I never learned about the Armenian Genocide in school. I'd never heard about it until I read a book which mentioned it, sparking my curiosity enough to read this book. It's another tragic story of man's inhumanity to man. Very much like the Holocaust of WW II. The Armenians believed they were being relocated, but instead found themselves being forced to travel without food, water and sanitation. Along the way they were robbed of what few possessions they were allowed to take with them. They were tortured, raped, shot, tossed over cliffs and hurled down mountainsides. They were stripped of their clothing and forced to walk for days on end until they died from exposure to the elements. Men, women, children and the elderly were all subjected to the same obscene cruelties. The few bright spots in the book included Turks and Kurds who protected Armenians at their own expense, and Armenians who managed to survive terrible tragedies and come through it all still believing in a just God and in the essential goodness of their fellow man.

If you could give six stars, this book would get it. It should be required reading for high school or college students. It should be required reading for revisionist historians like Stanford Shaw, Bernard Lewis, Justin McCarthy, and Heath Lowry--or any other Turkish "historian". Putting aside all the politics and theories, this book simply focuses on the suffering of the Armenians who went through the Genocide of 1915. It is as much a sociology book as a historical one. The parallels between the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust become obvious as one reads the accounts. It is an invaluable primary source for further study of the Armenian Genocide, as most of the survivors are dying off. It is an easy read, but you will probably find yourself disgusted or teary-eyed during much of it. It is objective, simply telling the facts, including descriptions of good, helpful Turks. If you know little about the subject, this is a great place to start. For those who get to caught up in the politics of events, this is a great book to remember the horrific suffering of these human beings. And for those revisionists and neo-Young Turks who still deny the wholesale extermination of the Armenians, I can't think of a better book to force someone to start accepting the truth.

This book by the Miller's is truly a masterpiece that captures what many Armenians feel deep within their hearts. The accounts from the survivors are truly disturbing and make any Armenian truly proud to have surivived such atrocities. This book serves as a testament to the 1.5 million Armenians killed between 1915 and 1923. I can say this much... I and my family will never forget!