April 24th marks the 100th anniversary of what many scholars have called the first modern genocide. More than 1 and a half million Armenians died at the hands of the Turks between 1914 and 1923. Turkey vehemently denies these claims. They don’t deny the deaths but they oppose the label “genocide.”
Why does the word genocide matter? We talk with Judith Claire Mitchell, whose novel “The Last Day of the War” covers historically-based but little known efforts to avenge the Armenian massacres after World War I.