Smyrna 1922. Das Tagebuch des Garabed Hatscherian
Der armenische Arzt Garabed Hatscherian war einer der wenigen Überlebenden des Massakers, in dem im September 1922 in Smyrna (heute Izmir) etwa 150.000 Griechen und Armenier von der türkischen Armee des Mustafa Kemal Pascha Atatürk niedergemetzelt wurden. Das in einer armenischen, griechischen, englischen, französischen, russischen und auch einer türkischen Ausgabe erschienene Werk gehört zu den bedeutendsten Quellen über den türkischen Völkermord an Griechen und Armeniern nach dem 1. Weltkrieg. Es besitzt einen hohen Quellenwert durch die Gleichzeitigkeit der Aufzeichnungen. Das brutale Vorgehen von Polizei und Militär wird beschrieben, Massenvergewaltigungen der Frauen, Niederbrennen ganzer Stadtviertel und die sadistische Quälerei der Unschuldigen, die von türkischen Milizen auch aus anderem Zusammenhang bekannt sind. Das Tagebuch schließt nach der Rettung durch ein amerikanisches Schiff: Trotz der vielen schlaflosen Nächte, die ich hinter mir habe, kann ich kein Auge schließen. Die schauderhaften Erlebnisse im Hafen von Punta kehren eins nach dem anderen zurück und bleiben in meinem Gedächtnis haften. Ich kann nicht zur Ruhe finden. In diesen Minuten äußerster Bedrängnis und Verzweiflung beobachte ich die Schönheit des gestirnten Himmels und ich frage mich, ob es noch Sinn hat, dieses ungewisse Leben, nach all den vielen Leiden und Verlusten, fortzusetzen. Jetzt, wo meine Frau und meine Kinder geborgen sind, denke ich an meine Mutter, an meinen Bruder und die Seinigen sowie an die vielen nahen Verwandten meiner Frau, die wir in Akhisar zurückgelassen haben. Was mag ihnen wohl zugestoßen sein?
Smyrna 1922. Das Tagebuch des Garabed Hatscherian: Amazon.de: Garabed Hatscherian, Dora Sakayan: Bücher
Die Massaker der Türkei waren einer der schlimmsten Verbrechen, noch heute feiern die Türken es als "Befreiung"
Hier auch noch mal ein sehr interessanter Artikel (nur auf Englisch) :
Turks seem to rejoice watching a massacred Christian family. Even babies were tortured and massacred.
Armenian & Greek Genocide
by Turkish Muslims against Christians
The world turned its head while large-scale "religious cleansing" took place
The 1st Genocide of the 20th Century
Before the Nazi's slaughtered 6 million Jews, before the Khmer Rouge killed 1.7 million of their fellow Cambodians, before Rwandan Hutus killed 800,000 ethnic Tutsis, the Armenians of Turkey endured mass slaughter at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. The centuries of Turkish rule reduced Asia Minor, the epicenter of western civilization and Christendom, into a bloody Islamic cesspool which culminated in a genocide by Turks against Armenian and Greek Christian populations.
The Armenian Genocide, occurred when 2 million Armenians living in Turkey were eliminated from their historic homeland through forced deportation and massacres by the Turks. As Turkish authorities forced them out of eastern Turkey, Armenians say they lost 1.5 million people in 1915-23, during and after World War I. Turkey says the death count is inflated and that the deaths were a result of civil unrest. To this day Turkey denies the Armenian genocide, but history cannot be hidden or rewritten.
Even Adolf Hitler cited the killing of the Armenians as a precedent for his own slaughter of the Jews two decades later.
"Kill without mercy!" the Nazi leader told his military on the eve of the Holocaust. "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" See reference for this statement by Hitler at the very bottom.
Armenians
For three thousand years, a thriving Armenian community had existed inside the vast region of the Middle East bordered by the Black, Mediterranean and Caspian Seas. The area, known as Asia Minor, stands at the crossroads of three continents; Europe, Asia and Africa. Great powers rose and fell over the many centuries and the Armenian homeland was at various times ruled by Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Mongols. Following the advent of Christianity, Armenia became the very first nation to accept it as the state religion. In 301 A.D., Armenia became the first nation to officially declare itself Christian. A golden era of peace and prosperity followed which saw the invention of a distinct alphabet, a flourishing of literature, art, commerce, and a unique style of architecture. By the 10th century, Armenians had established a new capital at Ani, affectionately called the "city of a thousand and one churches." In the eleventh century, the first Turkish (Seljuk Turks) invasion of the Armenian homeland occurred. The Muslim Turkish king, Alp Arslan invaded Armenia, and sacked its capital city Ani in 1064 A.D. This began several hundred years of rule by Muslim Turks. By the sixteenth century, Armenia had been absorbed into the vast and mighty Ottoman Empire. At its peak, this Turkish empire included much of Southeast Europe, North Africa, and almost all of the Middle East.
But by the 1800s the once powerful Ottoman Empire was in serious decline. For centuries, it had spurned technological and economic progress, while the nations of Europe had embraced innovation and became industrial giants. Turkish armies had once been virtually invincible. Now, they lost battle after battle to modern European armies.
As the Ottoman empire gradually disintegrated, formerly subject peoples including the Greeks, Serbs and Romanians achieved their long-awaited independence. Only the Armenians and the Arabs of the Middle East remained stuck in the backward and nearly bankrupt empire, now under the autocratic rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Ottoman misrule had made the Armenians, a prosperous minority despite its political disadvantages, sympathetic to Russia. Between 1894 and 1896 over 100,000 inhabitants of Armenian villages were massacred during widespread pogroms conducted by the Sultan's special regiments.
Sultan Abdul-Hamid II known in history as the "Red Sultan" carried out a series of massacres of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. The worst of the massacres occurred in 1895, resulting in the death of 100,000 to 300,000 civilians, and leaving tens of thousands destitute. Most of those killed were men. In many towns, the central marketplace and other Armenian-owned businesses were destroyed, usually by conflagration.