The Genocide Begins

On April 24, 1915 the Armenian Genocide began.

➡️The Turkish government arrested and executed Armenian intellectuals In the hundreds.

➡️They gathered up all the men and told them they were being enlisted in the army, but they were really being killed.

Women and children were kicked out of their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water.

➡️Often, they were stripped naked and forced to walk under the sun until they died.

➡️People who rested were shot.

The Young Turks had a special group which were a killing squad or "butcher battalions" to carry out the "liquidation of the Christian elements".

➡️The battalions were made up of murderers and ex-convicts.

➡️They drowned Armenians, threw them off cliffs, crucified them and burned them alive.

➡️The government squads also kidnapped children, converted them to Islam, and gave them to Turkish families.

➡️They raped women and forced by Bedouins into harems.

➡️Pregnant women had forced abortions.

➡️Babies were thrown against rocks.

➡️The Turkish would decapitate Armenians and use their heads as trophies.

➡️The battalions also publicly hung them.