C. CILICIA AND NORTHERN SYRIA.7. EXILES FROM ZEITOUN.Diary of a Foreign Resident in the Town of B. on
the Cilician Plain. Communicated by a Swiss Gentleman of Geneva.Sunday, 14th March, 1915.This morning I had a long conversation with
Mr.—— about events at Zeitoun. He has managed to obtain
some information regarding the little Armenian town, although all
direct communication with it has been interrupted. Turkish troops have
left Aleppo for Zeitoun—some say 4,000, some 6,000, others 8,000.
With what intention, one wonders? Mr.——, who has been there
himself during last summer and this winter, assures me that the
Armenians have no wish to revolt, and are prepared to put up with
anything the Government may do. Contrary to the old-established custom,
a levy was made at Zeitoun at the time of the August mobilisation, and
they did not offer the slightest resistance. None the less, the
Government has played them false. In October,1914,
their leader, Nazaret Tchaoush, came to Marash with a “safe
conduct” to arrange some special points with the officials. In
spite of the “safe conduct,” they imprisoned him, tortured
him and put him to death. Still the people of Zeitoun remained quiet.
Bands of zaptiehs (Turkish gendarmes), quartered in the town, have been
molesting the inhabitants, raiding shops, stealing, maltreating the
people and dishonouring their women. It is obvious that the Government
are trying to get a case against the Zeitounlis, so as to be able to
exterminate them at their pleasure and yet justify themselves in the
eyes of the world.—th April, 1915.Three Armenians from Dört Yöl were hanged last
night in the chief square of Adana. The Government declare that they
had been signalling to the British warship or warships stationed in the
Gulf of Alexandretta. This is untrue, for I know, though I dare not put
the source of my information on paper, that only one Armenian from
Dört Yöl has had any communication with the English.—th April.Two more Armenians from Dört Yöl have been
hanged at Adana.—th April.Three Armenians have been hanged at Adana. We were out
riding to-day, and the train came into the station just as we reached
the railway. Imagine our indignation when we saw a cattle-truck filled
with Armenians from Zeitoun. Most of these mountaineers were in rags,
but a few were quite well dressed. They had been driven out of their
homes and were going to be transplanted, God knows where, to some town
in Asia Minor. It seems we have returned to the days of theAssyrians, if whole populations can be exiled in
this way, and the sacred liberty of the individual so violated.—th April (the next day).We were able to see the unfortunate refugees, who are
still here to-day. These are the circumstances of their departure from
Zeitoun, or rather this is the tragedy which preceded their exile,
though it was not the cause of it.The Turkish gendarmes outraged several girls in the
town, and were attacked in consequence by about twenty of the more
hot-headed young men. Several gendarmes were killed, though all the
while the population as a whole was opposed to bloodshed, and desired
most earnestly to avoid the least pretext for reprisals. The twenty
rebels were driven out of the town and took refuge in a monastery about
three-quarters of an hour’s distance from the town. At this point
the troops from Aleppo arrived. The Zeitounlis gave them lodging, and
it seemed that all was going excellently between the populace and the
8,000 soldiers under their German officers.The Turks surrounded the monastery and attacked it for a
whole day; but the insurgents defended themselves, and, at the cost of
one man slightly wounded, they killed 300 of the regular troops. During
the night, moreover, they managed to escape.Their escape was as yet unknown to the town when, about
nine o’clock on the following morning, the Turkish Commandant
summoned about 300 of the principal inhabitants to present themselves
immediately at the military headquarters. They obeyed the summons
without the least suspicion, believing themselves to be on excellent
terms with the authorities. Some of them took a little money, others
some clothing or wraps, but the majority came in their working clothes
and brought nothingwith them. Some of them had even left their
flocks on the mountains in the charge of children. When they reached
the Turkish camp, they were ordered to leave the town at once without
returning to their homes. They were completely stupefied. Leave? But
for where? They did not know.They had been unable even yet to learn their
destination, but it is probable that they are being sent to the Vilayet
of Konia. Some of them have come in carriages and some on foot.—th April.I heard to-day that the whole population of Dört
Yöl has been taken away to work on the roads. They continue to
hang Armenians at Adana. It is a point worth remembering that Zeitoun
and Dört Yöl are the two Armenian towns which held their own
during the Adana massacres of 1909.—th May.A new batch of Zeitounlis has just arrived. I saw them
marching along the road, an interminable file under the Turkish whips.
It is really the most miserable and pitiable thing in the world. Weak
and scarcely clothed, they rather drag themselves along than walk. Old
women fall down, and struggle to their feet again when the zaptieh
approaches with lifted stick. Others are driven along like donkeys. I
saw one young woman drop down exhausted. The Turk gave her two or three
blows with his stick and she raised herself painfully. Her husband was
walking in front with a baby two or three days old in his arms.Further on an old woman had stumbled, and slipped down
into the mud. The gendarme touched her two or three times with his
whip, but she did not stir; then he gave her several kicks with his
foot; still she did not move; then he kicked her harder, and she rolled
overinto the ditch; I hope that she was already
dead.These people have now arrived in the town. They have had
nothing to eat for two days. The Turks forbade them to bring anything
with them from Zeitoun, except, in some cases, a few blankets, a
donkey, a mule, or a goat. But even these things they are selling here
for practically nothing—a goat for one medjidia (3s. 2d.), a mule
for half a lira (nine shillings). This is because the Turks steal them
on the road. One young woman who had only been a mother eight days, had
her donkey stolen the first night of the journey. What a way of
starting out! The German and Turkish officers made the Armenians leave
all their property behind, so that the mouhadjirs (refugees) from
Thrace might enter into possession. There are five families in
——’s house! The town and the surrounding villages
(about 25,000 inhabitants) are entirely destroyed.Between fifteen and sixteen thousand exiles have been
sent towards Aleppo, but they are going to be taken further. Perhaps
into Arabia? Can the real object be to starve them to death? Those who
have passed through our town were going to the Vilayet of Konia; there
too there are deserts.—th May.Letters have come which confirm my fears. It is not to
Aleppo that the Zeitounlis are being sent, but to Der-el-Zor, in
Arabia, between Aleppo and Babylonia. And those we saw the other day
are going to Kara-Pounar, between Konia and Eregli, in the most arid
part of Asia Minor.Certain ladies here have given blankets and shoes to
some of the poorest. The local Christians, too, have shown themselves
wonderfully self-sacrificing. But what can one do? It is a little drop
of charity in the ocean of their suffering.—th May.News has come from Konia. Ninety Armenians have been
taken to Kara-Pounar. The Zeitounlis have arrived at Konia. Their
sufferings have been increased by their having had to wait—some
of them 8, some 15, some 20 days—at Bozanti (the terminus of the
Anatolian Railway in the Taurus, 2,400 feet above sea level). This
delay was caused by the enormous masses of troops passing continually
through the Cilician Gates; it is the army of Syria which is being
recalled for the defence of the Dardanelles.When the exiles reached Konia, they had eaten nothing,
according to our news, for three days. The Greeks and Armenians at once
collected money and food for their relief, but the Vali of Konia would
not allow anything of any kind to be given to the exiles. They
therefore remained another three days without food, at the end of which
time the Vali removed the prohibition and allowed food to be served out
to them under the supervision of the zaptiehs.My informant tells me that, after the departure of the
Armenians from Konia for Kara-Pounar, he saw an Armenian woman throw
her new-born baby into a well; another is said to have thrown hers out
of the window of the train.—th May.A letter has come from Kara-Pounar. I know the writer of
it, and can have no doubt of his truthfulness. He says that the 6,000
or 8,000 Armenians from Zeitoun are dying there from starvation at the
rate of 150 to 200 a day. So from 15,000 to 19,000 Zeitounlis must have
been sent into Arabia, the total population of the town and the
outlying villages having been about 25,000.—th May.The whole garrison of —— and of Adana have
left forthe Dardanelles. There are no troops left to
defend the district if it should be attacked from outside.—th May (the next day).New troops have arrived, but they are untrained.—th May.The last batch of Zeitounlis passed through our town
to-day, and I was able to speak to some of them in the han where they
had been put. I saw one poor little girl who had been walking,
barefoot, for more than a week; her only clothing was a torn pinafore;
she was shivering with cold and hunger, and her bones were literally
pushing through her skin.About a dozen children had to be left on the road
because they could not walk any further. Have they died of hunger?
Probably, but no one will ever know for certain. I also saw two poor
old women without any hair left, or with hardly any. When the Turks
drove them out of Zeitoun they had been rich, but they could not take
anything with them beyond the clothes they were wearing. They managed
somehow to hide five or six gold pieces in their hair, but,
unfortunately for them, the sun glinted on the metal as they marched
along and the glitter attracted the notice of a zaptieh. He did not
waste any time in picking out the pieces of gold, but found it much
quicker to tear the hair out by the roots.I came across another very characteristic case. A
citizen of Zeitoun, formerly a rich man, was leading two donkeys, the
last remnants of his fortune. A gendarme came along and seized their
bridles; the Armenian implored him to leave them, saying that he was
already on the verge of starvation. The only answer he received from
the Turk was a shower of blows, repeated till he rolled over in the
dust; even then the Turk continued beating him, till the dust was
turned into a blood-soakedmud; then he gave a final kick and
went off with the donkeys. Several Turks stood by watching; they did
not appear to be at all surprised, nor did any of them attempt to
intervene.—th May.The authorities have sent a number of people from
Dört Yöl to be hanged in the various towns of Adana
Vilayet.—th May.There is a rumour of a partial exodus from Marash. It is
going to be our town next.Dört Yöl has also been evacuated and the
inhabitants sent into Arabia. Hadjin is threatened with the same fate.
There has been a partial clearing out of Adana; Tarsus and Mersina are
threatened too, and also Aintab.8. Information regarding Events in Armenia, published
in the “Sonnenaufgang” (Organ of the “German League
for the Promotion of Christian Charitable Work in the East”),
October, 1915; and in the “Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift,” November, 1915.This testimony is especially significant
because it comes from a German source, and because the German Censor
made a strenuous attempt to suppress it.The same issue of the “Sonnenaufgang” contains the following editorial
note:—“In our preceding issue we published an account
by one of our sisters (Schwester Möhring)
of her experiences on a journey, but we have to abstain from giving to
the public the new details that are reaching us in abundance. It costs
us much to do so, as our friends will understand; but the political
situation of our country demands it.”In the case of the “Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift,” the Censor was not content with
putting pressure on the editor. On the 10th November, he forbade the
reproduction of the present article in the German press, and did his
best to confiscate the whole current issue of the magazine. Copies of
both publications, however, found their way across the
frontier.Both the incriminating articles are drawn from common
sources, but the extracts they make from them donot
entirely coincide, so that, by putting them together, a fuller version
of these sources can be compiled.In the text printed below, the unbracketed paragraphs
are those which appear both in the “Sonnenaufgang” and in the “Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift”; while paragraphs
included in angular brackets[< >]appear only in the
“Sonnenaufgang,” and those in square
brackets([ ])only in the “Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift.”Between the 10th and the 30th May, 1,200 of the most
prominent Armenians and other Christians, without distinction of
confession, were arrested in the Vilayets of Diyarbekir and
Mamouret-ul-Aziz.
C. CILICIA AND NORTHERN SYRIA.7. EXILES FROM ZEITOUN.Diary of a Foreign Resident in the Town of B. on
the Cilician Plain. Communicated by a Swiss Gentleman of Geneva.Sunday, 14th March, 1915.This morning I had a long conversation with
Mr.—— about events at Zeitoun. He has managed to obtain
some information regarding the little Armenian town, although all
direct communication with it has been interrupted. Turkish troops have
left Aleppo for Zeitoun—some say 4,000, some 6,000, others 8,000.
With what intention, one wonders? Mr.——, who has been there
himself during last summer and this winter, assures me that the
Armenians have no wish to revolt, and are prepared to put up with
anything the Government may do. Contrary to the old-established custom,
a levy was made at Zeitoun at the time of the August mobilisation, and
they did not offer the slightest resistance. None the less, the
Government has played them false. In October,1914,
their leader, Nazaret Tchaoush, came to Marash with a “safe
conduct” to arrange some special points with the officials. In
spite of the “safe conduct,” they imprisoned him, tortured
him and put him to death. Still the people of Zeitoun remained quiet.
Bands of zaptiehs (Turkish gendarmes), quartered in the town, have been
molesting the inhabitants, raiding shops, stealing, maltreating the
people and dishonouring their women. It is obvious that the Government
are trying to get a case against the Zeitounlis, so as to be able to
exterminate them at their pleasure and yet justify themselves in the
eyes of the world.—th April, 1915.Three Armenians from Dört Yöl were hanged last
night in the chief square of Adana. The Government declare that they
had been signalling to the British warship or warships stationed in the
Gulf of Alexandretta. This is untrue, for I know, though I dare not put
the source of my information on paper, that only one Armenian from
Dört Yöl has had any communication with the English.—th April.Two more Armenians from Dört Yöl have been
hanged at Adana.—th April.Three Armenians have been hanged at Adana. We were out
riding to-day, and the train came into the station just as we reached
the railway. Imagine our indignation when we saw a cattle-truck filled
with Armenians from Zeitoun. Most of these mountaineers were in rags,
but a few were quite well dressed. They had been driven out of their
homes and were going to be transplanted, God knows where, to some town
in Asia Minor. It seems we have returned to the days of theAssyrians, if whole populations can be exiled in
this way, and the sacred liberty of the individual so violated.—th April (the next day).We were able to see the unfortunate refugees, who are
still here to-day. These are the circumstances of their departure from
Zeitoun, or rather this is the tragedy which preceded their exile,
though it was not the cause of it.The Turkish gendarmes outraged several girls in the
town, and were attacked in consequence by about twenty of the more
hot-headed young men. Several gendarmes were killed, though all the
while the population as a whole was opposed to bloodshed, and desired
most earnestly to avoid the least pretext for reprisals. The twenty
rebels were driven out of the town and took refuge in a monastery about
three-quarters of an hour’s distance from the town. At this point
the troops from Aleppo arrived. The Zeitounlis gave them lodging, and
it seemed that all was going excellently between the populace and the
8,000 soldiers under their German officers.The Turks surrounded the monastery and attacked it for a
whole day; but the insurgents defended themselves, and, at the cost of
one man slightly wounded, they killed 300 of the regular troops. During
the night, moreover, they managed to escape.Their escape was as yet unknown to the town when, about
nine o’clock on the following morning, the Turkish Commandant
summoned about 300 of the principal inhabitants to present themselves
immediately at the military headquarters. They obeyed the summons
without the least suspicion, believing themselves to be on excellent
terms with the authorities. Some of them took a little money, others
some clothing or wraps, but the majority came in their working clothes
and brought nothingwith them. Some of them had even left their
flocks on the mountains in the charge of children. When they reached
the Turkish camp, they were ordered to leave the town at once without
returning to their homes. They were completely stupefied. Leave? But
for where? They did not know.They had been unable even yet to learn their
destination, but it is probable that they are being sent to the Vilayet
of Konia. Some of them have come in carriages and some on foot.—th April.I heard to-day that the whole population of Dört
Yöl has been taken away to work on the roads. They continue to
hang Armenians at Adana. It is a point worth remembering that Zeitoun
and Dört Yöl are the two Armenian towns which held their own
during the Adana massacres of 1909.—th May.A new batch of Zeitounlis has just arrived. I saw them
marching along the road, an interminable file under the Turkish whips.
It is really the most miserable and pitiable thing in the world. Weak
and scarcely clothed, they rather drag themselves along than walk. Old
women fall down, and struggle to their feet again when the zaptieh
approaches with lifted stick. Others are driven along like donkeys. I
saw one young woman drop down exhausted. The Turk gave her two or three
blows with his stick and she raised herself painfully. Her husband was
walking in front with a baby two or three days old in his arms.Further on an old woman had stumbled, and slipped down
into the mud. The gendarme touched her two or three times with his
whip, but she did not stir; then he gave her several kicks with his
foot; still she did not move; then he kicked her harder, and she rolled
overinto the ditch; I hope that she was already
dead.These people have now arrived in the town. They have had
nothing to eat for two days. The Turks forbade them to bring anything
with them from Zeitoun, except, in some cases, a few blankets, a
donkey, a mule, or a goat. But even these things they are selling here
for practically nothing—a goat for one medjidia (3s. 2d.), a mule
for half a lira (nine shillings). This is because the Turks steal them
on the road. One young woman who had only been a mother eight days, had
her donkey stolen the first night of the journey. What a way of
starting out! The German and Turkish officers made the Armenians leave
all their property behind, so that the mouhadjirs (refugees) from
Thrace might enter into possession. There are five families in
——’s house! The town and the surrounding villages
(about 25,000 inhabitants) are entirely destroyed.Between fifteen and sixteen thousand exiles have been
sent towards Aleppo, but they are going to be taken further. Perhaps
into Arabia? Can the real object be to starve them to death? Those who
have passed through our town were going to the Vilayet of Konia; there
too there are deserts.—th May.Letters have come which confirm my fears. It is not to
Aleppo that the Zeitounlis are being sent, but to Der-el-Zor, in
Arabia, between Aleppo and Babylonia. And those we saw the other day
are going to Kara-Pounar, between Konia and Eregli, in the most arid
part of Asia Minor.Certain ladies here have given blankets and shoes to
some of the poorest. The local Christians, too, have shown themselves
wonderfully self-sacrificing. But what can one do? It is a little drop
of charity in the ocean of their suffering.—th May.News has come from Konia. Ninety Armenians have been
taken to Kara-Pounar. The Zeitounlis have arrived at Konia. Their
sufferings have been increased by their having had to wait—some
of them 8, some 15, some 20 days—at Bozanti (the terminus of the
Anatolian Railway in the Taurus, 2,400 feet above sea level). This
delay was caused by the enormous masses of troops passing continually
through the Cilician Gates; it is the army of Syria which is being
recalled for the defence of the Dardanelles.When the exiles reached Konia, they had eaten nothing,
according to our news, for three days. The Greeks and Armenians at once
collected money and food for their relief, but the Vali of Konia would
not allow anything of any kind to be given to the exiles. They
therefore remained another three days without food, at the end of which
time the Vali removed the prohibition and allowed food to be served out
to them under the supervision of the zaptiehs.My informant tells me that, after the departure of the
Armenians from Konia for Kara-Pounar, he saw an Armenian woman throw
her new-born baby into a well; another is said to have thrown hers out
of the window of the train.—th May.A letter has come from Kara-Pounar. I know the writer of
it, and can have no doubt of his truthfulness. He says that the 6,000
or 8,000 Armenians from Zeitoun are dying there from starvation at the
rate of 150 to 200 a day. So from 15,000 to 19,000 Zeitounlis must have
been sent into Arabia, the total population of the town and the
outlying villages having been about 25,000.—th May.The whole garrison of —— and of Adana have
left forthe Dardanelles. There are no troops left to
defend the district if it should be attacked from outside.—th May (the next day).New troops have arrived, but they are untrained.—th May.The last batch of Zeitounlis passed through our town
to-day, and I was able to speak to some of them in the han where they
had been put. I saw one poor little girl who had been walking,
barefoot, for more than a week; her only clothing was a torn pinafore;
she was shivering with cold and hunger, and her bones were literally
pushing through her skin.About a dozen children had to be left on the road
because they could not walk any further. Have they died of hunger?
Probably, but no one will ever know for certain. I also saw two poor
old women without any hair left, or with hardly any. When the Turks
drove them out of Zeitoun they had been rich, but they could not take
anything with them beyond the clothes they were wearing. They managed
somehow to hide five or six gold pieces in their hair, but,
unfortunately for them, the sun glinted on the metal as they marched
along and the glitter attracted the notice of a zaptieh. He did not
waste any time in picking out the pieces of gold, but found it much
quicker to tear the hair out by the roots.I came across another very characteristic case. A
citizen of Zeitoun, formerly a rich man, was leading two donkeys, the
last remnants of his fortune. A gendarme came along and seized their
bridles; the Armenian implored him to leave them, saying that he was
already on the verge of starvation. The only answer he received from
the Turk was a shower of blows, repeated till he rolled over in the
dust; even then the Turk continued beating him, till the dust was
turned into a blood-soakedmud; then he gave a final kick and
went off with the donkeys. Several Turks stood by watching; they did
not appear to be at all surprised, nor did any of them attempt to
intervene.—th May.The authorities have sent a number of people from
Dört Yöl to be hanged in the various towns of Adana
Vilayet.—th May.There is a rumour of a partial exodus from Marash. It is
going to be our town next.Dört Yöl has also been evacuated and the
inhabitants sent into Arabia. Hadjin is threatened with the same fate.
There has been a partial clearing out of Adana; Tarsus and Mersina are
threatened too, and also Aintab.8. Information regarding Events in Armenia, published
in the “Sonnenaufgang” (Organ of the “German League
for the Promotion of Christian Charitable Work in the East”),
October, 1915; and in the “Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift,” November, 1915.This testimony is especially significant
because it comes from a German source, and because the German Censor
made a strenuous attempt to suppress it.The same issue of the “Sonnenaufgang” contains the following editorial
note:—“In our preceding issue we published an account
by one of our sisters (Schwester Möhring)
of her experiences on a journey, but we have to abstain from giving to
the public the new details that are reaching us in abundance. It costs
us much to do so, as our friends will understand; but the political
situation of our country demands it.”In the case of the “Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift,” the Censor was not content with
putting pressure on the editor. On the 10th November, he forbade the
reproduction of the present article in the German press, and did his
best to confiscate the whole current issue of the magazine. Copies of
both publications, however, found their way across the
frontier.Both the incriminating articles are drawn from common
sources, but the extracts they make from them donot
entirely coincide, so that, by putting them together, a fuller version
of these sources can be compiled.In the text printed below, the unbracketed paragraphs
are those which appear both in the “Sonnenaufgang” and in the “Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift”; while paragraphs
included in angular brackets[< >]appear only in the
“Sonnenaufgang,” and those in square
brackets([ ])only in the “Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift.”Between the 10th and the 30th May, 1,200 of the most
prominent Armenians and other Christians, without distinction of
confession, were arrested in the Vilayets of Diyarbekir and
Mamouret-ul-Aziz.
C. CILICIA AND NORTHERN SYRIA.7. EXILES FROM ZEITOUN.Diary of a Foreign Resident in the Town of B. on
the Cilician Plain. Communicated by a Swiss Gentleman of Geneva.Sunday, 14th March, 1915.This morning I had a long conversation with
Mr.—— about events at Zeitoun. He has managed to obtain
some information regarding the little Armenian town, although all
direct communication with it has been interrupted. Turkish troops have
left Aleppo for Zeitoun—some say 4,000, some 6,000, others 8,000.
With what intention, one wonders? Mr.——, who has been there
himself during last summer and this winter, assures me that the
Armenians have no wish to revolt, and are prepared to put up with
anything the Government may do. Contrary to the old-established custom,
a levy was made at Zeitoun at the time of the August mobilisation, and
they did not offer the slightest resistance. None the less, the
Government has played them false. In October,1914,
their leader, Nazaret Tchaoush, came to Marash with a “safe
conduct” to arrange some special points with the officials. In
spite of the “safe conduct,” they imprisoned him, tortured
him and put him to death. Still the people of Zeitoun remained quiet.
Bands of zaptiehs (Turkish gendarmes), quartered in the town, have been
molesting the inhabitants, raiding shops, stealing, maltreating the
people and dishonouring their women. It is obvious that the Government
are trying to get a case against the Zeitounlis, so as to be able to
exterminate them at their pleasure and yet justify themselves in the
eyes of the world.—th April, 1915.Three Armenians from Dört Yöl were hanged last
night in the chief square of Adana. The Government declare that they
had been signalling to the British warship or warships stationed in the
Gulf of Alexandretta. This is untrue, for I know, though I dare not put
the source of my information on paper, that only one Armenian from
Dört Yöl has had any communication with the English.—th April.Two more Armenians from Dört Yöl have been
hanged at Adana.—th April.Three Armenians have been hanged at Adana. We were out
riding to-day, and the train came into the station just as we reached
the railway. Imagine our indignation when we saw a cattle-truck filled
with Armenians from Zeitoun. Most of these mountaineers were in rags,
but a few were quite well dressed. They had been driven out of their
homes and were going to be transplanted, God knows where, to some town
in Asia Minor. It seems we have returned to the days of theAssyrians, if whole populations can be exiled in
this way, and the sacred liberty of the individual so violated.—th April (the next day).We were able to see the unfortunate refugees, who are
still here to-day. These are the circumstances of their departure from
Zeitoun, or rather this is the tragedy which preceded their exile,
though it was not the cause of it.The Turkish gendarmes outraged several girls in the
town, and were attacked in consequence by about twenty of the more
hot-headed young men. Several gendarmes were killed, though all the
while the population as a whole was opposed to bloodshed, and desired
most earnestly to avoid the least pretext for reprisals. The twenty
rebels were driven out of the town and took refuge in a monastery about
three-quarters of an hour’s distance from the town. At this point
the troops from Aleppo arrived. The Zeitounlis gave them lodging, and
it seemed that all was going excellently between the populace and the
8,000 soldiers under their German officers.The Turks surrounded the monastery and attacked it for a
whole day; but the insurgents defended themselves, and, at the cost of
one man slightly wounded, they killed 300 of the regular troops. During
the night, moreover, they managed to escape.Their escape was as yet unknown to the town when, about
nine o’clock on the following morning, the Turkish Commandant
summoned about 300 of the principal inhabitants to present themselves
immediately at the military headquarters. They obeyed the summons
without the least suspicion, believing themselves to be on excellent
terms with the authorities. Some of them took a little money, others
some clothing or wraps, but the majority came in their working clothes
and brought nothingwith them. Some of them had even left their
flocks on the mountains in the charge of children. When they reached
the Turkish camp, they were ordered to leave the town at once without
returning to their homes. They were completely stupefied. Leave? But
for where? They did not know.They had been unable even yet to learn their
destination, but it is probable that they are being sent to the Vilayet
of Konia. Some of them have come in carriages and some on foot.—th April.I heard to-day that the whole population of Dört
Yöl has been taken away to work on the roads. They continue to
hang Armenians at Adana. It is a point worth remembering that Zeitoun
and Dört Yöl are the two Armenian towns which held their own
during the Adana massacres of 1909.—th May.A new batch of Zeitounlis has just arrived. I saw them
marching along the road, an interminable file under the Turkish whips.
It is really the most miserable and pitiable thing in the world. Weak
and scarcely clothed, they rather drag themselves along than walk. Old
women fall down, and struggle to their feet again when the zaptieh
approaches with lifted stick. Others are driven along like donkeys. I
saw one young woman drop down exhausted. The Turk gave her two or three
blows with his stick and she raised herself painfully. Her husband was
walking in front with a baby two or three days old in his arms.Further on an old woman had stumbled, and slipped down
into the mud. The gendarme touched her two or three times with his
whip, but she did not stir; then he gave her several kicks with his
foot; still she did not move; then he kicked her harder, and she rolled
overinto the ditch; I hope that she was already
dead.These people have now arrived in the town. They have had
nothing to eat for two days. The Turks forbade them to bring anything
with them from Zeitoun, except, in some cases, a few blankets, a
donkey, a mule, or a goat. But even these things they are selling here
for practically nothing—a goat for one medjidia (3s. 2d.), a mule
for half a lira (nine shillings). This is because the Turks steal them
on the road. One young woman who had only been a mother eight days, had
her donkey stolen the first night of the journey. What a way of
starting out! The German and Turkish officers made the Armenians leave
all their property behind, so that the mouhadjirs (refugees) from
Thrace might enter into possession. There are five families in
——’s house! The town and the surrounding villages
(about 25,000 inhabitants) are entirely destroyed.Between fifteen and sixteen thousand exiles have been
sent towards Aleppo, but they are going to be taken further. Perhaps
into Arabia? Can the real object be to starve them to death? Those who
have passed through our town were going to the Vilayet of Konia; there
too there are deserts.—th May.Letters have come which confirm my fears. It is not to
Aleppo that the Zeitounlis are being sent, but to Der-el-Zor, in
Arabia, between Aleppo and Babylonia. And those we saw the other day
are going to Kara-Pounar, between Konia and Eregli, in the most arid
part of Asia Minor.Certain ladies here have given blankets and shoes to
some of the poorest. The local Christians, too, have shown themselves
wonderfully self-sacrificing. But what can one do? It is a little drop
of charity in the ocean of their suffering.—th May.News has come from Konia. Ninety Armenians have been
taken to Kara-Pounar. The Zeitounlis have arrived at Konia. Their
sufferings have been increased by their having had to wait—some
of them 8, some 15, some 20 days—at Bozanti (the terminus of the
Anatolian Railway in the Taurus, 2,400 feet above sea level). This
delay was caused by the enormous masses of troops passing continually
through the Cilician Gates; it is the army of Syria which is being
recalled for the defence of the Dardanelles.When the exiles reached Konia, they had eaten nothing,
according to our news, for three days. The Greeks and Armenians at once
collected money and food for their relief, but the Vali of Konia would
not allow anything of any kind to be given to the exiles. They
therefore remained another three days without food, at the end of which
time the Vali removed the prohibition and allowed food to be served out
to them under the supervision of the zaptiehs.My informant tells me that, after the departure of the
Armenians from Konia for Kara-Pounar, he saw an Armenian woman throw
her new-born baby into a well; another is said to have thrown hers out
of the window of the train.—th May.A letter has come from Kara-Pounar. I know the writer of
it, and can have no doubt of his truthfulness. He says that the 6,000
or 8,000 Armenians from Zeitoun are dying there from starvation at the
rate of 150 to 200 a day. So from 15,000 to 19,000 Zeitounlis must have
been sent into Arabia, the total population of the town and the
outlying villages having been about 25,000.—th May.The whole garrison of —— and of Adana have
left forthe Dardanelles. There are no troops left to
defend the district if it should be attacked from outside.—th May (the next day).New troops have arrived, but they are untrained.—th May.The last batch of Zeitounlis passed through our town
to-day, and I was able to speak to some of them in the han where they
had been put. I saw one poor little girl who had been walking,
barefoot, for more than a week; her only clothing was a torn pinafore;
she was shivering with cold and hunger, and her bones were literally
pushing through her skin.About a dozen children had to be left on the road
because they could not walk any further. Have they died of hunger?
Probably, but no one will ever know for certain. I also saw two poor
old women without any hair left, or with hardly any. When the Turks
drove them out of Zeitoun they had been rich, but they could not take
anything with them beyond the clothes they were wearing. They managed
somehow to hide five or six gold pieces in their hair, but,
unfortunately for them, the sun glinted on the metal as they marched
along and the glitter attracted the notice of a zaptieh. He did not
waste any time in picking out the pieces of gold, but found it much
quicker to tear the hair out by the roots.I came across another very characteristic case. A
citizen of Zeitoun, formerly a rich man, was leading two donkeys, the
last remnants of his fortune. A gendarme came along and seized their
bridles; the Armenian implored him to leave them, saying that he was
already on the verge of starvation. The only answer he received from
the Turk was a shower of blows, repeated till he rolled over in the
dust; even then the Turk continued beating him, till the dust was
turned into a blood-soakedmud; then he gave a final kick and
went off with the donkeys. Several Turks stood by watching; they did
not appear to be at all surprised, nor did any of them attempt to
intervene.—th May.The authorities have sent a number of people from
Dört Yöl to be hanged in the various towns of Adana
Vilayet.—th May.There is a rumour of a partial exodus from Marash. It is
going to be our town next.Dört Yöl has also been evacuated and the
inhabitants sent into Arabia. Hadjin is threatened with the same fate.
There has been a partial clearing out of Adana; Tarsus and Mersina are
threatened too, and also Aintab.8. Information regarding Events in Armenia, published
in the “Sonnenaufgang” (Organ of the “German League
for the Promotion of Christian Charitable Work in the East”),
October, 1915; and in the “Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift,” November, 1915.This testimony is especially significant
because it comes from a German source, and because the German Censor
made a strenuous attempt to suppress it.The same issue of the “Sonnenaufgang” contains the following editorial
note:—“In our preceding issue we published an account
by one of our sisters (Schwester Möhring)
of her experiences on a journey, but we have to abstain from giving to
the public the new details that are reaching us in abundance. It costs
us much to do so, as our friends will understand; but the political
situation of our country demands it.”In the case of the “Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift,” the Censor was not content with
putting pressure on the editor. On the 10th November, he forbade the
reproduction of the present article in the German press, and did his
best to confiscate the whole current issue of the magazine. Copies of
both publications, however, found their way across the
frontier.Both the incriminating articles are drawn from common
sources, but the extracts they make from them donot
entirely coincide, so that, by putting them together, a fuller version
of these sources can be compiled.In the text printed below, the unbracketed paragraphs
are those which appear both in the “Sonnenaufgang” and in the “Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift”; while paragraphs
included in angular brackets[< >]appear only in the
“Sonnenaufgang,” and those in square
brackets([ ])only in the “Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift.”Between the 10th and the 30th May, 1,200 of the most
prominent Armenians and other Christians, without distinction of
confession, were arrested in the Vilayets of Diyarbekir and
Mamouret-ul-Aziz.
7. EXILES FROM ZEITOUN.Diary of a Foreign Resident in the Town of B. on the Cilician Plain. Communicated by a Swiss Gentleman of Geneva.Sunday, 14th March, 1915.This morning I had a long conversation with Mr.—— about events at Zeitoun. He has managed to obtain some information regarding the little Armenian town, although all direct communication with it has been interrupted. Turkish troops have left Aleppo for Zeitoun—some say 4,000, some 6,000, others 8,000. With what intention, one wonders? Mr.——, who has been there himself during last summer and this winter, assures me that the Armenians have no wish to revolt, and are prepared to put up with anything the Government may do. Contrary to the old-established custom, a levy was made at Zeitoun at the time of the August mobilisation, and they did not offer the slightest resistance. None the less, the Government has played them false. In October,1914, their leader, Nazaret Tchaoush, came to Marash with a “safe conduct” to arrange some special points with the officials. In spite of the “safe conduct,” they imprisoned him, tortured him and put him to death. Still the people of Zeitoun remained quiet. Bands of zaptiehs (Turkish gendarmes), quartered in the town, have been molesting the inhabitants, raiding shops, stealing, maltreating the people and dishonouring their women. It is obvious that the Government are trying to get a case against the Zeitounlis, so as to be able to exterminate them at their pleasure and yet justify themselves in the eyes of the world.—th April, 1915.Three Armenians from Dört Yöl were hanged last night in the chief square of Adana. The Government declare that they had been signalling to the British warship or warships stationed in the Gulf of Alexandretta. This is untrue, for I know, though I dare not put the source of my information on paper, that only one Armenian from Dört Yöl has had any communication with the English.—th April.Two more Armenians from Dört Yöl have been hanged at Adana.—th April.Three Armenians have been hanged at Adana. We were out riding to-day, and the train came into the station just as we reached the railway. Imagine our indignation when we saw a cattle-truck filled with Armenians from Zeitoun. Most of these mountaineers were in rags, but a few were quite well dressed. They had been driven out of their homes and were going to be transplanted, God knows where, to some town in Asia Minor. It seems we have returned to the days of theAssyrians, if whole populations can be exiled in this way, and the sacred liberty of the individual so violated.—th April (the next day).We were able to see the unfortunate refugees, who are still here to-day. These are the circumstances of their departure from Zeitoun, or rather this is the tragedy which preceded their exile, though it was not the cause of it.The Turkish gendarmes outraged several girls in the town, and were attacked in consequence by about twenty of the more hot-headed young men. Several gendarmes were killed, though all the while the population as a whole was opposed to bloodshed, and desired most earnestly to avoid the least pretext for reprisals. The twenty rebels were driven out of the town and took refuge in a monastery about three-quarters of an hour’s distance from the town. At this point the troops from Aleppo arrived. The Zeitounlis gave them lodging, and it seemed that all was going excellently between the populace and the 8,000 soldiers under their German officers.The Turks surrounded the monastery and attacked it for a whole day; but the insurgents defended themselves, and, at the cost of one man slightly wounded, they killed 300 of the regular troops. During the night, moreover, they managed to escape.Their escape was as yet unknown to the town when, about nine o’clock on the following morning, the Turkish Commandant summoned about 300 of the principal inhabitants to present themselves immediately at the military headquarters. They obeyed the summons without the least suspicion, believing themselves to be on excellent terms with the authorities. Some of them took a little money, others some clothing or wraps, but the majority came in their working clothes and brought nothingwith them. Some of them had even left their flocks on the mountains in the charge of children. When they reached the Turkish camp, they were ordered to leave the town at once without returning to their homes. They were completely stupefied. Leave? But for where? They did not know.They had been unable even yet to learn their destination, but it is probable that they are being sent to the Vilayet of Konia. Some of them have come in carriages and some on foot.—th April.I heard to-day that the whole population of Dört Yöl has been taken away to work on the roads. They continue to hang Armenians at Adana. It is a point worth remembering that Zeitoun and Dört Yöl are the two Armenian towns which held their own during the Adana massacres of 1909.—th May.A new batch of Zeitounlis has just arrived. I saw them marching along the road, an interminable file under the Turkish whips. It is really the most miserable and pitiable thing in the world. Weak and scarcely clothed, they rather drag themselves along than walk. Old women fall down, and struggle to their feet again when the zaptieh approaches with lifted stick. Others are driven along like donkeys. I saw one young woman drop down exhausted. The Turk gave her two or three blows with his stick and she raised herself painfully. Her husband was walking in front with a baby two or three days old in his arms.Further on an old woman had stumbled, and slipped down into the mud. The gendarme touched her two or three times with his whip, but she did not stir; then he gave her several kicks with his foot; still she did not move; then he kicked her harder, and she rolled overinto the ditch; I hope that she was already dead.These people have now arrived in the town. They have had nothing to eat for two days. The Turks forbade them to bring anything with them from Zeitoun, except, in some cases, a few blankets, a donkey, a mule, or a goat. But even these things they are selling here for practically nothing—a goat for one medjidia (3s. 2d.), a mule for half a lira (nine shillings). This is because the Turks steal them on the road. One young woman who had only been a mother eight days, had her donkey stolen the first night of the journey. What a way of starting out! The German and Turkish officers made the Armenians leave all their property behind, so that the mouhadjirs (refugees) from Thrace might enter into possession. There are five families in ——’s house! The town and the surrounding villages (about 25,000 inhabitants) are entirely destroyed.Between fifteen and sixteen thousand exiles have been sent towards Aleppo, but they are going to be taken further. Perhaps into Arabia? Can the real object be to starve them to death? Those who have passed through our town were going to the Vilayet of Konia; there too there are deserts.—th May.Letters have come which confirm my fears. It is not to Aleppo that the Zeitounlis are being sent, but to Der-el-Zor, in Arabia, between Aleppo and Babylonia. And those we saw the other day are going to Kara-Pounar, between Konia and Eregli, in the most arid part of Asia Minor.Certain ladies here have given blankets and shoes to some of the poorest. The local Christians, too, have shown themselves wonderfully self-sacrificing. But what can one do? It is a little drop of charity in the ocean of their suffering.—th May.News has come from Konia. Ninety Armenians have been taken to Kara-Pounar. The Zeitounlis have arrived at Konia. Their sufferings have been increased by their having had to wait—some of them 8, some 15, some 20 days—at Bozanti (the terminus of the Anatolian Railway in the Taurus, 2,400 feet above sea level). This delay was caused by the enormous masses of troops passing continually through the Cilician Gates; it is the army of Syria which is being recalled for the defence of the Dardanelles.When the exiles reached Konia, they had eaten nothing, according to our news, for three days. The Greeks and Armenians at once collected money and food for their relief, but the Vali of Konia would not allow anything of any kind to be given to the exiles. They therefore remained another three days without food, at the end of which time the Vali removed the prohibition and allowed food to be served out to them under the supervision of the zaptiehs.My informant tells me that, after the departure of the Armenians from Konia for Kara-Pounar, he saw an Armenian woman throw her new-born baby into a well; another is said to have thrown hers out of the window of the train.—th May.A letter has come from Kara-Pounar. I know the writer of it, and can have no doubt of his truthfulness. He says that the 6,000 or 8,000 Armenians from Zeitoun are dying there from starvation at the rate of 150 to 200 a day. So from 15,000 to 19,000 Zeitounlis must have been sent into Arabia, the total population of the town and the outlying villages having been about 25,000.—th May.The whole garrison of —— and of Adana have left forthe Dardanelles. There are no troops left to defend the district if it should be attacked from outside.—th May (the next day).New troops have arrived, but they are untrained.—th May.The last batch of Zeitounlis passed through our town to-day, and I was able to speak to some of them in the han where they had been put. I saw one poor little girl who had been walking, barefoot, for more than a week; her only clothing was a torn pinafore; she was shivering with cold and hunger, and her bones were literally pushing through her skin.About a dozen children had to be left on the road because they could not walk any further. Have they died of hunger? Probably, but no one will ever know for certain. I also saw two poor old women without any hair left, or with hardly any. When the Turks drove them out of Zeitoun they had been rich, but they could not take anything with them beyond the clothes they were wearing. They managed somehow to hide five or six gold pieces in their hair, but, unfortunately for them, the sun glinted on the metal as they marched along and the glitter attracted the notice of a zaptieh. He did not waste any time in picking out the pieces of gold, but found it much quicker to tear the hair out by the roots.I came across another very characteristic case. A citizen of Zeitoun, formerly a rich man, was leading two donkeys, the last remnants of his fortune. A gendarme came along and seized their bridles; the Armenian implored him to leave them, saying that he was already on the verge of starvation. The only answer he received from the Turk was a shower of blows, repeated till he rolled over in the dust; even then the Turk continued beating him, till the dust was turned into a blood-soakedmud; then he gave a final kick and went off with the donkeys. Several Turks stood by watching; they did not appear to be at all surprised, nor did any of them attempt to intervene.—th May.The authorities have sent a number of people from Dört Yöl to be hanged in the various towns of Adana Vilayet.—th May.There is a rumour of a partial exodus from Marash. It is going to be our town next.Dört Yöl has also been evacuated and the inhabitants sent into Arabia. Hadjin is threatened with the same fate. There has been a partial clearing out of Adana; Tarsus and Mersina are threatened too, and also Aintab.
7. EXILES FROM ZEITOUN.Diary of a Foreign Resident in the Town of B. on the Cilician Plain. Communicated by a Swiss Gentleman of Geneva.
Diary of a Foreign Resident in the Town of B. on the Cilician Plain. Communicated by a Swiss Gentleman of Geneva.
Diary of a Foreign Resident in the Town of B. on the Cilician Plain. Communicated by a Swiss Gentleman of Geneva.
Sunday, 14th March, 1915.This morning I had a long conversation with Mr.—— about events at Zeitoun. He has managed to obtain some information regarding the little Armenian town, although all direct communication with it has been interrupted. Turkish troops have left Aleppo for Zeitoun—some say 4,000, some 6,000, others 8,000. With what intention, one wonders? Mr.——, who has been there himself during last summer and this winter, assures me that the Armenians have no wish to revolt, and are prepared to put up with anything the Government may do. Contrary to the old-established custom, a levy was made at Zeitoun at the time of the August mobilisation, and they did not offer the slightest resistance. None the less, the Government has played them false. In October,1914, their leader, Nazaret Tchaoush, came to Marash with a “safe conduct” to arrange some special points with the officials. In spite of the “safe conduct,” they imprisoned him, tortured him and put him to death. Still the people of Zeitoun remained quiet. Bands of zaptiehs (Turkish gendarmes), quartered in the town, have been molesting the inhabitants, raiding shops, stealing, maltreating the people and dishonouring their women. It is obvious that the Government are trying to get a case against the Zeitounlis, so as to be able to exterminate them at their pleasure and yet justify themselves in the eyes of the world.—th April, 1915.Three Armenians from Dört Yöl were hanged last night in the chief square of Adana. The Government declare that they had been signalling to the British warship or warships stationed in the Gulf of Alexandretta. This is untrue, for I know, though I dare not put the source of my information on paper, that only one Armenian from Dört Yöl has had any communication with the English.—th April.Two more Armenians from Dört Yöl have been hanged at Adana.—th April.Three Armenians have been hanged at Adana. We were out riding to-day, and the train came into the station just as we reached the railway. Imagine our indignation when we saw a cattle-truck filled with Armenians from Zeitoun. Most of these mountaineers were in rags, but a few were quite well dressed. They had been driven out of their homes and were going to be transplanted, God knows where, to some town in Asia Minor. It seems we have returned to the days of theAssyrians, if whole populations can be exiled in this way, and the sacred liberty of the individual so violated.—th April (the next day).We were able to see the unfortunate refugees, who are still here to-day. These are the circumstances of their departure from Zeitoun, or rather this is the tragedy which preceded their exile, though it was not the cause of it.The Turkish gendarmes outraged several girls in the town, and were attacked in consequence by about twenty of the more hot-headed young men. Several gendarmes were killed, though all the while the population as a whole was opposed to bloodshed, and desired most earnestly to avoid the least pretext for reprisals. The twenty rebels were driven out of the town and took refuge in a monastery about three-quarters of an hour’s distance from the town. At this point the troops from Aleppo arrived. The Zeitounlis gave them lodging, and it seemed that all was going excellently between the populace and the 8,000 soldiers under their German officers.The Turks surrounded the monastery and attacked it for a whole day; but the insurgents defended themselves, and, at the cost of one man slightly wounded, they killed 300 of the regular troops. During the night, moreover, they managed to escape.Their escape was as yet unknown to the town when, about nine o’clock on the following morning, the Turkish Commandant summoned about 300 of the principal inhabitants to present themselves immediately at the military headquarters. They obeyed the summons without the least suspicion, believing themselves to be on excellent terms with the authorities. Some of them took a little money, others some clothing or wraps, but the majority came in their working clothes and brought nothingwith them. Some of them had even left their flocks on the mountains in the charge of children. When they reached the Turkish camp, they were ordered to leave the town at once without returning to their homes. They were completely stupefied. Leave? But for where? They did not know.They had been unable even yet to learn their destination, but it is probable that they are being sent to the Vilayet of Konia. Some of them have come in carriages and some on foot.—th April.I heard to-day that the whole population of Dört Yöl has been taken away to work on the roads. They continue to hang Armenians at Adana. It is a point worth remembering that Zeitoun and Dört Yöl are the two Armenian towns which held their own during the Adana massacres of 1909.—th May.A new batch of Zeitounlis has just arrived. I saw them marching along the road, an interminable file under the Turkish whips. It is really the most miserable and pitiable thing in the world. Weak and scarcely clothed, they rather drag themselves along than walk. Old women fall down, and struggle to their feet again when the zaptieh approaches with lifted stick. Others are driven along like donkeys. I saw one young woman drop down exhausted. The Turk gave her two or three blows with his stick and she raised herself painfully. Her husband was walking in front with a baby two or three days old in his arms.Further on an old woman had stumbled, and slipped down into the mud. The gendarme touched her two or three times with his whip, but she did not stir; then he gave her several kicks with his foot; still she did not move; then he kicked her harder, and she rolled overinto the ditch; I hope that she was already dead.These people have now arrived in the town. They have had nothing to eat for two days. The Turks forbade them to bring anything with them from Zeitoun, except, in some cases, a few blankets, a donkey, a mule, or a goat. But even these things they are selling here for practically nothing—a goat for one medjidia (3s. 2d.), a mule for half a lira (nine shillings). This is because the Turks steal them on the road. One young woman who had only been a mother eight days, had her donkey stolen the first night of the journey. What a way of starting out! The German and Turkish officers made the Armenians leave all their property behind, so that the mouhadjirs (refugees) from Thrace might enter into possession. There are five families in ——’s house! The town and the surrounding villages (about 25,000 inhabitants) are entirely destroyed.Between fifteen and sixteen thousand exiles have been sent towards Aleppo, but they are going to be taken further. Perhaps into Arabia? Can the real object be to starve them to death? Those who have passed through our town were going to the Vilayet of Konia; there too there are deserts.—th May.Letters have come which confirm my fears. It is not to Aleppo that the Zeitounlis are being sent, but to Der-el-Zor, in Arabia, between Aleppo and Babylonia. And those we saw the other day are going to Kara-Pounar, between Konia and Eregli, in the most arid part of Asia Minor.Certain ladies here have given blankets and shoes to some of the poorest. The local Christians, too, have shown themselves wonderfully self-sacrificing. But what can one do? It is a little drop of charity in the ocean of their suffering.—th May.News has come from Konia. Ninety Armenians have been taken to Kara-Pounar. The Zeitounlis have arrived at Konia. Their sufferings have been increased by their having had to wait—some of them 8, some 15, some 20 days—at Bozanti (the terminus of the Anatolian Railway in the Taurus, 2,400 feet above sea level). This delay was caused by the enormous masses of troops passing continually through the Cilician Gates; it is the army of Syria which is being recalled for the defence of the Dardanelles.When the exiles reached Konia, they had eaten nothing, according to our news, for three days. The Greeks and Armenians at once collected money and food for their relief, but the Vali of Konia would not allow anything of any kind to be given to the exiles. They therefore remained another three days without food, at the end of which time the Vali removed the prohibition and allowed food to be served out to them under the supervision of the zaptiehs.My informant tells me that, after the departure of the Armenians from Konia for Kara-Pounar, he saw an Armenian woman throw her new-born baby into a well; another is said to have thrown hers out of the window of the train.—th May.A letter has come from Kara-Pounar. I know the writer of it, and can have no doubt of his truthfulness. He says that the 6,000 or 8,000 Armenians from Zeitoun are dying there from starvation at the rate of 150 to 200 a day. So from 15,000 to 19,000 Zeitounlis must have been sent into Arabia, the total population of the town and the outlying villages having been about 25,000.—th May.The whole garrison of —— and of Adana have left forthe Dardanelles. There are no troops left to defend the district if it should be attacked from outside.—th May (the next day).New troops have arrived, but they are untrained.—th May.The last batch of Zeitounlis passed through our town to-day, and I was able to speak to some of them in the han where they had been put. I saw one poor little girl who had been walking, barefoot, for more than a week; her only clothing was a torn pinafore; she was shivering with cold and hunger, and her bones were literally pushing through her skin.About a dozen children had to be left on the road because they could not walk any further. Have they died of hunger? Probably, but no one will ever know for certain. I also saw two poor old women without any hair left, or with hardly any. When the Turks drove them out of Zeitoun they had been rich, but they could not take anything with them beyond the clothes they were wearing. They managed somehow to hide five or six gold pieces in their hair, but, unfortunately for them, the sun glinted on the metal as they marched along and the glitter attracted the notice of a zaptieh. He did not waste any time in picking out the pieces of gold, but found it much quicker to tear the hair out by the roots.I came across another very characteristic case. A citizen of Zeitoun, formerly a rich man, was leading two donkeys, the last remnants of his fortune. A gendarme came along and seized their bridles; the Armenian implored him to leave them, saying that he was already on the verge of starvation. The only answer he received from the Turk was a shower of blows, repeated till he rolled over in the dust; even then the Turk continued beating him, till the dust was turned into a blood-soakedmud; then he gave a final kick and went off with the donkeys. Several Turks stood by watching; they did not appear to be at all surprised, nor did any of them attempt to intervene.—th May.The authorities have sent a number of people from Dört Yöl to be hanged in the various towns of Adana Vilayet.—th May.There is a rumour of a partial exodus from Marash. It is going to be our town next.Dört Yöl has also been evacuated and the inhabitants sent into Arabia. Hadjin is threatened with the same fate. There has been a partial clearing out of Adana; Tarsus and Mersina are threatened too, and also Aintab.
Sunday, 14th March, 1915.
This morning I had a long conversation with Mr.—— about events at Zeitoun. He has managed to obtain some information regarding the little Armenian town, although all direct communication with it has been interrupted. Turkish troops have left Aleppo for Zeitoun—some say 4,000, some 6,000, others 8,000. With what intention, one wonders? Mr.——, who has been there himself during last summer and this winter, assures me that the Armenians have no wish to revolt, and are prepared to put up with anything the Government may do. Contrary to the old-established custom, a levy was made at Zeitoun at the time of the August mobilisation, and they did not offer the slightest resistance. None the less, the Government has played them false. In October,1914, their leader, Nazaret Tchaoush, came to Marash with a “safe conduct” to arrange some special points with the officials. In spite of the “safe conduct,” they imprisoned him, tortured him and put him to death. Still the people of Zeitoun remained quiet. Bands of zaptiehs (Turkish gendarmes), quartered in the town, have been molesting the inhabitants, raiding shops, stealing, maltreating the people and dishonouring their women. It is obvious that the Government are trying to get a case against the Zeitounlis, so as to be able to exterminate them at their pleasure and yet justify themselves in the eyes of the world.
—th April, 1915.
Three Armenians from Dört Yöl were hanged last night in the chief square of Adana. The Government declare that they had been signalling to the British warship or warships stationed in the Gulf of Alexandretta. This is untrue, for I know, though I dare not put the source of my information on paper, that only one Armenian from Dört Yöl has had any communication with the English.
—th April.
Two more Armenians from Dört Yöl have been hanged at Adana.
—th April.
Three Armenians have been hanged at Adana. We were out riding to-day, and the train came into the station just as we reached the railway. Imagine our indignation when we saw a cattle-truck filled with Armenians from Zeitoun. Most of these mountaineers were in rags, but a few were quite well dressed. They had been driven out of their homes and were going to be transplanted, God knows where, to some town in Asia Minor. It seems we have returned to the days of theAssyrians, if whole populations can be exiled in this way, and the sacred liberty of the individual so violated.
—th April (the next day).
We were able to see the unfortunate refugees, who are still here to-day. These are the circumstances of their departure from Zeitoun, or rather this is the tragedy which preceded their exile, though it was not the cause of it.
The Turkish gendarmes outraged several girls in the town, and were attacked in consequence by about twenty of the more hot-headed young men. Several gendarmes were killed, though all the while the population as a whole was opposed to bloodshed, and desired most earnestly to avoid the least pretext for reprisals. The twenty rebels were driven out of the town and took refuge in a monastery about three-quarters of an hour’s distance from the town. At this point the troops from Aleppo arrived. The Zeitounlis gave them lodging, and it seemed that all was going excellently between the populace and the 8,000 soldiers under their German officers.
The Turks surrounded the monastery and attacked it for a whole day; but the insurgents defended themselves, and, at the cost of one man slightly wounded, they killed 300 of the regular troops. During the night, moreover, they managed to escape.
Their escape was as yet unknown to the town when, about nine o’clock on the following morning, the Turkish Commandant summoned about 300 of the principal inhabitants to present themselves immediately at the military headquarters. They obeyed the summons without the least suspicion, believing themselves to be on excellent terms with the authorities. Some of them took a little money, others some clothing or wraps, but the majority came in their working clothes and brought nothingwith them. Some of them had even left their flocks on the mountains in the charge of children. When they reached the Turkish camp, they were ordered to leave the town at once without returning to their homes. They were completely stupefied. Leave? But for where? They did not know.
They had been unable even yet to learn their destination, but it is probable that they are being sent to the Vilayet of Konia. Some of them have come in carriages and some on foot.
—th April.
I heard to-day that the whole population of Dört Yöl has been taken away to work on the roads. They continue to hang Armenians at Adana. It is a point worth remembering that Zeitoun and Dört Yöl are the two Armenian towns which held their own during the Adana massacres of 1909.
—th May.
A new batch of Zeitounlis has just arrived. I saw them marching along the road, an interminable file under the Turkish whips. It is really the most miserable and pitiable thing in the world. Weak and scarcely clothed, they rather drag themselves along than walk. Old women fall down, and struggle to their feet again when the zaptieh approaches with lifted stick. Others are driven along like donkeys. I saw one young woman drop down exhausted. The Turk gave her two or three blows with his stick and she raised herself painfully. Her husband was walking in front with a baby two or three days old in his arms.
Further on an old woman had stumbled, and slipped down into the mud. The gendarme touched her two or three times with his whip, but she did not stir; then he gave her several kicks with his foot; still she did not move; then he kicked her harder, and she rolled overinto the ditch; I hope that she was already dead.
These people have now arrived in the town. They have had nothing to eat for two days. The Turks forbade them to bring anything with them from Zeitoun, except, in some cases, a few blankets, a donkey, a mule, or a goat. But even these things they are selling here for practically nothing—a goat for one medjidia (3s. 2d.), a mule for half a lira (nine shillings). This is because the Turks steal them on the road. One young woman who had only been a mother eight days, had her donkey stolen the first night of the journey. What a way of starting out! The German and Turkish officers made the Armenians leave all their property behind, so that the mouhadjirs (refugees) from Thrace might enter into possession. There are five families in ——’s house! The town and the surrounding villages (about 25,000 inhabitants) are entirely destroyed.
Between fifteen and sixteen thousand exiles have been sent towards Aleppo, but they are going to be taken further. Perhaps into Arabia? Can the real object be to starve them to death? Those who have passed through our town were going to the Vilayet of Konia; there too there are deserts.
—th May.
Letters have come which confirm my fears. It is not to Aleppo that the Zeitounlis are being sent, but to Der-el-Zor, in Arabia, between Aleppo and Babylonia. And those we saw the other day are going to Kara-Pounar, between Konia and Eregli, in the most arid part of Asia Minor.
Certain ladies here have given blankets and shoes to some of the poorest. The local Christians, too, have shown themselves wonderfully self-sacrificing. But what can one do? It is a little drop of charity in the ocean of their suffering.
—th May.
News has come from Konia. Ninety Armenians have been taken to Kara-Pounar. The Zeitounlis have arrived at Konia. Their sufferings have been increased by their having had to wait—some of them 8, some 15, some 20 days—at Bozanti (the terminus of the Anatolian Railway in the Taurus, 2,400 feet above sea level). This delay was caused by the enormous masses of troops passing continually through the Cilician Gates; it is the army of Syria which is being recalled for the defence of the Dardanelles.
When the exiles reached Konia, they had eaten nothing, according to our news, for three days. The Greeks and Armenians at once collected money and food for their relief, but the Vali of Konia would not allow anything of any kind to be given to the exiles. They therefore remained another three days without food, at the end of which time the Vali removed the prohibition and allowed food to be served out to them under the supervision of the zaptiehs.
My informant tells me that, after the departure of the Armenians from Konia for Kara-Pounar, he saw an Armenian woman throw her new-born baby into a well; another is said to have thrown hers out of the window of the train.
—th May.
A letter has come from Kara-Pounar. I know the writer of it, and can have no doubt of his truthfulness. He says that the 6,000 or 8,000 Armenians from Zeitoun are dying there from starvation at the rate of 150 to 200 a day. So from 15,000 to 19,000 Zeitounlis must have been sent into Arabia, the total population of the town and the outlying villages having been about 25,000.
—th May.
The whole garrison of —— and of Adana have left forthe Dardanelles. There are no troops left to defend the district if it should be attacked from outside.
—th May (the next day).
New troops have arrived, but they are untrained.
—th May.
The last batch of Zeitounlis passed through our town to-day, and I was able to speak to some of them in the han where they had been put. I saw one poor little girl who had been walking, barefoot, for more than a week; her only clothing was a torn pinafore; she was shivering with cold and hunger, and her bones were literally pushing through her skin.
About a dozen children had to be left on the road because they could not walk any further. Have they died of hunger? Probably, but no one will ever know for certain. I also saw two poor old women without any hair left, or with hardly any. When the Turks drove them out of Zeitoun they had been rich, but they could not take anything with them beyond the clothes they were wearing. They managed somehow to hide five or six gold pieces in their hair, but, unfortunately for them, the sun glinted on the metal as they marched along and the glitter attracted the notice of a zaptieh. He did not waste any time in picking out the pieces of gold, but found it much quicker to tear the hair out by the roots.
I came across another very characteristic case. A citizen of Zeitoun, formerly a rich man, was leading two donkeys, the last remnants of his fortune. A gendarme came along and seized their bridles; the Armenian implored him to leave them, saying that he was already on the verge of starvation. The only answer he received from the Turk was a shower of blows, repeated till he rolled over in the dust; even then the Turk continued beating him, till the dust was turned into a blood-soakedmud; then he gave a final kick and went off with the donkeys. Several Turks stood by watching; they did not appear to be at all surprised, nor did any of them attempt to intervene.
—th May.
The authorities have sent a number of people from Dört Yöl to be hanged in the various towns of Adana Vilayet.
—th May.
There is a rumour of a partial exodus from Marash. It is going to be our town next.
Dört Yöl has also been evacuated and the inhabitants sent into Arabia. Hadjin is threatened with the same fate. There has been a partial clearing out of Adana; Tarsus and Mersina are threatened too, and also Aintab.
8. Information regarding Events in Armenia, published
in the “Sonnenaufgang” (Organ of the “German League
for the Promotion of Christian Charitable Work in the East”),
October, 1915; and in the “Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift,” November, 1915.This testimony is especially significant
because it comes from a German source, and because the German Censor
made a strenuous attempt to suppress it.The same issue of the “Sonnenaufgang” contains the following editorial
note:—“In our preceding issue we published an account
by one of our sisters (Schwester Möhring)
of her experiences on a journey, but we have to abstain from giving to
the public the new details that are reaching us in abundance. It costs
us much to do so, as our friends will understand; but the political
situation of our country demands it.”In the case of the “Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift,” the Censor was not content with
putting pressure on the editor. On the 10th November, he forbade the
reproduction of the present article in the German press, and did his
best to confiscate the whole current issue of the magazine. Copies of
both publications, however, found their way across the
frontier.Both the incriminating articles are drawn from common
sources, but the extracts they make from them donot
entirely coincide, so that, by putting them together, a fuller version
of these sources can be compiled.In the text printed below, the unbracketed paragraphs
are those which appear both in the “Sonnenaufgang” and in the “Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift”; while paragraphs
included in angular brackets[< >]appear only in the
“Sonnenaufgang,” and those in square
brackets([ ])only in the “Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift.”Between the 10th and the 30th May, 1,200 of the most
prominent Armenians and other Christians, without distinction of
confession, were arrested in the Vilayets of Diyarbekir and
Mamouret-ul-Aziz.
8. Information regarding Events in Armenia, published in the “Sonnenaufgang” (Organ of the “German League for the Promotion of Christian Charitable Work in the East”), October, 1915; and in the “Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift,” November, 1915.
This testimony is especially significant
because it comes from a German source, and because the German Censor
made a strenuous attempt to suppress it.The same issue of the “Sonnenaufgang” contains the following editorial
note:—“In our preceding issue we published an account
by one of our sisters (Schwester Möhring)
of her experiences on a journey, but we have to abstain from giving to
the public the new details that are reaching us in abundance. It costs
us much to do so, as our friends will understand; but the political
situation of our country demands it.”In the case of the “Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift,” the Censor was not content with
putting pressure on the editor. On the 10th November, he forbade the
reproduction of the present article in the German press, and did his
best to confiscate the whole current issue of the magazine. Copies of
both publications, however, found their way across the
frontier.Both the incriminating articles are drawn from common
sources, but the extracts they make from them donot
entirely coincide, so that, by putting them together, a fuller version
of these sources can be compiled.In the text printed below, the unbracketed paragraphs
are those which appear both in the “Sonnenaufgang” and in the “Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift”; while paragraphs
included in angular brackets[< >]appear only in the
“Sonnenaufgang,” and those in square
brackets([ ])only in the “Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift.”Between the 10th and the 30th May, 1,200 of the most
prominent Armenians and other Christians, without distinction of
confession, were arrested in the Vilayets of Diyarbekir and
Mamouret-ul-Aziz.
This testimony is especially significant because it comes from a German source, and because the German Censor made a strenuous attempt to suppress it.
The same issue of the “Sonnenaufgang” contains the following editorial note:—
“In our preceding issue we published an account by one of our sisters (Schwester Möhring) of her experiences on a journey, but we have to abstain from giving to the public the new details that are reaching us in abundance. It costs us much to do so, as our friends will understand; but the political situation of our country demands it.”
In the case of the “Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift,” the Censor was not content with putting pressure on the editor. On the 10th November, he forbade the reproduction of the present article in the German press, and did his best to confiscate the whole current issue of the magazine. Copies of both publications, however, found their way across the frontier.
Both the incriminating articles are drawn from common sources, but the extracts they make from them donot entirely coincide, so that, by putting them together, a fuller version of these sources can be compiled.
In the text printed below, the unbracketed paragraphs are those which appear both in the “Sonnenaufgang” and in the “Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift”; while paragraphs included in angular brackets[< >]appear only in the “Sonnenaufgang,” and those in square brackets([ ])only in the “Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift.”
Between the 10th and the 30th May, 1,200 of the most prominent Armenians and other Christians, without distinction of confession, were arrested in the Vilayets of Diyarbekir and Mamouret-ul-Aziz.
[On the 30th May, 674 of them were embarked on thirteen Tigris barges, under the pretext that they were to be taken to Mosul. The Vali’s aide-de-camp, assisted by fifty gendarmes, was in charge of the convoy. Half the gendarmes started off on the barges, while the other half rode along the bank. A short time after the start the Armenians were stripped of all their money (about £6,000 Turkish) and then of their clothes; after that they were thrown into the river. The gendarmes on the bank were ordered to let none escape. The clothes of these victims were sold in the market of Diyarbekir.]
It is said that in Diyarbekir five or six priests were
stripped naked one day, smeared with tar, and dragged through the
streets. In the Vilayet of Aleppo they have evicted the
inhabitants of Hadjin, Shar, Albustan, Göksoun, Tasholouk,Zeitoun, all the villages of Alabash, Geben,
Shivilgi, Furnus and the surrounding villages, Fundadjak, Hassan-Beyli,
Harni, Lappashli, Dört Yöl and others.> [They have marched them off in convoys into the desert
on the pretext of settling them there. In the village of Tel-Armen
(along the line of the Bagdad Railway, near Mosul) and in the
neighbouring villages about 5,000 people were massacred, leaving only a
few women and children. The people were thrown alive down wells or into
the fire. They pretend that the Armenians are to be employed in
colonising land situated at a distance of twenty-four to thirty
kilometres from the Bagdad Railway. But as it is only the women and
children who are sent into exile, since all the men, with the exception
of the very old, are at the war, this means nothing less than the
wholesale murder of the families, since they have neither the labour
nor the capital for clearing the country.] A German met a Christian soldier of his acquaintance,
who was on furlough from Jerusalem. The man was wandering up and down
along the banks of the Euphrates searching for his wife and children,
who were supposed to have been transferred to that neighbourhood. Such
unfortunates are often to be met with in Aleppo, because they believe
that there they will learn something about the whereabouts of their
relations. It has often happened that when a member of a family has
been absent, he discovers on his return that all his family are
gone—evicted from their homes. [For a whole month corpses were observed floating down
the River Euphrates nearly every day, often in batches of from two to
six corpses bound together. The male corpses are in many cases
hideously mutilated (sexual organs cut off, and so on), the female
corpsesare ripped open. The Turkish military authority in
control of the Euphrates, the Kaimakam of Djerablous, refuses to allow
the burial of these corpses, on the ground that he finds it impossible
to establish whether they belong to Moslems or to Christians. He adds
that no one has given him any orders on the subject. The corpses
stranded on the bank are devoured by dogs and vultures. To this fact
there are many German eye-witnesses. An employee of the Bagdad Railway
has brought the information that the prisons at Biredjik are filled
regularly every day and emptied every night—into the Euphrates.
Between Diyarbekir and Ourfa a German cavalry captain saw innumerable
corpses lying unburied all along the road.] Aleppo and Ourfa are the assembling-places for the
convoy of exiles. There were about 5,000 of them in Aleppo during June
and July, while during the whole period from April to July many more
than 50,000 must have passed through the city. The girls were abducted
almost without exception by the soldiers and their Arab hangers-on. One
father, on the verge of despair, besought me to take with me at least
his fifteen-year-old daughter, as he could no longer protect her from
the persecutions inflicted upon her. The children left behind by the
Armenians on their journey are past counting. Women whose pains came upon them on the way had to
continue their journey without respite. A womanbore
twins in the neighbourhood of Aintab; next morning she had to go on
again. She very soon had to leave the children under a bush, and a
little while after she collapsed herself. Another, whose pains came
upon her during the march, was compelled to go on at once and fell down
dead almost immediately. There were several more incidents of the same
kind between Marash and Aleppo.1 The villagers of Shar were permitted to carry all their
household effects with them. On the road they were suddenly told:
“An order has come for us to leave the high road and travel
across the mountains.” Everything—waggons, oxen and
belongings—had to be left behind on the road, and then they went
on over the mountains on foot. This year the heat has been
exceptionally severe, and many women and children naturally succumbed
to it even in these early stages of their journey. There are about 30,000 exiles of whom we have no news at
all, as they have arrived neither at Aleppo nor at Ourfa.> 9. Extracts from the Records of a German who died in
Turkey.Between the 28th July and the 20th August, 1915, I
travelled to Marash. At Beshgöz, between Killis and Aintab, it was
a subject of conversation among the villagers that the deportation of
the Armenians would begin at Aintab too on the following day. A little
while after, a well-dressed gentleman, a Circassian, according to his
appearance, being partly in mufti and partly in officer’s
uniform, joined the group of talkers and asked: “From what part
of the town are people being sent away? By what road do they go? What
kind of people are they? Are they people from whom anything is to be
got?” When one of the persons present asked him whether he was a
civilian or in military service, he said smilingly: “Is there a
finer opportunity of being a soldier than now?” The same person
said afterwards: “This time Germany has given these
unbelieving swine a lesson which they will not
forget.”2On hearing this, I could not refrain from replying that
it was soiling the name of Germany to mention it in connection with the
things which I had just been compelled to hear. On my return journey I
heard that the first convoys from Aintab, consisting almost exclusively
of well-to-do families, were stripped to their shirts,and I
was assured from several sides that this was done with the connivance
of the Government authorities, with whom the above-mentioned
questionable gentleman must, according to all appearances, have been in
relation. At Karaböyük, between Aintab and Marash, I met a
convoy of Armenians, consisting of about forty women and children and
five or six men. Close in front of them, at a distance of about 180
yards, 100 newly-enlisted soldiers were marching. There was a young
lady among the women, a teacher, who for several years had been in
German employment; she had just recovered from a serious attack of
typhoid fever. The soldiers wanted her and a young wife, whose husband
is at present a soldier in Damascus, to spend the night with them, and
used force to make them. It was only through the Mohammedan mule
drivers coming to the assistance of the women, that the soldiers could
be kept off during their three attacks.On the 6th August the Armenian village of Fundadjak,
near Marash, a place of about 3,000 inhabitants, was battered down to
the ground. The population, consisting almost exclusively of mule
drivers, had, during the preceding three months, been frequently
compelled to transport Armenians in the direction of the Euphrates.
They had seen the corpses in the Euphrates, and had also observed with
their own eyes the selling and raping of women and girls.In an Armenian school at Marash I saw over 100 women and
children with bullet wounds in their legs and their arms, and with all
sorts of mutilations; among them were children of one to two years.On the 13th August, 34 Armenians, including two boys
twelve years old, were shot at Marash. Again, on the 15th August, 24
were shot and 14 were hanged.The 24 who were shot were tied
together with a heavy chain that went round their necks, and were made
to stand up together in one mass. They were shot in the presence of the
Mohammedan population behind the American College. With my own eyes I
saw the bodies, while still convulsed by the agonies of death, being
abandoned to the license of the rough civilian mob, who pulled the
hands and feet of the corpses; and during the next half-hour the
policemen and gendarmes shot continuously with revolvers on these
corpses, some of which were terribly disfigured, while the population
looked on with amusement.Afterwards the same people marched up and
down in front of the German Hospital and shouted, “Vashasin Almanya”(Long live
Germany).3Again and again I have been told by
Mohammedans that it was Germany which caused the Armenians to be
extirpated in this way.On the way from the town to the farm I saw, on the
outskirts of the town, a human head lying on a dung-heap, which was
used as a target by Turkish boys. In Marash itself, during my stay
there, Armenians were every day killed by the civil population, and the
corpses were left for days in the open sewers or elsewhere.Kadir Pasha said to me at Marash: “I know that, in
pursuance of an order from the Government, the whole male population
within the area of the 4th Army Corps was killed.”On the 20th August, 19154, at six
o’clock in the evening, it was proclaimed at Marash that,
according to the order of the Vali of Adana, all males over 15 years of
age (5,600 altogether) must be assembled outside thetown,
ready for marching, by mid-day on Saturday; any one of them found in
the town after 12 o’clock would be shot on the spot. Everyone
knew the meaning of this order, and we lived through hours of most
awful terror. At the last moment the Vali’s order, owing to the
intervention of the very humane Governor of Marash, was modified to the
extent that the men would be allowed to leave with their families. Only
on the 18th August the Vali had sent for the clerical authorities, and
had given them an assurance that the Armenians in Marash would not be
deported. Thus the first who had to leave the town had to do so without
any previous preparation.In the village of Böveren, near Albistan, all the
Armenian inhabitants, 82 in number, with the exception of a boy twelve
years old, who jumped into the water and escaped, were killed.In the neighbourhood of Zeitoun the inhabitants of a
village infested by the smallpox were deported. The patients suffering
from smallpox, including those whose eyesight had been destroyed by the
illness, were lodged in hans (i.e. inns) at Marash, in which deported
persons from other districts were lodged already.At Marash I saw a convoy, consisting of about 200
persons, among whom were several blind. A mother, of the age of about
60, led her daughter, who was lame from birth; in this manner they
started on their journey on foot. After an hour’s march a man
collapsed near the Erkeness bridge; he was robbed and killed. Four days
afterwards we still saw his corpse lying in a ditch.Last night I called on an acquaintance; he had given
hospitality to a mother and her child who had been deported from
Sivas—the two survivors of a family of 26 persons who had been
deported from Sivas threemonths before and had reached Marash
in the last few days.In Aintab I saw a written order of the Governor of the
town, prohibiting the purchase on the part of the Mohammedan population
of any objects belonging to the deported Armenians. The same Governor
caused preparations to be made for a raid on the deported persons. Two
convoys were robbed of everything, down to the shirts of the people
belonging to them.About 2,800 persons deported from Gürün were
attacked and robbed at Airan-Pounar (12 hours to the north-east of
Marash) by eight brigands, who wore uniforms, partly officer’s
uniform and partly private’s. At Kisyl Gedjid, 1½ hours
short of Airan-Pounar, the eight brigands joined the gendarmes
escorting the convoy and had a long conversation with them. At
Airan-Pounar the gendarmes ordered the people to divide into two
parties; the few men formed one party, and the women the other party.
The women were stripped naked and robbed of everything; four women and
two girls were dragged away in the night and violated; five of them
returned on the following morning. In a defile of the Engissek-Dagh the
whole convoy was completely plundered by Turks and Kurds. In this
assault 200 persons were killed; 70 severely wounded persons had to be
left behind, and more than 50 more were taken along with the convoy. I
met the convoy, then consisting of about 2,500 persons, at
Karaböyük. The people were in an indescribable state of
misery; one hour short of Karaböyük two men were lying on the
road, one with two and the other with seven knife-wounds; further on
there were two exhausted women; still further four women, including a
girl of 13, with a two days’ old baby in her arms, wrapped in
rags. A man of about 60, who was lying in the road with adeep
wound (inflicted by a dagger), as long as a finger and two fingers
wide, told me that he had left Gürün with 13 animals. All the
animals and all his goods were taken away from him at Airan-Pounar, and
he had dragged himself away on foot, until he reached a place about an
hour short of Karaböyük, where he fell down exhausted.These people had all been in easy circumstances; the
value of the goods, the animals and the money of which they were
robbed, is estimated at T£8,000. Those who were exhausted were
left lying on the road; corpses can be seen lying on both sides of it.
Among the 2,500 persons of whom this convoy was composed I saw no
males, with the exception of about 30–40. All males over the age
of 15 were taken away in the sight of the women, and were probably
killed. These Armenians were intentionally transported by circuitous
routes and over dangerous paths. By the direct road to Marash they
would have arrived in four days, and they have been on the road for
over a month. They had to travel without animals, without beds, without
food; once in every day they received a thin slice of bread, and then
not enough to satisfy their hunger. Four hundred of them (Protestants)
have in the meantime arrived at Aleppo; out of these two or three die
every day.The raid at Ainar-Pounar was carried out with the
connivance of the Kaimakam at Albistan, who made them pay him
T£200, and promised the people that he would see that they
reached Aintab safely. The Kaimakam at Gürün made them pay
him T£1,020, and gave the same assurances. I saw a man who,
together with others, handed this sum to the Kaimakam in the club room
at Gürün. In the neighbourhood of Aintab several women
belonging to this convoy were violated in the night by civilian
inhabitants of Aintab. On the occasionof the raid at
Airan-Pounar men were tied to trees and burnt alive. While the
Armenians at Gürün were actually leaving the town, the
Mollahs called the faithful to prayer from the roofs of the Christian
Churches. An eye-witness told me about a dispute between two brothers
relating to the booty at Airan-Pounar; one of them said: “For
these four loads I have killed forty women.”At Marash a Mohammedan of the name of Hadji, whom I have
known for years, told me the following incident: “At Nissibin, I
and all the mule-drivers were locked up in a han; several young women
belonging to Furnus were violated during the night by the gendarmes
escorting the convoy and by civilians.”At Aintab, at the office of the Commissioner of Police,
a Mohammedan Agha said in my presence to an Armenian: “In such
and such places letters have been found. What are your relations with
this man? I have often told you to become a Mohammedan: if you had
listened to me, you would have escaped all the disagreeable things to
which your nation is exposed.”Out of 18,000 persons who were deported from Kharput and
Sivas, 350 arrived at Aleppo (consisting of women and children); out of
1,900 deported from Erzeroum, only eleven—one sick boy, four
girls and six women—reached that town. A convoy of women and
girls had to walk the 65 hours from Ras-el-Ain to Aleppo along the
railway line, notwithstanding the fact that at the same time the
railway carriages, which had been used for the transport of soldiers,
were returning empty. Mohammedan travellers, who came along this way,
report that the roads are impassable owing to the many corpses lying
unburied on both sides of the road, the smell of which is poisoning the
air. Of those “remaining over,” who so far have not been
sent further on, 100–120 persons have died at Aleppo up to the
present,in consequence of the hardships of the journey.
The starving and emaciated women and children, on their arrival at
Aleppo, fell on the food like wild beasts. In the case of many of them
the digestive organs had ceased to work; after having devoured one or
two spoonfuls they put the spoon aside. The Government alleges that the
deported persons receive food, but in the case of the above-mentioned
convoy, which came from Kharput, a distribution of bread took place
only once in three months.The Government does not merely neglect to make any
provision for the people; on the contrary, it causes everything to be
taken away from them. At Ras-el-Ain a convoy of 200 girls and women
arrived in a state of complete nudity; their shoes, their chemises,
everything, in short, had been taken away from them, and they were made
to walk for four days under the hot sun—the temperature was 122
degrees in the shade—in their condition of nakedness, jeered at
and derided by the soldiers of their escort. Mr. X. told me that he
himself had seen a convoy, consisting of 400 women and children, in the
same state. Whenever the wretched exiles appealed to the humanity of
the officials, the reply was: “We have strict orders from the
Government to treat you in this way.”At first the dead in Aleppo were brought to the cemetery
in the coffins provided by the Armenian Church. This was done by
“Hamals” (professional porters), who received two piastres
for each dead. When the “Hamals” were unable to cope with
the whole work, the women themselves brought their dead to the
cemetery—the babies in their arms, the bigger children laid on
sacks and carried by four women, one at each corner. I saw corpses
carried to the cemetery across a donkey’sback. A
friend of mine saw a dead body tied to a stick, which was carried by
two men. Another friend saw a cart drawn by oxen going to the cemetery
with a full load of corpses. The two-wheeled cart was too large to pass
the narrow cemetery-gate, whereupon the driver, without any hesitation,
turned it round and emptied it; then he dragged the dead bodies to
their respective graves by the arms and legs. At the present moment
five or six carts are in use, which take the dead to the cemetery. In
one of the hans, which is called a hospital, I saw on a Sunday
something like 30 corpses lying about in a yard, which was about 25
yards wide and 50 yards long. About 20 had already been buried on that
day. The 30 corpses remained lying there until the evening. My wife got
them carried away in the darkness by engaging three
“Hamals,” to whom she gave a medjidié (about 3s.
2d.) each. In the case of one of the corpses the skin adhered to the
hands of the “Hamals,” showing how far the process of
decomposition had already gone. Dying persons and persons suffering
from serious illnesses, about 1,000 altogether, were lying among the
dead, under the burning sun. The whole scene was more terrible than
anything I had ever seen, even than the shooting of the 24 people at
Marash in the summer, which has been described above. Nearly all the
people suffered from diarrhœa. Channels had been dug in the
ground within the courtyard, by the side of which the dying were
placed, with their backs towards the channel, so that the emptyings of
their bowels could pass into it at once. Whenever anyone died, he was
removed, and his melancholy place was filled by another. It happened
frequently that persons who were carried away as dead gave signs of
life when they were near the grave; they were dragged aside, until it
was certain that death had supervened.One young girl recovered
so far that she could be carried back to the town, and one person who
had been buried in the evening was found sitting on his grave the next
morning. Several corpses had been thrown into one grave, and he was on
the top; in the twilight only a thin layer of earth had been put over
him. In Tel-Abiad Mr.— saw open graves with 20–30 corpses.
The graves were filled up with earth when it was no longer possible to
put any more corpses into them. Mr.— told me that it was
impossible to go near these places owing to the stench, and yet the
deported persons had to encamp in the immediate vicinity. Out of 35
orphans who were kept in one room at Aleppo, 30 died in a week for want
of nourishment. Mr.— says that on his journey to this place he
saw corpses everywhere on the road, and that a Kurd boasted to him of
having killed 14 children.On Sunday, the 12th August, 1915, I had to go to the
station of the Damascus railway at Aleppo, and was able to see the
loading into cattle trucks of about 1,000 women and children. With us
in Germany the cattle are allowed more space than those wretched
people; 90 per cent. of them had death written on their faces. There
were people among them who literally had no time allowed them for
dying. On the previous evening a convoy had been taken away, and on the
next morning the dead bodies of two children, about half grown up, were
found, who had died during the loading of the trucks and had been left
lying on the platform.On the 13th September, 1915, the following telegraphic
order from the Commander-in-Chief of the 4th Army, Djemal Pasha, was
brought to the notice of the inhabitants: “All photographs, which
may have been taken by the engineers or other officers of the Bagdad
Railway Construction Company relating to the convoysof
Armenians, are to be delivered within 48 hours, together with the
negatives, to the Military Commissariat of the Bagdad Railway at
Aleppo. Any contravention of this order will be punished by
court-martial.”Several times I saw women and children search for scraps
of food in the dustheaps: anything that was found was devoured
immediately. I saw the children gnawing at raw bones which they had
picked up in corners used as urinals.On the road between Marash and Aintab the Mohammedan
population of a village wanted to distribute water and bread among a
convoy of 100 families, but the soldiers escorting the convoy prevented
this. Four-fifths of the deported persons are women and children; the
majority of the men have been called up for the Army.Twenty thousand persons who had been deported by way of
Marash were not allowed to pass on to Aintab and obtain supplies of
food, though the direct caravan route goes through Aintab.At Ras-el-Ain there are at present about 1,500 women and
children, the only survivors out of several thousands, who, together
with their husbands and fathers, were deported from Kharput and the
surrounding country. Among these 1,500 persons there is not a single
male over the age of 10–12 years. These people, healthy or sick,
are left lying from morning till evening in the sun without food and
without protection against a temperature of 109½ degrees in the
shade, and they are in the arbitrary power of their guards. Mr.
L.— who during the last month had, in conversation with me, used
the expression “Armenian rabble”—spoke literally as
follows: “I am not a man who is easily touched, but after what I
have seen at Ras-el-Ain I cannot keep the tears away. I did not think
it possible that suchacts of ill-treatment and violence, outraging
all rules of humanity, could be perpetrated in our century.”A “Tchaoush” (Sergeant-Major) of the name of
Suleiman took 18 women and girls and sold them to Arabs, charging
2–3 mejidiés (6s. 4d.—9s. 6d.) for each of them. A
Turkish police-commissary said to me: “We have lost all count of
the numbers of women and girls who were taken away by the Arabs and
Kurds, either by force or with the connivance of the Government. This
time we have carried out our operations against the Armenians according
to our heart’s desire; not one out of ten has been left among the
living.”While I am writing this down, my wife has returned from
a walk into the town, and reports tearfully that she met a convoy of
over 800 Armenians, all bare-footed, with torn clothes, carrying their
scanty possessions on their backs, together with their babies.In Besné the whole population, consisting of
1,800 souls, principally women and children, were expatriated; it was
alleged that they were to be deported to Ourfa. When they reached the
Göksu, a tributary of the Euphrates, they were compelled to take
their clothes off, and thereupon they were all massacred and thrown
into the river.On a single day latterly 170 corpses were observed
drifting down the Euphrates, on other days 50–60. Mr. A., an
engineer, saw 40 corpses in the course of one ride. Those which are
stranded on the river bank are devoured by the dogs, those on sandbanks
in mid-stream by the vultures.The above-mentioned 800 Armenians had been deported from
the district of Marash. They had been told that they would be taken to
Aintab, and they were to provide themselves with food for two days.
Whenthey reached the neighbourhood of Aintab the
soldiers said: “We have made a mistake, we were meant to go to
Nissibin.” No food was supplied by the authorities, and no
opportunities for the purchase of provisions were given. At Nissibin
the word went round: “We came the wrong way; we were meant to go
to Mumbidj.” There again the soldiers said: “We came the
wrong way; we were meant to go to Bab.” In this manner they had
to wander about for seventeen days, abandoned to the arbitrary pleasure
of their escort. During the whole time no provisions were supplied by
the Government, and their scanty possessions had to be given away in
exchange for bread.One mother, whose eldest daughter was taken away by
force, threw herself in despair into the Euphrates with her two
remaining children.Said, an emigrant from Tripoli, who had been a groom in
Mr. L.’s stables for four years with a monthly salary of 400
piastres (about £3), enlisted as a volunteer for the war, in
order to be able, according to his own statement, to take part in the
slaughter of a few Armenians. A nice house in an Armenian village near
Ourfa was promised him (he hinted) by way of reward.Two Circassians who were in the service of Mr. E., a
storekeeper, enlisted as volunteers for the war on the same ground.The head of a Circassian village community, Tchordekli,
speaking of the war volunteers from his village, said to an
acquaintance of mine: “Ev yikmak itchun giderler” (They go
in order to ruin whole families).At Arab Pounar a Turkish Major, who spoke German,
expressed himself as follows: “I and my brother took possession
of a young girl at Ras-el-Ain, who had been left on the road.We are
very angry with the Germansfor doing such things.”
When I contradicted them, they said: “The Chief of the General
Staff is a German; von der Goltz is Commander-in-Chief, and ever so
many German officers are in our Army. Our Koran does not permit such
treatment as the Armenians have to suffer now.”5At Nuss Tell a Mohammedan inspector made similar remarks to a clerk.
When I taxed him with this utterance in the presence of others, he
said: “It is not only I who say this; everyone will tell you the
same tale.”At Biredjik the prisons are filled every day and emptied
over night. Tell Armen, a village of 3,000 inhabitants, was raided, the
inhabitants were massacred, thrown dead or alive into the wells, or
burnt. Major von Mikusch was a witness of the devastation. A German
cavalry captain saw unburied corpses between Diyarbekir and Ourfa on
both sides of the road, with their throats cut. Innumerable unburied
corpses of children were seen on the way by Mr. S.At Tel-Abiad seventeen dead or dying persons were left
behind near the station, on the departure of a convoy. Two railway
officials afterwards had all seventeen buried.All the convoys of Armenians have for the last few days
been taken into these parts. The statement made by Mr. N. is entirely
in accord with the reply given to me by the Chairman of the Deportation
Commission, when I made an application in favour of four Armenian
children: “You do not grasp our intentions; we want to destroy
the Armenian name.Just as Germany will only let Germans exist, so
we Turks will only let Turks.”6 9. Extracts from the Records of a German who died in
Turkey. Between the 28th July and the 20th August, 1915, I
travelled to Marash. At Beshgöz, between Killis and Aintab, it was
a subject of conversation among the villagers that the deportation of
the Armenians would begin at Aintab too on the following day. A little
while after, a well-dressed gentleman, a Circassian, according to his
appearance, being partly in mufti and partly in officer’s
uniform, joined the group of talkers and asked: “From what part
of the town are people being sent away? By what road do they go? What
kind of people are they? Are they people from whom anything is to be
got?” When one of the persons present asked him whether he was a
civilian or in military service, he said smilingly: “Is there a
finer opportunity of being a soldier than now?” The same person
said afterwards: “This time Germany has given these
unbelieving swine a lesson which they will not
forget.”2On hearing this, I could not refrain from replying that
it was soiling the name of Germany to mention it in connection with the
things which I had just been compelled to hear. On my return journey I
heard that the first convoys from Aintab, consisting almost exclusively
of well-to-do families, were stripped to their shirts,and I
was assured from several sides that this was done with the connivance
of the Government authorities, with whom the above-mentioned
questionable gentleman must, according to all appearances, have been in
relation. At Karaböyük, between Aintab and Marash, I met a
convoy of Armenians, consisting of about forty women and children and
five or six men. Close in front of them, at a distance of about 180
yards, 100 newly-enlisted soldiers were marching. There was a young
lady among the women, a teacher, who for several years had been in
German employment; she had just recovered from a serious attack of
typhoid fever. The soldiers wanted her and a young wife, whose husband
is at present a soldier in Damascus, to spend the night with them, and
used force to make them. It was only through the Mohammedan mule
drivers coming to the assistance of the women, that the soldiers could
be kept off during their three attacks.On the 6th August the Armenian village of Fundadjak,
near Marash, a place of about 3,000 inhabitants, was battered down to
the ground. The population, consisting almost exclusively of mule
drivers, had, during the preceding three months, been frequently
compelled to transport Armenians in the direction of the Euphrates.
They had seen the corpses in the Euphrates, and had also observed with
their own eyes the selling and raping of women and girls.In an Armenian school at Marash I saw over 100 women and
children with bullet wounds in their legs and their arms, and with all
sorts of mutilations; among them were children of one to two years.On the 13th August, 34 Armenians, including two boys
twelve years old, were shot at Marash. Again, on the 15th August, 24
were shot and 14 were hanged.The 24 who were shot were tied
together with a heavy chain that went round their necks, and were made
to stand up together in one mass. They were shot in the presence of the
Mohammedan population behind the American College. With my own eyes I
saw the bodies, while still convulsed by the agonies of death, being
abandoned to the license of the rough civilian mob, who pulled the
hands and feet of the corpses; and during the next half-hour the
policemen and gendarmes shot continuously with revolvers on these
corpses, some of which were terribly disfigured, while the population
looked on with amusement.Afterwards the same people marched up and
down in front of the German Hospital and shouted, “Vashasin Almanya”(Long live
Germany).3Again and again I have been told by
Mohammedans that it was Germany which caused the Armenians to be
extirpated in this way.On the way from the town to the farm I saw, on the
outskirts of the town, a human head lying on a dung-heap, which was
used as a target by Turkish boys. In Marash itself, during my stay
there, Armenians were every day killed by the civil population, and the
corpses were left for days in the open sewers or elsewhere.Kadir Pasha said to me at Marash: “I know that, in
pursuance of an order from the Government, the whole male population
within the area of the 4th Army Corps was killed.”On the 20th August, 19154, at six
o’clock in the evening, it was proclaimed at Marash that,
according to the order of the Vali of Adana, all males over 15 years of
age (5,600 altogether) must be assembled outside thetown,
ready for marching, by mid-day on Saturday; any one of them found in
the town after 12 o’clock would be shot on the spot. Everyone
knew the meaning of this order, and we lived through hours of most
awful terror. At the last moment the Vali’s order, owing to the
intervention of the very humane Governor of Marash, was modified to the
extent that the men would be allowed to leave with their families. Only
on the 18th August the Vali had sent for the clerical authorities, and
had given them an assurance that the Armenians in Marash would not be
deported. Thus the first who had to leave the town had to do so without
any previous preparation.In the village of Böveren, near Albistan, all the
Armenian inhabitants, 82 in number, with the exception of a boy twelve
years old, who jumped into the water and escaped, were killed.In the neighbourhood of Zeitoun the inhabitants of a
village infested by the smallpox were deported. The patients suffering
from smallpox, including those whose eyesight had been destroyed by the
illness, were lodged in hans (i.e. inns) at Marash, in which deported
persons from other districts were lodged already.At Marash I saw a convoy, consisting of about 200
persons, among whom were several blind. A mother, of the age of about
60, led her daughter, who was lame from birth; in this manner they
started on their journey on foot. After an hour’s march a man
collapsed near the Erkeness bridge; he was robbed and killed. Four days
afterwards we still saw his corpse lying in a ditch.Last night I called on an acquaintance; he had given
hospitality to a mother and her child who had been deported from
Sivas—the two survivors of a family of 26 persons who had been
deported from Sivas threemonths before and had reached Marash
in the last few days.In Aintab I saw a written order of the Governor of the
town, prohibiting the purchase on the part of the Mohammedan population
of any objects belonging to the deported Armenians. The same Governor
caused preparations to be made for a raid on the deported persons. Two
convoys were robbed of everything, down to the shirts of the people
belonging to them.About 2,800 persons deported from Gürün were
attacked and robbed at Airan-Pounar (12 hours to the north-east of
Marash) by eight brigands, who wore uniforms, partly officer’s
uniform and partly private’s. At Kisyl Gedjid, 1½ hours
short of Airan-Pounar, the eight brigands joined the gendarmes
escorting the convoy and had a long conversation with them. At
Airan-Pounar the gendarmes ordered the people to divide into two
parties; the few men formed one party, and the women the other party.
The women were stripped naked and robbed of everything; four women and
two girls were dragged away in the night and violated; five of them
returned on the following morning. In a defile of the Engissek-Dagh the
whole convoy was completely plundered by Turks and Kurds. In this
assault 200 persons were killed; 70 severely wounded persons had to be
left behind, and more than 50 more were taken along with the convoy. I
met the convoy, then consisting of about 2,500 persons, at
Karaböyük. The people were in an indescribable state of
misery; one hour short of Karaböyük two men were lying on the
road, one with two and the other with seven knife-wounds; further on
there were two exhausted women; still further four women, including a
girl of 13, with a two days’ old baby in her arms, wrapped in
rags. A man of about 60, who was lying in the road with adeep
wound (inflicted by a dagger), as long as a finger and two fingers
wide, told me that he had left Gürün with 13 animals. All the
animals and all his goods were taken away from him at Airan-Pounar, and
he had dragged himself away on foot, until he reached a place about an
hour short of Karaböyük, where he fell down exhausted.These people had all been in easy circumstances; the
value of the goods, the animals and the money of which they were
robbed, is estimated at T£8,000. Those who were exhausted were
left lying on the road; corpses can be seen lying on both sides of it.
Among the 2,500 persons of whom this convoy was composed I saw no
males, with the exception of about 30–40. All males over the age
of 15 were taken away in the sight of the women, and were probably
killed. These Armenians were intentionally transported by circuitous
routes and over dangerous paths. By the direct road to Marash they
would have arrived in four days, and they have been on the road for
over a month. They had to travel without animals, without beds, without
food; once in every day they received a thin slice of bread, and then
not enough to satisfy their hunger. Four hundred of them (Protestants)
have in the meantime arrived at Aleppo; out of these two or three die
every day.The raid at Ainar-Pounar was carried out with the
connivance of the Kaimakam at Albistan, who made them pay him
T£200, and promised the people that he would see that they
reached Aintab safely. The Kaimakam at Gürün made them pay
him T£1,020, and gave the same assurances. I saw a man who,
together with others, handed this sum to the Kaimakam in the club room
at Gürün. In the neighbourhood of Aintab several women
belonging to this convoy were violated in the night by civilian
inhabitants of Aintab. On the occasionof the raid at
Airan-Pounar men were tied to trees and burnt alive. While the
Armenians at Gürün were actually leaving the town, the
Mollahs called the faithful to prayer from the roofs of the Christian
Churches. An eye-witness told me about a dispute between two brothers
relating to the booty at Airan-Pounar; one of them said: “For
these four loads I have killed forty women.”At Marash a Mohammedan of the name of Hadji, whom I have
known for years, told me the following incident: “At Nissibin, I
and all the mule-drivers were locked up in a han; several young women
belonging to Furnus were violated during the night by the gendarmes
escorting the convoy and by civilians.”At Aintab, at the office of the Commissioner of Police,
a Mohammedan Agha said in my presence to an Armenian: “In such
and such places letters have been found. What are your relations with
this man? I have often told you to become a Mohammedan: if you had
listened to me, you would have escaped all the disagreeable things to
which your nation is exposed.”Out of 18,000 persons who were deported from Kharput and
Sivas, 350 arrived at Aleppo (consisting of women and children); out of
1,900 deported from Erzeroum, only eleven—one sick boy, four
girls and six women—reached that town. A convoy of women and
girls had to walk the 65 hours from Ras-el-Ain to Aleppo along the
railway line, notwithstanding the fact that at the same time the
railway carriages, which had been used for the transport of soldiers,
were returning empty. Mohammedan travellers, who came along this way,
report that the roads are impassable owing to the many corpses lying
unburied on both sides of the road, the smell of which is poisoning the
air. Of those “remaining over,” who so far have not been
sent further on, 100–120 persons have died at Aleppo up to the
present,in consequence of the hardships of the journey.
The starving and emaciated women and children, on their arrival at
Aleppo, fell on the food like wild beasts. In the case of many of them
the digestive organs had ceased to work; after having devoured one or
two spoonfuls they put the spoon aside. The Government alleges that the
deported persons receive food, but in the case of the above-mentioned
convoy, which came from Kharput, a distribution of bread took place
only once in three months.The Government does not merely neglect to make any
provision for the people; on the contrary, it causes everything to be
taken away from them. At Ras-el-Ain a convoy of 200 girls and women
arrived in a state of complete nudity; their shoes, their chemises,
everything, in short, had been taken away from them, and they were made
to walk for four days under the hot sun—the temperature was 122
degrees in the shade—in their condition of nakedness, jeered at
and derided by the soldiers of their escort. Mr. X. told me that he
himself had seen a convoy, consisting of 400 women and children, in the
same state. Whenever the wretched exiles appealed to the humanity of
the officials, the reply was: “We have strict orders from the
Government to treat you in this way.”At first the dead in Aleppo were brought to the cemetery
in the coffins provided by the Armenian Church. This was done by
“Hamals” (professional porters), who received two piastres
for each dead. When the “Hamals” were unable to cope with
the whole work, the women themselves brought their dead to the
cemetery—the babies in their arms, the bigger children laid on
sacks and carried by four women, one at each corner. I saw corpses
carried to the cemetery across a donkey’sback. A
friend of mine saw a dead body tied to a stick, which was carried by
two men. Another friend saw a cart drawn by oxen going to the cemetery
with a full load of corpses. The two-wheeled cart was too large to pass
the narrow cemetery-gate, whereupon the driver, without any hesitation,
turned it round and emptied it; then he dragged the dead bodies to
their respective graves by the arms and legs. At the present moment
five or six carts are in use, which take the dead to the cemetery. In
one of the hans, which is called a hospital, I saw on a Sunday
something like 30 corpses lying about in a yard, which was about 25
yards wide and 50 yards long. About 20 had already been buried on that
day. The 30 corpses remained lying there until the evening. My wife got
them carried away in the darkness by engaging three
“Hamals,” to whom she gave a medjidié (about 3s.
2d.) each. In the case of one of the corpses the skin adhered to the
hands of the “Hamals,” showing how far the process of
decomposition had already gone. Dying persons and persons suffering
from serious illnesses, about 1,000 altogether, were lying among the
dead, under the burning sun. The whole scene was more terrible than
anything I had ever seen, even than the shooting of the 24 people at
Marash in the summer, which has been described above. Nearly all the
people suffered from diarrhœa. Channels had been dug in the
ground within the courtyard, by the side of which the dying were
placed, with their backs towards the channel, so that the emptyings of
their bowels could pass into it at once. Whenever anyone died, he was
removed, and his melancholy place was filled by another. It happened
frequently that persons who were carried away as dead gave signs of
life when they were near the grave; they were dragged aside, until it
was certain that death had supervened.One young girl recovered
so far that she could be carried back to the town, and one person who
had been buried in the evening was found sitting on his grave the next
morning. Several corpses had been thrown into one grave, and he was on
the top; in the twilight only a thin layer of earth had been put over
him. In Tel-Abiad Mr.— saw open graves with 20–30 corpses.
The graves were filled up with earth when it was no longer possible to
put any more corpses into them. Mr.— told me that it was
impossible to go near these places owing to the stench, and yet the
deported persons had to encamp in the immediate vicinity. Out of 35
orphans who were kept in one room at Aleppo, 30 died in a week for want
of nourishment. Mr.— says that on his journey to this place he
saw corpses everywhere on the road, and that a Kurd boasted to him of
having killed 14 children.On Sunday, the 12th August, 1915, I had to go to the
station of the Damascus railway at Aleppo, and was able to see the
loading into cattle trucks of about 1,000 women and children. With us
in Germany the cattle are allowed more space than those wretched
people; 90 per cent. of them had death written on their faces. There
were people among them who literally had no time allowed them for
dying. On the previous evening a convoy had been taken away, and on the
next morning the dead bodies of two children, about half grown up, were
found, who had died during the loading of the trucks and had been left
lying on the platform.On the 13th September, 1915, the following telegraphic
order from the Commander-in-Chief of the 4th Army, Djemal Pasha, was
brought to the notice of the inhabitants: “All photographs, which
may have been taken by the engineers or other officers of the Bagdad
Railway Construction Company relating to the convoysof
Armenians, are to be delivered within 48 hours, together with the
negatives, to the Military Commissariat of the Bagdad Railway at
Aleppo. Any contravention of this order will be punished by
court-martial.”Several times I saw women and children search for scraps
of food in the dustheaps: anything that was found was devoured
immediately. I saw the children gnawing at raw bones which they had
picked up in corners used as urinals.On the road between Marash and Aintab the Mohammedan
population of a village wanted to distribute water and bread among a
convoy of 100 families, but the soldiers escorting the convoy prevented
this. Four-fifths of the deported persons are women and children; the
majority of the men have been called up for the Army.Twenty thousand persons who had been deported by way of
Marash were not allowed to pass on to Aintab and obtain supplies of
food, though the direct caravan route goes through Aintab.At Ras-el-Ain there are at present about 1,500 women and
children, the only survivors out of several thousands, who, together
with their husbands and fathers, were deported from Kharput and the
surrounding country. Among these 1,500 persons there is not a single
male over the age of 10–12 years. These people, healthy or sick,
are left lying from morning till evening in the sun without food and
without protection against a temperature of 109½ degrees in the
shade, and they are in the arbitrary power of their guards. Mr.
L.— who during the last month had, in conversation with me, used
the expression “Armenian rabble”—spoke literally as
follows: “I am not a man who is easily touched, but after what I
have seen at Ras-el-Ain I cannot keep the tears away. I did not think
it possible that suchacts of ill-treatment and violence, outraging
all rules of humanity, could be perpetrated in our century.”A “Tchaoush” (Sergeant-Major) of the name of
Suleiman took 18 women and girls and sold them to Arabs, charging
2–3 mejidiés (6s. 4d.—9s. 6d.) for each of them. A
Turkish police-commissary said to me: “We have lost all count of
the numbers of women and girls who were taken away by the Arabs and
Kurds, either by force or with the connivance of the Government. This
time we have carried out our operations against the Armenians according
to our heart’s desire; not one out of ten has been left among the
living.”While I am writing this down, my wife has returned from
a walk into the town, and reports tearfully that she met a convoy of
over 800 Armenians, all bare-footed, with torn clothes, carrying their
scanty possessions on their backs, together with their babies.In Besné the whole population, consisting of
1,800 souls, principally women and children, were expatriated; it was
alleged that they were to be deported to Ourfa. When they reached the
Göksu, a tributary of the Euphrates, they were compelled to take
their clothes off, and thereupon they were all massacred and thrown
into the river.On a single day latterly 170 corpses were observed
drifting down the Euphrates, on other days 50–60. Mr. A., an
engineer, saw 40 corpses in the course of one ride. Those which are
stranded on the river bank are devoured by the dogs, those on sandbanks
in mid-stream by the vultures.The above-mentioned 800 Armenians had been deported from
the district of Marash. They had been told that they would be taken to
Aintab, and they were to provide themselves with food for two days.
Whenthey reached the neighbourhood of Aintab the
soldiers said: “We have made a mistake, we were meant to go to
Nissibin.” No food was supplied by the authorities, and no
opportunities for the purchase of provisions were given. At Nissibin
the word went round: “We came the wrong way; we were meant to go
to Mumbidj.” There again the soldiers said: “We came the
wrong way; we were meant to go to Bab.” In this manner they had
to wander about for seventeen days, abandoned to the arbitrary pleasure
of their escort. During the whole time no provisions were supplied by
the Government, and their scanty possessions had to be given away in
exchange for bread.One mother, whose eldest daughter was taken away by
force, threw herself in despair into the Euphrates with her two
remaining children.Said, an emigrant from Tripoli, who had been a groom in
Mr. L.’s stables for four years with a monthly salary of 400
piastres (about £3), enlisted as a volunteer for the war, in
order to be able, according to his own statement, to take part in the
slaughter of a few Armenians. A nice house in an Armenian village near
Ourfa was promised him (he hinted) by way of reward.Two Circassians who were in the service of Mr. E., a
storekeeper, enlisted as volunteers for the war on the same ground.The head of a Circassian village community, Tchordekli,
speaking of the war volunteers from his village, said to an
acquaintance of mine: “Ev yikmak itchun giderler” (They go
in order to ruin whole families).At Arab Pounar a Turkish Major, who spoke German,
expressed himself as follows: “I and my brother took possession
of a young girl at Ras-el-Ain, who had been left on the road.We are
very angry with the Germansfor doing such things.”
When I contradicted them, they said: “The Chief of the General
Staff is a German; von der Goltz is Commander-in-Chief, and ever so
many German officers are in our Army. Our Koran does not permit such
treatment as the Armenians have to suffer now.”5At Nuss Tell a Mohammedan inspector made similar remarks to a clerk.
When I taxed him with this utterance in the presence of others, he
said: “It is not only I who say this; everyone will tell you the
same tale.”At Biredjik the prisons are filled every day and emptied
over night. Tell Armen, a village of 3,000 inhabitants, was raided, the
inhabitants were massacred, thrown dead or alive into the wells, or
burnt. Major von Mikusch was a witness of the devastation. A German
cavalry captain saw unburied corpses between Diyarbekir and Ourfa on
both sides of the road, with their throats cut. Innumerable unburied
corpses of children were seen on the way by Mr. S.At Tel-Abiad seventeen dead or dying persons were left
behind near the station, on the departure of a convoy. Two railway
officials afterwards had all seventeen buried.All the convoys of Armenians have for the last few days
been taken into these parts. The statement made by Mr. N. is entirely
in accord with the reply given to me by the Chairman of the Deportation
Commission, when I made an application in favour of four Armenian
children: “You do not grasp our intentions; we want to destroy
the Armenian name.Just as Germany will only let Germans exist, so
we Turks will only let Turks.”6 Between the 28th July and the 20th August, 1915, I
travelled to Marash. At Beshgöz, between Killis and Aintab, it was
a subject of conversation among the villagers that the deportation of
the Armenians would begin at Aintab too on the following day. A little
while after, a well-dressed gentleman, a Circassian, according to his
appearance, being partly in mufti and partly in officer’s
uniform, joined the group of talkers and asked: “From what part
of the town are people being sent away? By what road do they go? What
kind of people are they? Are they people from whom anything is to be
got?” When one of the persons present asked him whether he was a
civilian or in military service, he said smilingly: “Is there a
finer opportunity of being a soldier than now?” The same person
said afterwards: “This time Germany has given these
unbelieving swine a lesson which they will not
forget.”2 On hearing this, I could not refrain from replying that
it was soiling the name of Germany to mention it in connection with the
things which I had just been compelled to hear. On my return journey I
heard that the first convoys from Aintab, consisting almost exclusively
of well-to-do families, were stripped to their shirts,and I
was assured from several sides that this was done with the connivance
of the Government authorities, with whom the above-mentioned
questionable gentleman must, according to all appearances, have been in
relation. At Karaböyük, between Aintab and Marash, I met a
convoy of Armenians, consisting of about forty women and children and
five or six men. Close in front of them, at a distance of about 180
yards, 100 newly-enlisted soldiers were marching. There was a young
lady among the women, a teacher, who for several years had been in
German employment; she had just recovered from a serious attack of
typhoid fever. The soldiers wanted her and a young wife, whose husband
is at present a soldier in Damascus, to spend the night with them, and
used force to make them. It was only through the Mohammedan mule
drivers coming to the assistance of the women, that the soldiers could
be kept off during their three attacks. On the 6th August the Armenian village of Fundadjak,
near Marash, a place of about 3,000 inhabitants, was battered down to
the ground. The population, consisting almost exclusively of mule
drivers, had, during the preceding three months, been frequently
compelled to transport Armenians in the direction of the Euphrates.
They had seen the corpses in the Euphrates, and had also observed with
their own eyes the selling and raping of women and girls. In an Armenian school at Marash I saw over 100 women and
children with bullet wounds in their legs and their arms, and with all
sorts of mutilations; among them were children of one to two years. On the 13th August, 34 Armenians, including two boys
twelve years old, were shot at Marash. Again, on the 15th August, 24
were shot and 14 were hanged.The 24 who were shot were tied
together with a heavy chain that went round their necks, and were made
to stand up together in one mass. They were shot in the presence of the
Mohammedan population behind the American College. With my own eyes I
saw the bodies, while still convulsed by the agonies of death, being
abandoned to the license of the rough civilian mob, who pulled the
hands and feet of the corpses; and during the next half-hour the
policemen and gendarmes shot continuously with revolvers on these
corpses, some of which were terribly disfigured, while the population
looked on with amusement.Afterwards the same people marched up and
down in front of the German Hospital and shouted, “Vashasin Almanya”(Long live
Germany).3Again and again I have been told by
Mohammedans that it was Germany which caused the Armenians to be
extirpated in this way. On the way from the town to the farm I saw, on the
outskirts of the town, a human head lying on a dung-heap, which was
used as a target by Turkish boys. In Marash itself, during my stay
there, Armenians were every day killed by the civil population, and the
corpses were left for days in the open sewers or elsewhere. Kadir Pasha said to me at Marash: “I know that, in
pursuance of an order from the Government, the whole male population
within the area of the 4th Army Corps was killed.” On the 20th August, 19154, at six
o’clock in the evening, it was proclaimed at Marash that,
according to the order of the Vali of Adana, all males over 15 years of
age (5,600 altogether) must be assembled outside thetown,
ready for marching, by mid-day on Saturday; any one of them found in
the town after 12 o’clock would be shot on the spot. Everyone
knew the meaning of this order, and we lived through hours of most
awful terror. At the last moment the Vali’s order, owing to the
intervention of the very humane Governor of Marash, was modified to the
extent that the men would be allowed to leave with their families. Only
on the 18th August the Vali had sent for the clerical authorities, and
had given them an assurance that the Armenians in Marash would not be
deported. Thus the first who had to leave the town had to do so without
any previous preparation. In the village of Böveren, near Albistan, all the
Armenian inhabitants, 82 in number, with the exception of a boy twelve
years old, who jumped into the water and escaped, were killed. In the neighbourhood of Zeitoun the inhabitants of a
village infested by the smallpox were deported. The patients suffering
from smallpox, including those whose eyesight had been destroyed by the
illness, were lodged in hans (i.e. inns) at Marash, in which deported
persons from other districts were lodged already. At Marash I saw a convoy, consisting of about 200
persons, among whom were several blind. A mother, of the age of about
60, led her daughter, who was lame from birth; in this manner they
started on their journey on foot. After an hour’s march a man
collapsed near the Erkeness bridge; he was robbed and killed. Four days
afterwards we still saw his corpse lying in a ditch. Last night I called on an acquaintance; he had given
hospitality to a mother and her child who had been deported from
Sivas—the two survivors of a family of 26 persons who had been
deported from Sivas threemonths before and had reached Marash
in the last few days. In Aintab I saw a written order of the Governor of the
town, prohibiting the purchase on the part of the Mohammedan population
of any objects belonging to the deported Armenians. The same Governor
caused preparations to be made for a raid on the deported persons. Two
convoys were robbed of everything, down to the shirts of the people
belonging to them. About 2,800 persons deported from Gürün were
attacked and robbed at Airan-Pounar (12 hours to the north-east of
Marash) by eight brigands, who wore uniforms, partly officer’s
uniform and partly private’s. At Kisyl Gedjid, 1½ hours
short of Airan-Pounar, the eight brigands joined the gendarmes
escorting the convoy and had a long conversation with them. At
Airan-Pounar the gendarmes ordered the people to divide into two
parties; the few men formed one party, and the women the other party.
The women were stripped naked and robbed of everything; four women and
two girls were dragged away in the night and violated; five of them
returned on the following morning. In a defile of the Engissek-Dagh the
whole convoy was completely plundered by Turks and Kurds. In this
assault 200 persons were killed; 70 severely wounded persons had to be
left behind, and more than 50 more were taken along with the convoy. I
met the convoy, then consisting of about 2,500 persons, at
Karaböyük. The people were in an indescribable state of
misery; one hour short of Karaböyük two men were lying on the
road, one with two and the other with seven knife-wounds; further on
there were two exhausted women; still further four women, including a
girl of 13, with a two days’ old baby in her arms, wrapped in
rags. A man of about 60, who was lying in the road with adeep
wound (inflicted by a dagger), as long as a finger and two fingers
wide, told me that he had left Gürün with 13 animals. All the
animals and all his goods were taken away from him at Airan-Pounar, and
he had dragged himself away on foot, until he reached a place about an
hour short of Karaböyük, where he fell down exhausted. These people had all been in easy circumstances; the
value of the goods, the animals and the money of which they were
robbed, is estimated at T£8,000. Those who were exhausted were
left lying on the road; corpses can be seen lying on both sides of it.
Among the 2,500 persons of whom this convoy was composed I saw no
males, with the exception of about 30–40. All males over the age
of 15 were taken away in the sight of the women, and were probably
killed. These Armenians were intentionally transported by circuitous
routes and over dangerous paths. By the direct road to Marash they
would have arrived in four days, and they have been on the road for
over a month. They had to travel without animals, without beds, without
food; once in every day they received a thin slice of bread, and then
not enough to satisfy their hunger. Four hundred of them (Protestants)
have in the meantime arrived at Aleppo; out of these two or three die
every day. The raid at Ainar-Pounar was carried out with the
connivance of the Kaimakam at Albistan, who made them pay him
T£200, and promised the people that he would see that they
reached Aintab safely. The Kaimakam at Gürün made them pay
him T£1,020, and gave the same assurances. I saw a man who,
together with others, handed this sum to the Kaimakam in the club room
at Gürün. In the neighbourhood of Aintab several women
belonging to this convoy were violated in the night by civilian
inhabitants of Aintab. On the occasionof the raid at
Airan-Pounar men were tied to trees and burnt alive. While the
Armenians at Gürün were actually leaving the town, the
Mollahs called the faithful to prayer from the roofs of the Christian
Churches. An eye-witness told me about a dispute between two brothers
relating to the booty at Airan-Pounar; one of them said: “For
these four loads I have killed forty women.” At Marash a Mohammedan of the name of Hadji, whom I have
known for years, told me the following incident: “At Nissibin, I
and all the mule-drivers were locked up in a han; several young women
belonging to Furnus were violated during the night by the gendarmes
escorting the convoy and by civilians.” At Aintab, at the office of the Commissioner of Police,
a Mohammedan Agha said in my presence to an Armenian: “In such
and such places letters have been found. What are your relations with
this man? I have often told you to become a Mohammedan: if you had
listened to me, you would have escaped all the disagreeable things to
which your nation is exposed.” Out of 18,000 persons who were deported from Kharput and
Sivas, 350 arrived at Aleppo (consisting of women and children); out of
1,900 deported from Erzeroum, only eleven—one sick boy, four
girls and six women—reached that town. A convoy of women and
girls had to walk the 65 hours from Ras-el-Ain to Aleppo along the
railway line, notwithstanding the fact that at the same time the
railway carriages, which had been used for the transport of soldiers,
were returning empty. Mohammedan travellers, who came along this way,
report that the roads are impassable owing to the many corpses lying
unburied on both sides of the road, the smell of which is poisoning the
air. Of those “remaining over,” who so far have not been
sent further on, 100–120 persons have died at Aleppo up to the
present,in consequence of the hardships of the journey.
The starving and emaciated women and children, on their arrival at
Aleppo, fell on the food like wild beasts. In the case of many of them
the digestive organs had ceased to work; after having devoured one or
two spoonfuls they put the spoon aside. The Government alleges that the
deported persons receive food, but in the case of the above-mentioned
convoy, which came from Kharput, a distribution of bread took place
only once in three months. The Government does not merely neglect to make any
provision for the people; on the contrary, it causes everything to be
taken away from them. At Ras-el-Ain a convoy of 200 girls and women
arrived in a state of complete nudity; their shoes, their chemises,
everything, in short, had been taken away from them, and they were made
to walk for four days under the hot sun—the temperature was 122
degrees in the shade—in their condition of nakedness, jeered at
and derided by the soldiers of their escort. Mr. X. told me that he
himself had seen a convoy, consisting of 400 women and children, in the
same state. Whenever the wretched exiles appealed to the humanity of
the officials, the reply was: “We have strict orders from the
Government to treat you in this way.” At first the dead in Aleppo were brought to the cemetery
in the coffins provided by the Armenian Church. This was done by
“Hamals” (professional porters), who received two piastres
for each dead. When the “Hamals” were unable to cope with
the whole work, the women themselves brought their dead to the
cemetery—the babies in their arms, the bigger children laid on
sacks and carried by four women, one at each corner. I saw corpses
carried to the cemetery across a donkey’sback. A
friend of mine saw a dead body tied to a stick, which was carried by
two men. Another friend saw a cart drawn by oxen going to the cemetery
with a full load of corpses. The two-wheeled cart was too large to pass
the narrow cemetery-gate, whereupon the driver, without any hesitation,
turned it round and emptied it; then he dragged the dead bodies to
their respective graves by the arms and legs. At the present moment
five or six carts are in use, which take the dead to the cemetery. In
one of the hans, which is called a hospital, I saw on a Sunday
something like 30 corpses lying about in a yard, which was about 25
yards wide and 50 yards long. About 20 had already been buried on that
day. The 30 corpses remained lying there until the evening. My wife got
them carried away in the darkness by engaging three
“Hamals,” to whom she gave a medjidié (about 3s.
2d.) each. In the case of one of the corpses the skin adhered to the
hands of the “Hamals,” showing how far the process of
decomposition had already gone. Dying persons and persons suffering
from serious illnesses, about 1,000 altogether, were lying among the
dead, under the burning sun. The whole scene was more terrible than
anything I had ever seen, even than the shooting of the 24 people at
Marash in the summer, which has been described above. Nearly all the
people suffered from diarrhœa. Channels had been dug in the
ground within the courtyard, by the side of which the dying were
placed, with their backs towards the channel, so that the emptyings of
their bowels could pass into it at once. Whenever anyone died, he was
removed, and his melancholy place was filled by another. It happened
frequently that persons who were carried away as dead gave signs of
life when they were near the grave; they were dragged aside, until it
was certain that death had supervened.One young girl recovered
so far that she could be carried back to the town, and one person who
had been buried in the evening was found sitting on his grave the next
morning. Several corpses had been thrown into one grave, and he was on
the top; in the twilight only a thin layer of earth had been put over
him. In Tel-Abiad Mr.— saw open graves with 20–30 corpses.
The graves were filled up with earth when it was no longer possible to
put any more corpses into them. Mr.— told me that it was
impossible to go near these places owing to the stench, and yet the
deported persons had to encamp in the immediate vicinity. Out of 35
orphans who were kept in one room at Aleppo, 30 died in a week for want
of nourishment. Mr.— says that on his journey to this place he
saw corpses everywhere on the road, and that a Kurd boasted to him of
having killed 14 children. On Sunday, the 12th August, 1915, I had to go to the
station of the Damascus railway at Aleppo, and was able to see the
loading into cattle trucks of about 1,000 women and children. With us
in Germany the cattle are allowed more space than those wretched
people; 90 per cent. of them had death written on their faces. There
were people among them who literally had no time allowed them for
dying. On the previous evening a convoy had been taken away, and on the
next morning the dead bodies of two children, about half grown up, were
found, who had died during the loading of the trucks and had been left
lying on the platform. On the 13th September, 1915, the following telegraphic
order from the Commander-in-Chief of the 4th Army, Djemal Pasha, was
brought to the notice of the inhabitants: “All photographs, which
may have been taken by the engineers or other officers of the Bagdad
Railway Construction Company relating to the convoysof
Armenians, are to be delivered within 48 hours, together with the
negatives, to the Military Commissariat of the Bagdad Railway at
Aleppo. Any contravention of this order will be punished by
court-martial.” Several times I saw women and children search for scraps
of food in the dustheaps: anything that was found was devoured
immediately. I saw the children gnawing at raw bones which they had
picked up in corners used as urinals. On the road between Marash and Aintab the Mohammedan
population of a village wanted to distribute water and bread among a
convoy of 100 families, but the soldiers escorting the convoy prevented
this. Four-fifths of the deported persons are women and children; the
majority of the men have been called up for the Army. Twenty thousand persons who had been deported by way of
Marash were not allowed to pass on to Aintab and obtain supplies of
food, though the direct caravan route goes through Aintab. At Ras-el-Ain there are at present about 1,500 women and
children, the only survivors out of several thousands, who, together
with their husbands and fathers, were deported from Kharput and the
surrounding country. Among these 1,500 persons there is not a single
male over the age of 10–12 years. These people, healthy or sick,
are left lying from morning till evening in the sun without food and
without protection against a temperature of 109½ degrees in the
shade, and they are in the arbitrary power of their guards. Mr.
L.— who during the last month had, in conversation with me, used
the expression “Armenian rabble”—spoke literally as
follows: “I am not a man who is easily touched, but after what I
have seen at Ras-el-Ain I cannot keep the tears away. I did not think
it possible that suchacts of ill-treatment and violence, outraging
all rules of humanity, could be perpetrated in our century.” A “Tchaoush” (Sergeant-Major) of the name of
Suleiman took 18 women and girls and sold them to Arabs, charging
2–3 mejidiés (6s. 4d.—9s. 6d.) for each of them. A
Turkish police-commissary said to me: “We have lost all count of
the numbers of women and girls who were taken away by the Arabs and
Kurds, either by force or with the connivance of the Government. This
time we have carried out our operations against the Armenians according
to our heart’s desire; not one out of ten has been left among the
living.” While I am writing this down, my wife has returned from
a walk into the town, and reports tearfully that she met a convoy of
over 800 Armenians, all bare-footed, with torn clothes, carrying their
scanty possessions on their backs, together with their babies. In Besné the whole population, consisting of
1,800 souls, principally women and children, were expatriated; it was
alleged that they were to be deported to Ourfa. When they reached the
Göksu, a tributary of the Euphrates, they were compelled to take
their clothes off, and thereupon they were all massacred and thrown
into the river. On a single day latterly 170 corpses were observed
drifting down the Euphrates, on other days 50–60. Mr. A., an
engineer, saw 40 corpses in the course of one ride. Those which are
stranded on the river bank are devoured by the dogs, those on sandbanks
in mid-stream by the vultures. The above-mentioned 800 Armenians had been deported from
the district of Marash. They had been told that they would be taken to
Aintab, and they were to provide themselves with food for two days.
Whenthey reached the neighbourhood of Aintab the
soldiers said: “We have made a mistake, we were meant to go to
Nissibin.” No food was supplied by the authorities, and no
opportunities for the purchase of provisions were given. At Nissibin
the word went round: “We came the wrong way; we were meant to go
to Mumbidj.” There again the soldiers said: “We came the
wrong way; we were meant to go to Bab.” In this manner they had
to wander about for seventeen days, abandoned to the arbitrary pleasure
of their escort. During the whole time no provisions were supplied by
the Government, and their scanty possessions had to be given away in
exchange for bread. One mother, whose eldest daughter was taken away by
force, threw herself in despair into the Euphrates with her two
remaining children. Said, an emigrant from Tripoli, who had been a groom in
Mr. L.’s stables for four years with a monthly salary of 400
piastres (about £3), enlisted as a volunteer for the war, in
order to be able, according to his own statement, to take part in the
slaughter of a few Armenians. A nice house in an Armenian village near
Ourfa was promised him (he hinted) by way of reward. Two Circassians who were in the service of Mr. E., a
storekeeper, enlisted as volunteers for the war on the same ground. The head of a Circassian village community, Tchordekli,
speaking of the war volunteers from his village, said to an
acquaintance of mine: “Ev yikmak itchun giderler” (They go
in order to ruin whole families). At Arab Pounar a Turkish Major, who spoke German,
expressed himself as follows: “I and my brother took possession
of a young girl at Ras-el-Ain, who had been left on the road.We are
very angry with the Germansfor doing such things.”
When I contradicted them, they said: “The Chief of the General
Staff is a German; von der Goltz is Commander-in-Chief, and ever so
many German officers are in our Army. Our Koran does not permit such
treatment as the Armenians have to suffer now.”5At Nuss Tell a Mohammedan inspector made similar remarks to a clerk.
When I taxed him with this utterance in the presence of others, he
said: “It is not only I who say this; everyone will tell you the
same tale.” At Biredjik the prisons are filled every day and emptied
over night. Tell Armen, a village of 3,000 inhabitants, was raided, the
inhabitants were massacred, thrown dead or alive into the wells, or
burnt. Major von Mikusch was a witness of the devastation. A German
cavalry captain saw unburied corpses between Diyarbekir and Ourfa on
both sides of the road, with their throats cut. Innumerable unburied
corpses of children were seen on the way by Mr. S. At Tel-Abiad seventeen dead or dying persons were left
behind near the station, on the departure of a convoy. Two railway
officials afterwards had all seventeen buried. All the convoys of Armenians have for the last few days
been taken into these parts. The statement made by Mr. N. is entirely
in accord with the reply given to me by the Chairman of the Deportation
Commission, when I made an application in favour of four Armenian
children: “You do not grasp our intentions; we want to destroy
the Armenian name.Just as Germany will only let Germans exist, so
we Turks will only let Turks.”6 10. Narrative of a German Official of the Bagdad
Railway.When the inhabitants of the Cilician villages left
their homes, many of them still had donkeys for riding or carrying
packs, but the soldiers escorting the convoys would only allow the
“Katerdjis” (donkey-drivers) to ride on these animals,
saying that strict orders had been given that no deported persons,
whether male or female, might ride. In the case of the convoy starting
from Hadjin the “Katerdjis” simply took all the pack
animals which they suspected of carrying money or valuables straight to
their own villages. Other animals, which the people had taken with
them, were taken away from them by force or purchased for prices so
absurdly low that it would hardly have made any difference if they had
been given away gratis. A woman whose family is known to me sold 90
sheep for a hundred piastres, which at any other time would have
realised about T£60 to £70; in other words, she had to sell
ninety animals for the proper price of one animal. The villagers of
Shar had received permission to take away their oxen, carts and pack
animals. Near Gökpunar they were forced to leave the carriage road
and to take the shorter footpath which crosses the mountains. They had
to march on without any food, for their journey or other equipment. The
escort simply said that these were their orders.At the beginning each deported person received from the
Government one kilogram (2 lbs.) of bread per month (not per day). They
lived on the provisions which they had taken with them. Small sums of
money were afterwards paid to them. I was told of about 30 persons who
had formerly been in good positions in the Circassian village of
Bumbudj (Mumbidj, on the ruins of the ancient Bambyke), 1½
days’ journey from Aleppo, who had received 20 piastres in thirty
days—not per head; but the 30 between them. That meant a penny a
month each. About four hundred barefooted women, each with one child on
her arm, one child on her back (often enough a dead one) and one held
by the hand, passed through Marash during the first days. The Armenians
of Marash—who afterwards were themselves deported—purchased
£50 (Turkish) worth of shoes to supply those who passed through
the town. Between Marash and Aintab the Mohammedan population in a
Turkish village wished to give water and bread to a convoy of about 100
families. The soldiers refused to permit this. The American mission and
the Armenians of Aintab—who later on were also
deported—managed to bring bread and money during the night to the
convoys which passed Aintab, and which totalled about 20,000 persons,
mostly women and children. These were the villagers of the Sandjak of
Marash. The convoys were not allowed to enter Marash, but encamped in
the open. The American missionaries found it possible to provision them
thus by night as far as Nisib (nine hours to the south-east of Aintab,
on the way to the Euphrates).While on the march the deported Armenians were at first
robbed of their ready money, and afterwards of all their possessions. A
deported Protestant minister saw T£43 being taken away from one
family and £28 fromanother. This minister was himself
newly married, and was compelled to leave his young wife at Hadjin,
expecting her first child. Four-fifths of the deported persons are
women and children. Three-fifths of them are barefooted. A former
inhabitant of Hadjin who is known to me personally and who had a
fortune of at least T£15,000 had, like everybody else, been
robbed of his clothes, and clothes had to be begged for him here. The
deported Armenians are specially troubled by the fact that they are
unable to bury their dead. They are left dying anywhere on the road.
The women often carry their dead children for days on their backs. At
Bab, ten hours to the east of Aleppo, those who came through were
lodged provisionally for a week or two, but they were not allowed to
retrace their steps to bury the companions who had died on the way.The hardest fate is that of the women who are confined
on the way. They are hardly allowed sufficient time to bring their
child into the world. One poor woman gave birth to twins during the
night. In the morning she had to march on, carrying the two newly-born
children on her back. After a two hours’ march she collapsed. She
had to put the children on the ground under a bush, and the soldiers
compelled her to walk on with her companions. Another woman was
confined during the march and was forced to proceed on her march
immediately; she fell down dead. A third woman was surrounded by ladies
belonging to the American mission, while she was confined in the
neighbourhood of Aintab. They only succeeded in obtaining permission
for her to ride an animal, and she continued her journey in this
manner, holding the child in her lap with a few rags round it. These
cases were witnessed merely on the section of road between Marash and
Aintab. At Aintab the people clearing up a han, whichan hour
before had been left by a convoy, found a new-born child. In the
Tash-Han, in Marash, three new-born children were found buried in
dung.Innumerable corpses of children are found lying unburied
on the road. A Turkish Major, who returned with me three days ago, said
that many children were abandoned by their mothers on the way because
they could not feed them any more. Older children are taken away from
their mothers by the Turks. The Major, as well as each of his brothers,
had an Armenian child with him; they intended to educate them as
Mohammedans. One of the children speaks German. It must be one of the
inmates of a German orphanage. It is thought that about 300 of the
women who passed through here were confined on the way.In this place a family, in its dire poverty and despair,
sold a girl of the age of 18 years to a Turk for T£6. The
husbands of most of the women had been called up for service in the
Army. Anyone who does not obey the summons calling him up is hanged or
shot; there were seven cases lately at Marash. The conscripts are,
however, generally used merely for mending the roads, and are not
allowed to carry arms. Those who return home find their houses empty.
Two days ago I met an Armenian soldier at Djerabulus, who had come from
Jerusalem, having obtained leave to visit his native village, Geben
(situate between Zeitoun and Sis). I have known this man for years.
Here he heard that his mother, his wife and three children had been
deported into the desert. All inquiries as to the fate of his family
were fruitless.Corpses drifting down the Euphrates have been observed
every day during the last 28 days, pairs of them being tied together
back to back, while others are tied three to eight together by the
arms. A TurkishColonel who is stationed at Djerabulus was asked
why he did not have the corpses buried, whereupon he replied that he
had no orders to do so, and that, moreover, it was impossible to
ascertain whether they were Mohammedans or Christians, as their sexual
organs had been cut off. (They would bury Mohammedans, but not
Christians.) The corpses which had been stranded on the shore were
eaten by the dogs. Others which had stuck on the sandbanks became the
prey of the vultures. A German, in the course of one ride, saw six
pairs of corpses drifting down stream. A German cavalry captain said he
had, in the course of a ride from Diyarbekir to Ourfa, seen innumerable
unburied corpses on both sides of the road, all corpses of young men
whose throats had been cut. (These were the Armenians called up for
military service and used for mending the roads.) A Turkish Pasha,
addressing a distinguished Armenian, expressed himself as follows:
“Be thankful, if at least you find a grave in the desert; many of
you have to do without this.”Not one half of the deported persons remain alive. The
day before yesterday one woman died here in the station yard; yesterday
there were 14 deaths, and this morning a further 10. A Protestant
minister from Hadjin said to a Turk at Osmanieh: “Not one half of
these deported persons remain alive.” The Turk replied:
“That is what we are after.”It ought not to be overlooked that there are some
Mohammedans who disapprove of the horrible deeds done against the
Armenians. A Mohammedan Sheikh, a person of great authority at Aleppo,
said in my presence: “When I hear talk about the treatment of the
Armenians, I am ashamed of being a Turk.”Anyone who wishes to remain alive is compelled to go
over to Islam. In order to promote this, isolatedfamilies
are in certain cases sent to purely Mohammedan villages.The number of deported persons who have passed through
here and at Aintab has so far reached about 50,000. Nine-tenths of them
were told on the evening before their deportation that they had to
start in the morning. The majority of the convoys go through Ourfa, the
minority through Aleppo. The first mentioned take the road for Mosul,
the others for Der-el-Zor. The authorities say that they are to be
settled there, but those who escape the knife will certainly perish of
hunger. Some 10,000 persons have reached Der-el-Zor on the Euphrates;
no news has so far been received of the others. As regards those who
were sent towards Mosul, it is said that they are to be settled at a
distance of about 16 miles from the railway; this probably means that
they are to be driven into the desert, where their extirpation can
proceed without witnesses.What I have written down is only a small fraction of all
the cruelties which have been practised here during the last two
months, and which assume larger proportions every day. It is only a
fraction of the things which I have seen with my own eyes and heard
from acquaintances and friends who were eye-witnesses. I am prepared at
any time to mention the dates of the events and to give the names of
the witnesses. 10. Narrative of a German Official of the Bagdad
Railway. When the inhabitants of the Cilician villages left
their homes, many of them still had donkeys for riding or carrying
packs, but the soldiers escorting the convoys would only allow the
“Katerdjis” (donkey-drivers) to ride on these animals,
saying that strict orders had been given that no deported persons,
whether male or female, might ride. In the case of the convoy starting
from Hadjin the “Katerdjis” simply took all the pack
animals which they suspected of carrying money or valuables straight to
their own villages. Other animals, which the people had taken with
them, were taken away from them by force or purchased for prices so
absurdly low that it would hardly have made any difference if they had
been given away gratis. A woman whose family is known to me sold 90
sheep for a hundred piastres, which at any other time would have
realised about T£60 to £70; in other words, she had to sell
ninety animals for the proper price of one animal. The villagers of
Shar had received permission to take away their oxen, carts and pack
animals. Near Gökpunar they were forced to leave the carriage road
and to take the shorter footpath which crosses the mountains. They had
to march on without any food, for their journey or other equipment. The
escort simply said that these were their orders.At the beginning each deported person received from the
Government one kilogram (2 lbs.) of bread per month (not per day). They
lived on the provisions which they had taken with them. Small sums of
money were afterwards paid to them. I was told of about 30 persons who
had formerly been in good positions in the Circassian village of
Bumbudj (Mumbidj, on the ruins of the ancient Bambyke), 1½
days’ journey from Aleppo, who had received 20 piastres in thirty
days—not per head; but the 30 between them. That meant a penny a
month each. About four hundred barefooted women, each with one child on
her arm, one child on her back (often enough a dead one) and one held
by the hand, passed through Marash during the first days. The Armenians
of Marash—who afterwards were themselves deported—purchased
£50 (Turkish) worth of shoes to supply those who passed through
the town. Between Marash and Aintab the Mohammedan population in a
Turkish village wished to give water and bread to a convoy of about 100
families. The soldiers refused to permit this. The American mission and
the Armenians of Aintab—who later on were also
deported—managed to bring bread and money during the night to the
convoys which passed Aintab, and which totalled about 20,000 persons,
mostly women and children. These were the villagers of the Sandjak of
Marash. The convoys were not allowed to enter Marash, but encamped in
the open. The American missionaries found it possible to provision them
thus by night as far as Nisib (nine hours to the south-east of Aintab,
on the way to the Euphrates).While on the march the deported Armenians were at first
robbed of their ready money, and afterwards of all their possessions. A
deported Protestant minister saw T£43 being taken away from one
family and £28 fromanother. This minister was himself
newly married, and was compelled to leave his young wife at Hadjin,
expecting her first child. Four-fifths of the deported persons are
women and children. Three-fifths of them are barefooted. A former
inhabitant of Hadjin who is known to me personally and who had a
fortune of at least T£15,000 had, like everybody else, been
robbed of his clothes, and clothes had to be begged for him here. The
deported Armenians are specially troubled by the fact that they are
unable to bury their dead. They are left dying anywhere on the road.
The women often carry their dead children for days on their backs. At
Bab, ten hours to the east of Aleppo, those who came through were
lodged provisionally for a week or two, but they were not allowed to
retrace their steps to bury the companions who had died on the way.The hardest fate is that of the women who are confined
on the way. They are hardly allowed sufficient time to bring their
child into the world. One poor woman gave birth to twins during the
night. In the morning she had to march on, carrying the two newly-born
children on her back. After a two hours’ march she collapsed. She
had to put the children on the ground under a bush, and the soldiers
compelled her to walk on with her companions. Another woman was
confined during the march and was forced to proceed on her march
immediately; she fell down dead. A third woman was surrounded by ladies
belonging to the American mission, while she was confined in the
neighbourhood of Aintab. They only succeeded in obtaining permission
for her to ride an animal, and she continued her journey in this
manner, holding the child in her lap with a few rags round it. These
cases were witnessed merely on the section of road between Marash and
Aintab. At Aintab the people clearing up a han, whichan hour
before had been left by a convoy, found a new-born child. In the
Tash-Han, in Marash, three new-born children were found buried in
dung.Innumerable corpses of children are found lying unburied
on the road. A Turkish Major, who returned with me three days ago, said
that many children were abandoned by their mothers on the way because
they could not feed them any more. Older children are taken away from
their mothers by the Turks. The Major, as well as each of his brothers,
had an Armenian child with him; they intended to educate them as
Mohammedans. One of the children speaks German. It must be one of the
inmates of a German orphanage. It is thought that about 300 of the
women who passed through here were confined on the way.In this place a family, in its dire poverty and despair,
sold a girl of the age of 18 years to a Turk for T£6. The
husbands of most of the women had been called up for service in the
Army. Anyone who does not obey the summons calling him up is hanged or
shot; there were seven cases lately at Marash. The conscripts are,
however, generally used merely for mending the roads, and are not
allowed to carry arms. Those who return home find their houses empty.
Two days ago I met an Armenian soldier at Djerabulus, who had come from
Jerusalem, having obtained leave to visit his native village, Geben
(situate between Zeitoun and Sis). I have known this man for years.
Here he heard that his mother, his wife and three children had been
deported into the desert. All inquiries as to the fate of his family
were fruitless.Corpses drifting down the Euphrates have been observed
every day during the last 28 days, pairs of them being tied together
back to back, while others are tied three to eight together by the
arms. A TurkishColonel who is stationed at Djerabulus was asked
why he did not have the corpses buried, whereupon he replied that he
had no orders to do so, and that, moreover, it was impossible to
ascertain whether they were Mohammedans or Christians, as their sexual
organs had been cut off. (They would bury Mohammedans, but not
Christians.) The corpses which had been stranded on the shore were
eaten by the dogs. Others which had stuck on the sandbanks became the
prey of the vultures. A German, in the course of one ride, saw six
pairs of corpses drifting down stream. A German cavalry captain said he
had, in the course of a ride from Diyarbekir to Ourfa, seen innumerable
unburied corpses on both sides of the road, all corpses of young men
whose throats had been cut. (These were the Armenians called up for
military service and used for mending the roads.) A Turkish Pasha,
addressing a distinguished Armenian, expressed himself as follows:
“Be thankful, if at least you find a grave in the desert; many of
you have to do without this.”Not one half of the deported persons remain alive. The
day before yesterday one woman died here in the station yard; yesterday
there were 14 deaths, and this morning a further 10. A Protestant
minister from Hadjin said to a Turk at Osmanieh: “Not one half of
these deported persons remain alive.” The Turk replied:
“That is what we are after.”It ought not to be overlooked that there are some
Mohammedans who disapprove of the horrible deeds done against the
Armenians. A Mohammedan Sheikh, a person of great authority at Aleppo,
said in my presence: “When I hear talk about the treatment of the
Armenians, I am ashamed of being a Turk.”Anyone who wishes to remain alive is compelled to go
over to Islam. In order to promote this, isolatedfamilies
are in certain cases sent to purely Mohammedan villages.The number of deported persons who have passed through
here and at Aintab has so far reached about 50,000. Nine-tenths of them
were told on the evening before their deportation that they had to
start in the morning. The majority of the convoys go through Ourfa, the
minority through Aleppo. The first mentioned take the road for Mosul,
the others for Der-el-Zor. The authorities say that they are to be
settled there, but those who escape the knife will certainly perish of
hunger. Some 10,000 persons have reached Der-el-Zor on the Euphrates;
no news has so far been received of the others. As regards those who
were sent towards Mosul, it is said that they are to be settled at a
distance of about 16 miles from the railway; this probably means that
they are to be driven into the desert, where their extirpation can
proceed without witnesses.What I have written down is only a small fraction of all
the cruelties which have been practised here during the last two
months, and which assume larger proportions every day. It is only a
fraction of the things which I have seen with my own eyes and heard
from acquaintances and friends who were eye-witnesses. I am prepared at
any time to mention the dates of the events and to give the names of
the witnesses. When the inhabitants of the Cilician villages left
their homes, many of them still had donkeys for riding or carrying
packs, but the soldiers escorting the convoys would only allow the
“Katerdjis” (donkey-drivers) to ride on these animals,
saying that strict orders had been given that no deported persons,
whether male or female, might ride. In the case of the convoy starting
from Hadjin the “Katerdjis” simply took all the pack
animals which they suspected of carrying money or valuables straight to
their own villages. Other animals, which the people had taken with
them, were taken away from them by force or purchased for prices so
absurdly low that it would hardly have made any difference if they had
been given away gratis. A woman whose family is known to me sold 90
sheep for a hundred piastres, which at any other time would have
realised about T£60 to £70; in other words, she had to sell
ninety animals for the proper price of one animal. The villagers of
Shar had received permission to take away their oxen, carts and pack
animals. Near Gökpunar they were forced to leave the carriage road
and to take the shorter footpath which crosses the mountains. They had
to march on without any food, for their journey or other equipment. The
escort simply said that these were their orders. At the beginning each deported person received from the
Government one kilogram (2 lbs.) of bread per month (not per day). They
lived on the provisions which they had taken with them. Small sums of
money were afterwards paid to them. I was told of about 30 persons who
had formerly been in good positions in the Circassian village of
Bumbudj (Mumbidj, on the ruins of the ancient Bambyke), 1½
days’ journey from Aleppo, who had received 20 piastres in thirty
days—not per head; but the 30 between them. That meant a penny a
month each. About four hundred barefooted women, each with one child on
her arm, one child on her back (often enough a dead one) and one held
by the hand, passed through Marash during the first days. The Armenians
of Marash—who afterwards were themselves deported—purchased
£50 (Turkish) worth of shoes to supply those who passed through
the town. Between Marash and Aintab the Mohammedan population in a
Turkish village wished to give water and bread to a convoy of about 100
families. The soldiers refused to permit this. The American mission and
the Armenians of Aintab—who later on were also
deported—managed to bring bread and money during the night to the
convoys which passed Aintab, and which totalled about 20,000 persons,
mostly women and children. These were the villagers of the Sandjak of
Marash. The convoys were not allowed to enter Marash, but encamped in
the open. The American missionaries found it possible to provision them
thus by night as far as Nisib (nine hours to the south-east of Aintab,
on the way to the Euphrates). While on the march the deported Armenians were at first
robbed of their ready money, and afterwards of all their possessions. A
deported Protestant minister saw T£43 being taken away from one
family and £28 fromanother. This minister was himself
newly married, and was compelled to leave his young wife at Hadjin,
expecting her first child. Four-fifths of the deported persons are
women and children. Three-fifths of them are barefooted. A former
inhabitant of Hadjin who is known to me personally and who had a
fortune of at least T£15,000 had, like everybody else, been
robbed of his clothes, and clothes had to be begged for him here. The
deported Armenians are specially troubled by the fact that they are
unable to bury their dead. They are left dying anywhere on the road.
The women often carry their dead children for days on their backs. At
Bab, ten hours to the east of Aleppo, those who came through were
lodged provisionally for a week or two, but they were not allowed to
retrace their steps to bury the companions who had died on the way. The hardest fate is that of the women who are confined
on the way. They are hardly allowed sufficient time to bring their
child into the world. One poor woman gave birth to twins during the
night. In the morning she had to march on, carrying the two newly-born
children on her back. After a two hours’ march she collapsed. She
had to put the children on the ground under a bush, and the soldiers
compelled her to walk on with her companions. Another woman was
confined during the march and was forced to proceed on her march
immediately; she fell down dead. A third woman was surrounded by ladies
belonging to the American mission, while she was confined in the
neighbourhood of Aintab. They only succeeded in obtaining permission
for her to ride an animal, and she continued her journey in this
manner, holding the child in her lap with a few rags round it. These
cases were witnessed merely on the section of road between Marash and
Aintab. At Aintab the people clearing up a han, whichan hour
before had been left by a convoy, found a new-born child. In the
Tash-Han, in Marash, three new-born children were found buried in
dung. Innumerable corpses of children are found lying unburied
on the road. A Turkish Major, who returned with me three days ago, said
that many children were abandoned by their mothers on the way because
they could not feed them any more. Older children are taken away from
their mothers by the Turks. The Major, as well as each of his brothers,
had an Armenian child with him; they intended to educate them as
Mohammedans. One of the children speaks German. It must be one of the
inmates of a German orphanage. It is thought that about 300 of the
women who passed through here were confined on the way. In this place a family, in its dire poverty and despair,
sold a girl of the age of 18 years to a Turk for T£6. The
husbands of most of the women had been called up for service in the
Army. Anyone who does not obey the summons calling him up is hanged or
shot; there were seven cases lately at Marash. The conscripts are,
however, generally used merely for mending the roads, and are not
allowed to carry arms. Those who return home find their houses empty.
Two days ago I met an Armenian soldier at Djerabulus, who had come from
Jerusalem, having obtained leave to visit his native village, Geben
(situate between Zeitoun and Sis). I have known this man for years.
Here he heard that his mother, his wife and three children had been
deported into the desert. All inquiries as to the fate of his family
were fruitless. Corpses drifting down the Euphrates have been observed
every day during the last 28 days, pairs of them being tied together
back to back, while others are tied three to eight together by the
arms. A TurkishColonel who is stationed at Djerabulus was asked
why he did not have the corpses buried, whereupon he replied that he
had no orders to do so, and that, moreover, it was impossible to
ascertain whether they were Mohammedans or Christians, as their sexual
organs had been cut off. (They would bury Mohammedans, but not
Christians.) The corpses which had been stranded on the shore were
eaten by the dogs. Others which had stuck on the sandbanks became the
prey of the vultures. A German, in the course of one ride, saw six
pairs of corpses drifting down stream. A German cavalry captain said he
had, in the course of a ride from Diyarbekir to Ourfa, seen innumerable
unburied corpses on both sides of the road, all corpses of young men
whose throats had been cut. (These were the Armenians called up for
military service and used for mending the roads.) A Turkish Pasha,
addressing a distinguished Armenian, expressed himself as follows:
“Be thankful, if at least you find a grave in the desert; many of
you have to do without this.” Not one half of the deported persons remain alive. The
day before yesterday one woman died here in the station yard; yesterday
there were 14 deaths, and this morning a further 10. A Protestant
minister from Hadjin said to a Turk at Osmanieh: “Not one half of
these deported persons remain alive.” The Turk replied:
“That is what we are after.” It ought not to be overlooked that there are some
Mohammedans who disapprove of the horrible deeds done against the
Armenians. A Mohammedan Sheikh, a person of great authority at Aleppo,
said in my presence: “When I hear talk about the treatment of the
Armenians, I am ashamed of being a Turk.” Anyone who wishes to remain alive is compelled to go
over to Islam. In order to promote this, isolatedfamilies
are in certain cases sent to purely Mohammedan villages. The number of deported persons who have passed through
here and at Aintab has so far reached about 50,000. Nine-tenths of them
were told on the evening before their deportation that they had to
start in the morning. The majority of the convoys go through Ourfa, the
minority through Aleppo. The first mentioned take the road for Mosul,
the others for Der-el-Zor. The authorities say that they are to be
settled there, but those who escape the knife will certainly perish of
hunger. Some 10,000 persons have reached Der-el-Zor on the Euphrates;
no news has so far been received of the others. As regards those who
were sent towards Mosul, it is said that they are to be settled at a
distance of about 16 miles from the railway; this probably means that
they are to be driven into the desert, where their extirpation can
proceed without witnesses. What I have written down is only a small fraction of all
the cruelties which have been practised here during the last two
months, and which assume larger proportions every day. It is only a
fraction of the things which I have seen with my own eyes and heard
from acquaintances and friends who were eye-witnesses. I am prepared at
any time to mention the dates of the events and to give the names of
the witnesses. 11. THE AMANUS PASSES.Statements by two Swiss Ladies, resident in
Turkey. Communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian
Relief.(a) Report by Fräulein M., dated 16th
November, 1915.I have just returned from a ride on horseback through
the Baghtché-Osmania plain, where thousands of exiles are lying
out in the fields and on the roads, without any shelter and completely
at the mercy of all manner of brigands. Last night, about 12
o’clock, a little camp was suddenly attacked. There were between
50 and 60 persons in it. I found men and women badly
wounded—bodies slashed open, broken skulls and terrible
knife-wounds. Fortunately I was provided with clothes, so I could
change their blood-soaked things and then bring them to the next inn,
where they were nursed. Many of them were so much exhausted from the
enormous loss of blood that they died, I fear, in the meantime. In
another camp we found thirty or forty thousand Armenians. I was able to
distribute bread among them! Desperate, and half-starved, they fell
upon it; several times I was almost pulled off my horse. A number of
corpses were lying about unburied, and it was only by bribing the
gendarmes that we could induce them to allow their burial. Usually the
Armenians werenot allowed to perform the last offices of love
for their relatives. Dreadful epidemics of typhoid-fever broke out
everywhere; there was a victim of it practically in every third tent.
Nearly everything had to be transported on foot; men, women and
children carried their few belongings on their backs. I often saw them
break down under their burden, but the soldiers kept on driving them
forward with the butt-ends of their rifles, even sometimes with their
bayonets. I have dressed bleeding wounds on the bodies of women that
had been caused by these bayonet thrusts. Many children had lost their
parents and were now without any support. Three hours’ distance
from Osmania two dying men were lying absolutely alone in the fields.
They had been here for days without food or even a drop of water, after
their companions had continued their march. They had grown as thin as
skeletons, and only their heavy breathing showed that there was still
life in them. Unburied women and children were lying in the ditches.
The Turkish officials in Osmania were very obliging; I succeeded in
obtaining many concessions from them, and many hardships were remedied.
I obtained carriages to pick up the dying people and bring them in to
town.(b) Report by Fräulein O. on a visit to the
exiles’ camp at Mamouret, 26th November, 1915.We saw thousands of tiny low tents, made of thin
material. An innumerable crowd of people, of all ages and every class
of society! They were looking at us partly in surprise, partly with the
indifference of desperation. A group of hungry, begging children and
women were at our heels: “Hanoum, bread! Hanoum, I am hungry; we
have had nothing to eat to-day or yesterday!”You had only to look at the greedy, pale, sufferingfaces to know that their words were true. About
1,800 loaves could be procured. Everybody fell greedily upon them; the
priests who were charged with the distribution of the bread had almost
to fight for their lives; but it was by no means sufficient, and no
further bread was to be had. A crowd of hungry people stood imploringly
before us. The gendarmerie had to keep them back by force. Suddenly the
order for departure was given. If anybody was slow in striking their
tent, it was torn down with the bayonet. Three carriages and a number
of camels were held in readiness. A few wealthy people quickly hired
the carriages, while others less well-to-do loaded a camel with their
things. The wailing of the poor, the old and the sick filled the air:
“We can’t go any further, let us die here.” But they
had to go on. We were at least able to pay for a camel for some of
them, and to give small change to others in order to buy bread at the
next station; clothes, sewn at the Mission Station in Adana, were also
distributed. Soon the immense procession was moving on. Some of the
most miserable were left behind (others rested there already in the
newly-dug graves). As many as 200—destitute, old or
sick—are said to have waited there for help to come. The misery
was increased a hundredfold by the severe rain and cold that had set
in. Everywhere convoys left dying people in their track—little
children and invalids perishing. Besides all this the epidemic was
spreading more and more.(c) Report by Fräulein M. on a visit to the
exiles’ camp at Islohia, 1st December, 1915.It had rained three days and three nights; even in our
houses we were acutely sensible of the cold and damp. As soon as
possible, I set out on my way. About200 families had been
left behind at Mamouret. They were unable to proceed through exhaustion
or illness. In this rain the soldiers, too, felt no inclination to
rouse them up and drive them on, so they were lying about in what might
have been a lake. There was not a single dry thread left in their
ragged bedding. Many women had their feet frost-bitten; they were quite
black and in a state for amputation. The wailing and groaning was
horrible. Everywhere there were dying people in their last agonies or
dead bodies lying in front of the tents. It was only by
“bakshish” that the soldiers could be persuaded to bury
them. It seemed a comfort to them when we came with dry clothes; they
could change their things and get some bread and small change. Then I
drove in a carriage along the whole route to Islohia. Though I had seen
much distress before, the objects and the scenes I saw here defy
description. A frailly-built woman was sitting by the roadside with her
bedding on her back, and a young baby strapped on at the top of it; in
her arms she had a two-year-old child—its eyes were dim and it
was at its last gasp. The woman had broken down in her distress and was
weeping in a heartbreaking way. I took her with me to the next camp,
where the child died; then I took care of her and sent her on her way.
She was so grateful. The whole carriage was packed with bread. I kept
on distributing all the time. We had three or four opportunities of
buying fresh supplies. These thousands of loaves were a great help to
us. I was also able to hire some hundreds of animals to help the poor
people forward. The camp at Islohia itself is the saddest thing I have
ever seen. Right at the entrance a heap of dead bodies lay unburied. I
counted 35, and in another place 22, in the immediate neighbourhood of
the tents of those who were down with virulent dysentery. The filth inand around these tents was something
indescribable. On one single day the burial committee buried as many as
580 people. Men were fighting for bread like hungry wolves. One saw
hideous scenes. With what timidity and apathy these poor people often
stared at me, as though they wondered where this assistance came from!
For some weeks now many camps have been provided daily with bread. Of
course, everything has to be done as unobtrusively as possible. We are
so thankful to God that we may at least do something.(d) Letter from Fräulein M. to Mr. N., dated 13th
December, 1915, on the way to Aleppo.I should have written long before this, but during these
last weeks I have been more on the road than at home, and the work in
the camps was often so urgent that I could not find time for anything
else. I suppose you have had, in the meantime, the receipt for the 200
liras you sent me. Many thanks for the quick response. I only wish you
could see these poor people yourself; you would get an impression of
the absolutely dreadful need and distress that these camps conceal. It
is simply indescribable; one has to have seen it oneself. So far I have
had no difficulty whatever; on the contrary, the officials here are
most obliging, and grateful for everything we are doing for the poor
people. You will find some reports enclosed which Miss O. copied for
you as well; they will give you an idea of what we are doing here. Up
to the present we have worked in four camps, twelve hours distant. We
were often able to distribute about 10 to 20 liras’ worth of
bread a day; besides this, we gave flour, clothes and nirra to many
sick people, to help them on the long journey. Sometimes it happened
that in some places we did not have nearly enoughbread—in such cases we provided the people
with money to buy bread at the next bakery along the route.Now we are on our way to Aleppo, and Miss O. will stay
there some weeks, D.V., to prepare everything for another journey to
Der-el-Zor. I intend to come back soon, since there is still much work
to do on the Mamouret-Islohia route, and it seems to me that we ought
not to give up the work among the distressed so long as any of them are
left in this place, for if we did they would absolutely die of
starvation. Judging by our recent experience, we shall need about 300
to 400 liras a month. Dr. L. told me to send you word about this,
because I should get the money from you. It would be better not to stop
the work for lack of money, because the poor people would suffer by it.
If, however, you think that less money ought to be spent, or that the
whole work should be given up, please send me a telegram in time, so
that we may stop doing it. If not, will you please be so kind as to
send me the amount. To-day I have asked you by wire to send me 400
liras—200 for Mamouret and 200 for Islohia-Hassan-Beyli.I hope you are well. We got a message that Dr. L. is
down with typhoid. I hope that God will soon give him new strength.
Fräulein O. and I both send you our best wishes. 11. THE AMANUS PASSES.Statements by two Swiss Ladies, resident in
Turkey. Communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian
Relief. Statements by two Swiss Ladies, resident in
Turkey. Communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian
Relief. Statements by two Swiss Ladies, resident in
Turkey. Communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian
Relief. (a) Report by Fräulein M., dated 16th
November, 1915.I have just returned from a ride on horseback through
the Baghtché-Osmania plain, where thousands of exiles are lying
out in the fields and on the roads, without any shelter and completely
at the mercy of all manner of brigands. Last night, about 12
o’clock, a little camp was suddenly attacked. There were between
50 and 60 persons in it. I found men and women badly
wounded—bodies slashed open, broken skulls and terrible
knife-wounds. Fortunately I was provided with clothes, so I could
change their blood-soaked things and then bring them to the next inn,
where they were nursed. Many of them were so much exhausted from the
enormous loss of blood that they died, I fear, in the meantime. In
another camp we found thirty or forty thousand Armenians. I was able to
distribute bread among them! Desperate, and half-starved, they fell
upon it; several times I was almost pulled off my horse. A number of
corpses were lying about unburied, and it was only by bribing the
gendarmes that we could induce them to allow their burial. Usually the
Armenians werenot allowed to perform the last offices of love
for their relatives. Dreadful epidemics of typhoid-fever broke out
everywhere; there was a victim of it practically in every third tent.
Nearly everything had to be transported on foot; men, women and
children carried their few belongings on their backs. I often saw them
break down under their burden, but the soldiers kept on driving them
forward with the butt-ends of their rifles, even sometimes with their
bayonets. I have dressed bleeding wounds on the bodies of women that
had been caused by these bayonet thrusts. Many children had lost their
parents and were now without any support. Three hours’ distance
from Osmania two dying men were lying absolutely alone in the fields.
They had been here for days without food or even a drop of water, after
their companions had continued their march. They had grown as thin as
skeletons, and only their heavy breathing showed that there was still
life in them. Unburied women and children were lying in the ditches.
The Turkish officials in Osmania were very obliging; I succeeded in
obtaining many concessions from them, and many hardships were remedied.
I obtained carriages to pick up the dying people and bring them in to
town.(b) Report by Fräulein O. on a visit to the
exiles’ camp at Mamouret, 26th November, 1915.We saw thousands of tiny low tents, made of thin
material. An innumerable crowd of people, of all ages and every class
of society! They were looking at us partly in surprise, partly with the
indifference of desperation. A group of hungry, begging children and
women were at our heels: “Hanoum, bread! Hanoum, I am hungry; we
have had nothing to eat to-day or yesterday!”You had only to look at the greedy, pale, sufferingfaces to know that their words were true. About
1,800 loaves could be procured. Everybody fell greedily upon them; the
priests who were charged with the distribution of the bread had almost
to fight for their lives; but it was by no means sufficient, and no
further bread was to be had. A crowd of hungry people stood imploringly
before us. The gendarmerie had to keep them back by force. Suddenly the
order for departure was given. If anybody was slow in striking their
tent, it was torn down with the bayonet. Three carriages and a number
of camels were held in readiness. A few wealthy people quickly hired
the carriages, while others less well-to-do loaded a camel with their
things. The wailing of the poor, the old and the sick filled the air:
“We can’t go any further, let us die here.” But they
had to go on. We were at least able to pay for a camel for some of
them, and to give small change to others in order to buy bread at the
next station; clothes, sewn at the Mission Station in Adana, were also
distributed. Soon the immense procession was moving on. Some of the
most miserable were left behind (others rested there already in the
newly-dug graves). As many as 200—destitute, old or
sick—are said to have waited there for help to come. The misery
was increased a hundredfold by the severe rain and cold that had set
in. Everywhere convoys left dying people in their track—little
children and invalids perishing. Besides all this the epidemic was
spreading more and more.(c) Report by Fräulein M. on a visit to the
exiles’ camp at Islohia, 1st December, 1915.It had rained three days and three nights; even in our
houses we were acutely sensible of the cold and damp. As soon as
possible, I set out on my way. About200 families had been
left behind at Mamouret. They were unable to proceed through exhaustion
or illness. In this rain the soldiers, too, felt no inclination to
rouse them up and drive them on, so they were lying about in what might
have been a lake. There was not a single dry thread left in their
ragged bedding. Many women had their feet frost-bitten; they were quite
black and in a state for amputation. The wailing and groaning was
horrible. Everywhere there were dying people in their last agonies or
dead bodies lying in front of the tents. It was only by
“bakshish” that the soldiers could be persuaded to bury
them. It seemed a comfort to them when we came with dry clothes; they
could change their things and get some bread and small change. Then I
drove in a carriage along the whole route to Islohia. Though I had seen
much distress before, the objects and the scenes I saw here defy
description. A frailly-built woman was sitting by the roadside with her
bedding on her back, and a young baby strapped on at the top of it; in
her arms she had a two-year-old child—its eyes were dim and it
was at its last gasp. The woman had broken down in her distress and was
weeping in a heartbreaking way. I took her with me to the next camp,
where the child died; then I took care of her and sent her on her way.
She was so grateful. The whole carriage was packed with bread. I kept
on distributing all the time. We had three or four opportunities of
buying fresh supplies. These thousands of loaves were a great help to
us. I was also able to hire some hundreds of animals to help the poor
people forward. The camp at Islohia itself is the saddest thing I have
ever seen. Right at the entrance a heap of dead bodies lay unburied. I
counted 35, and in another place 22, in the immediate neighbourhood of
the tents of those who were down with virulent dysentery. The filth inand around these tents was something
indescribable. On one single day the burial committee buried as many as
580 people. Men were fighting for bread like hungry wolves. One saw
hideous scenes. With what timidity and apathy these poor people often
stared at me, as though they wondered where this assistance came from!
For some weeks now many camps have been provided daily with bread. Of
course, everything has to be done as unobtrusively as possible. We are
so thankful to God that we may at least do something.(d) Letter from Fräulein M. to Mr. N., dated 13th
December, 1915, on the way to Aleppo.I should have written long before this, but during these
last weeks I have been more on the road than at home, and the work in
the camps was often so urgent that I could not find time for anything
else. I suppose you have had, in the meantime, the receipt for the 200
liras you sent me. Many thanks for the quick response. I only wish you
could see these poor people yourself; you would get an impression of
the absolutely dreadful need and distress that these camps conceal. It
is simply indescribable; one has to have seen it oneself. So far I have
had no difficulty whatever; on the contrary, the officials here are
most obliging, and grateful for everything we are doing for the poor
people. You will find some reports enclosed which Miss O. copied for
you as well; they will give you an idea of what we are doing here. Up
to the present we have worked in four camps, twelve hours distant. We
were often able to distribute about 10 to 20 liras’ worth of
bread a day; besides this, we gave flour, clothes and nirra to many
sick people, to help them on the long journey. Sometimes it happened
that in some places we did not have nearly enoughbread—in such cases we provided the people
with money to buy bread at the next bakery along the route.Now we are on our way to Aleppo, and Miss O. will stay
there some weeks, D.V., to prepare everything for another journey to
Der-el-Zor. I intend to come back soon, since there is still much work
to do on the Mamouret-Islohia route, and it seems to me that we ought
not to give up the work among the distressed so long as any of them are
left in this place, for if we did they would absolutely die of
starvation. Judging by our recent experience, we shall need about 300
to 400 liras a month. Dr. L. told me to send you word about this,
because I should get the money from you. It would be better not to stop
the work for lack of money, because the poor people would suffer by it.
If, however, you think that less money ought to be spent, or that the
whole work should be given up, please send me a telegram in time, so
that we may stop doing it. If not, will you please be so kind as to
send me the amount. To-day I have asked you by wire to send me 400
liras—200 for Mamouret and 200 for Islohia-Hassan-Beyli.I hope you are well. We got a message that Dr. L. is
down with typhoid. I hope that God will soon give him new strength.
Fräulein O. and I both send you our best wishes. (a) Report by Fräulein M., dated 16th
November, 1915. I have just returned from a ride on horseback through
the Baghtché-Osmania plain, where thousands of exiles are lying
out in the fields and on the roads, without any shelter and completely
at the mercy of all manner of brigands. Last night, about 12
o’clock, a little camp was suddenly attacked. There were between
50 and 60 persons in it. I found men and women badly
wounded—bodies slashed open, broken skulls and terrible
knife-wounds. Fortunately I was provided with clothes, so I could
change their blood-soaked things and then bring them to the next inn,
where they were nursed. Many of them were so much exhausted from the
enormous loss of blood that they died, I fear, in the meantime. In
another camp we found thirty or forty thousand Armenians. I was able to
distribute bread among them! Desperate, and half-starved, they fell
upon it; several times I was almost pulled off my horse. A number of
corpses were lying about unburied, and it was only by bribing the
gendarmes that we could induce them to allow their burial. Usually the
Armenians werenot allowed to perform the last offices of love
for their relatives. Dreadful epidemics of typhoid-fever broke out
everywhere; there was a victim of it practically in every third tent.
Nearly everything had to be transported on foot; men, women and
children carried their few belongings on their backs. I often saw them
break down under their burden, but the soldiers kept on driving them
forward with the butt-ends of their rifles, even sometimes with their
bayonets. I have dressed bleeding wounds on the bodies of women that
had been caused by these bayonet thrusts. Many children had lost their
parents and were now without any support. Three hours’ distance
from Osmania two dying men were lying absolutely alone in the fields.
They had been here for days without food or even a drop of water, after
their companions had continued their march. They had grown as thin as
skeletons, and only their heavy breathing showed that there was still
life in them. Unburied women and children were lying in the ditches.
The Turkish officials in Osmania were very obliging; I succeeded in
obtaining many concessions from them, and many hardships were remedied.
I obtained carriages to pick up the dying people and bring them in to
town. (b) Report by Fräulein O. on a visit to the
exiles’ camp at Mamouret, 26th November, 1915. We saw thousands of tiny low tents, made of thin
material. An innumerable crowd of people, of all ages and every class
of society! They were looking at us partly in surprise, partly with the
indifference of desperation. A group of hungry, begging children and
women were at our heels: “Hanoum, bread! Hanoum, I am hungry; we
have had nothing to eat to-day or yesterday!” You had only to look at the greedy, pale, sufferingfaces to know that their words were true. About
1,800 loaves could be procured. Everybody fell greedily upon them; the
priests who were charged with the distribution of the bread had almost
to fight for their lives; but it was by no means sufficient, and no
further bread was to be had. A crowd of hungry people stood imploringly
before us. The gendarmerie had to keep them back by force. Suddenly the
order for departure was given. If anybody was slow in striking their
tent, it was torn down with the bayonet. Three carriages and a number
of camels were held in readiness. A few wealthy people quickly hired
the carriages, while others less well-to-do loaded a camel with their
things. The wailing of the poor, the old and the sick filled the air:
“We can’t go any further, let us die here.” But they
had to go on. We were at least able to pay for a camel for some of
them, and to give small change to others in order to buy bread at the
next station; clothes, sewn at the Mission Station in Adana, were also
distributed. Soon the immense procession was moving on. Some of the
most miserable were left behind (others rested there already in the
newly-dug graves). As many as 200—destitute, old or
sick—are said to have waited there for help to come. The misery
was increased a hundredfold by the severe rain and cold that had set
in. Everywhere convoys left dying people in their track—little
children and invalids perishing. Besides all this the epidemic was
spreading more and more. (c) Report by Fräulein M. on a visit to the
exiles’ camp at Islohia, 1st December, 1915. It had rained three days and three nights; even in our
houses we were acutely sensible of the cold and damp. As soon as
possible, I set out on my way. About200 families had been
left behind at Mamouret. They were unable to proceed through exhaustion
or illness. In this rain the soldiers, too, felt no inclination to
rouse them up and drive them on, so they were lying about in what might
have been a lake. There was not a single dry thread left in their
ragged bedding. Many women had their feet frost-bitten; they were quite
black and in a state for amputation. The wailing and groaning was
horrible. Everywhere there were dying people in their last agonies or
dead bodies lying in front of the tents. It was only by
“bakshish” that the soldiers could be persuaded to bury
them. It seemed a comfort to them when we came with dry clothes; they
could change their things and get some bread and small change. Then I
drove in a carriage along the whole route to Islohia. Though I had seen
much distress before, the objects and the scenes I saw here defy
description. A frailly-built woman was sitting by the roadside with her
bedding on her back, and a young baby strapped on at the top of it; in
her arms she had a two-year-old child—its eyes were dim and it
was at its last gasp. The woman had broken down in her distress and was
weeping in a heartbreaking way. I took her with me to the next camp,
where the child died; then I took care of her and sent her on her way.
She was so grateful. The whole carriage was packed with bread. I kept
on distributing all the time. We had three or four opportunities of
buying fresh supplies. These thousands of loaves were a great help to
us. I was also able to hire some hundreds of animals to help the poor
people forward. The camp at Islohia itself is the saddest thing I have
ever seen. Right at the entrance a heap of dead bodies lay unburied. I
counted 35, and in another place 22, in the immediate neighbourhood of
the tents of those who were down with virulent dysentery. The filth inand around these tents was something
indescribable. On one single day the burial committee buried as many as
580 people. Men were fighting for bread like hungry wolves. One saw
hideous scenes. With what timidity and apathy these poor people often
stared at me, as though they wondered where this assistance came from!
For some weeks now many camps have been provided daily with bread. Of
course, everything has to be done as unobtrusively as possible. We are
so thankful to God that we may at least do something. (d) Letter from Fräulein M. to Mr. N., dated 13th
December, 1915, on the way to Aleppo. I should have written long before this, but during these
last weeks I have been more on the road than at home, and the work in
the camps was often so urgent that I could not find time for anything
else. I suppose you have had, in the meantime, the receipt for the 200
liras you sent me. Many thanks for the quick response. I only wish you
could see these poor people yourself; you would get an impression of
the absolutely dreadful need and distress that these camps conceal. It
is simply indescribable; one has to have seen it oneself. So far I have
had no difficulty whatever; on the contrary, the officials here are
most obliging, and grateful for everything we are doing for the poor
people. You will find some reports enclosed which Miss O. copied for
you as well; they will give you an idea of what we are doing here. Up
to the present we have worked in four camps, twelve hours distant. We
were often able to distribute about 10 to 20 liras’ worth of
bread a day; besides this, we gave flour, clothes and nirra to many
sick people, to help them on the long journey. Sometimes it happened
that in some places we did not have nearly enoughbread—in such cases we provided the people
with money to buy bread at the next bakery along the route. Now we are on our way to Aleppo, and Miss O. will stay
there some weeks, D.V., to prepare everything for another journey to
Der-el-Zor. I intend to come back soon, since there is still much work
to do on the Mamouret-Islohia route, and it seems to me that we ought
not to give up the work among the distressed so long as any of them are
left in this place, for if we did they would absolutely die of
starvation. Judging by our recent experience, we shall need about 300
to 400 liras a month. Dr. L. told me to send you word about this,
because I should get the money from you. It would be better not to stop
the work for lack of money, because the poor people would suffer by it.
If, however, you think that less money ought to be spent, or that the
whole work should be given up, please send me a telegram in time, so
that we may stop doing it. If not, will you please be so kind as to
send me the amount. To-day I have asked you by wire to send me 400
liras—200 for Mamouret and 200 for Islohia-Hassan-Beyli. I hope you are well. We got a message that Dr. L. is
down with typhoid. I hope that God will soon give him new strength.
Fräulein O. and I both send you our best wishes. 1“We have just picked up fifteen babies. Three are already dead.
They were terribly thin and ailing when we found them. Ah! If we could
only write all that we see.”—Extract from a letter dated
Marash, 4th June, 1915, published in “Sonnenaufgang,”
September, 1915.↑2The
italics are the Editor’s.↑3The
italics are the Editor’s.↑4This was
a Friday.↑5The
italics are the Editor’s.↑6The
italics are the Editor’s.↑ 1“We have just picked up fifteen babies. Three are already dead.
They were terribly thin and ailing when we found them. Ah! If we could
only write all that we see.”—Extract from a letter dated
Marash, 4th June, 1915, published in “Sonnenaufgang,”
September, 1915.↑ 2The
italics are the Editor’s.↑ 3The
italics are the Editor’s.↑ 4This was
a Friday.↑ 5The
italics are the Editor’s.↑ 6The
italics are the Editor’s.↑
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