Der Matossian and Gzoyan Publish Landmark Volume on the Concentration Camps of the Armenian Genocide

LONDON/NEW YORK — Bloomsbury Publishing has announced the publication of The Concentration Camps of the Armenian Genocide, a 520-page edited volume by Prof. Bedross Der Matossian and Dr. Edita Gzoyan. The book is part of the series Armenians in the Modern and Early Modern World, edited by Bedross Der Matossian of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Although scholarship on the Armenian Genocide has expanded significantly in recent decades, the concentration-camp system established by the Ottoman authorities, particularly in present-day Syria, remains insufficiently studied. This is the first volume to offer an in-depth and multifaceted examination of these camps. Its chapters trace the origins and development of the camp system and document the atrocities committed at sites such as Deir ez-Zor, Ras al-Ain, Meskene, and elsewhere.

Featuring twenty-one chapters by historians and social scientists from Armenia, France, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Lebanon, and Australia, the volume brings together diverse disciplinary and geographical perspectives. It also foregrounds survivors’ voices through memoirs and diaries that document their experiences of deportation and life in the camps. Literary reflections and biographical studies of Armenian and foreign individuals connected with the camps and humanitarian missions further enrich the volume’s interdisciplinary approach.

The contributors examine the experiences of deportees along deportation routes and in transit and concentration camps; the geography and spatial organization of the camps; the brutal realities of daily life; the distribution of humanitarian assistance and the development of self-help mechanisms; interactions between deportees and local populations; moral and physical forms of resistance; and the experiences of children. The volume also considers Ottoman laws, decrees, and administrative practices relating to the camps and situates the Armenian case within the broader comparative history of concentration camps and genocide.

This project was generously supported by the Friedman Fund, the Hymen Rosenberg Professorship, and the Department of History at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

“This has been one of the most demanding projects we have undertaken,” Der Matossian and Gzoyan commented. “One of the volume’s distinguishing features is that it brings together renowned experts and emerging scholars, including a substantial number of Armenia-based researchers. Over the course of three years, we worked closely with the contributors to ensure the scholarly quality and historical accuracy of each chapter. Repeatedly engaging with accounts of the suffering and violence endured by Armenians in these camps was difficult, but it also reinforced our commitment to documenting this understudied dimension of the genocide.”

“We consider this one of the most important books published in the field of Armenian Genocide in the past few years. We hope that it will make a significant contribution to Armenian Genocide scholarship and encourage further research on the concentration-camp system and what is often described as the second phase of the genocide,” they continued.

Reviews

“Armenian Genocide studies has avoided or neglected the topic of concentration camps. Therefore, this book provides a new lens through which to understand the horrors of 1915–1916. The period of what has become known as the second phase of the genocide—roughly after 1915, once the majority of Armenian victims had been deported to the Syrian deserts and incarcerated in camps—has not been investigated as thoroughly as in this work. As someone who has written a book on the Armenian Genocide, I learned enormous amounts and was saddened, not only by the tragic stories in this collection of excellent essays, but by the fact that I did not have this work to use in my 2015 book.”

—Ronald Grigor Suny, Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan, USA

“This edited volume is a tour de force that manages to produce fresh empirical insights through deep archival investigation and unique oral histories, as well as generate new analytical perspectives by taking a comparative perspective on the wretched topic of concentration camps in the Armenian Genocide.”

—Uğur Ümit Üngör, Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Amsterdam and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies, the Netherlands

Dr. Bedross Der Matossian is the Elwood N. and Katherine Thompson Distinguished Professor of Modern World History at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. A Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author, editor, and co-editor of nine books, including Shattered Truths: Denial of Genocides in the Digital Age, forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press in late fall 2026. He also serves as Director of Genocide Research at the Zoryan Institute.

Dr. Edita Gzoyan teaches at the American University of Armenia (AUA). She is a genocide studies scholar specializing in the legal and historical dimensions of the Armenian Genocide. She is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies (IJAGS). Her research focuses on gendered violence, forced child transfer, and international criminal law. She has also edited scholarly volumes, including The Silenced Crime: Forcible Child Transfer During the Armenian Genocide (Brill, 2025).

Copies of The Concentration Camps of the Armenian Genocide are available for purchase on the Bloomsbury Press⁠ website. Enter code GLR AT8 at checkout for 35 percent off.