Toynbee. Herbert A. Gibbons. and the then American Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau described eyewitness accounts of such agonizing scenes as mothers flinging themselves with their infants into bloody seas to prevent capture. along with murder. mutilation. torture. rape. and mass deportations that turned out to be death caravans. Mr. Speaker. I quote from Howard M. Sachars revealing and authoritative book "The Emergence of the Middle East. 19141924": By any standards. this was surely the most unprecedented. indeed the most unimaginable racial annihilation. until then. in modern history. Nevertheless. apparently unconcerned by the enormity of their affront to civilization. the members of the Young Turk regime continued to view the "deportation" as nothing more than effective diplomacy. the realization that [Sultan] Abdul Hamids injunction that "the best way to finish with the Armenian Question is to finish with the Armenians. (Knopf. N.Y. 1969) Historic account after historic account shows. without a doubt. that the Armenians were being persecuted for reasons no sane man can justifybecause of their Christian beliefs. because of their intellectual. cultural. and commercial advancements. because of the ferocious nature of the Turkish Government and policies. and most of all for the same fanatic nationalism that Hitler employed In Germanyto eradicate any nonTurkish elements from the Ottoman Empire. What a sad testimony to world history that the first Christian nation on eartha very brave and talented nation with a 3.000yearold history--should suffer the first genocide of such abhorrent magnitude.
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deportations deportation