| Most
of those who did not die of disease died of starvation. It was a new kind of genocide, the planned extermination
of a people through natural causes. The government did
not provide for food or water on their long march.
"When
the measures to transport the entire population into
the desert were adopted, no appropriations were made
for any kind of nourishment. On the contrary, it is
obvious that the government pursued a plan to let the
people die of starvation. Even an organized mass-killing
such as during the times when liberty, equality, and
fraternity had not yet been proclaimed in Constantinople,
would have been a much more human measure, since it
would have saved these miserable people from the horrors
of hunger and the slow death and the excruciating pains
of tortures so fiendish that the most cruel of the Mongols
could not have imagined them. But a massacre is less
constitutional than death by starvation. Civilization
is saved!" German missionary eyewitness Johannes
Lespius
Part
of The Armenian Genocide
exhibit |
