Deportation of Ottoman Armenians In 1915, when some Armenians welcomed Russian armies as liberators after years of persecution, the Ottoman government ordered a mass deportation of its Armenian citizens from their homeland in the empire’s eastern provinces. This photo, taken from a hotel window in Kharpert by a German businessman in 1915, shows Turkish guards marching Armenian men off to prison, where they were tortured to death. About 1 million Armenians died from murder, starvation, and disease during World War I.
(Photo courtesy of the Armenian Library & Museum of America)