This book tells the stories of the Muslims, Christians, Jews and others who made a courageous stand against the mass slaughter of Ottoman Armenians in 1915, the first modern genocide. Foreigners and Ottomans alike ran considerable risks to bear witness and rescue victims, sometimes sacrificing their lives. Diplomats, humanitarians, missionaries, lawyers and other visitors to the Empire stood up, including Tolstoy’s daughter, Alexandra; Raphael Lemkin, the jurist who first established genocide as an international crime; and the polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who recognised and relieved the plight of stateless Armenian refugees. Ottoman subjects—from officials and officers to ordinary townspeople and villagers—faced near-certain death for their entire family by resisting orders and helping Armenians. Unlike the Righteous of the Holocaust, these heroes have been systematically ignored and erased—a major injustice. Based on fresh research, and hoping to repay a moral debt to Ottoman Muslims who braved everything to rescue the authors’ forebears, this book is an important, moving testament to a grievously overlooked aspect of the Armenian tragedy.

This book tells the stories of the Muslims, Christians, Jews and others who made a courageous stand against the mass slaughter of Ottoman Armenians in 1915, the first modern genocide. Foreigners and Ottomans alike ran considerable risks to bear witness and rescue victims, sometimes sacrificing their lives. Diplomats, humanitarians, missionaries, lawyers and other visitors to the Empire stood up, including Tolstoy's daughter, Alexandra; Raphael Lemkin, the jurist who first established genocide as an international crime; and the polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who recognized and relieved the plight of stateless Armenian refugees. Ottoman subjects--from officials and officers to ordinary townspeople and villagers--faced near-certain death for their entire family by resisting orders and helping Armenians. Unlike the Righteous of the Holocaust, these heroes have been systematically ignored and erased--a major injustice. Based on fresh research, and hoping to repay a moral debt to Ottoman Muslims who braved everything to rescue the authors' forebears, this book is an important, moving testament to a grievously overlooked aspect of the Armenian tragedy.

"World War I was a watershed, a defining moment, in Armenian history. Its effects were unprecedented in that it resulted in what no other war, invasion, or occupation had achieved in three thousand years of identifiable Armenian existence. This calamity was the physical elimination of the Armenian people and most of the evidence of their ever having lived on the great Armenian Plateau, to which the perpetrator side soon gave the new name of Eastern Anatolia. The bearers of an impressive martial and cultural history, the Armenians had also known repeated trials and tribulations, waves of massacre, captivity, and exile, but even in the darkest of times there had always been enough remaining to revive, rebuild, and go forward. This third volume in a series edited by Richard Hovannisian, the dean of Armenian historians, provides a unique fusion of the history, philosophy, literature, art, music, and educational aspects of the Armenian experience. It further provides a rich storehouse of information on comparative dimensions of the Armenian genocide in relation to the Assyrian, Greek and Jewish situations, and beyond that, paradoxes in American and French policy responses to the Armenian genocides. The volume concludes with a trio of essays concerning fundamental questions of historiography and politics that either make possible or can inhibit reconciliation of ancient truths and righting ancient wrongs."--

World War I was a watershed, a defining moment, in Armenian history. Its effects were unprecedented in that it resulted in what no other war, invasion, or occupation had achieved in three thousand years of identifiable Armenian existence. This calamity was the physical elimination of the Armenian people and most of the evidence of their ever having lived on the great Armenian Plateau, to which the perpetrator side soon gave the new name of Eastern Anatolia. The bearers of an impressive martial and cultural history, the Armenians had also known repeated trials and tribulations, waves of massacre, captivity, and exile, but even in the darkest of times there had always been enough remaining to revive, rebuild, and go forward. This third volume in a series edited by Richard Hovannisian, the dean of Armenian historians, provides a unique fusion of the history, philosophy, literature, art, music, and educational aspects of the Armenian experience. It further provides a rich storehouse of information on comparative dimensions of the Armenian genocide in relation to the Assyrian, Greek and Jewish situations, and beyond that, paradoxes in American and French policy responses to the Armenian genocides. The volume concludes with a trio of essays concerning fundamental questions of historiography and politics that either make possible or can inhibit reconciliation of ancient truths and righting ancient wrongs.

The Armenian Genocide was one of the greatest atrocities of the twentieth century, an episode in which up to 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives. In this major new history, the renowned historian Raymond Kevorkian provides an authoritative account of the origins, events and consequences of the years 1915 and 1916. He considers the role that the Armenian Genocide played in the construction of the Turkish nation state and Turkish identity, as well as exploring the ideologies of power, rule and state violence. Crucially, he examines the consequences of the violence against the Armenians, the implications of deportations and attempts to bring those who committed the atrocities to justice. Kevorkian offers a detailed and meticulous record, providing an authoritative analysis of the events and their impact upon the Armenian community itself, as well as the development of the Turkish state. This important book will serve as an indispensable resource to historians of the period, as well as those wishing to understand the history of genocidal violence more generally.

A fresh look at the forgotten genocide of world history.