An article was published on 10 September 1895 by the New York Times , entitled
‘Another Armenian Holocaust’. This key primary source was describing the Hamidian
Massacres, which were the brutal killings of Armenian and Assyrian Christians in the
Ottoman Empire. They took place between 1894 and 1897, and around one to three
hundred thousand people were slaughtered by Ottoman troops. There were also a series of
forced conversions and lootings, as the New York Times article writes: ‘A force of 1,000
Turkish troops was sent to Kemokh, and five villages were pillaged’. 3 Historians, like Selim
Der ingil, express their shock that ‘little [research] has focused on the massacres of 1894 -
1897’. As he reflects, ‘important research has been done on the mass conversions during the
genocide of 1915’. 4 The word ‘Holocaust’ was used in 1895 to describe these killings but
evidently, there is a lack of awareness concerning both Armenian massacres. Donald
Bloxham reflects that ‘one of the striking facts about the Armenian genocide is that it is so
little known’. Bloxham further writes, ‘With the advent of Britain’s first Holocaust Memorial
Day in January 2001, the Armenian genocide also raised its head a fraction there’. 5 It seems
that recognition of the Holocaust (also known as the ‘Shoah’ – Hebrew for ‘calamity’ or
‘catastrophe’), sparks recognition of other hor rendous genocides, because when Holocaust
education became normalised, this triggered the normalisation of these other events in
history.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) was founded in 1998 and
is an intergovernmental organisation that strives to unite governments around the world, to
3 ‘Another Armenian Holocaust’, The New York Times, 10 September 1895, p. 15 4 Selim Deringil, “The Armenian Question Is Finally Closed”: Mass Conversions of Armenians in Anatolia during the Hamidian Massacres of 1895- 1897’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 51. 2 (2009), pp. 344-371 (p. 344) 5 David Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 6
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