December 7, 2009

Robert Fisk: The forgotten holocaust


The killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks between 1915 and 1917 remains one of the bloodiest and most contentious episodes of the 20th century.

On 15 September 1915, Talaat Pasha, the Turkish Interior minister, cabled an instruction to his prefect in Aleppo about what he should do with the tens of thousands of Armenians in his city. "You have already been informed that the government... has decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons living in Turkey... Their existence must be terminated, however tragic the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or to any scruples of conscience." These words are almost identical to those used by Himmler to his SS killers in 1941.





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