Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide is widely regarded as the first modern genocide. This horrifying experience occurred in 1915 and 1916, carried out by the "Young Turk" government of the Ottoman Empire. The "Young Turks" were a group of racist people who didn't like the Armenians. In all, there was a total of about one and a half  million Armenians killed out of the total of two and a half million in the Ottoman Empire. The first thing that happened was that Armenians whom were previously in the army or drafted into the Ottoman armed forces were disarmed and then told to go out and find arms to help support Turkey's wartime effort. If they would not return their weapons, they were severely punished by the Turks. Secondly, on April 24, 1915, Armenian political leaders, writers, and thinkers were rounded up, deported and killed. After those people were the men and teenagers. Lastly were the women, children, and elderly. The men and teenagers were tied together into groups with ropes and taken to the outskirts of their town where they were then shot dead. The women, children and elderly were told to bring a few belongings to be relocated to a non-military zone for safety. They soon found out that they were being taken on death marches toward the Syrian Desert. Along the way, the Armenian's had to walk naked. They starved to death and died of hydration because they were denied food and water, and they were murdered by their "guards", all in the burning sun.

Today, there are children and grandchildren of the survivors from the Armenian Genocide. Also, the Turkish government still denies that there was even such a genocide; they claim that the Armenians were only removed from the eastern “war zone”. During the time, the British, French, Russian, German, and Austrian governments all believed this was wrong, as well as the United States. Missionaries from the United States tried to save the orphaned children who were remnants of the marches.

To me, the Armenian Genocide is an extremely appalling occurrence. I personally don't understand why people are discriminated against; it's morally wrong for people to believe they are better than others. While I was doing some research on this topic, I found that the Armenian Genocide is compared to the Holocaust in many ways. The Holocaust is a more widespread event than the Armenian Genocide but to compare it to something as horrendous as that makes it obvious of how wrong it was. We see how Hitler had Jewish people killed, just like the "Young Turks" had Armenian people killed. To know that people were lied to and then killed makes me sick to my stomach. They also were raped along the way, denied food and water, and murdered. All of those things are horrible things that I would never wish upon anyone.  

A starved mother and her two starved children