Abstract
Between 1915-1917, 1.5 million Armenians were sent on death marches and killed as part of the Ottoman Empire’s campaign to exterminate its Armenian population. While many works have been published about the Armenian Genocide, few studies have relied on survivor testimonies. This study is based on a collection of Genocide survivor interviews gathered between the 1970s to 1990s. For this project, 350 preliminary sampling data sheets were examined to select interviews that describe stories of intervention. Afterwards, the selected interview transcripts were read to better understand the circumstances surrounding these events.
The purpose of this paper is to focus on the types of action and the category of non-Armenian individuals who acted to save Armenians. The classification scheme will identify different ways people intervened, and the types of individuals who intervened to establish a relationship between the kind of intervention and category of person. The types of action which resulted in preventing or delaying death are divided into two large categories—legal means (advocacy and exemption) and illegal or subversive acts (providing shelter, safe passage, warning, and food; and protection by government officials).
The most dominant category of intervention was providing shelter, encompassing a wide range of subcategories with very different motivations. This category includes those who were adopted, bought as slaves, kidnapped, married, and resided with families. The next largest category was providing safe passage which included providing information about safe routes to take and putting deportees on trains other than the intended ones that would have led to certain death. The third largest category, exemption, refers to those whose lives were saved because of government-granted exemptions. Often these individuals had relatives serving in the army, possessed skills that were considered to be of value to Turkish society, or were of a particular religious denomination. Many other lives were saved as a result of warnings about impending danger, or through the advocacy of non-Armenians who interceded to rescue lives. In the last two categories, individuals were provided with food or protection by government officials.
Since the Genocide occurred in the Ottoman Empire, not surprisingly, the majority of individuals who assisted Armenians in all categories of intervention were Turks. However, it is worth noting that many other ethnic groups (Arabs, Kurds, Azeri, Assyrian, Circassian, American, German, Russian, and Dane) came to the assistance of Armenians. The lives of those who survived were protected through the legal and subversive actions of these individuals.
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