Armin Wegner: Documenting a Genocide

Armin Wegner personally witnessed the brutality of the Armenian Genocide, and it changed him forever. As a young man with the German army, Armin Wegner took graphic photographs of what he saw. For the rest of his life, he devoted his efforts as a writer, photographer, and poet to human rights.

At the outset of World War I, Wegner enrolled in the army as a volunteer nurse in Poland. When Turkey joined the alliance with Germany, he was sent to the Middle East as a member of the German Sanitary Corps.

Wegner used his leave in the summer months to investigate rumors about the Armenian massacres. Horrified by what he witnessed, Wegner went to work. Serving under German Field Marshal von der Goltz, commander of the sixth Ottoman Army in Turkey, he traveled throughout Asia Minor, photographing the Armenian deportations and the unburied remains of the dead. Deliberately disobeying orders meant to prevent news of the massacres from spreading, Wegner arranged for evidence of the genocide, including photographs, documents, and personal notes, to reach contacts in Germany and the United States. Before long, Wegner's mail routes were discovered, and the Turkish government asked the German army to place him under arrest.

Reassigned to the cholera wards, Wegner became seriously ill in fall 1916 and was sent from Baghdad to Constantinople in November 1916, all the while hiding photographic images of the atrocities in his belt. Wegner was recalled to Germany in 1916. Back home he continued to raise consciousness about the Armenian massacres. In 1919, Wegner published his eyewitness accounts of the atrocities in The Way of No Return: A Martyrdom in Letters.

Discussion Questions

1. Who in this reading was in the position to act in response to the crimes being committed against Armenians?
2. What could this person or group have done in order to stop or prevent acts of violence against Armenians? What options for action might have been available to them?
3. Why might their decision about how to respond have been difficult to make? What dilemmas did they face?
4. What did the person or group ultimately do?
5. Why do you think they made this choice?