The Range of Responses to the Armenian Genocide

In this lesson, students will encounter emotionally challenging content, including:

• Readings and videos throughout the lesson that describe genocidal violence
• Readings and videos that include the topic of deportation, which in the context of the Armenian Genocide usually resulted in the death of those forcibly removed from their homes in the Ottoman Empire

Carefully consider each of these suggestions before engaging with this material with your students:

• Preview each resource in this lesson before you share it with your students. Let students know in advance when they are about to encounter material that some may find upsetting. If necessary, omit resources that you believe will be too emotionally challenging for your students.
• Briefly review the class contract with students before beginning the lesson. This will help reinforce the norms you have established and reinforce the idea of the classroom as a safe space for students to voice concerns, questions, or emotions that may arise.
• Create space for students to have a range of reactions and emotions as they engage with the content of this unit. This might include time for silent reflection or writing in journals, as well as structured discussions to help students process content together. Some students will not want to share their reactions to emotionally disturbing content in class, and teachers should respect that in class discussions. For their learning and emotional growth, it is crucial to allow for a variety of student responses, or none at all, to emotionally challenging content.

This lesson uses the Barometer discussion strategy, which invites students to move around the room and position themselves along a continuum to represent their position on a topic.  Before class, make sure you have prepared two signs—one reading “Agree” and the other “Disagree”—and determine where to hang them in the classroom so that students have the space necessary to position themselves between them. Also, assess how the classroom desks, tables, or other furniture are configured and make any adjustments necessary to enable students to move about the room for this activity.

This lesson requires students to work in small groups to read and analyze one of several readings about the choices people made during the Armenian Genocide. Note that these readings include a variety of lengths and reading levels. In particular, the first three readings in this list are longer and more complex than the last two. 

• Reading: The Armenians of Musa Dagh Take a Stand 
• Reading: The Turks Who Chose to Help Rescue Armenians
• Reading: How Armenians in Aleppo Aided Deported Anatolian Armenians
• Reading: Armin Wegner: Documenting a Genocide
• Reading: A Turkish Governor Takes Action 

Therefore, the latter two may be more appropriate for struggling readers. Regardless of the reading they are assigned, students will learn about the contents of all of the readings in the culminating class discussion in Activity 3.

This lesson’s materials reference the geographic sites listed below. We recommend taking a few moments during this lesson for students to locate them on Map of Eastern Anatolia, the Southern Caucasus, and the Syrian Desert:

• Aleppo
• Deir-ez-Zor
• Musa Dagh

You can help students deepen their emotional engagement with the Armenian Genocide by reflecting on firsthand accounts of people who were there. IWitness (free account required) provides a collection of dozens of clips from video testimony by survivors and witnesses. Most clips are shorter than three minutes.

We recommend that you, the teacher, spend some time exploring the collection and choose 2–3 clips to share with the class in this lesson. The videos in the collection are categorized by a variety of topics. Those tagged with the following topics may be especially relevant to this lesson’s focus on the range of choices people made during the genocide: Choice/Dilemma, Bystanders, Rescue/Aid, and Hiding. 

While these videos do not contain graphic images, many of those interviewed describe violent and traumatic experiences. Choose carefully with the experiences and needs of your students in mind, and review the Teaching Note “Preparing to Teach Emotionally Challenging Content” before introducing video testimony to your class. 

After you show each clip, give students a few minutes to write a response to the testimony in their journals using the S-I-T: Surprising, Interesting, Troubling teaching strategy. 

Once students have finished journaling responses to all of the testimonies you will share, begin a class discussion with the following questions:

• What aspect of the testimonies is most striking to you? What did it make you think about or feel?
• What is the value of hearing this kind of firsthand account? How does it affect the way you understand the choices and dilemmas people faced during the Armenian Genocide?

The lesson Teaching with Video Testimony, while primarily focused on testimony from Holocaust survivors, provides additional guidance and suggestions you can use to incorporate Armenian Genocide video testimony into your class.

Consider extending the class discussion about the range of choices people made in response to the atrocities against the Armenians by sharing a quotation about bystanders from Professor Ervin Staub. Staub, a psychologist who studies violence, terrorism, and mass murder, thinks the actions (or inactions) of bystanders make a big difference:

Bystanders, people who witness but are not directly affected by the actions of perpetrators, help shape society by their reactions. . . . Bystanders can exert powerful influences. They can define the meaning of events and move others toward empathy or indifference. They can promote values and norms of caring, or by their passivity or participation in the system they can affirm the perpetrators.

It may be worth noting to students that Staub’s statement implies that everyone who witnesses an injustice starts out as a bystander. Those bystanders who choose to take action can then become upstanders (a term that had not been coined when Staub made this statement).

After sharing the quotation, ask students the following questions:

• How might the choices of the people we learned about in this lesson “exert powerful influences”? On who?
• How might their choices define the meaning of the Armenian Genocide for us today? How can learning about them help shape us and our society today?

The readings, Ahmed Riza, a Young Turk Senator, Advocates for Armenians and "Cries Ringing in My Ears”, provide additional stories of choices that people made during the genocide:

• Ahmed Riza, a Young Turk Senator, Advocates for Armenians describes how Ahmed Riza, an early leader of the Young Turks and a senator in the Ottoman parliament during and after the genocide, attempted to use his influence in politics to stop the atrocities against the Armenians. 
• “Cries Ringing in My Ears” describes the response of a small group of American tourists when they witnessed the round up of Armenians in a local town while waiting for a train. 

While optional, these readings can help deepen students’ exploration of the dilemmas people faced and the range of actions they took when they came face to face with Armenians targeted by the CUP program of genocide. You might incorporate these readings into the main activities of this lesson or explore one or both of them separately with the class.