The Armenian Holocaust Trivia Quiz

Answer: Southern Caucasus

The Republic of Armenia (first formed in 1920) borders Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran. It includes the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is surrounded by Azerbaijan. It is a former republic of the Soviet Union and has a population of about 3.26 million (estimate, 2009). An estimated further three million Armenians live outside Armenia in what is often called the "Armenian diaspora".

Answer: Eastern Anatolia

There was a heavy concentration of Armenians in and just beyond the area of the ancient Kingdom of Armenia. Over half the Armenian population lived in Eastern Anatolia in an area extending from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean: this was the Armenian heartland. (This area of Turkey adjoins the Republic of Armenia).

There were Armenians in most cities of the Empire and large communities in the areas round Smyrna (now Izmir) and in Turkey in Europe.

Answer: All of these

A few Armenians belonged to the commercial and intellectual élite; many had jobs that were above average in pay but were not particularly prestigious, and even more farmed in Eastern Anatolia. It was this combination of factors that made it easy for Ottoman governments to scapegoat the Armenians, subject them to pogroms and ultimately to genocide.

Answer: False

The Armenians had long been officially recognized as one of ethnic and religious minorities (or "millets") of the Empire. Though they were subject to certain disabilities, major difficulties didn't emerge till the 1860s at the earliest, when the negotations for a new "constitution" for the Armenian millet ran into lengthy delays.

Answer: 1894-96

In 1894 there was a rebellion against the authorities in some of the predominantly Armenian provinces of Eastern Anatolia. The Turks responded with massacres. In 1896, a small group of Armenian extremists seized the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople in order to draw attention to their plight. The authorities responded by slaughtering between 6,000 and 8,000 Armenians in the streets of Constantinople, often in full view of Western diplomats.

In all, in the massacres of 1894-96 at least 200,000 Armenians were slaughtered. By the definitions used in the late 20th and early 21st centuries this series of massacres would in itself be considered genocide.

Massacres had become routine practice in the Ottoman Empire, starting with the notorious Tower of Skulls in Nis (Nish) in Serbia (1809). Massacres and other atrocities were widely used by the Ottomans against the Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians and other peoples who rebelled.

Answer: That some Armenians had gone over to the Russians on the Caucasus Front

Many historians are willing to concede that a few hundred Armenians changed sides and that a handful of extremists were urging Armenians to desert. None of this even begins to justify genocide.

Answer: They were forced to march, with inadequate food and water, to camps in Syria

The victims were marched in hot weather from Eastern Anatolia and other parts of the Ottoman Empire to the Syrian desert around Deir al-Zor, about 170 miles (270 km) SE of Aleppo, where they were herded into camps - and denied sufficient food and water. During the march, mounted Kurdish (and other) bandits, acting with government encouragement, attacked the Armenians.

Some Armenians were also drowned in the Black Sea.

Answer: False

On the contrary, the Turkish establishment has gone to great lengths to deny the Armenian Holocaust. They often claim that there was a mass insurrection in Eastern Anatolia, that had to be put down by force and that the Armenians had to be moved away from areas near the war zone. They claim that civil war ensued in Eastern Anatolia and that 300,000 Armenians and an approximately equal number of Turks perished. They deny all independent and Armenian evidence of the genocide.

That the Turkish action was genocide is confirmed by the fact that Armenians far away from Anatolia were massacred, and others were rounded up and marched to the Syrian desert. Neither the very old nor the very young were spared.

Answer: All of these

A handful of Turkish officials refused to round up and massacre the Armenians and were dismissed - for example, the governor of Angora (now Ankara) - and in many cases written records of these dismissals and of the correspondence exist. The American Ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, collected evidence which he passed on to Washington. In WWI Germany and the Ottoman Empire were allies. A number of German soldiers witnessed the holocaust and the German Ambassador in Constantinople, Count Wolff-Metternich, also collected evidence. Indeed, in 1916 he protested to the Ottoman government about the genocide. He also pointed out that it was completely irrational and accused the Turks of undermining the war effort. The German writer and journalist, Armin T. Wegner, also took photographs of the camps and of starving Armenians and smuggled them out of the Ottoman Empire.

In addition, the chief planners of the Armenian Holocaust - Enver, Talaat and Ahmed Djemal - were tried for a range of crimes (including the slaughter of the Armenians) by a Turkish military court in 1918-19 and sentenced to death in July, 1919. Turks sometimes object that this court had the British and French breathing down its neck. However, this doesn't in itself invalidate the evidence.

Answer: 1922

After WWI the Ottoman government accepted the harsh Treaty of Sèvres, but in Turkey a group of rebels, headed by Kemal Atatürk, renewed the war. The genocide restarted in 1920, culminating in 1922 in the large-scale massacre of Armenians and Greeks in Smyrna, now Izmir. (During WWI the Armenians there had been protected by the Germans). Those Armenians and Greeks who were not murdered were thrown out of Turkey.

Many of the Armenian survivors settled in the US, especially in California; in Europe the preferred destination was France.

The figure of about 1.5 million murdered given in the introduction includes the whole period 1915-22.