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Time in Yerevan: 11:07,   29 March 2024

Armenian Genocide – German guilt?: Deutsche Welle

Armenian Genocide – German guilt?: Deutsche Welle

YEREVAN, MARCH 6, ARMENPRESS: In its article “Armenian Genocide – German guilt?” Deutsche Welle states that at a congress in Berlin, historians have been debating Germany’s role in the genocide of Armenians 100 years ago. New findings show that Germany’s complicity is greater than previously assumed. Armenpress reports, citing the author of the article Richard Fuchs that the historians see the German Empire's involvement in the deportation of Armenians as a proven fact. However, the part the Germans played is still not clear. Were they mere witnesses, or were they actually accomplices? The 160 historians in Berlin were focused on Germany's complicity in the Armenians' suffering.
According to the Armenian historian Ashot Hayruni from the State University of Yerevan, the Germans are seen as accomplices because of their silence and cold indifference.
The German government just stood by and watched as the young Turkish government expelled Armenians from Turkey to the deserts of Mesopotamia, a region now in modern-day Iraq, Kuwait and Syria. And Germans claimed that they did not want to interfere, even though they were very well-informed.
Historian Christin Pschichholz from the University of Potsam has no doubts. After having read files at the German Foreign Ministry, she concludes that, "the German government had extensive information about the destructive policies regarding the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire. Death marches, executions and forced labor: German diplomats painstakingly took note of everything happening around them at that time.
Historical witnesses were quite aware of the atrocities, as illustrated by a dispatch sent on July 7, 1915 by the German Ambassador in Constantinople (now Istanbul) to the Imperial Chancellor. It said, "it is the declared intention of the government [meaning the Turkish government] to destroy the Armenian race in the Turkish Empire."
Historian Rolf Holsfeld at Lepsiushaus, a highly regarded research institute in Potsdam, says, "the statement that genocide took place on Ottoman territory in 1915 and 1916 has been officially known to the German government for over 100 years."
German government officials have always avoided using the word genocide when speaking of Armenia. In the German Reichstag on September 29, 1916, the diplomat Gottlieb von Jagow had to give parliament an account of the terrible events in Turkey, then the Ottoman Empire. It was about mass displacement and executions taking place in the eastern region of Anatolia. The German Empire was a colonial power there at the time and also an ally of the Ottoman government, which had previously initiated a mass persecution of Christian Armenians before the onset of World War I. "We did everything we could," stated Jagow in defense of Germany's passivity.
Now there is a dispute as to who will represent Germany at the main memorial service in Armenia on the 100th anniversary of the genocide on April 24 this year. Until now, the German Foreign Ministry claims that it is still checking to see who will officially represent Germany in the Armenian capital. Insiders are expecting that Germany's reticence on this issue will be underscored by the absence of high-level politicians. It is possible that only the German ambassador will attend the service, whereas France will be represented by the president himself, Francois Hollande. Historian Jürgen Gottschlich has called this ‘scandalous’. 




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