Posted on 04/25/2015 8:11:45 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier insisted on Friday that calling Armenian massacres genocide risks belittling the Holocaust, after President Joachim Gauck broke a taboo by using the word on Thursday.
Steinmeier stuck to his guns on Friday, arguing in an interview with Spiegel that “We in Germany need to be careful not to give justification to those who follow their own political agenda and say the Holocaust started before 1933.” […]
Steinmeier has come in for fierce criticism this week, with one high profile politician comparing him to Germany’s First World War leadership.
Both Gauck and Bundestag (German parliament) president Norbert Lammert condemned the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces a century ago as a “genocide”, the first time Germany has officially used the term.
Gauck’s speech at an event commemorating the centenary marked the first time that Berlin has officially used the word “genocide” to describe the killings in Armenia, and an unusually strong acknowledgement of the then German Empire’s role. …
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.de ...
...Cause if there’s any nation on earth that implicitly knows what constitutes genocide it’s the Germans.
CC
What doesn’t get mentioned is that the Armenians were murdered by the mohammaden turks because they were Christians.
The Armenian genocide began long before 1915. Here is a report from the genocide in 1895.
http://www.davidcox.com.mx/library/A/Anderson,%20Robert%20-%20The%20Silence%20of%20God%20%28b%29.pdf
Sir Robert Anderson
SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service Theologian
THE SILENCE OF GOD
CHAPTER ONE.
Here is a testimony to the Armenian massacres of 1895
“Over 6o,ooo Armenians have been butchered. In Trebizond, Erzeroum, Erzinghian, Hassankaleh, and
numberless other places the Christians were crushed like grapes during the vintage. The frantic mob,
seething and surging in the streets of the cities, swept down upon the defenceless Armenians, plundered
their shops, gutted their houses, then joked and jested with the terrified victims, as cats play with mice.
The rivulets were choked up with corpses; the streams ran red with human blood; the forest glades and
rocky caves were peopled with the dead and dying; among the black ruins of once prosperous villages lay
roasted infants by their mangled mothers’ corpses; pits were dug at night by the wretches destined to fill
them, many of whom, flung in when but lightly wounded, awoke underneath a mountain of clammy
corpses, and vainly wrestled with death and with the dead, who shut them out from light and life for ever.
“A man In Erzeroum, hearing a tumult, and fearing for his children, who were playing in the street, went
out to seek and save them. He was borne down upon by the mob. He pleaded for his life, protesting that
he had always lived in peace with his Moslem neighbours, and sincerely loved them. The statement may
have represented a fact, or it may have been but a plea for pity. The ringleader, however, told him that
that was the proper spirit, and would be condignly rewarded. The man was then stripped, and a chunk of
his flesh cut out of his body, and jestingly offered for sale: ‘Good fresh meat, and dirt cheap,’ exclaimed
some of the crowd. ‘Who’ll buy fine dog’s meat?’ echoed the amused bystanders. The writhing wretch
uttered piercing screams as some of the mob, who had just come from riffing the shops, opened a bottle
and poured vinegar or some acid into the gaping wound. He called on God and man to end his agonies.
But they had only begun. Soon afterwards two little boys came up, the elder crying, ‘Hairik, Hairih
(Father, father), save me! See what they’ve done to me!’ and pointed to his head, from which the blood
was streaming over his handsome face, and down his neck. The younger brother - a child of about three -
was playing with a wooden toy. The agonising man was silent for a second and then, glancing at these his
children, made a frantic but vain effort to snatch a dagger from a Turk by his side. This was the signal for
the renewal of his torments. The bleeding boy was finally dashed with violence against the dying father,
who began to lose strength and consciousness, and the two were then pounded to death where they lay.
The younger child sat near, dabbling his wooden toy in the blood of his father and brother, and looking
up, now through smiles at the prettily dressed Kurds and now through tears at the dust-begrimed thing
that had lately been his father. A slash of a sabre, wound up his short experience of God’s world, and the
crowd turned its attention to others.
“These are but isolated scenes revealed for a brief second by the light, as it were, of a momentary
lightning-flash. The worst cannot be described.”
-Contemporary Review, January, 1896.
The following refers to still more recent horrors :-
“In no place in this region has the attack upon the Christians been more savage than in Egin. Every male
above twelve years of age who could be found was slain. Only one Armenian was found who had been
seen and spared. Many children and boys were laid on their backs and their necks cut like sheep. The
women and children were gathered together in the yard of the Government building and in various places
throughout the town. Turks, Kurds, and soldiers went among these women, selected the fairest, and led
them aside to outrage them. In the village of Pinguan fifteen women threw themselves into the river to
escape dishonour.”
-The Times, December 10, 1896.
I have no problem labeling this a genocide, but it has to be viewed in the context of WWI; when a country’s survival is at stake, they will go to extreme lengths to hold it together (see Abraham Lincoln). Not a defense of the murders; more of an explanation. Turkey saw the writing on the wall between the Arab rising and the problems on the Russian front (compounded by the Gallipoli landing), and figured it was all or nothing.
I suppose you have an “explanation” for what happened during WWII as well?
Not bad for a brief opus. Never mind the neoconfederate propaganda.
The nazis had “reasons” for killing the Jews too. muslims don’t need a reason to kill Christians, it’s in their book.
Nazis gave reasons for killing all of the people they killed (including 20 million Russians); there was no mystery about it. There is a lot less documentation regarding what happened in Armenia.
I can understand his need to pander to the Turks, since they are one of the largest population groups in Germany. Muslims, mostly Turks, make up almost 4% of the population.
You mean like the Democrats’ “need” to pander to Mexicans who do not respect the US laws of immigration? I guess it’s understandable and of course predictable out of a Social Democrat too.
Calling excuses “reasons” for the second time in this thread?
The real reasons is that Turks have filled Germany for decades now. Turks are to Germany as Mexicans are to us.
What a putz to say this,,,,
“Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story.” Free at Google Books. According to Morgenthau, Germany was in it up to the neck.
An amazing read. And ahhhhhh,,, think of how different that ONE story would have been had that family had one AR-15, and one or two magazines.
Or even a 38 snub.
People riot because its fun. All a riot control guns must do is introduce the concept of “not fun” for a moment. I will never turn mine in, no matter what law they pass,,,ever.
Grow up; they gave their reasons very clearly (as cold and evil as they may have been).
“Turkish” Mausers..., Orient Express...
German industrialism and markets in the east...
“German–Turkish relations have their beginnings in the times of the Ottoman Empire and have culminated in the development of strong bonds with many facets that include economic, military, cultural and social relations.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany%E2%80%93Turkey_relations
Germany is to Turkey as America is to ChinaMart...
Lewis and Clark were looking for a “northwest passage” to the east...among other thangs
...before Bill Clinton...the only two adult down on the floor of the Oval Office were Thomas Jefferson and Merriwether Lewis ...
looking at maps.
( ; ) donchathink?
Clinton is innocent of Benghazi with that logic.
Hamidian massacres 1894 up to 300K murdered
Adana massacre up to 30K murdered
Armenian Genocide 1915 up to 1.5M murdered Youtube The Armenian Genocide [ The Hidden Holocaust ] 1992 Documentary
between 1914 and 1915 is a controversial topic. Most estimates by Western scholars range from 1.7 to 2.3 million
there were 281,000 Armenians left in Anatolia in 1921
Ottoman Armenian population
It was the Armenian Genocide that gave Hitler the inspiration to go through with The Holocaust.
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