Dr. Glendale-Hilmar Kaiser explored a new facet of the disputedArmenian genocide in a lecture last Thursday that discussed howyoung Armenian children were able to escape death, though usuallyat the expense of parting with their parents.
"Armenian children had a strong chance of survival" during theperiod of the starvation, abuse and loss of more than a millionArmenians that took place in the early 20th century, said Kaiser, aGerman scholar of the genocide.
Kaiser described the genocide's devastating nature on Turkey'swider Armenian population using authentic and often graphic photosof the genocide.
Armenian girls and boys younger than age 13 were often spared,however, because the Turkish government felt it was "possible forArmenian children to be assimilated into Turkish culture," Kaisersaid.
Marriage into a Turkish family would save girls, especiallyyounger girls, from a more disastrous fate in the genocide's deathmarches across the Anatolia region.
"A saving grace for Armenian girls is the Turkish socialstructure," Kaiser said. "An Armenian woman who married a Turkishman automatically became Turkish by association."
The Turkish government also provided funds specifically to "feedthe Armenian children," because they were also useful laborers,Kaiser said.
For this reason, there also "was a clear pattern for survival ofboys" because they were needed to "work as shepherds, camel herdersand farmhands," Kaiser said.
Armenian children were spared because of their importance inTurkey's textile industry as well. Their small hands could reachinto the spokes of the spinning machines to retrieve bits ofunprocessed cotton, making them "essential to the industry. Withoutthem, the textile industry surely would have collapsed," Kaisersaid.
But hundreds of thousands of older Armenians were removed fromtheir villages and provinces within Turkish territories, supposedlyto be "relocated" to distant and isolated pockets of the empiresuch as Azur.
Instead, the Armenians were subject to a "systematic exposure tostarvation, dehydration and contagious diseases," Kaiser said.
The Turkish government still denies to this day that there was agenocide, claiming that Armenian populations were simply removedfrom a "war zones."
But some Armenian children, though they were able to avoid thedeath marches and forced relocations, were exposed to anotherextreme hardship: prostitution.
Kaiser said that "there was rampant child prostitution and rapealong Turkey's railroads during this period. Children eight yearsold and even younger were prostituted in these regions."
The origins of the genocide lie partly in the surging fearwithin Ottoman Turkey that its Armenian population had sided withthe Russian forces during World War I.
The immediate genocidal period lasted from about April 1915until Sept. 1916, according to Kaiser. It began with the executionsof hundreds of Armenian leaders who had been fooled into gatheringin Istanbul.
Although Kaiser said that conflicting data and statistics makeit difficult to determine precisely how many Armenians weremurdered during the genocide, "the Armenian population could havesuffered about 1.5 million losses."
Kaiser defined a "loss" not simply as a death, but rather as afunctioning member of the Armenian community who, for whateverreason, could no longer rejoin it after the genocide.
"How many people were ravaged by disease and made infertile? Howmany were reduced to insanity by the death marches? How manyArmenian women were married into Turkish families?" Kaisersaid.
And though Kaiser stressed that the genocide was rapidly plannedand carried out by the Turkish government, he said that "there wasno long-term conspiracy to kill Armenians."
Rather, "it occurred when the Turks had every reason to believethat their last hour had come [as a result of World War I]."
"[It was more] the Turks saying 'we'll take care of theArmenians before we go down ourselves,'" Kaiser said.
Kaiser was invited to speak by the Tufts Armenian Club. About 30people attended the discussion, which took place Thursday night inEaton Hall.
