English transcript

...truth, but in this particular case, the point

that was being made was that the massacre of

the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was the

same as what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany.

And that is a downright falsehood. What happened

to the Armenians was the result of a massive

Armenian armed rebellion against the Turks,

which began even before war broke out and continued

on a larger scale. Great numbers of Armenians,

including members of the armed forces, deserted,

crossed the frontier and joined the Russian

forces invading Turkey. Armenian rebels actually

seized the city of Van and held it for a while,

intending to hand it over to the invaders. Um,

there was guerrilla warfare all over Anatolia.

I mean, this was what we nowadays call a national

liberation movement of the Armenians against

Turkey. And, uh, the Turks certainly resorted

to very ferocious methods in repelling it. There

is clear evidence of a decision by the Turkish

government to deport the Armenian population

from the sensitive areas, which meant virtually

the whole of Anatolia, uh, not including the

Arab provinces which were then still part of

the Ottoman Empire. There is no evidence of

a decision to massacre. On the contrary, there

is considerable evidence of attempts to prevent

it, which were not very successful. Yes, there

were tremendous massacres. The numbers are very

uncertain, but a million may well be likely.

Uh, the massacres were carried out by irregulars,

by local villagers responding to what had been

done to them, and in a number of other ways.

But to make this a parallel with the Holocaust

in Germany, you would have to assume that the

Jews of Germany had been engaged in an armed

rebellion against the German state, collaborating

with the allies against Germany. That in the

deportation order, the cities of Hamburg and

Berlin were exempted, that persons in the employment

of the state were exempted, and that the deportation

only applied to the Jews of Germany proper,

so that when they got to Poland they were welcomed

and sheltered by the Polish Jews. This seems

to me a rather absurd parallel. Okay, I'm going

to go over here. My name...