Ohanus Appressian Quotes


We closed the roads and mountain passes that might serve as ways of escape for the Tartars [Turks], and then proceeded in the work of extermination. Our troops surrounded village after village. Little resistance was offered. Our artillery knocked the huts into heaps of stones and dust, and when the villages became untenable and the inhabitants fled from them into the fields, bullets and bayonets completed the work.


Context

One of the most murderous struggles in history was when Turkey was fighting Armenia. The peoples had, and still do have, a great hatred towards each other. The Turks had a large ethnic Armenian population and the Turkish government decided to “relocate” them. In the process many Armenians were brutally murdered, The Armenians however also butchered Turks whenever they could. The events were so brutal, that neither Turkey or Armenia teach about their own atrocities in their schools, but tell their students of the other’s atrocities. Historial denial governs this conflict and its war crimes.


Citations

Ohanus Appressian, 1892-*, Armenian Military Officer, Description of the Atrocities the Armenians Inflicted Upon The Turks in 1919, Men are Like That: Memoirs of an Armenian Officer

Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations

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The soldiers obeyed their orders and killed every man, woman and child they could find outside the city. They beheaded captured prisoners, bayoneted pregnant women and children. All civilian houses were burned, often with the people trapped inside.


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This statement caused great consternation. NcNutt did try to explain that he was speaking personally and not for the Government, but there was a small proportion of America who had concluded that all Japanese should be killed. Such an concept which was unthinkable 5 years earlier was considered as a result of several factors: The Japanese had murdered many American prisoners of war. Killed millions of civilians throughout Asia including doing medical and weapons experiments on live human beings. They had practiced torture, compulsory prostitution and mass rape of conquered territories. At the same time, the Germans had tried to exterminate all the Jews and, with some Japanese help, did kill two-thirds. The concept of genocide had been introduced to Americans as the concentration camps were liberated. And American casualties in the Pacific had been heavy. Vengeance was desired by many. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Americans never considered genocide seriously.


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