After centuries of imperial powers committing genocide against the colonized peoples, the first documented one made news in 1915, as the Ottoman Turks massacred almost half the Armenian population, a mass slaughter unequaled until the Third Reich. The first movie made about it was Oscar Apfel's "Ravished Armenia", also known as "Auction of Souls", starring survivor Aurora Mardiganian. Most of the movie is now lost, but the surviving part is horrific enough, although Mardiganian later admitted that the crucifixion scene didn't really happen. The Turks made Armenian girls strip, raped them, and made them sit on little pointed crosses, impaling them. No less vicious. Indeed, when Hitler was about to invade Poland, he reportedly got asked how he thought people would remember him, and responded "Who today speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
Alas, this first genocide of the 20th century faded from memory, and Turkey (one of the key US proxies in the Middle East) not only denies that it ever happened, but arrests people for saying that it happened; no surprise that Turkey leads the world in the number of imprisoned journalists.
I understand that one of the first famous people to take up the cause of the Armenians was Jackie Coogan, co-star of Charlie Chaplin's movie "The Kid". As for this one, I see that I'm the first one reviewing it. I had to watch it on YouTube. Other movies focusing on the genocide include "Ararat" and "The Promise".
In a Russian course, I learned about a link to the Russia-Georgia War. Seeing the mass slaughter of the Armenians, the peoples of the Caucasus turned to Imperial Russia for help against the Turks, and nascent countries there eventually became part of the Soviet Union. When they won their independence in 1991, Abkhazia wanted independence from Georgia, but didn't receive it, so the Abkhaz people waged their own war. In 2008, Georgia responded with force, and Russia invaded. (the professor was from Russia, so I got that bias)
To crown everything, the Versailles negotiations further screwed everything up. Most notable was that the reparations imposed on Germany set the stage for Hitler's rise to power. On top of that, Armenia got reduced to a fraction of its former territory, with no access to Mt. Ararat. The Palestinians, Kurds and Yazidis didn't even get their own countries; a British soldier bragged about dropping bombs on "the Arab and the Kurd". It's no accident that the Sykes-Picot Agreement set the stage for the current bloodshed in the Middle East. But lesser known is that a young Ho Chi Minh appealed to Woodrow Wilson, but Wilson (a racist thug if there ever was one) refused to listen.
All in all, I recommend the movie.
Alas, this first genocide of the 20th century faded from memory, and Turkey (one of the key US proxies in the Middle East) not only denies that it ever happened, but arrests people for saying that it happened; no surprise that Turkey leads the world in the number of imprisoned journalists.
I understand that one of the first famous people to take up the cause of the Armenians was Jackie Coogan, co-star of Charlie Chaplin's movie "The Kid". As for this one, I see that I'm the first one reviewing it. I had to watch it on YouTube. Other movies focusing on the genocide include "Ararat" and "The Promise".
In a Russian course, I learned about a link to the Russia-Georgia War. Seeing the mass slaughter of the Armenians, the peoples of the Caucasus turned to Imperial Russia for help against the Turks, and nascent countries there eventually became part of the Soviet Union. When they won their independence in 1991, Abkhazia wanted independence from Georgia, but didn't receive it, so the Abkhaz people waged their own war. In 2008, Georgia responded with force, and Russia invaded. (the professor was from Russia, so I got that bias)
To crown everything, the Versailles negotiations further screwed everything up. Most notable was that the reparations imposed on Germany set the stage for Hitler's rise to power. On top of that, Armenia got reduced to a fraction of its former territory, with no access to Mt. Ararat. The Palestinians, Kurds and Yazidis didn't even get their own countries; a British soldier bragged about dropping bombs on "the Arab and the Kurd". It's no accident that the Sykes-Picot Agreement set the stage for the current bloodshed in the Middle East. But lesser known is that a young Ho Chi Minh appealed to Woodrow Wilson, but Wilson (a racist thug if there ever was one) refused to listen.
All in all, I recommend the movie.