|
German President Joachim Gauck for the first time Thursday called the World War I massacre of 1.5 million Armenians a genocide and said Germany bears some of the responsibility.
Gauck said at a service in the Berlin Cathedral that as a wartime ally of the Ottoman Empire, German soldiers took part in planning and implementing deportations of Armenians.
"Women, men, children, and the elderly were indiscriminately sent on death marches, banished without any protection or food to the steppe and the desert, burned alive, chased, beaten, and shot to death," he said. "This planned and calculated criminal act targeted Armenians for a sole reason: because they were Armenians."
German President Joachim Gauck for the first time Thursday called the World War I massacre of 1.5 million Armenians a genocide and said Germany bears some of the responsibility.
Gauck said at a service in the Berlin Cathedral that as a wartime ally of the Ottoman Empire, German soldiers took part in planning and implementing deportations of Armenians.
"Women, men, children, and the elderly were indiscriminately sent on death marches, banished without any protection or food to the steppe and the desert, burned alive, chased, beaten, and shot to death," he said. "This planned and calculated criminal act targeted Armenians for a sole reason: because they were Armenians."
German President Joachim Gauck for the first time Thursday called the World War I massacre of 1.5 million Armenians a genocide and said Germany bears some of the responsibility.
Gauck said at a service in the Berlin Cathedral that as a wartime ally of the Ottoman Empire, German soldiers took part in planning and implementing deportations of Armenians.
"Women, men, children, and the elderly were indiscriminately sent on death marches, banished without any protection or food to the steppe and the desert, burned alive, chased, beaten, and shot to death," he said. "This planned and calculated criminal act targeted Armenians for a sole reason: because they were Armenians."
|
