Everyone has their “death march”

Everyone has their “death march”

The color and pride of the Ottoman Empire were trampled, desecrated and scolded by nothing-can-do tribes and murderous mobs.

First the desert was dead and lifeless; only the wind blew over sand dunes, and from time to time caravans passed by. Then it was filled with sounds. At first the sounds were strange, shuffling, as if someone were dragging their feet on the sand, sinking ankle-deep. Then the sounds became tangible, the desert revived, vibrating under the weight of hundreds of thousands of bare, wounded legs. And then there came to be heard moans, cries, and endless shots.

PanARMENIAN.Net - One and a half million citizens of the Ottoman Empire, only because they were born Armenians, began their Way of the Cross to nowhere, to eternity. The earth was buzzing from the shuffling of a million feet. The color and pride of the Ottoman Empire were trampled, desecrated and scolded by nothing-can-do tribes and murderous mobs. However, one thing they could do - to kill, bringing sophistication to almost perfection. The Germans with their gas chambers were merely imitators. It’s true that during the World War II destruction of the fellow men was put on, one can say, industrial basis. According to certain sources, a healthy middle-aged Jew, i.e. what was left of him - teeth, hair and skin - was worth fifteen hundred marks. But the essence of murder did not change. You can always talk about non-equivalence of the victims of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, comparing six million to one and a half. You can, but everyone has their own “death march” and you never know what is worse - to wander through the desert, knowing that you are going to become a prey to thugs, or to go into gas chambers... According to extant memoirs of U.S., British and French consuls to the Ottoman Empire, the worst that could be seen each time the caravan of fleeced and beaten Armenians walked away was the pack of dogs, full up with human flesh and turned into predators, like their owners.

April 24, 1915 is considered to be the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, but in fact the Genocide had started long ago, still during the bloody reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who was held back from total extermination of the Armenian nation by the Treaty of Berlin. What the Sultan did not manage to do was done by the Young Turks. All of this is now a page in history that cannot be changed either by the current Turkish government or by any other force in the world. In fact, extermination of the Christian peoples of the Ottoman Empire began with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and has never ended since then. It continues to this day: Hrant Dink, Sevag Şahin Balıkçı… This list can continue for as long as Turkey fails to find the courage and say: yes, it was genocide. Until then Turkey will be killing Christians.

Unfortunately, Armenians are naive and gullible, in spite of everything. Today, we almost gladly talk of the commemoration actions on Taksim Square in Istanbul and near the train station Haidar Pasha, where the Armenian intellectuals of the Empire - over 250 people - were driven out. But they traveled only a little. At the next halt the writers, doctors, journalists were removed from the train cars and killed in a most barbaric way – their heads were smashed.

And today, 97 years later, Armenians should never forget what was done to them, because history has a habit of repeating itself…

Sand has covered the tracks, and only occasionally do the almost decayed bones of innocent victims rise to the surface. And the desert of Deir ez-Zor continues living its own life...

Karine Ter-Sahakyan
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