Diana Der-Hovanessian: Definitions

Trying to warn about Hitler’s

plans for the Jews, Raphael

Lemkin,  linguist and jurist, 

invented the word genocide 

in 1943 describing the

annihilation of the Armenians

in 1915,“a systematic destruction

of a population segment, or

race, by a ruling government.”

Wholesale massacres by Turks

were taught them by their

ancestors, Genghis Khan

and Tamerlane.  In 1895 the word 

Holocaust was used by missionary

Corwin Shattuck to label the 1895

burning of Armenians in the Urfa

cathedral. These fires leveling

churches with Armenians locked

inside, spread to schools and barns.

Then to neighbors. Assyrians

named it Seifo.The Greeks,

the burning of Smyrna.

 The Arabs, Nakba  for catastrophe,

 calamity, disaster.  The Kurds

used the words The Anfal. Africans,

apartheid, gypsies, annihilation,

 the Syrians, intrafada.  The Jews

named the crime by the Nazis, Shoah.

Then  the Balkans called it ethnic

cleansing.  But the present day Turkish

label for two and a half million lost

Armenians: unavoidable wartime casualties.

This poem appears by kind permission of the author