From: dbd@urartu.sdpa.org (David Davidian)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish,talk.politics.mideast,soc.history
Subject: Convergent Aspects of the Armenian and Jewish Genocides Part2/2
Keywords: Part 2 of 2
Date: 27 Jul 92 19:10:31 GMT
Organization: S.D.P.A. Center for Regional Studies

Part 2 of 2

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|                                                                            |
|    THE CONVERGENT ASPECTS OF THE ARMENIAN AND JEWISH CASES OF GENOCIDE.    |
|               A REINTERPRETATION OF THE CONCEPT OF HOLOCAUST               |
|                                                                            |
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From: _HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE STUDIES_, Vol 3, No. 2 pages 151-169, 1998.

Published in association with the
United States Holocaust Memorlal Council and
Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes'
Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem

Editor-in-Chief: YEHUDA BAUER

Associate Editor: HARRY JAMES CARGAS
Chairman of the Editorial Board: ELIE WIESEL


          THE CONVERGENT ASPECTS OF THE ARMENIAN AND
          JEWISH CASES OF GENOCIDE. A REINTERPRETATION
                  OF THE CONCEPT OF HOLOCAUST

                       VAHAKN N. DADRIAN
               State University of New York, Geneseo


...continued from Part 1

                      THE HOLOCAUST PERSPECTIVE

In depicting the common determinants of the two episodes of genocide the claim
of uncommonness advanced by the victims of each genocide is implicitly put to 
the test. If the similarities of the factors of victimization are striking, 
can the end result they help produce be significantly dissimilar? From the 
perspective of the perpetrators, genocidal victimization is in substance and 
thrust, if not in form, a more or less consistent practice of extermination, 
or what Horowitz calls 'taking lives'. The practice extends over a whole range
of activities involving designs, deliberations, planning, organization, and 
supervision -- all geared to reducing, concentrating, trapping and 
annihilating the targeted victims.

But when one shifts the focus of attention to the victims, a discrepancy in 
perception and interpretation sets in, for these victims are no longer the 
objects reduced for the purpose of destruction, but subjects enveloped with 
the conditions of destruction as a national destiny. The Armenian and Jewish 
perspectives of victimization throughout the centuries have been gravitating 
toward distinct self-images at the center of which is a martyrdom complex. 
This is a special type of victim response which gives to the perspective a 
kind of existentialist-phenomenological character through which subjective
experiences are elevated to the altar of apocalyptic but elusive truth. The
rationale is that no outsider can grasp the uniqueness of the personal 
experience. and if one tries, one is bound to distort it. As Elie Wiesel, the 
Jewish proponent of this school of thought, has stated 'The Event remains 
unique, unlike any other . . . the Event defies all analogy; it can only be 
compared to itself . . . To explain is to diminish it, to generalize it, to 
mutilate it' [39].

American sociologist W. I. Thomas' concept of 'the definition of the 
situation' is exemplified here. When people define situations as real they are
real in consequence. The subjective definition rather than the objective 
content of the situation becomes the basis of the response. Thus arise unique 
responses which should not be confounded with unique experiences. By 
delineating in broad terms the holocaustal dimensions of the Jewish genocide, 
Wiesel articulated a response, the uniqueness of which exceeds in importance 
the objective features of the genocide itself. Several questions pose 
themselves. How personal and deep is the experience in terms of what the 
Germans call Erlebnis? More importantly, what is exactly the relationship of 
the personal to the more abstract ethnic or national sense of identification? 
Involved here are various categories of survivors who in the grip of immediate
or delayed trauma, are prone to project into and reemphasize the collective 
aspects of the trauma.

As noted above, the very rudiments in the formation of these two peoples are 
bound up with a special kind of religious fervor discernibly presaging 
disastrous persecution. Viewed historically, religious separateness in an 
inhospitable geo-political locus was full of conflict with 'out-groups'. By 
the same token, that conflict was likely to take on the form of persecution 
inasmuch as such an 'in-group' separateness was critically handicapped by
vulnerability and impotence. It is in this sense that the objective fact of 
victimization, sustained through millennia, was harnessed by these two peoples
by way of transforming it into subjective images highlighting a model of 
unique victims. To be weak and still insist on a system of beliefs that 
implicitly challenges the belief systems of the stronger and militant 
out-groups is a form of tacit defiance, full of risks. To persist in such 
beliefs in the face of unrelenting persecution is perilous. But to survive 
these perils despite the attendant decimations may well be defined as a type 
of heroism denoting the concept of unique victims, while connoting unique 
forms of victimization.

This idea was underscored by two renowned British historians in their 
discussion of the World War I genocide of the Armenians: 'The most fiendish 
ingenuity of man was defeated by the superhuman constancy of the Armenian 
nation. It should never be forgotten that nearly three-quarters of a million 
of Armenians could have saved themselves from death by abjuring their faith. 
Even the remnant of such a nation is immortal by its sufferings and self-
sacrifice' [40]. A similar appraisal is warranted for the Jews. Here, the
convergence of both genocides has a historical-developmental feature as part 
of the configuration in the incidence of a unique genocide.

We may now turn to the question of the application of these images of 
uniqueness to the concept of 'holocaust' through which a distinction is made 
between 'the universal' and 'the unique' in genocides. As a social phenomenon,
albeit cataclysmic in nature, genocide may be analyzed mechanically, detached 
from given historical roots. Not the cumulative developments leading up to it,
but the immediate incidence of occurrences producing the fact of genocide, are
of interest here. Historically speaking, genocide is a problem of aggregate 
factors, constituting an organic whole. The mechanical approach, on the other 
hand, addresses problems of precipitation. Genocides which are single-time 
experiences for the victims, having no specific historical rudiments, and no 
general antecedents involving any significant level of domestic persecution 
and atrocities are of this kind. The instances identified with Cambodia, 
Indonesia and Nigeria may be treated as belonging to this class of cases. From
a historical perspective they are more or less accidents of aberration. 
Sociological categories of power, domination, minority status, intergroup 
conflict, conflict resolution, state authority, decision making, etc. are the 
parameters of consideration. In other words, when genocide is subjected to 
conceptualization, it is reduced to a set of common denominators and, 
acquiring 'universal' properties, it becomes divested of its unique 
attributes. Inveighing against this method described as a manifestation of 
'the genius of scientific progress [which] covertly carries the destruction
of unique events', Protestant scholar Franklin Littell pleads for the 
acceptance of 'the unexamined and mysterious'. Addressing specifically the 
problem of genocide, he takes to task the adherents of this 'scientific' 
method by exposing what he considers to be their fallacy:

  'There may have been a destruction and desecration of Jerusalem in 70 and 
   135 CE, but Rome and Constantinople and Moscow and Dresden went through
   similar experiences. There may have been a Holocaust, but there is a large 
   volume of other illustrations of 'man's inhumanity to man'... In terms of 
   the unique, the style of thinking moves from avoidance of the particular to
   generalization to abstraction to banality. In short, the 
   critical/analytical/comparative/abstractive method -- unless balanced by 
   aesthetic and/or religious awareness--can lead easily to absurdity in the 
   treatment of the mysterious and the sacred' [41].

When national history is perceived to be largely a history of national 
tragedy, marked by episodes of sustained persecution and intermittent 
massacres, the experience of genocide for the victims acquires special 
meaning. History, world outlook, ethnic-national self-images, and future 
aspirations are eventually subjected to the centrality of that meaning. The 
result is the growth of a pervasive sense of uniqueness, and its corollary, an
inveterate ethnocentrism, which is a melancholy response to endless suffering 
as a collective destiny. Such responses are in part a way of coping with the 
residues of a lingering trauma, and in part a compensatory mechanism through 
which survivors and their progeny may be attempting to reward themselves for 
endurance and survival perceived to be extraordinary feats. The tormenting 
problem of impotence and unabating vulnerability in the vicissitudes of power 
play dominating international and inter-group relations is dealt with by 
collective sublimations. The principal vehicle for this is self-elevation 
through a self-recognition in which a sense of distinctness coincides with a 
sense of uniqueness. The poem that follows illustrates a particular type of 
sublimation in which nihilistic heroism is carried to the threshold of 
Divinity that stands thus challenged. It is written by Vahan Tekeyan who, by 
sheer accident, escaped the fate of his fellow poets who were annihilated by 
Turkish swords.

                            WE WILL REFUSE AND SAY

	Should it happen that we do not endure
	this unfair struggle, should there be no cure,
	should our strength fail us, should we agonize
	fallen upon the ground never to rise,
	when death closes the last Armenian eyes,
	and when the last martyred Armenian dies
	without having known one victorious day,
	let us all swear that when at last we meet
	God in his paradise coming to greet
	and comfort and make amends for our pain,
	let us swear to refuse his aid, and say:

	'Send us to hell. Send us to hell again.
	 You made us know it alas, but too well.
	 Keep paradise for Turks. Send us to hell.'

  (Translated by John Papasian, painter and poet.)

In the genocidal experience of both Armenians and Jews survival has had a dual
dimension. One dimension refers to the outcome of centuries-old persecutions 
which could not extinguish either people and their nationhood. The other, and 
more significant aspect concerns the survival from the blow of the 'Final 
Solution'. That solution aimed at total or near-total destruction. One has to 
take into account in this respect not only the scale of victims but, equally 
important, the scope of ruination of the social and cultural bases of both 
peoples. With the purposeful devastation of the network of institutions 
enabling the national existence of the Armenians in their ancestral 
territories, an end has been put to the existence of historical Armenia. A 
similar fate befell European Jews. As to the scale of human losses, one has to
rely on informed estimates in the absence of exact figures. According to 
Hilberg's computations, out of a five million Jewish population, 'upwards of
1,500,000 Jews did succeed in eluding the grasp of the mobile killing units'
in Russia. Furthermore, between 1933 and 1938, the number of Jews in Germany 
proper shrank from 515,000 to 350,000, due to Nazi-encouraged emigration, and 
natural causes, Still, the losses were enormous. While Hilberg estimates the 
total loss of European Jews at 5 million [42] Dawidowicz offers the 5.
5 million figure, not including the estimated 0.5 million who died in the 
ghettos [43]. The 'most authoritative estimate' in this respect is said to be
5,978 000 [44].

Two kinds of Armenians survived: those from the eastern provinces which, being
border areas made it possible for about a quarter of a million Armenians to 
escape into Transcaucasia and Persia; those from the cities of Smyrna and 
Istanbul in which deportation and subsequent annihilation was incomplete [45].
The 'optimal' dimensions of the Armenian genocide [46] are attested by high-
ranking Turkish authorities. Interior Minister, and subsequently Grand Vizier,
that 'it is no use for you to argue, we have already disposed of three 
quarters of the Armenians . . .' Later in the war, during his last meeting
with the American Ambassador, Talat signaled the end of the Armenian Question 
with the words, 'What's the use of speaking about them? We are through with 
them. That's all over' [47]. In his memoirs, Count Johann Bernstorff, the last
German ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (7 September 1917-27 October 1918), 
likewise quotes Talat, whom German Ambassador Metternich described as 'the 
soul of the Armenian persecutions' [48]. As Bernstorff relates, 'When I kept 
on pestering him on the Armenian Question, he once said with a smile, "What
on earth do you want? The question is settled, there are no more Armenians"'. 
Bernstorff explained this assertion as relating to the ancestral territories 
of the victims, namely, Armenia, where the Turks have been systematically 
trying to exterminate the Christian population' [49]. The only authoritative 
figure provided by the Turkish authorities on the number of Armenians 
annihilated in connection with the deportations is an admission, made in a 
rare moment of candor, by a post-war Interior Minister. According to figures
compiled by his ministry, of all the Armenians deported, 800,000 of them were
'actually killed'. Interior Minister Cemal's figure excludes the tens of 
thousands of Armenian soldiers and officers executed by fellow military, a 
larger number of victims absorbed in the mainstream of the population through 
conversions, and those multitudes who succumbed to the ordeals of deportation
[50].

The methods of destruction are no less relevant in considering the singular 
aspects of the types of mass murder involved here. The trauma and the response
to it cannot be divorced from the ferocity and degree of heinousness of the 
crime itself. Speaking of the Armenian case, the bulk of the victims were 
dispatched to death through manual slaughter, usually by 'clubs, hammers, 
axes, scythes, spades and saws', to quote Ambassador Morgenthau, who went on 
to say:

  'such instruments not only caused more agonizing deaths than guns and 
   pistols, but as the Turks themselves boasted they were more economical, 
   since they did not involve the waste of powder and shell . . bodies 
   horribly mutilated were left in the valley, where they were devoured by 
   wild beasts. After completing this destruction, the peasants and gendarmes 
   gathered in the local tavern, comparing notes and boasting of the number 
   of 'giaours' that each had slain' [51]'

After citing several examples of atrocities, Ambassador Morgenthau continued:

  'I have by no means told the most terrible details, for a complete narration
   of the sadistic orgies of which these Armenian men and women were the 
   victims, can never be printed in an American publication. Whatever crimes 
   the most perverted instincts of the human mind can devise, and whatever 
   refinements of persecution and injustice the most debased imagination can 
   conceive, became the misfortune of this devoted people. I am confident that
   the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as 
   this . . . the utter depravity and fiendishness of the Turkish nature, 
   already sufficiently celebrated through the centuries, had now surpassed
   themselves' [52].

Moreover, tens of thousands of hard core criminals were released from public 
prisons and assigned to massacre duty, according to Toynbee, who alluded to 
'the blood-lust of the pack' whose ferocity was 'the most signal modern 
instance [as evidenced in] the attempt to exterminate the Armenians in 1915. 
In this case hundreds of thousands of people were done to death and thousands 
turned into robbers and murderers by the administrative action of a few dozen 
criminals in control of the Ottoman Empire.' Toynbee bemoaned learning 'all 
that there is to be learnt to the discredit of the Turkish nation' [53].

In the Nazi case, among many notorious practices, two which stood out were: 
The Central Security Department of Himmler (the RSHA) assigned 6000 
'professional criminals' to concentration camp duty; and the case of SS 
Lieutenant-General (Obergruppenfuhrer) Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who was 
in charge of the Waffen-SS and police in the eastern territories, and

  'whose record of looting, arson and mass murder is equaled only by the 
   Huns and Mongols of days past. General von dem Bach was the deputy Genghis 
   Khan of this horde. The troops which he commanded included the notorious 
   Dirlewanger Brigade which was composed of habitual criminals . . . one 
   single report . . . shows that, among others, 363,211 Jews were executed by
   these formations' [54].

The task of collecting, transporting and 'resettling' the deportees was 
generally entrusted, however, to Einsatzgruppen and other SS units (assisted 
by Feldgendarmerie), acting as special killer units comprising enlisted men 
and officers, and comparable to the gendarme units Talat's Interior Ministry 
had engaged for the Armenian deportations.

In one particular respect, however, the Armenian experience of World War I 
comes closer to the concept of holocaust than the Jewish one, in the strict
sense of the word. Tens of thousands of Armenians were burned alive in several
regions of the interior of Turkey. Whereas in the Jewish case the gas chambers
almost always preceded the ovens, in the Armenian case, the stables, haylofts,
barns and pits were inexorably substituted for both contraptions [55]. The 
concept holocaust, deserves, therefore, to be reinterpreted and redefined in a
comparative context. At issue here is a climactic thrust of destructiveness 
bent on ending a lingering conflict through a decisive resolution meant to
be the Final Solution. It is this provision of a final solution that invests 
the genocide thereby enacted with a property which is distinct and 
extraordinary, not necessarily quantitatively but certainly qualitatively. 
Indeed, the eradication of an entire people under the circumstances described 
above is not a product of random or accidental occurrence, but it is an
ultimate event, packing with it the concentrated force of long accumulated
enmities and frustrations. The strike is not only destructive but 
concomitantly innovative (in a devious way) as far as human history and the 
direction of human relations are concerned. Throughout the history of armed 
clashes and violence the patterns of destruction arising out of insoluble 
conflicts have been more or less subjected to constraints, with the active 
belligerents remaining as the principal shock absorbers. Indiscriminate and 
deliberate slaughter on a comprehensive scale as a radical problem solving 
method represents a new yardstick. It represents an exterminatory assault 
against one's own species, rarely encountered even in the animal kingdom. In 
such a phase of innovation, victims, victimizers and the act and fact of 
victimization configure in unprecedented ways. The term 'unique' is presently
understood to denote the idea of extraordinariness, and to connote the idea of
rarity rather than exclusiveness. It neither suggests historical discontinuity 
or disconnectedness, nor precludes historical recurrence that may involve the 
same victim group or others. While genocide in itself and by itself is a 
unique experience for any victim group, it is entirely plausible to grant 
certain types of genocide the attribute of uniqueness within the broader
and generic category subsuming that phenomenon. In its broadest sense this is 
the sense of the holocaust perspective as applied to the two cases in this 
study.


                                     NOTES

      1. For a systematic treatment of Armenian Christianity see M. Ormanian, 
The Church of Armenia, second revised edition by T. Poladian (London: Mowbray,
1955), and L Arpee, A History of Armenian Christianity (New York: The Armenian
Missionary Association, 1946). For a detailed examination of the theological-
doctrinaire arguments and the impact of Christianity upon Armenian history, 
see H. Chakmakjian, Armenian Christology and Evangelization of Islam (Leiden:
Brill, 1965). For a brief discussion of the claim f Christ appearing to 
Gregory in a vision, see S. Der Nersessian, The Armenians (London: Thames &
Hudson, 1969), pp. 75-77, 87-88. For a similar general review see H. J. 
Mueller, The Loom of History (New York: Harper, 1958), Appendix 2, 'The
Armenians', pp. 377-382. For Jewish corroboration of the Armenian tradition 
on Noah's Ark and related issues, see The Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. Il, 1902, 
1909 editions, pp. 116-118. Among foreign language publications covering these
topics are: V. Inglisian, Armenien in der Bibel (Vienna: Mechitarist, 1935); 
B. Kassardjian, L'Eglise Apostolique Armenienne et sa doctrine (Paris:
Librairie Philosophique, 1943); S. Weber, Die Katholische Kirche in Armenien 
(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herdersche Verlagshandlung, 1903), especially Chapter
II; E. V. Gulbekian, 'The Conversion of King Turdat (Turdat lll) and 
Khorenatsi's History of the Armenians', Le Museon, Revue d'etudes orientales 
90 (1977), 49-62.

    2. These comments are excerpted from a preface Byron wrote for a textbook 
in the preparation of which he had collaborated with an Armenian scholar-
priest at the Mechitarist Congregation in Venice, Italy. Called A Grammar, 
Armenian and English, the tract was intended for English-speaking students 
willing to learn Armenian; first published in 1819, it was republished in 
1832. While staying in Venice (1816-1819), Byron, during a three month period 
(January-March 1817), subjected himself to the grueling task of learning 
Armenian in some 50 tutoring sessions. He learned considerably about Armenian 
history and culture in the course of these studies. K. Kristof, 'Lord Byron 
and the Monks of St. Lazarus', Armenian Review 9 (Spring 1956), 65-76; A. 
Mesrobian, 'Lord Byron at the Armenian Monastery of San Lazzero', Armenian 
Review 27 (Summer 1974), 131-145; H. S. Djemdjemian, 'Lord Byron yev Hayeru' 
(Lord Byron and the Armenians), Hai Undanik. Reprinted in Hairenik (26 August 
1987), 4.
 
     3. On Jewish nationalism, see, for example, B. Halpern, The Idea of the 
Jewish State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), or The Zionist 
Idea, A Historical Analysis and Reader, ed. A. Hertzberg (Philadelphia, PA: 
Jewish Publication Society of America, 1959). On  Jewish messianism, see G. 
Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1971 ).

      4. A. C. Miassnigian, Undeer Yerger (Selected Works) (Yerevan, Soviet 
Armenia: State Printing House, 1957), p. 98.

      5. A. Vambery, 'Zur armenischen Frage', Deutsche Revue (May 1895), 229,
230.

      6. Israel Zangwill, The Voice of Jerusalem (London: William Heinemann, 
1920), p. 353.

      7. N. Sokolow, The Armenian and Georgian Alliance (London: Spottiswoode 
& Ballantyne, 1918), p. 24.

      8. The original French is in FO 371/7874/E3162, Rome, 9 March 1922. See 
also FO 371/7874/E6035 .

      9. Foremost among them were the three successive American ambassadors 
to Turkey, Oscar Straus, Henry Morgenthau and Abram Elkus, as well as the 
prominent American rabbi Stephen Wise. In Europe, they included world renowned
Austrian author Franz Werfel, who wrote the novel The Forty Days of Moussa 
Dagh on the subject of the Armenian genocide, German parliamentarian Hans
Liebknecht, and others.

     10. For the circumstances of this murder, see V. N. Dadrian, 'The Role of
Turkish Physicians in the World War One Genocide of Ottoman Armenians', 
Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1 (1986), 189, note 45. See also K. Hiusian, 
'Krikor Zohrab. Kuroghu yev Hanrayeen Kordzitchu' (Krikor Zohrab. The Writer 
and Public Servant), Panper 2 (1987), 62.

     11. Theodor Herzl's Tagebucher, 1895-1904, 3 Vols. (Berlin: Judischer, 
1922-1923). The quotations are from Vol. I, pp. 432, 440, 450, 453; Vol. II, 
pp. 271-272, 311-313. For the English version of the diaries, see The Complete
Diaries of Theodor Herzl, ed. R. Patai, trans. H. Zohn (New York: Herzl Press 
& T. Yoseloff, 1960), 5 Vols.

     12. W. Yale, The Near East. A Modern History (Ann Arbor, Ml. University 
of Michigan Press, 1968), p. 268.

     13. The certificates were issued by the renowned Armenologist Haig 
Berberian, who was then in charge of the church's chancery. A. Beylerian, 
'Haig Berberian (1887-1978), necrology' Achkar (Paris Armenian weekly) (21 
October 1978), 2.

     14. Quoted in E. Robinson, The Armenians (London: Frederick, 1918), p. 4.

     15. Report from Athlitt incorporated in PRO ARMENIA by Feinberg himself. 
Original in French. Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate Gulbenkian Library 955.66,
Fe. Copy from the papers (Nachlass) of Absalom Feinberg, deposited in the 
Private Archive of the Aaronsohn family, Beth Aaronsohn, Zichron Yaakov, 
Israel.

     16. The 27-year-old Sarah, sister of Aaron, the conduit to the British 
Intelligence Service was eventually captured and tortured by the Turks. In a 
1916 British Foreign Office document where her  identity is concealed, one of 
Sarah's extensive reports described particularly heinous atrocities against 
the Armenians. ' . . . the bodies of hundreds of Armenian men, women and 
children lying on  both sides of the railway. Sometimes Turkish women were 
seen searching the corpses for anything that might be of value; at other times
dogs were observed feeding on the bodies. There were hundreds of bleached 
skeletons. At either Gulek or Osmanieh [on the Baghdad Railway] saw thousands
of starving and fever-stricken Armenians . . . They were lying about the 
station, on the sidings, and some on the track itself. Some were jostled on 
the line when the train arrived, and the engine ran over them to the joy of 
the engine driver, who shouted to his friends, "Did you see how I smashed 
about fifty of these Armenian swine?" [I] fainted at the sight, and on 
recovery two Turkish officers, speaking French, remonstrated with [me] on 
[my] lack of patriotism since the Armenians were enemies.' FO 371/2781/253852,
Appendix A, p. 9, 13 December 1915, report, relayed through Colonel Mark
Sykes. See also R. W. Rowan, The Story of the Secret Service (New York: 
Literary Guild. 1937), pp. 536-537; I. Cowen and I. Gunther, A Spy for 
Freedom: The Story of Sarah Aaronsohn (New York: Dutton, 1984); and L. Y. 
Schneerson, Diary of a Man of Nili (Haifa: Renaissance, 1967), in Hebrew.

    17. R. Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (Washington, DC: Carnegie 
Endowment for International Peace, 1944); see also The Raphael Lemkin Papers,
The Rare Books and Manuscript Division, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox 
and Tilden Foundations.

    18. Several European authors, interpreting the Armenian massacres of 
1894-1897 and of World War 1, anticipated Lemkin in defining the term genocide
in German. Responding to the Abdul Hamid era massacres, for example, German 
nationalist Naumann termed these massacres, a product of 'Turkish barbarism', 
as 'Armenocide' (Armeniermord). F. Naumann, Asia, 8th edition (Berlin-
Schoneberg: Hilfe Publications, 1911), p. 137. A Swiss historian described the
World War I massacres as 'genocide' (Volkermord) 'in the most brutal and 
literal sense of the word', S. Zurlinden, Der Weltkrieg, Vol. Il (Zurich: Art.
Institut Orell Fussli, 1918), p. 649. In its evening edition of 5 May, 1910
(no. 236), the German Catholic daily Casseler Tageblatt used the term 
'Armenocide'(Armeniermord) when alluding to: (1) 'the harrowing details of the
atrocities against the Armenians perpetrated by the Turks'; and (2) a related 
declaration by the Bishop of the Diocese of Fulda.

    19. E. Alexander, 'The Lepsius Symposium: A Report in Summary', Armenian 
Review XXXIX (Winter 1986), 96.

    20. A. Tusa and J. Tusa, The Nuremberg Trial (New York: Atheneum, 1986), 
p. 226.

    21. J. Guttmann, The Beginnings of Genocide: A Brief Account of the 
Armenian Massacres of World War I (New York: Armenian National Council of 
America, 1948). This essay was first published Hebrew in Israel.

    22. R. Lichtheim, Ruckkehr(Stuttgart: Deutsche-Verlagsanstalt, 1970), pp. 
287, 341; J. L. Wallach, a military historian at Tel Aviv University, also 
refers to 'a certain parallel' between the Jewish and Armenian catastrophes. 
See his Anatomie einer Militarhilfe: Dle preussisch-deutschen Militarmissionen
in der Turkei 1835-1919 (Dusseldorf: Droste, 1972), p. 207. See also V. N. 
Dadrian. The Role of Turkish Physicians . . . ', op cit, pp. 184, 192, and R.
J. Lifton, The Nazi aoctors, Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide 
(New York; Basic Books, 1986), pp. 470-480, 492-493.

    23. The first part of the quotation is in L. Kuper, The Prevention of 
Genocide (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 149; the second 
part using the term 'precursor' is in L. Kuper Genocide. Its Political Use in 
the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 105.

    24. H. Fein. Accounting for Genocide (New York: The Free Press, 1979),
p. 4.

    25. R. L. Rubenstein, The Age of Triage (Roston, MA: Beacon Press, 1983), 
pp. 13, 142-144.

    26. Y. Bauer, A History of the Holocaust (New York: F. Watts, 1982), 
pp. 57-58.

    27. Y. Bauer, 'Essay: On the Place of the Holocaust in History', Holocaust
and Genocide Studies 2 (1987), 213, 215, 217.

    28. Lossow cables: 15 May 1918, Turkei, 183/51, A20698; 23 May, 183/51, 
A21877; 11 July, 183/53, A31345. Von Kressenstein cables: 10 July, 183/53, 
A32123; 13 July, 158/20, A31679; 5 August, 183/54, A34707; 20 August, 183/54, 
A36001; 3 September, 183/54, A32244.

    29. H. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (Garden City, NY: 
Doubleday, Page, 1918), p. 338.

    30. L. S. Dawidowicz, The Holocaust and the Historians (Cambridge, MA: 
Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 13.

    31. I. W. Charny, 'Genocide: The Ultimate Human Rights Problem', Social 
Education (September 1986), 452.

    32. G. Korman, Hunter and Hunted. Human History of the Holocaust (New 
York: The Viking Press, 1973), pp. 25-27.

    33. R. W. Smith, 'Denial and Justification of Genocide: The Armenian Case 
and Its Implications, p. 34. Paper presented at the 1986 Annual Meeting of the
American Political Science Association .

    34. T. Des Pres, The Survivor. An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps (New 
York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), pp. 52-53.

    35. B. Ye'or, The Dhimmi. The Jews and Christians under Islam, trans. from
French by D. Maisel (text) and P. Fenton (documents), and D. Littman 
(Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickson University Press, 1985), pp. 95, 101, 103. 
Using the pen-name Bat Ye'or (daughter of the River Nile, in poetic Hebrew), 
the author, Y. Masriya, first published this work in French in 1980.

    36. E. L. Fackenheim, 'Concerning Authentic and Unauthentic Responses to 
the Holocaust', Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1 (1986), 101, 104, 105. 
Fackenheim's thesis is enumerated in eight points incorporated in the foreword
to Bauer's The Jewish Emergence from Powerlessness (Toronto: University of 
Toronto Press, 1979).

    37. I. L. Horowitz, 'Many Genocides, One Holocaust: The Limits of the 
Rights of States and the Obligations of Individuals', Modern Judaism 1 (1981),
76-79.

    38. R. W. Smith, 'Denial and Justification of Genocide', op. cit., pp. 
28-29.

    39. E. Wiesel, foreword to H. J. Cargas, A Christian Response to the 
Holocaust (Denver: Stonehenge Books, 1981), p. 111.

    40 A. J. Grant and H. Temperley, Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth 
Centuries (1789-1950), 5th edition (London: Longmans, 1952), p. 452.

    41. F. H. Littell, The Crucifixion of the Jews. The failure of the 
Christians to Understand the Jews (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press. ROSE 
Reprints, 1986), pp. 11-12. In a recent article, under the sub-heading 'What 
about the Armenians?' Littell enumerates 13 'striking common characteristics' 
which represent 'a significant set of parallels between the Armenian and 
Jewish experiences'. The other 'focus in the dialectic', however, requires
the recognition of the Holocaust as 'morally and theologically unique', 
beckoning us 'to re-enter the domain of history as lived . . . an experience 
without an equivalent . . . Unless both foci of the dialectic are respected, 
maintained in creative tension with each other, the story of the Holocaust is 
headed for obscurity and its lessons for oblivion.' F. H. Littell, 'Holocaust 
and Genocide: The Essential Dialectic', Holocaust and Genocide Studies 2 
(1987), 97-99, 102-103.

    42. R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago, IL: 
Quadrangle Books, 1961), pp. 190, 192, 225.

    43. Dawidowicz, The Holocaust and the Historians, op. cit., p. 13.

    44. L. Poliakov and J. Wulf, eds., Das Dritte Reich und die Juden: 
Dokumente und Aufsatze (Berlin: Arani, 1955), p. 229.

    45. German Embassy Charge von Neurath informed Berlin on 12 November 1915:
'According to a reliable source, the Turkish Government has, contrary to all 
assurances decided to deport the Armenians of Constantinople also.' Turkei, 
183/40, A33705. German Ambassador Metternich on 7 December 1915, informed 
Berlin that 4000 Armenians had recently been removed from Constantinople, that
the total number of those deported from the Ottoman capital up to that time 
had reached 30,000, and that 'gradually a clean sweep will be made of the 
remaining 80,000 Armenian inhabitants' of the Ottoman capital. Turkei, 183/40,
A36184. For additional corroboration of this pattern of deportation of 
Istanbul's Armenians, see Zurlinden, Der Weltkrieg, op. cit., pp. 44-45. See 
also H. Sturmer, Two War Years in Constantinople (trans. E. Allen) (New York: 
G. H. Doran, 1917), A. Toynbee, Armenian Atrocities. The Murder of a Nation 
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915), pp. 77-78, and Ambassador Morgenthau~s 4 
October 1915 cipher no. 1121, in U.S National Archives, RG 867.4016/1 59.

    46. V. N. Dadrian, 'A Typology of Genocide', International Review of 
Modern Sociology 5 (1975), 201--212.

    47. H. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, op. cit., pp. 337-339.

    48. Turkei, 1 83/40i A36184, 7 December 1915, report.

    49. J. Bernstorff, Memoirs of Count Bernstorff, trans. from the German by 
Eric Sutton (New York: Random House, 1936), pp. 176, 180, 374.

    50. The admission appeared in the French-language Istanbul daily Le 
Moniteur Oriental, 15 March 1919, and the Turkish-language daily Vakit, 15 
March 1919. For details of the circumstances of this singular admission and 
official and unofficial Turkish reactions to it, see V. N Dadrian, The 
Naim-Adonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of Ottoman Armenians: 
The Anatomy of a Genocide', International Journal of Middle East Studies 18 
(1986), 358-359 Subsequent official Turkish compilations undertaken by the 
authorities of the Turkish Republic verified this figure. Y. H. Bayur, Turk 
Inkilabi Tarihi (The History of the Turkish Revolution), Vol. Ill, No. 4
(Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, 1983), p. 787.

    51. H. Morgenthau, Ambassador, op. cit., p. 312.

    52. Ibid., pp. 321-322, 328.

    53. A. J. Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey (Boston, MA: 
Houghton Mifflin, 1922), pp. IX, 265-266, 280.

    54. L. Alexander, 'War Crimes and their Motivation. The Socio-
Psychological Structure of the SS and the Criminalization of Society', Journal
of Criminal Law. Criminology and Police Science XXXIX (1948), 181-183, 187-192.

    55. The inhabitants of Mu$ city and the rural-agricultural population of 
the 40-50 mile long and 3-4 mile wide Mus7 Plain, involving about 70,000-
80,000 Armenians, were subjected to this method of extermination. This is how 
the Armenian Catholic Bishop of Trabzon (Trebizond) describes one instance of 
burning. 'Having gathered together 1,000 little children, Governor Mustafa
Abdulhalik led them to a place called Tashod where he had them burnt to death 
in the presence of notables and Turkish crowds, at the same time shouting at 
the top of his voice, "It is necessary to erase once and for all the Armenian 
name in these provinces for the security of Turkey." The children were after-
wards thrown into ditches prepared beforehand for them especially; the moans 
of those not yet completely consumed could be heard for days.' Les memoirs de
Msgr. Jean Naslian, Vol. 1 (Vienna: Mechitarist, 1955), p. 146, n. 62. The 
noted scholar Bernard Lewis, presumably in recognition of this practice of 
burning alive, saw fit to describe the Armenian experience as 'the terrible 
holocaust of 1916, when a million and a half Armenians perished'. The 
Emergence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 350.


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