Multivolume Publication on the Armenian Genocide Sheds Light on News Accounts from the American Press

The entire project involves a planned ten books that sytematically document the accounts from six leading American newspapers: The New York Times, The Boston Daily Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Christian Scince monitor, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.

Now that we have reached the 100th anniversary threshold of the Armenian Genocide, the importance of reminding the present and future generations of those dark days in the life of the Armenian nation has become somewhat more pressing, in particular in view of the persistent efforts by successive Turkish governments in the past 100 years not only to deny the reality of the historical facts, but also, sadly, to place the blame on the victims themselves.

The international team involved in this pro­ject have searched years of newspapers, collated the articles, and published these new important volumes in this two-volume set The Armenian Genocide: Prelude and Aftermath. They include an exten­sive selection of the newspaper ac­counts and headlines from the New York Times that relate to Arme­nians covering the period from 1890 to 1922. In so doing, the compil­ers Ara Ketibian and Father Vahan Ohanian have made the docu­men­tary materials more rea­dily available to all who wish and need to learn about the roots, deadly deeds and enduring consequences of the Armenian Massa­cres and Genocide.

Ara Ketibian and Father Vahan Ohanian

It is imperative that present and future generations are acquainted with the facts as they were reported at the time when the events were actually taking place (“real time”).

Very often, these news reports assist in filling in the gaps or simply to reinforce the in­formation contained in more conventional evidentiary sources, such as archived mate­rials, including the numerous reports filed by the various diplomatic missions accred­ited to the Ottoman Empire, as well as those accredited to the Young Turk regime and various other European countries.

By reading through these hundreds of news reports and eye-witness accounts in chrono­logical sequence, one can clearly see how the annihilation of a nation was meticulously planned, exe­cuted and later denied by its perpetrators.

The present publication of the New York Times in two volumes is part of an ambitious project, which involves the pub­lication, in searchable, annotated and edited format, of key international press reports and analyses concerning the Armenian Question in general and the Armenian Genocide in particu­lar.

The material included in these volumes covers the three main periods of mass killings, i.e. the Hamidian massacres from 1894 to 1896, the Adana massacre and the “Metz Yeghern”, the Geno­cide of 1915, and the immediate “aftermath” of these massacres, culminating ulti­mately in the introduction of Soviet rule in Armenia.

The approach adopted in these volumes differs in many respects from previous at­tempts by others, as the material presented here has been converted into text form, has been annotated and is accompanied by an extensive index of names and locations.

The international team involved in this project have searched years of newspapers, collated the articles, and published these new important volumes in this two-volume set The Armenian Genocide: Prelude and Aftermath. They include an extensive selection of the newspaper accounts and headlines from the New York Times that relate to Armenians covering the period from 1890 to 1922. In so doing, the compilers Ara Ketibian and Father Vahan Ohanian have made the documentary materials more readily available to all who wish and need to learn about the roots, deadly deeds and enduring consequences of the Armenian Massacres and Genocide.

The New York Times articles, numbering NYT Vol. 1 – 1607 articles, NYT Vol. 2 – 1059 articles, Total 2666 articles, have been extracted from the archives of The New York Times.

The entire project involves a planned ten books that sytematically document the accounts from six leading American newspapers: The New York Times, The Boston Daily Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Christian Scince monitor, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.

The project has taken the compilers some 12 years to complete.

One cannot underestimate the importance of a comprehensive and detailed account that fully brings together what contemporary reporters, editors, aid workers, and foreign government officials documented. Such cumulative newspaper accounts form a historic base from which to confront contemporary state-sponsored genocide denial that seeks to misinform, distort, and, with the passage of time, cast doubt about what happened in history.

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