If you haven’t heard of it, here is a short summary. The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. It was implemented primarily through the mass murder of 1.5 million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert and the forced Islamization of Armenian women and children.
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It wasn’t part of our curriculum in school but I’d imagine many teachers might touch on it in the broader context of WW1.
I also just looked this up now to check but apparently Ireland doesn’t recognise the genocide, which is pretty shit considering the history of genocide on this island, the cultural kind and the murderous kind.
Edit: in case anyone is wondering I meant against the Irish people. Although, some people might say it was a natural reaction for the time (we’re talking medieval to early modern) but we weren’t so nice to our Protestant brothers and sisters either.
Nope , we didn’t learn about it all, only heard about it when I was 14 in French class. Had a substitute French teacher of Armenian descent who told us about it , she got fired later for being racist to a Turkish student at my school, it was messy.
Yes, it was part of our history lessons on WW I.
Some of the Turkish perpetrators fled to Germany after the war. Some are then executed here in Germany by Armenians, e.g. Interior Minister Talit Pasha.
Not in school… but generally in the public because one of norway greastest polar heroes, [Nansen](http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/30.11.2016-Nansen-eng.php), made a huge effort to help the armenians during the genocide. One of his main contribution was the Nansen passports for statless refugees.300.000 of those were given to armenians, surely saving many lives. Probably among few, if the only, norwegian to be put on stamp in armenia, having street named after him in jerevang and havin central place in the genocide museum.. Still a bit facinated that Nansen were aware of the armenians situations as “early” as [1896](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamidian_massacres)… during the hamidian massacres.. many tend to be unaware of the fact that there were extreme massacres/genocides before that one that started in 1915.
So due to this history .. some of the knowledge of the genocide indeed has been part as common knowledge in small portions.
No, and I wish they’d brought up how the Nazis looked to it (among other sources) to inspire their policies. I would also have liked to see a description of the Kurds’ role in this as both the Ottomans/Turks’ catspaws, enriching themselves at the expense of the Georgians, while eventually becoming the victims of Turkey and the other governments that formed there. I think there’s a lot of value in highlighting “Divide And Conquer” policies in general, as well as “And Then They Came For…” situations in particular. Kids need to learn quickly not to drink that Sectarian juice without looking at it very closely, as it’s usually a callous scam.
Something about US foreign policy regarding Kurds since the days of Kissinger would also be useful to look at. They’re really an excellent case study in terms of being used and abused by powermongering third parties that want them to fight but not to win.
I don’t remember it being specially covered in the history textbook, but I have heard of it and more than once – though not necessarily in school. I think it might have been as an example or just extra information when talking about connected topics.
Our history lessons were more about changes in society as a whole (including all the achievements and changes in systems) and political changes of borders (who has ruled over who), while specific political events like war crimes etc were not the focus and never discussed in detail. Just like the actual brutality of war itself was never the focus. Crimes against humanity are more likely to be discussed in social/civic studies lesson, as a whole, with several examples. No curriculum can ever cover them all, not even all of the ones committed against (any) own nation.
It was never mentioned when I was at school, even whilst teaching the First World War (in face we barely even mentioned the Ottoman Empire). That’s not to say that it wasn’t taught in other schools though, there’s no set mandatory curriculum in Scotland (and I’ve also been out of school for a long time).
Not at all. Personally I only learned about it due to Turkish denials and System of a down..
No. I studied in high school in the years 2003 to 2008. Armenian genocide was completely skipped in history class and my book barely mentioned it. But luckily my Religious education teacher decided to extensively talk about it. I owe her a lot, she focused her lessons on very interesting topics and debated on controversial news.
We studied it during our course on ww1 in middle and high school. I heard from teachers that a lot of armenian fled to France, especially near Lyon where I’m from. Here there is one of the first commemorative monument for the genocide, and it something we still talk about, especially when Turkey’s adhesion to EU is mentionned.
Today there are a lot of French of armenian decent, they integrated themselve very well by immediately investing in business with success. There is an armenian fm radio in my region. I think two or three years ago there even have been some clashes with a few turks during a strike, but I forgot the reason of both the strike and the clash probably the genocide recognition abroad and nationalistic ideas.
To be fair, I didn’t grow up in Germany. But I did grow up in a city and neighbourhood where there are quite a lot of Armenians. So I learned about it from my Armenian (2nd gen) classmates. Most (of their parents) immigrated from places like Lebanon, Syria, Greece and Iran. I even knew of one guy who was Armenian from Egypt.
It was discussed in history classes, being brought up by my Armenian classmates, but I don’t think it was a set lesson from the school curriculum itself.
Turkish here.
It was taught in my history class as we have our eleventh year dedicated for the events affecting Turkey between 1856-1950.
The timeline or number of deaths aren’t controversial here. The problem for our high school curricula is how to define it, more about using the exact the word “genocide”. In a weird way, it is the most common way that Turks learn about the Holocaust. Because, in our high schools, WWII is covered in only two hours.
It is a huge taboo in Turkey to say the least. Throughout the lesson, our teacher was nervous about how to go through with it and we were asking questions about whether it constituted a genocide or not. Turkish students really hate taboos.
Note: My high school was excellent at teaching English, so we could read from foreign sources. It is nearly impossible for most Turkish high school students.
just as a side note during ww2 in regards to Hitler’s quote “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
so pretty much only that it happened without giving any details as to why
I don’t remember but I had a Turkish friend and he was so adamant that it never happened. All he ever said was there was no proof and then it changed to there are no pictures and then it changed to well those are pictures of dead Turkish people because the Armenians killed us instead. It was so disgusting. I ended up blocking him. And the dumbest thing is that he even admitted that the schools in turkey teach propaganda. Apparently that wasn’t though 🙄
Not in any detail, just like a footnote. Something like “by the way, the Turks genocided the Armenians during the war and are denying it to this day, but we do not have the time to spend on this, we have a whole world war to cover.”
Then again, history classes in my high school were a huge mess with constantly changing teachers, so…
The WW1 chapter in my history my history book had a paragraph about it with a picture of a field full of dead people. My teacher never used the book though, so I only read about it because I enjoy history.
Not in schools, no.
Here we mostly study Romanian history and the international contex of it, with a few exceptions like the Revolution of 1688, the French revolution and the American revolution, but those latter ones are not exam subjects so nobody really bothers to actually learn them.