One hundred and eight years ago, the world witnessed one of the most shameful examples of inhumanity ever seen.
In the shadow of World War I, the Ottoman government embarked on a program to eliminate an entire ancient culture and population. In full view of the entire world, more than 1.5 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire perished through starvation, forced deportation and outright murder. The circumstances of the killings involved horrific and repeated instances of bestiality and depravity. Men women and children were stripped of their property, their dignity and ultimately their lives. Theodore Roosevelt referred to the atrocities as “the greatest crime of the war.” The brutalities were witnessed and reported by high ranking U.S. officials.
The world watched but did not intervene as the genocide, a word which did not yet exist, unfolded. Years later, in 1944, a young scholar named Raphael Lemkin coined the word and cited the Armenian atrocities as a primary example.