Bundespräsidialamt
PressRelease (OpenReader’sReply)Subjecttochange.
Translation of advance
text.Thespeechonline:
Berlin, 23.04.2015
Words of remembrance
by Federal President Joachim Gauck
following the “Ecumenical service at the Berliner Dom to
commemorate the genocide suffered by the Armenians,
Aramaeans and Pontian Greeks”, held by the Protestant
Church in Germany, the German Bishops’ Conference and
the Diocese of the Armenian Church of Germany,
on 23 April 2015,
Berliner Dom
Greeks: See: Inter allied report of 1919-1922 Greek atrocities. (Regrettably Clergies is imposed in science or documented history, instead of scholars) Also: The Greek retreat, followed by the scenes at Smyrna, forms a sickening record of bestiality and barbarity >.[British Foreign Office Rumbold to Curzon no.440, 19 Sept. 1922: FO 371/7891.]
This service commemorates the hundreds of thousands of Armenians who fell victim to planned and systematic murder a century ago.
SeeAt. # 1:WW-1 total casualties are close to 40 million, Armenian losses are not mentioned because they area drop in the bucket. 200.000 Armenians died in fights against home country serving enemies, another 195.000 died of hunger and epidemics in Armenia during their Republic June 1918 to Dec. 1920. Evidencing documents are irrefutable. .
Men, women, children and the aged were deported, sent on death marches, abandoned in the steppe and desert without any shelter or food, burned alive, hunted down and beaten to death, and shot dead indiscriminately.
These are all (Armenian style) unproven slanders, contradicting many US & Russian Official Reports. See At. # 2 for evidencing irrefutable documents! There is not a single official document or neutral eye witness: No one was burned or beaten; shortage of food was throughout all countries since Britain blockaded all ports and used “famine as a war weapon”. Famine and epidemics killed all. Strangely there is no reference “why innocent Armenians were forced to be relocated in other part of the country”!
This planned and calculated criminal act was meted out against the Armenians for one reason, and one reason only: because they were Armenians. A similar fate befell their fellow sufferers – Pontian Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians.
Greeks replied above. Armenians in war zones and strategic points sabotaging supply lines were temporarily resettled in other parts. Armenian volunteers who were hiding and fed by houses no longer could be sheltered. They had to go to Russia; the Turkish armies kept busy “after the Allied landings” at Gallipoli were freed and went to the front where even 15 years old children were drafted. Your advisors omitted two important documents A :# 3A-. General Commander of the Ottoman Army (by secret agreement) as General Liman von Sanders and all demands and orders came from him. Envelope contains copy of secret agreement Aug.2.1914. Additional American evidence provided clarifying that“it was General Sanders who started the deportations”. Furthermore, GeneralBronsart von Schellendorf, was General Staff of the Ottoman Army and deputy of War Minister Enver Pasha with authority to sign War Ministry documents! These evidences are undeniable!
2- The following statement dated March 1, 1920 by League of Nations General Secretary Sir Eric Drummond releases Turkish Governments in individual banditries; bandits did not make any separation. “Further, in Turkey, minorities were often oppressed and massacres carried out by irregular bands who were entirely outside the control of the central Turkish Government.
With our present day knowledge, and against the backdrop of the political and humanitarian horrors of recent decades, it is to us clear today that the fate of the Armenians exemplifies the history of mass annihilations, ethnic cleansing, deport- ations, even genocides that marred the twentieth century in such a terrible way.
This “pub-type” generalization by empty words only (but absolutely no written or neutral eye witnessing) is a distortion of the “true horrors performed by Armenians with refinements of cruelty. Evidencing official documents provided inside A.# 4. (Captain Emory Niles and General Harbord & Admiral Bristol, also Russian General’s reports). In A.# 5 we submit official requirements for the crime of genocide which must be decided upon by a tribunal in the country it is claimed to have happened OR an International Authorized Tribunal. U.N. has acknowledged only Jewish Holocaust and Rwanda cases as genocide, both based on legal verdicts. We are speaking serious history and legal procedures, where we hear only empty words for unilateral accusations made in absentia, even without asking a counter opinion or defense. This Press Release exhibits how easy politicians can fall into pits of tricks. Sir, you are not Authorized Judge to decide for what happened a century ago, not even knowing the great services of the “Armenian Legion in WW-2 in the Nazi Army. Sir, it seems you were not told about General(Butcher)DroKanajan’s dedication to Hitler up to last minute? See some evidences in A.#6 also that Turkish diplomats saved about 10.000 Jews from Vichy France and quarreled with Nazis!. It is indeed regretful to see your Office defending the “Armenian adventurers not knowing even your own history”!
These crimes were committed in the shadows of wars; war also served to legitimize these barbaric acts. This is what happened to the Armenians in the First World War. This is what also happened elsewhere over the course of the last century. And this is what sometimes continues to happen to many other religious and national minorities today. They were branded variously as spies, as the henchmen of foreign powers, as troublemakers threatening national unity, as enemies of the people or enemies by race, or as pathogens infecting the body politic.
You’re Excellency, don’t such gossip words without a thread of evidence, shadow the seriousness of the claim?
We remember the victims so that they and their fate are not forgotten. We remember them for their own sake. Above all, in doing so we call to mind the inalienable dignity of every human being! While this dignity cannot be destroyed, there is unlimited potential for running roughshod over it by violating and crushing it underfoot.
Sir, these slanders by imaginations without evidence, is not worthy even for a school composition!
We remember the victims so that they are once again given a voice, so that their story is told – a story that was supposed to vanish without a trace.
Yes, we remember the victims also for our own sake. We can only preserve our humanity by ensuring that it is not only the victors and the memory of the living that determine history, but that those who were beaten, the missing, the betrayed and the annihilated, also have a voice.
Your Excellency Turks have a list by date, place and event names of over 500.000 Moslems butchered by Armenians as confirmed in the American Reports; the total WW-1 Casualties are close to 40 million, Germany about 7 million with over 1.7 million dead. The net Armenian deaths in-between 1914 – 1922 calculated by Prof. McCarthy for all reasons (apart from 200.000 who died in fights and 195.000 died in their own country) is at maximum 200 to 250.000. When speaking of humanity of Armenians do you imply inhumanity of all others?
Commemorating the victims would only be half of the act of remembrance if we failed to talk about the perpetrators. There are no victims without perpetrators. The perpetrators, the then rulers of the Ottoman Empire and their henchmen – as essentially all perpetrators of racially, ethnically or religiously motivated mass murder – were convinced, to the point of fanaticism, that what they were doing was right.
In early 1916 Ottomans put on military trials more than 1600 cases of wrong doings and crimes duringrelocation. Some 400 were found innocent. Over 1200 person (67 hanged) were heavily penalized including high ranking officials. The Ottomans were fighting for their life because t heir own citizens had joined the enemy and revolted in every part. The Armenians in the Western parts were not moved and some 250.000 Armenians themselves went with the Russian army when they retreated. This historical fact is untold. Also after the 30.10.1918 surrender with the Mudros Cease Fire, the new Ottoman Government, in February 1919 tried to organize a neutral court composed by two judges from Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Holland and Denmark. All these countries (after having consulted Britain) refused the invitation, The Grand Vizier had to resign, 144 dignitaries were arrested and imprisoned in Malta waiting for legal trial which could not commence because there was no evidence to prove all these inflated rumors and charges. Yes, why you have not been told your Excellency? The Armenian drafters will never mention facts and will keep telling their own tales of horror!
The Young Turkish ideology saw in the concept of an ethnically homogeneous nation state with a uniform religion an alternative to the lost tradition of the coexistence of different peoples and religions in the collapsing Ottoman Empire. Division along ethnic lines, ethnic cleansing and expulsions often formed the darker side of the emergence of nation states at the beginning of the 20th century. However, ideologies preaching unity and purity often lead to exclusion and expulsion and, ultimately, to murderous acts. In the Ottoman Empire, this developed a genocidal dynamic to which the Armenian people fell victim.
These are again fabricated charges directly belied by various documents. Armenians were given high posts such as Ministers, Mayors, high administrators, Army Officers… Poetic slanders such as “genocidal dynamics” may satisfy the “brain washed fanatics to show themselves as all time victims” and not educated criminals. A.#7
We are currently right in the middle of a necessary debate on which term most appropriately describes events that took place one hundred years ago. But let us ensure that this debate is not boiled down to differences in terminology. What matters above all is – even after one hundred years – to recognise, deplore and mourn the systematic annihilation of a people in all of its terrible reality. If we fail to do this, we will lose sight of the compass that guides our actions – and also lose respect for ourselves.
The genocide claim is said to have happened in 1915s, but strange enough it was never mentioned and written by Armenians until 1965s, when it was introduced to support the Dashnakist old time money embezzling; this time asking contributions to support training of Armenian terrorists in Bekaavalley, who killed over 40 diplomats in more than 250 acts of terror! See A. # 8for assorted documents, readthe Berlin Blackmarket, German barracks becoming place for Dashnakist methods of money swindling. It is all there, if you care to read like I did several ten thousand pages of authentic documents. Sir, you’re dictating, not debating!
If we achieve understanding in our assessment of history, if we call injustice by its name even if our people were guilty of such injustice, if we are united in our commitment to respecting rights and human rights in our daily lives, then we will manage to preserve the dignity of the victims and create a shared humane basis for coexistence at home and beyond borders.
Not worth reading or answering in a debate on a history a century ago! Letdocuments speak, no empty words!
We are not putting anyone alive today into the dock by remembering this. The perpetrators of this crime committed long ago are no longer with us, and their children and their children’s children cannot be found guilty. However, what the descendants of the victims are rightfully entitled to expect is that historical facts, and thus historical guilt, are recognized. It is part of the responsibility of those living today to feel a sense of commitment to respecting and protecting the right to life and human rights of each and every individual, and also of each and every minority.
Treason is guilt punishable by killing right on spot. I remember during WW-2 if a German soldier was in Paris killed by French Resistance, immediately “any 50 persons” on street were picked and shot the same moment. Crime and punishment cannot be transferred, endorsed or inherited. Laws do not work backwards. Genocide is a crime to be decided by an authorized Court verdict and can be applied for crimes only after 1948. Descendants of victims are also descendants of Revolutionaries who massacred (500.000) innocent Muslims. After 30.10.1918 every one was permitted to return and demand their losses which were immediately met by the Governmentunder Occupation. Even capitulations were reinstated. At the Lausanne Treaty a grace period of 2 years was granted to everyone to come and regain his/her nationalityand properties. More than half of the deported people returned back, those who were happier in the exiled places, did not return. We need not empty advices from persons who did not study history and old readjustments.
In the case of the Armenians, we therefore follow no other principle than that of our deep-rooted human experience, which teaches us that we cannot free ourselves from guilt by denying, suppressing or trivializing it. We in Germany have painstakingly, and often after shameful procrastination, learned to remember the crimes committed in the National Socialist period – above all the persecution and annihilation of Europe’s Jews. And, in so doing, we have also learned to differentiate between the guilt of the perpetrators, which must be recognized unconditionally, and the responsibility of their descendants to engage in appropriate acts of commemoration.
This type of Armenian-fanatic written nonsense erases the respectability of this paper. The shameful act is to deceive people who do not know truths and build an industry to earn money by selling lies and hatred!A.#9
It is utterly important and clearly justified to remember, also here in Germany, the murder of the Armenian people. Descendants of Armenians and Turks live here, and each has their own story to tell. It is important, however, for the sake of peaceful coexistence, for us all to follow the same objective principles when coming to terms with the past.
In this case, we Germans as a whole must also take part in this process insofar as we share responsibility, perhaps even guilt, in the genocide committed against the Armenians.
Excellency, there were about 10.000 German officers and soldiers fighting and dying withTurks. Why you do not have a “single German document” (other than fanatic Lepsius’ lies) to prove the charges. SeeGeneralBronsart von Schellendorf’sarticle “Deutsche AllgemeineZeitung # 342, July 24,1921. He lived and knew everything since he was the General Staff Commander and also “deputy of the Turkish Minister of War”! A.#10YourExcellency is it that you do not trust your high ranked General but you believe in this type of trash?Yes, Germany must take part in this process by first teach the 22.000 men 812th Battalion, later Armenian Legion (4.800 SS). Read their devotion to Hitler in February 1945 German-Armenian HAYASTAN paper, two months before Hitler committed suicide. Read Arthur Derounian’s visit to Berlin and his notes on Dashnak Armenians and later how they became “poor Displaced Persons” and were admitted into USA with special tariffs. Even General Dro (Russians wanted him badly) was accepted into USA. A.# 11
German military officers were involved in planning, and to an extent in carrying out, the deportations. Advice from German observers and diplomats, who plainly recognized the destructive intent behind the actions taken against the Armenians, was overlooked and ignored. At the end of the day, what the German Reich wanted least was to damage relations with their Ottoman ally. Reich Chancellor BethmannHollweg, who had been informed about the persecution of the Armenians in painstaking detail by a special envoy, remarked dryly in December 1915 that: “Our sole objective is to keep Turkey on our side until the end of the war, irrespective of whether Armenians are killed in the process or not.”
Chancellor Hollweg knew everything from the very start because it was him to authorize Wangenheim to sign agreement with Turks. New Ambassador Metternich was a religion sympathizer and he cabled to Berlin without even knowing Wangenheim’s accord. Metternich’s manners was not liked by PM Talat, who did not want to see him,. He was called back soon.Hollweg’sanswer makessense; he knew the story and wanted victory!A#12
But there were also Germans, most notably the highly dedicated Johannes Lepsius, whose publishing activities made the suffering of the Armenian people known around the world.
Lepsius was a fanatic Protestant, he came to Istanbul in mid July 1915 when deportations started. The German Ambassador did not talk to him, he was not wanted. He talked to Morgenthau 3-4 times and several times to the Armenian Patriarch and got a handful of “fabricated – rumor” documents, which he used in getting more relief money from the Swiss Red Cross. Lepsius lies and bias can be read in..Talaat Pasha’s Murder (15.3.1921): A Parody in the Courts of Berlin Belying 'The Miller of Sansoucci Legend of Justice' (1)