Two essays by famous Spanish writer and journalist Julio Camba who condemned the Armenian Genocide of 1915 were republished by the Sevillian publishing house “Renaissance.”
According to a scholar of the Silver Age of Spanish literature José Miguel González Soriano – thanks to whom the essays were reprinted – the cruelty with which the Genocide was carried out terrified Camba.
“The Armenian Genocide committed by the Turkish hands was one of the first ethnic massacres of the 20th century. It resulted in the deportation and extermination of 1.5-2 million Armenian civilians. The brutality of this massacre shook Camba,” writes Soriano.
“This is something terrible, even for an era when horror was an everyday vulgar occurrence,” wrote Camba.
The writer accused the Turks of the fact that they boasted that “they were able to shake the world when it seemed that human sensitivity was exhausted and when it was already impossible to do something original in the forms of barbarism”.
Most of all, Camba was struck by the attitude of the Turks towards women and children. On this occasion, he wrote: “The Turks found new entertainment – to rape Armenian women in front of their parents and husbands”.
According to José Miguel Gonzalez Soriano, the writer in his essays requested the government of Spain to ease the fate of “those Armenians who had survived this terrible persecution.”
Original publication: www.lavanguardia.com
