Common fate, different experience: Gender-specific aspects of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Volumn 19, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 1-25

  Derderian, Katharine ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARMENIA; ARTICLE; CULTURAL FACTOR; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNIC GROUP; ETHNOLOGY; GENDER IDENTITY; HISTORY; HOMICIDE; HUMAN; LEGAL ASPECT; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; RESEARCH; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; SOCIAL STATUS; VIOLENCE; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS;

ARMENIA; CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS; ETHNIC GROUPS; GENDER IDENTITY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HOMICIDE; HUMANS; PREJUDICE; RESEARCH; SOCIAL CONDITIONS; VIOLENCE; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS;

EID: 34247673230     PISSN: 87566583     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hgs/dci001     Document Type: Article

References (106)

1. See Kurt Jonassohn and Frank Chalk, "A Typology of Genocide and Some Implications for the Human Rights Agenda," in Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death, ed. Isidor Wallimann and Michael Dobkowski (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), pp. 3-20, esp. pp. 12-15, where the authors treat the process of real or fictive definition of the victim by a dominant group
2. Ruth Seifert, "Krieg und Vergewaltigung: Ansätze zu einer Analyse" in Massenvergewaltigung: Krieg gegen die Frauen, ed. Alexandra Stiglmayer (Freiburg: Kore, 1993), pp. 85-108
3. See, for example, Gisela Bock, "Equality and Difference in National Socialist Racism" in Feminism and History, ed. Joan Wallach Scott (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 267-90
4. Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman, eds., Women in the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998)
5. Carol Rittner and John K. Roth, eds., Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust (New York: Paragon House, 1993)
6. and Roger W. Smith, "Women and Genocide: Notes on an Unwritten History," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 8:3 (Winter 1994), pp. 315-34
7. Gerayer Koutcharian, Der Siedlungsraum der Armenier unter dem Einfluss der historischpolitischen Ereignisse seit dem Berliner Kongress 1878: Eine politisch-geographische Analyse und Dokumentation (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1989), pp. 126-27. The exact Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire and the number of Armenian victims of the Genocide have long been the subject of debate
8. see Richard G. Hovannisian, Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 34-37
9. Hovannisian, Armenia on the Road to Independence, p. 37
10. Ara Sarafian, ed., United States Official Documents, 5 vols. [Watertown, MA: Armenian Review, 1993], vol. 2, pp. xii, 118-19)
11. On the history of the Young Turks and their Turkist and Turanist ideologies, see Mihran Dabag, "Katastrophe und Identität: Verfolgung und Erinnerung in der armenischen Gemeinschaft" in Hanno Loewy and Bernhard Moltmann, eds., Erlebnis-Gedächtnis-Sinn: Authentische und konstruierte Erinnerung (Frankfurt: Campus, 1996), pp. 177-235, esp. p. 189ff
12. See for example Johannes Lepsius, Rapport secret sur les massacres d'Arménie (Beirut: Edition Hamaskaíne, 1968), pp. 44-49, or New York Times reports confirming that the majority of deportees were women and children (see Richard D. Kloian, The Armenian Genocide: News Accounts from the American Press, 1915-1922 [Richmond, CA: ACC Books, 1985], pp. 20, 142, 148)
13. Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Armenian Genocide in Official Turkish Sources: Collected Essays," Journal of Political and Military Sociology 22:1 (1994), p. 121 n. 63
14. Rouben Adalian, "The Armenian Genocide" in Genocide in the Twentieth Century: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, ed. Samuel Totten, William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charny (New York: Garland, 1995), pp. 49-96
15. Taner Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord: Die Istanbuler Prozesse und die türkische Nationalbewegung (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1996), pp. 61-70
16. Sarafian, United States Official Documents, vol. 1, pp. xv-xxii. While Turkish historiography continues to insist that the deportations were simply a resettlement, documents released from the Ottoman archives to date give no evidence of the arrival or resettlement of any deportees
17. See Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, "Women and Children of the Armenian Genocide" in The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New York: St. Martin's, 1992), p. 213, for a comprehensive list of institutional and individual oral history projects in the United States, representing an estimated 1,696 audio and 934 video interviews
18. Scholars of women's history argue for negotiating between larger patterns of social history and the experiences of individual women to provide an integrated account of historical events or movements. See Kathryn Anderson and Dana C. Jack, "Learning to Listen: Interview Techniques and Analyses" in Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History, ed. Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 11-26
19. and Ann D. Gordon, Mari Jo Buhle, and Nancy Schrom Dye, "The Problem of Women's History" in Liberating Women's History: Theoretical and Critical Essays, ed. Bernice A. Carroll (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), pp. 75-92
20. Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), p. 79
21. Helen Fein, "Genocide: A Sociological Perspective," Current Sociology 38:1 (1990), p. 24
22. Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Comparative Aspects of the Armenian and Jewish Cases of Genocide: A Socio-Historical Perspective" in Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, ed. Alan S. Rosenbaum (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996), pp. 111-13
23. Leo Kuper, Genocide:Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 41-42, 86ff
24. and Yves Ternon, Der verbrecherische Staat: Völkermord im 20. Jahrhundert (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1996), p. 140
25. Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Circumstances Surrounding the 1909 Adana Holocaust," Armenian Review 41:4 (1988), pp. 8-12
26. Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Naim-Andonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of Ottoman Armenians The Anatomy of a Genocide," International Journal of Middle East Studies 18:3 (1986), pp. 311-60, esp. pp. 314-18
27. idem, "The Secret Young-Turk Ittihadist Conference and the Decision for the World War I Genocide of the Armenians," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 7:2 (Fall 1993), pp. 174-75
28. Mabel Evelyn Elliott, Beginning Again at Ararat (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1924), pp. 26-29, 104, 185
29. Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1918), pp. 291, 321
30. Armenian women are reported to have feigned labor pains to avoid contact with perpetrators, camouflaged themselves as Americans or other foreigners, and even undertaken active resistance activities. See Elliott, Beginning Again at Ararat, pp. 254-55, 259-261
31. Zabel Essayan, "Chronique: Le rôle de la femme arménienne pendant la guerre," Revue des Études Arméniennes 2:1 (1922), passim
32. Stanley E. Kerr, The Lions of Marash: Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief, 1919-1922 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1973), pp. 165-66, 249
33. The family in Asia Minor was patriarchal; see James Creagh, Armenians, Koords, and Turks (London: S. Tinsley, 1880), p. 116
34. Lucy M. J. Garnett, The Women of Turkey and Their Folk-Lore, 2 vols. (London: David Nutt, 1890), vol. 1, pp. 202-7
35. Béatrice Kasbarian-Bricout, La société arménienne au XIXe siècle (Paris: Pensée universelle, 1981), pp. 58-59, 61-62
36. Raymond H. Kévorkian and Paul B. Paboudjian, Les Arméniens dans l'Empire Ottoman à la veille du génocide (Paris: Éditions d'art et d'histoire, 1992), pp. 61-62
37. Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 55-60. While Armenian men moved in the public sphere, Armenian women oversaw the household, including preparation of meals and the preservation of food for winter, cleaning and laundry, textile production, and child rearing; see Creagh, Armenians, Koords, and Turks, p. 92
38. Garnett, Women of Turkey, vol. 1, pp. 202, 215, 232-33
39. Susie Hoogasian Villa and Mary Kilbourne Matossian, Armenian Village Life before 1914 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1982), pp. 48-58, 110-15, 120-24
40. Kasbarian-Bricout, Société arménienne, pp. 40-43
41. Hratch A. Tarbassian, Erzurum (Garin): Its Armenian History and Traditions (New York: Garin Compatriotic Union of the United States, 1975), pp. 121, 129-31
42. As of the nineteenth century, most Armenian women, even in rural areas, had some schooling because of European and American missionary work as well as the more liberal Armenian attitudes toward women than in the general Ottoman population; see Fanny Davis, The Ottoman Lady: A Social History from 1718 to 1918 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1986), pp. 49-52, 61, 87-89
43. Norwegian Helsinki Committee, "Report: From a Journey to Turkey, April 3-14, 1981" (Oslo: EPD, 1981)
44. Deniz Kandiyoti, "End of Empire: Islam, Nationalism, and Women in Turkey" in Women, Islam, and the State, ed. Deniz Kandiyoti (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), pp. 22-47, esp. p. 29
45. Halidé Edib, Memoirs of Halidé Edib (New York: Century, 1926), p. 258
46. Das neue Turan: Ein türkisches Frauenschicksal (Weimar: Verlag Gustav Keipenheuer, 1916), pp. 7, 25, 38
47. and Turkey Faces West (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1930), pp. 5-6, 46, 129-32
48. Tessa Hofmann, ed., Der Völkermord an den Armeniern vor Gericht: Der Prozess Talaat Pascha (Göttingen: Die Gesellschaft, 1980 <1985>), pp. 133-36
49. Johannes Lepsius, Deutschland und Armenien, 1914-1918: Sammlung diplomatischer Aktenstücke (Potsdam: Der Tempelverlag, 1919), p. 113 (hereafter: DA)
50. United States Official Documents, vol. 2, p. 26
51. For example, Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 400-01: "It is evident that in genocide victim differences, whether among members of a single victim group or among several victim groups, are of little significance. The differences simply collapse into an abyss of irrelevance as they are leveled by the mechanisms and claws of a mammoth engine of destruction."
52. and idem, "The Experience of Women and Children," in Survivors, chap. 5
53. Eliz Sanasarian, "Gender Distinction in the Genocidal Process: A Preliminary Study of the Armenian Case," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 4:4 (Winter 1989), pp. 449-61, esp. pp. 453-55. Drawing on oral history interviews with fourteen female survivors, Sanasarian observes how Turkish, Arab, and Kurdish women were involved in the purchase and forced labor of Armenian women in their own households, as well as complicit in arranging forced marriages and even directly involved in genocidal violence. Sanasarian also recognizes the role of Ottoman women as rescuers, concluding, "No ethnic group or gender stands out as rescuers. Women acquired all possible roles traditionally ascribed to men; they were perpetrators and collaborators⋯ .The 14 case histories⋯seem to [corroborate] Israel Charny's thesis that 'all "normal" people are capable of being genociders, accomplices or bystanders' " (p. 459). Cf. Roger Smith ("Genocide and Women," pp. 328-29), who argues that while female perpetrators' roles have often been determined by their gender (e.g., torturers of men, kidnappers of children, subordinate actors dealing with female victims), their role converges with men's in terms of moral assent to the genocidal project and with an increasing level of bureaucratic and technical involvement in genocide in the modern era a greater potential for direct and sustained participation in genocide. On theoretical issues see Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), pp. 33-38, 56, 124, 376
54. and Lee Ellis, Theories of Rape: Inquiries into the Causes of Sexual Aggression (New York: Hemisphere, 1989), pp. 55-60
55. See Dadrian, "Comparative Aspects," p. 114
56. and History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 386-87
57. Cf. Bryce, Treatment, pp. 63, 483 (Zeitun)
58. Lepsius, Der Todesgang des armenischen Volkes: Bericht über das Schicksal des armenischen Volkes in der Türkei während des Weltkrieges(Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1919; hereafter: TAV), p. 43 (Erzurum), p. 204 (Zeitun)
59. and Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, p. 298 (Van)
60. Lepsius, DA, p. 40
61. Lepsius, TAV, p. 126 (Adapazari)
62. On the normalization of genocidal processes as central to their implementation, see Dabag, "Katastrophe und Identität," p. 185. The victims are convinced by rhetoric camouflaging genocidal intent (e.g., husbands will be reunited with wives, Armenians will return to their homes after the "deportation"), and the perpetrators are convinced of the normalcy of violence against minorities and are thus reinforced in their role
63. Lepsius, TAV, p. 89. On massacres within the caravan: eleven accounts from the unpublished Miller interviews; cf. Bryce, Treatment of the Armenians, pp. 238, 266, 353-54, 365-66, 553
64. Faiz El-Ghassein, Martyred Armenia (New York: G. H. Doran, 1918), pp. 8, 28
65. Kloian, Armenian Genocide, p. 291
66. Pailadzo Captanian (ed. Meliné Pehlivanian), 1915: Der Völkermord an den Armeniern: Eine Zeugin berichtet (Leipzig: Gustav Kiepenheuer, 1993), p. 49
67. Kloian, Armenian Genocide, pp. 28-29, 61, 106, 142
68. On thirst, see Bryce, Treatment of the Armenians, pp. 266, 274-75, 473, 543, 561, 567
69. El-Ghassein, Martyred Armenia, p. 7
70. On exposure, see Bryce, Treatment of the Armenians, pp. 266, 277, 323, 543
71. Captanian, 1915, pp. 48-49
72. See Beylerian, Grandes puissances, p. 208
73. Letter from Rev. L. H. Leslie, American missionary and American consular agent (Urfa), to Jesse B. Jackson, Esquire, American consul, Aleppo, August 6, 1915 (cited in Sarafian, United States Official Documents, vol. 1, pp. 49-50)
74. cf. Hofmann, Völkermord an den Armeniern, p. 8
75. Ephraim K. Jernazian, Judgment unto Truth: Witnessing the Armenian Genocide (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1990), pp. 68, 88
76. Cf. in particular Captanian, 1915, pp. 42ff., 50-52
77. "Armenian Women Put Up At Auction," New York Times, September 29, 1915 (cited in Kloian, Armenian Genocide, p. 47)
78. Cf. Bryce, Treatment of the Armenians, p. 20
79. Hofmann and Pehlivanian, "Malatia 1915," pp. 318-19
80. Albert Ailanjian, male native of Ailanji (village by Yozgat), unpublished Miller interviews
81. cf. Bryce, Treatment of the Armenians, p. 24
82. Martin Niepage, The Horrors of Aleppo, Seen by a German Witness (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1975 <1917>), p. 12
83. Cf. Kerr, Lions of Marash, p. 25, who reports men killed for protesting against rapes
84. and Seifert, "Krieg und Vergewaltigung," pp. 5, 9, on rape or the threat of rape aimed at dampening resistance by highlighting the helplessness of the men and the corresponding defenselessness of "their" women
85. Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Role of Turkish Physicians in the World War I Genocide of Ottoman Armenians," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1:2 (Fall 1986), pp. 169-92
86. Niepage, Horrors of Aleppo, p. 13
87. Sanasarian, "Gender Distinction in the Genocidal Process," p. 451
88. Baronigian, Armenien und die Türkei, pp. 18-20
89. Sarafian, United States Official Documents, vol. 1, pp. 14-15, 21, vol. 2, pp. 38, 48, 53, 94
90. Adalian, "Armenian Genocide," p. 86
91. Captanian, 1915, pp. 109-10, 119
92. Leslie A. Davis (ed. Susan Blair), The Slaughterhouse Province: An American Diplomat's Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917 (New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Karatzas, 1988), p. 169
93. Jernazian, Judgment unto Truth, p. 88
94. Sarafian, United States Official Documents, vol. 2, p. 38
95. Talaat Pasha, telegram, December 17, 1915 (cited in Andonian, Documents officiels, p. 148)
96. On Talaat's telegrams bearing specific references to integration and elimination of Armenian children, see Dadrian, "Naim-Andonian Documents," p. 315
97. cf. Captanian, 1915, pp. 35-36, 77, 83
98. El-Ghassein, Martyred Armenia, pp. 33-34 (Deir-el-Zor)
99. Hofmann and Pehlivanian, "Malatia 1915," p. 317
100. on Armenian women as nannies, see Captanian, 1915, pp. 98-105
101. "Criticizes Mr. Morgenthau," New York Times, October 8, 1915 (cited in Kloian, Armenian Genocide, p. 63)
102. "Armenian Girls Tell of Massacres," New York Times, June 1, 1919 (cited in Kloian, Armenian Genocide, p. 297)
103. See Miller and Miller, "Orphanage Life and Family Reunions" in Survivors, pp. 118-36
104. Major Stephen Trowbridge, "Stories of Liberated Armenians," Missionary Review of the World, July 1919 (cited in Kloian, Armenian Genocide, pp. 302-5)
105. On similarities and differences between the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, see Dadrian, "Comparative Aspects," passim; Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 395-99
106. Florence Mazian, Why Genocide? The Armenian and Jewish Experiences in Perspective (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990), esp. pp. 243ff. Ternon (Verbrecherische Staat, pp. 153-55) makes a significant point on the difference between Armenian and Jewish women's experience of sexual