The surviving Armenian women. children. and elderly were then forced on death marches into the Syrian desert. during which the unprotected women. children. and elderly were subjected to rape. torture. and mutilation. Thousands were seized and forced into Turkish and Kurdish homes and harems. The majority of the deportees died during the marches from starvation. exposure. disease. and massacres. The Armenian genocide effectively eliminated the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire and marked the beginning of a century of cruelty and suffering. unparalleled in history. Indeed. it served as an inspiration for Adolf Hitler. who asked. before planning the extermination of European Jewry. "Who remembers the Armenians?" Today we understand all too well the price the world paid for not remembering the Armenian genocide. Yet the lessons of the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust seem to be lost as the world again sits idly by as ethnic cleansingmass murder. torture. mass rape. and forced deportationoccurs in Bosnia. We owe it to the victims of the Armenian genocide not to forget their suffering. and to do what is in our power as individuals and as a nation to prevent the perpetration of crimes against humanity such as occurred 78 years ago.
Keywords matched
deportationoccurs deportees