Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty
“Million Armenians Killed Or Exile.” “Tell Horror Done in Armenia.” “Armenians Are Sent To Perish In Desert.”
These are just some of the headlines from The New York Times in 1915 that described the first genocide of the 20th century, when more than 1.5 million Armenians were systemically exterminated by the Ottoman Turks, an event the Turkish government denies to this day. Despite the overwhelming evidence at the time, the world stood idly by and did nothing.
In his most recent project, Ken Burns, the celebrated American documentary filmmaker, looked at America’s response (or lack thereof) to the Holocaust and its indifference in preventing one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the twentieth century by asking if the nation lived up to its principles and ideals.