And the lesson they mastered in the school of adversity was not forgotten. They learned to appreciate the real value of national freedom and therefore worked more fervently for its attainment. It is unfortunate that the eventual attainment of this freedom had to be accomplished at the stunning cost of more than 1 million Armenian dead in the Turkish massacres and deportations of the First World War. Yet so sweet seemed the reward. and so noble the ideal behind that reward that even such terrifying sacrifices were not made grudgingly. And on May 28 of 1918. when Armenians proclaimed their national independence and founded the Armenian Republic in the northeastern part of historic Armenia. all past miseries and sufferings seemed. for the moment. to have vanished.
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deportations