Forgotten Fire- Eight Stages of Genocide

The predominant stage of genocide mentioned in Forgotten Fire is extermination. One example is from page 27. The gendarmes go to Vahan's house to search for hiding Armenians. After they finish searching the house, they tell the family they can reenter. Before everyone goes in, they take Tavel and Darin to the garden wall and shoot them both. Another example of extermination is from after Vahan's family was put into the inn, and the gendarmes were marching all the prisoners out of the city. They stopped everyone at a river for the prisoners to take a drink, but it was a plot to kill more of them. Vahan said "[he] heard gunfire, saw the soldiers firing on the prisoners by the river, saw the bodies flatten out or lurch forward" (Bagdasarian, 2000. p. 48). Vahan's friend's family, the Altoonian's, also experienced losing loved ones. While Vahan stayed with Pattoo, they were talking late one night. Pattoo told Vahan that the gendarmes had come and killed his older brother, Vartan, by taking him to the back yard and shooting him. Extermination is the process of eliminating people that you don't want around. The Armenians were targeted by the Turks. All of the examples mentioned above illustrate the Turkish soldiers killing off the Armenian citizens.