Wider Massacre

Armenian genocide victims
also included Iraqi Christians.

Don Coheni Contributing Writer

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8 CHALDEAN NEWS I JEWISH NEWS

May 2011

exhibit at the Holocaust Memorial
Center in Farmington Hills through
20th-century Chaldean
early July) has no hesitation in
accepting Chaldeans as fellow victims
history is uncovered, and
of the Turks.
"They [the Muslim Turks] wanted
it's tragic. Hundreds of
purification. They didn't care,' he says.
"The major thing was to get rid of
thousands of Chaldeans
the Armenians because of the size of
their population. But they wanted to
were murdered along with 1.5 mil-
get rid of all of the Christians:'
lion Armenians and other Christian
At the opening of the Barsamian
minorities as part of what is now
exhibit on March 24, Dr. Sanjian
widely recognized as the Armenian
outlined current scholarship on the
genocide.
Armenian genocide. Western schol-
"It is more and more
ars believe that up to 1.5
apparent to historians
million of an Armenian
that this is an issue,'
population of 2.1 mil-
says Dr. Ara Sanjian,
lion were killed by the
associate professor of
Ottoman Turks between
history and director of
the spring of 1915 and
the Armenian Research
the end of 1916."By the
Center at University of
end of 1915, 800,000 were
Michigan-Dearborn.
already massacred or con-
"There were other
verted," he said.
Christians, Assyrians,
Others were marched
Syriacs and Greeks
to Aleppo, which was a
pushed out of their
major Ottoman city for
Robert Barsamia n
ancestral homes and
centuries before becom-
massacred. Including
ing part of Syria. "Eight
them now becomes an
hundred and seventy
imperative,' he says.
thousand people made it
Sanjian refers to a
to Aleppo; and 630,000 of
2006 book by Swedish
them were later killed:'
academic David Gaunt
The number of
titled Massacres,
Chaldeans killed is esti-
Resistance, Protectors:
mated at more than half a
Muslim-Christian
million. Research into the
Relations in Eastern
persecution and deaths of
Anatolia during World
the Armenians and other
War L The book pro-
Christians has been hin-
Dr. Ara Sanjian
vided new informa-
dered by the Turkish gov-
tion regarding Assyrian Christian
ernment, which refuses to open its
minorities caught up in the genocide
official files and actively opposes the
named for the Armenian victims.
use of the term genocide to describe
The Chaldean Catholic Church is
the killings.
united with Rome while the Assyrian
Germany, a World War I ally of
Church of the East does not fall under Turkey, helped Turkey in its geno-
Roman jurisdiction. Both continue to
cidal plans. In 1939, when consid-
use Aramaic, the language spoken by
ering his plans for genocide, Nazi
J esus Christ.
Germany's Adolf Hitler famously
Robert Barsamian, the Dallas-
asked:
based artist whose work focuses on
"Who, after all, speaks today of the
the Armenian experience (and is on
annihilation of the Armenians?" ',T3 C: