PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE GERMAN SCHOLAR ON THE GENOCIDE

By David Luhrssen

(Greenfield, Wis.) A mother tries to protect her baby from the bitter cold by cradling her tightly. All around are other tired faces registering anxiety. These are among the images of the Armenian Genocide collected by Hilmar Kaiser and shown in a powerpoint presentation at St. John the Baptist Armenian Church, Greenfield, on December 5, 2007.

An independent German scholar, Kaiser has lectured across North America, Europe and the Middle East and published several books and essays on the Genocide. He drew his presentation at St. John from German sources by painstakingly identifying German military officers and consular officials known to have observed the Genocide and likely to have taken photographs. Kaiser approached the families of these men and searched the archives of the Foreign Office, navy and other organizations they were affiliated with.

He uncovered a disturbing cache of pictures and glass negatives, often carefully labeled by the photographer and occasionally accompanied by diaries offering detailed, on the spot account of the atrocities.

The advance of high-resolution technology has enabled us to see the pictures more clearly and interpret their meaning more fully. Kaiser recalled that Turkish scholars claimed that one particular photo of a death march caravan was actually of Turkish refugees. Kaiser disproved them by focusing on a shadowy corner, which now reveals a pair of celibate Armenian priests under their distinctive pointed black hoods. Not every picture is a record of fear and desperation. One shows a priest conducting services, an act of bravery at a time when the Young Turks especially targeted priests for death.

Kaiser was introduced by Christina Maranci, a professor of Armenian art history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and took many questions following his talk. He made a similar presentation the following night at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside and hopes to mount a traveling exhibit of his archival photographs in time for Martyrs Day, 2008.

Although some of Kaiser’s photos clearly show the effects of malnourishment and disease upon the victims of the death marches, and a few include the bodies of the dead, no photographs appear to have been taken by the Germans of the massacres themselves. Especially haunting are the close-ups Kaiser was able to show of the eyes of the marchers in the death caravans, in many cases only a week or two before reaching the killing fields.