Die Austreibung des armenischen Volkes in die Wuste

by Armin T. Wegner

Essay by Wolfgang Gust

While serving as a medic during World War I, Armin T. Wegner witnessed the stream of refugees—the Armenian population—being driven by the Turks into the Syrian Desert. Between 1915 and 1917, up to 1.5 million Armenians perished there. In an open letter to U.S. President Wilson, Wegner protested against this injustice.
Immediately after the war, Wegner summarized his experiences as an eyewitness in a lecture that he delivered on numerous occasions starting in October 1919. To accompany the talk, he showed 100 slides—images he had captured despite a ban by Turkish authorities and—as the lecture recounts—smuggled across the border "hidden beneath his body belt."
Although many of these photographs now define the iconography of the genocide, Wegner’s eyewitness account has never before been published.
With the publication of this lecture, the photographs are presented not only with the captions authorized by Wegner, but their authenticity is also discussed within a critical apparatus. An essay by Wolfgang Gust on the historical background of the first genocide of the modern era rounds out the volume.

Used copy in like-new condition, missing dust jacket