Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

BRYCE, VISCOUNT JAMES
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arrangements back to robust health or, if such health had never existed, to nurture its
development. As a temporary compromise measure, the formation of a BBTG is, by definition,
established on the basis of power sharing, with ministerial posts being allocated
across the range of all parties participating in the effort. (The latter are, in most cases,
determined by the victors of the conflict that led to the establishment of the BBTG in the
first place, though, in a spirit of reconciliation, preconflict parties shorn of their radical
elements may also be invited to join under controlled conditions.) A BBTG is, most frequently,
established only at the conclusion of a conflict, as part of some sort of peace
agreement, which is why third-party involvement in the form of an occupation or monitoring
force is now the norm. The duration of the force’s stay depends on the success of
the BBTG in achieving its transitional objectives. Recent examples of states in which a
BBTG has been either imposed or recommended include Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burundi,
Cambodia, East Timor, and Rwanda.
Bryce, Viscount James (1838–1922). British intellectual, ambassador, and politician
with an authoritative knowledge of Armenia and the Turkish genocide perpetrated from
1915 onward. Lord Bryce had a lengthy association with Armenia that began in the
1870s. At the time of the Hamidian Massacres in 1895, he wrote a seminal essay on
the “Armenian Question,” which attracted widespread attention on both sides of the
Atlantic. In 1904, he became active in the International Pro-Armenia Movement, an
organization established to raise consciousness about the need to do something to assist
the Armenians who had long suffered persecution under the sultan’s rule. In 1907, in
recognition of his professional work in Britain’s Foreign Office, he was appointed British
ambassador to the United States; later, in 1914, he was elevated to the Hague Tribunal.
With the onset of World War I in 1914, Lord Bryce busied himself collecting evidence of
enemy contraventions of international law, and, in 1915, the British government assigned
him the task of gathering whatever evidence could be found on the mass murder of the
Armenians. Through his contacts in the U.S. State Department, he was able to tap into
American dispatches emanating from Constantinople, both formal and informal, and
these, together with other documents, Bryce entrusted to a young historian, Arnold Toynbee
(1889–1975), to edit into a government blue book, or official documentary collection. It was
a devastating indictment of the deportation and extermination of the Armenian people
at the hands of the Young Turk regime. Lord Bryce’s collection was published as The
Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916, and was presented to the British
parliament by the foreign secretary, Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933). Although
by now elderly, Bryce spent the rest of his life in active pursuit of the ideals that came
to be enshrined in the League of Nations, whose appearance in 1919 he embraced
enthusiastically.
Buchenwald. A Nazi concentration camp located near Weimar, Thuringia, Germany,
Buchenwald was established in 1937 to house male slave laborers for use in the armaments
industry. Women were not imprisoned there until 1944. Its first commandant, from 1937
to 1941, was Karl Otto Koch (1897–1945), whose wife was Ilse Koch (1906–1967), the
notorious “Bitch of Buchenwald,” known for her sadistic cruelty. Sometime during Koch’s
last year, medical experiments were also performed on prisoners. Both Koch and his wife
were brought to trial by the Nazis on charges of corruption stemming from their theft of
goods and diversion of camp monies. He was executed in April 1945, and she was given
a four-year term, which was reduced to two, and later set free, only to be rearrested and