Comparing The Armenian Genocide And The Holocaust

“It is generally not known in the world that, in the years preceding 1916, there was a concerted effort to eliminate all the Armenian people, probably one of the greatest tragedies that ever befell any group. And there weren’t any Nuremberg trials”(Carter, 1987). Jimmy Carter, the thirty-ninth president of the United States, said this quote at the White House reception honoring Armenian Americans in May of 1978. It shows how little is known about the Armenian Genocide and that the survivors never received closure like the Holocaust survivors did with the Nuremberg Trials. During the Armenian Genocide, which lasted from 1915 until 1916, 1.2 million Armenians were brutally murdered. They were murdered in either massacre and individual killings, or from systematic ill-treatment, exposure, and starvation. In the novel Forgotten Fire, the main social issue, the Armenian Genocide, compares to the Holocaust as they both were caused by a hatred of a specific race, they both resulted in extreme violence and immense casualties, and they both had many heroes who made considerable sacrifices on behalf of those being persecuted.

An important part of a genocide, on the side of the perpetrator, acts as the structural changes of the society. The perpetrators in genocides use polarization, preparation, and persecution to separate the victims from the rest of society. In the Armenian Genocide, every step taken before the genocide helped the Turks seem justified when the killing of the Armenians began. Therefore, polarization, preparation, and persecution stand very importantly in the formation of the Armenian Genocide.

In a span of 10 years, the Holocaust killed over 7 million people, that’s just as much as the population of Hong Kong. In the book Night, by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel shares his experience on how he survived the Holocaust and what he went through. How he dealt with the horrors and even to how he felt of his dad’s death and how he saw himself after it was all over. As he tried to publish it he was constantly turned down due to the fact of how horrid and truful it was. He still tried and tried until it was finally published. This book shows how the Holocaust should be taught and not be forgotten, due to it being a prime example of human impureness. Humans learn off trial and error, how the Jewish population was affected, decrease in moral, and the unsettled tension are prime examples of such mistakes.

“Why dwell upon the study of the Holocaust when history is loaded with other tragedies? Because the Holocaust was unique. This is not to say that other tragedies were less horrible, only that the Holocaust was different and should not be compared and trivialized,” the author noted (Tarnor Wacks 9). A mere 71 years ago a defining feature of world history took place, in concentration camps across Eastern and Western Europe. 6 million Jews were ripped out of their homes and ultimately murdered. It is imperative that we remember the Holocaust because the magnitude of this tragedy is astronomical and shouldn’t be forgotten.

In the first stage, the forty thousand Armenian men serving in the Turkish Army in 1914 had their weapons confiscated and became slave labourers; they later died from brutal work conditions. The roundups began in the second stage on April 24, 1915, when 300 Armenian teachers, lawyers, philosophers, and political leaders were taken, jailed, tortured, and then hung or shot (United Human Rights Council). Then came the mass arrests of Armenian men that were tied together and shot dead. Finally, the woman, children, and elderly Armenians were given a short notice to pack few belongings and leave their homes. They were then taken on death marches towards to Syrian desert. After being denied food and water as well as being beaten during the march, the Armenians were forced to just walk under the scorching sun until they dropped dead from exhaustion and dehydration. Those who survived were thrown off of cliffs, buried alive, or drowned (United Human Rights Council). Many local Turks who took over the homes and villages of the Armenians decided to spare some young children by forcing them to reject Christianity and become Muslims. However, with no help from the rest of the world, the Armenians managed to fight back by acquiring weapons and revolted the Turkish invasion known as the battle of Sardarabad; this saved the surviving population from complete extinction. Additionally, the body count of Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire before World War I was two million. In 1922, when the genocide was over, there were only 388,000 remaining Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (Armenian Genocide Museum -

“Genocide is an attempt to exterminate a people, not to alter their behavior.” Jack Schwartz. Genocide is mass murder, it happens in all parts of the world. A common known genocide is the Holocaust. Where a group known as the“Nazis” (lead by Hitler) murdered more than six million people (many were Jewish). Another is the Rwandan genocide, the Belgians split Rwanda's tribe as “Hutus” and “Tutsis”, based on the width of their nose. When the Belgians left Rwanda the Tutsis were left in charge. This angered the Hutus so they tried to exterminate them with machetes after they ran out of bullets. Both of these examples are horrible mass killings, very similar, but also very different.

In this day and age, the world is very corrupt. From lying to killing, we’ve got it all. Unfortunately, genocide is among one of the problems of this perverted world. Genocide is a deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. Something connected to genocide that is on its own level of disgusting is that many people disregard the genocides that are going on, like the one in Darfur, and there are people that even deny that past genocides, like the holocaust, has ever happened. Now, there were times where people tried to stop genocides. As the cartoon drawn by Michael “Sudsy” Sutherland shows the UN saying that they

Imagine one day you meet the most talented hypnotist in the world. This hypnotist tells you he can change your memories without even breaking a sweat. Maybe this sounds like magic or just plain nonsense to you but in reality it isn’t that difficult to tamper with memories. Any time you hear a different telling of an event, even one you witnessed first-hand, your perception of the event changes over and over becoming a conglomeration of everything you’ve heard about the aforementioned event. Memoirs and other pieces of literature written from memory suffer from these easily modified memories and can’t always be trusted to be true.

Jewish people were excluded from public life on September 15th, 1935 when the Nuremberg Laws were issued. These laws also stripped German Jews of their citizenship and their right to marry Germans. When the Nuremberg Laws were established, the Jewish population began the process of losing their identity and eventually themselves. As soon as Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the human race would be forever scarred. Although it is estimated the number of people killed in the Holocaust was around 11 million, there is a high chance of the death toll being much higher. The sheer amount of lives lost in this horrid time astonishes a large quantity of today’s population. Not only were people being tossed into the concentration camps, but soldiers and civilians were killed in the fight for their lives’. Human beings were given numbers and made to look like clones, as if to hide the misery of dehumanization. Loss of self and personal identity is shown throughout Night by Elie Wiesel.

Of all the terrible events in history, the Holocaust may be the worst of them all. This tragedy was so terrible, I cannot think of the ones who instigated it as human beings. It was against many morals and standards that the world views today as common ethics. The most terrible part of this is, perhaps, how today’s new and younger generations are not sufficiently educated about this disaster. Although many younger generations do not know about the Holocaust, it’s importance should be emphasised in today’s society to learn from it, to realize that every human life is important, and to appreciate the blessings of the present day. I, like many others, did know about the events of the Holocaust for the longest time and when I did, I gained a feeling of disgust towards everything that occurred at that time. In the movie, The Devil’s Arithmetic, I gained a much larger sense of the hostile feeling that this tragedy brought on and it made me realize that this was something that is very important to know and learn about. For the

Genocides are the mass killings of a group of people, and sometimes even an entire race. The Holocaust is one of the largest genocides that the world has ever seen. Because society is not educated on these horrific events, genocides continue to take place. Society has moved forward in so many forms of communication that there are numerous ways to convey the message of remembering a genocide. Jane Yolen 's novel, The Devil’s Arithmetic, more aptly conveys the message of remembering than Donna Deitch’s film adaptation as seen through dehumanization, boxcars, and a love interest.

In the early 1940s, Adolf Hitler told Germany the single story of his opinions of the Jewish race. His single story led Germany to blame Jews, persecute Jews, and kill Jews. You would think the nation would stand against wrongdoings, but most were brainwashed by Hitler’s perspective, and the rest, cowards. Germany was manipulated to think a certain way, without caring to hear what the Jews had to say, and ultimately reacted in a harmful way to the Jews. You may ask, why is this important? It is important because you have fallen into the trap of the most dangerous weapon of all without even realizing it. A single story brings the danger of the audience not taking the time to examine multiple perspectives, being manipulated to think a certain way, and reacting in hurtful ways.

The various news accounts from the New York Times in Source C tell of just some of the gruesome stories that confronted the Armenians. These articles share with the world the confronting nature of the young Turks and the proof that the Armenian genocide did occur.

Genocide is the act of mass murdering groups of people because of someone 's disliking. In other words getting rid of people or stop their existence,mostly because of their religion, ethnic, or race.One of the most atrocious ones was the Armenian Genocide(April 24,1915-1916), in which 1.5 million of the Armenian population, living in the Ottoman Empire were either deported or killed.During this time,the Turkish government had planned the genocide to get rid of the entire Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire(which was one of the largest empires to rule on the border of the Mediterranean Sea) because they feared that the Armenian community would join their enemy troops during WWI in 1915.

War and genocide have historically been closely related and even described as Siamese twins. Genocide can occur without war but war cannot occur without some elements of genocide as the distinction between legitimate war and genocide is not clear. War is defined as an armed conflict between different nations or groups within a nation. Scholars who have studied the relationship between war and genocide have argued that they are one in the same. It is a very convincing argument especially when examining the UN Convention on genocide. The UN Convention defines genocide as “any of the follow acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group” (Jones 13). The wordings of the definition can