“Peregrinations into the Void?” German Jews and their Knowledge about the Armenian Genocide during the Third Reich

Abstract

The February 2006 issue of the European edition of Time magazine contained a DVD dedicated to the subject of the genocide of the Armenian people. The text introducing the documentary, produced by the French-German TV network arte, said, “‘Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ Hitler posed this rhetorical question on August 22, 1939, before embarking upon his campaign to exterminate six million European Jews and other groups.” The introductory paragraph concluded, “His assumption that no one remembered the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkey must have emboldened the Führer to perpetrate the Jewish Holocaust.”