captioned in German "Armenian camp in Rakka", may have been
taken by one of Wegner's military colleagues, showing a number of men
and women among drab-looking tents. Alas, almost all those Armenians
who survived the 1915 death marches to Ras al-Ayn and Rakka were
executed the following year when the Turkish-Ottoman genocide caught
up with them.
Some German consuls spoke out against Turkey. The Armenian-American
historian Peter Balakian has described how a German Protestant
petition to Berlin protested that "since the end of May, the
deportation of the entire Armenian population from all the Anatolian
Vilayets [governorates] and Cilicia in the Arabian steppes south of
the Baghdad-Berlin railway had been ordered". As the Deutsche Bank was
funding the railway, its officials were appalled to see its rolling
stock packed with Armenian male deportees and transported to places of
execution. Furthermore, Professor Balakian and other historians have
traced how some of the German witnesses to the Armenian holocaust
played a role in the Nazi regime.
Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath, for example, was attached to the
Turkish 4th Army in 1915 with instructions to monitor "operations"
against the Armenians; he later became Hitler's foreign minister and
"Protector of Bohemia and Moravia" during Reinhard Heydrich's terror
in Czechoslovakia. Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg was consul at
Erzerum from 1915-16 and later Hitler's ambassador to Moscow.
Rudolf Hoess was a German army captain in Turkey in 1916; from
1940-43, he was commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp and
then deputy inspector of concentration camps at SS headquarters. He
was convicted and hanged by the Poles at Auschwitz in 1947.
We may never know, however, the identity of the two officers standing
so nonchalantly beside the skulls of Erzinjan.
Photograph links Germans to 1915 Armenia genocide
Robert Fisk
Sunday, 21 October 2012
[Summary: Newly discovered picture shows Kaiser's officers at scene of
Turkish atrocity. The photograph is available at the link above.]
The photograph - never published before - was apparently taken in the
summer of 1915. Human skulls are scattered over the earth. They are
all that remain of a handful of Armenians slaughtered by the Ottoman
Turks during the First World War. Behind the skulls, posing for the
camera, are three Turkish officers in tall, soft hats and a man, on
the far right, who is dressed in Kurdish clothes. But the two other
men are Germans, both dressed in the military flat caps, belts and
tunics of the Kaiserreichsheer, the Imperial German Army. It is an
atrocity snapshot - just like those pictures the Nazis took of their
soldiers posing before Jewish Holocaust victims a quarter of a century
later.
Did the Germans participate in the mass killing of Christian Armenians
in 1915? This is not the first photograph of its kind; yet hitherto
the Germans have been largely absolved of crimes against humanity
during the first holocaust of the 20th century. German diplomats in
Turkish provinces during the First World War recorded the forced
deportations and mass killing of a million and a half Armenian
civilians with both horror and denunciation of the Ottoman Turks,
calling the Turkish militia-killers "scum". German parliamentarians
condemned the slaughter in the Reichstag.
Indeed, a German army medical officer, Armin Wegner, risked his life
to take harrowing photographs of dying and dead Armenians during the
genocide. In 1933, Wegner pleaded with Hitler on behalf of German
Jews, asking what would become of Germany if he continued his
persecution. He was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo and is today
recognised at the Yad Vashem Jewish Holocaust memorial in Israel; some
of his ashes are buried at the Armenian Genocide Museum in the
capital, Yerevan.
It is this same Armenian institution and its energetic director, Hayk
Demoyan, which discovered this latest photograph. It was found with
other pictures of Turks standing beside skulls, the photographs
attached to a long-lost survivor's testimony. All appear to have been
taken at a location identified as "Yerznka" - the town of Erzinjan,
many of whose inhabitants were murdered on the road to Erzerum.
Erzinjan was briefly captured by Russian General Nikolai Yudenich from
the Turkish 3rd Army in June of 1916, and Armenians fighting on the
Russian side were able to gather much photographic and documentary
evidence of the genocide against their people the previous year.
Russian newspapers - also archived at the Yerevan museum - printed
graphic photographs of the killing fields. Then the Russians were
forced to withdraw.
Wegner took many photographs at the end of the deportation trail in
what is now northern Syria, where tens of thousands of Armenians died
of cholera and dysentery in primitive concentration camps. However,
the museum in Yerevan has recently uncovered more photos taken in
Rakka and Ras al-Ayn, apparently in secret by Armenian survivors. One
picture - captioned in Armenian, "A caravan of Armenian refugees at
Ras al-Ayn" - shows tents and refugees. The photograph seems to have
been shot from a balcony overlooking the camp.
Another, captioned in German "Armenian camp in Rakka", may have been
taken by one of Wegner's military colleagues, showing a number of men
and women among drab-looking tents. Alas, almost all those Armenians
who survived the 1915 death marches to Ras al-Ayn and Rakka were
executed the following year when the Turkish-Ottoman genocide caught
up with them.
Some German consuls spoke out against Turkey. The Armenian-American
historian Peter Balakian has described how a German Protestant
petition to Berlin protested that "since the end of May, the
deportation of the entire Armenian population from all the Anatolian
Vilayets [governorates] and Cilicia in the Arabian steppes south of
the Baghdad-Berlin railway had been ordered". As the Deutsche Bank was
funding the railway, its officials were appalled to see its rolling
stock packed with Armenian male deportees and transported to places of
execution. Furthermore, Professor Balakian and other historians have
traced how some of the German witnesses to the Armenian holocaust
played a role in the Nazi regime.
Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath, for example, was attached to the
Turkish 4th Army in 1915 with instructions to monitor "operations"
against the Armenians; he later became Hitler's foreign minister and
"Protector of Bohemia and Moravia" during Reinhard Heydrich's terror
in Czechoslovakia. Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg was consul at
Erzerum from 1915-16 and later Hitler's ambassador to Moscow.
Rudolf Hoess was a German army captain in Turkey in 1916; from
1940-43, he was commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp and
then deputy inspector of concentration camps at SS headquarters. He
was convicted and hanged by the Poles at Auschwitz in 1947.
We may never know, however, the identity of the two officers standing
so nonchalantly beside the skulls of Erzinjan.