12. "A word to the accredited representatives of the German people,"
by Dr. Martin Niepage, Higher Grade Teacher at the German Technical
School at Aleppo, at present at Wernigerode.
On my return in September, 1915, from Beirut to Aleppo, after a
three months' holiday, I heard, to my horror, that a new period of
Armenian massacres had been initiated. I was told that they were far
more terrible than those under Abdul Hamid; and that their object
was to exterminate, root and branch, the intelligent, prosperous and
progressive nation of the Armenians and to transfer their property
to Turkish hands.
At first I was unable to believe such a monstrous report. I was told
that in various quarters of Aleppo there were masses of half-famished
human beings, the survivors of so-called "deportation-convoys," and
that in order to cover the extermination of the Armenian people with
a political cloak, military reasons had been put forward, which were
alleged to necessitate the expulsion of the Armenians from the homes
they had occupied for over 2,500 years, and their deportation into
the Arabian Desert. It was also said that individual Armenians had
lent themselves to acts of espionage.
After having investigated the facts and made enquiries on all sides,
I came to the conclusion that the accusations against the Armenians
related in all cases to trifling matters, which were taken as a
pretext to slay ten thousand innocent persons for one who was guilty,
to commit the most savage outrages against women and children, and
to carry on a war of starvation against the deported persons with
the object of destroying the whole nation.
In order to test the judgment which I had formed from the information
I had obtained, I visited every place in the town in which there were
any Armenians who had formed part of one of the convoys and had been
left behind. I found in dilapidated caravansaries (hans) heaps of dead
bodies, many of which were in an advanced state of decomposition, with
living persons interspersed among them who were all near to the agony
of death. In other yards I found heaps of sick and famished persons
who were absolutely uncared for. Near the German Technical School,
of which I am one of the higher grade teachers, there were four hans
of this class with 700-800 deported persons who were starving. We,
the teachers at the school, and our pupils had to pass them every
day. Through the open windows we saw, each time we went out, the
emaciated forms, covered with rags, of these miserable beings. Our
school children had every morning almost to touch the two-wheeled
carts drawn by oxen which they had to pass in the narrow streets,
and in which every day 8-10 rigid corpses were carted away without
coffins and without covering of any sort, the arms and legs protruding
from the cart.
After having been a witness of these scenes during several days,
I thought it my duty to draft the following report--
"As teachers at the German Technical School at Aleppo we take leave
humbly to submit the following report:--
"We deem it our duty to call attention to the fact that our educational
work will lose its moral foundation and the esteem of the natives,
if the German Government is not in a position to prevent the brutality
with which the wives and children of slaughtered Armenians are treated
in this place. The convoys which, on the departure of the exiles from
their homes in Upper Armenia, consisted of 2,000-3,000 persons--men,
women and children--arrive here in the south with a remnant of only two
or three hundred survivors. The men are killed on the way, the women
and children, excepting those of unattractive appearance and those who
are quite old or quite young, are first abused by Turkish soldiers
and officers, and then brought into Turkish or Kurd villages, where
they have to go over to Islam. As regards the remnant of the caravans,
every effort is made to reduce them by hunger and thirst. Even when
a river is passed, those who are dying of thirst are not permitted to
drink. As their only food a small quantity of flour is strewn on their
hands as a daily ration; this they greedily lick off, but its only
effect is to delay death from starvation for a little while longer.
"Opposite to the German Technical School at Aleppo in which we do our
work as teachers, a remnant of some of these convoys is lying in one
of the hans; there are about 400 emaciated forms; about 100 boys and
girls, from five to seven years old, are among them. Most of them are
suffering from typhoid and dysentery. On entering the yard one has
the impression of coming into a lunatic asylum. When food is brought
to them, one notices that they have lost the habit of eating. The
stomach, weakened by months of starvation, has ceased to be able to
receive food. Any bread that is given to them is laid aside with an
air of indifference. They just lie there quietly, waiting for death.
"How can we teachers read German fairy tales with our pupils, or,
indeed, the story of the Good Samaritan in the Bible? How can we
ask them to decline and conjugate indifferent words, while round
about in the neighbouring yards the starving brothers and sisters of
our Armenian pupils are succumbing to a lingering death? In these
circumstances our educational work flies in the face of all true
morality and becomes a mockery of human feeling.
"And those poor creatures who in their thousands have been driven
through the town and the neighbouring districts into the desert; nearly
all of them are women and children, and what becomes of them? They
are driven on from place to place, until the thousands dwindle
into hundreds and until the hundreds dwindle into insignificant
remnants. And these remnants are again driven on until the last
survivors have ceased to live. Then only the final goal of the
migration has been reached. Then the wanderers have arrived at 'the
new homes assigned to the Armenians,' as the newspapers express it.
"'Ta'alim el aleman' ('that is the teaching of the Germans') says the
simple Turk, when asked about the authors of these measures. [24]
The educated Moslems are convinced that, though the German people
may disapprove of such horrors, the German Government is taking no
steps to prevent them, out of consideration for its Turkish Allies.
"Mohammedans of more refined feelings, Turks as well as Arabs, shake
their heads disapprovingly; they do not even conceal their tears when,
in the passage of a convoy of deported Armenians through the town,
they see Turkish soldiers inflicting blows with heavy sticks on women
in advanced pregnancy or dying persons who cannot drag themselves any
further. They cannot imagine that their Government has ordered these
cruelties, and ascribe all excesses to the guilt of the Germans,
who during the war are held to be the teachers of the Turks in all
matters. [25] Even the Mollahs declare in the Mosques that it was
not the Sublime Porte but the German officers who had ordered the
ill-treatment and annihilation of the Armenians.
"The things which in this place have been before everybody's eyes
during many months, must indeed remain a blot on Germany's shield of
honour in the memory of Oriental nations.
"Many educated persons, who do not wish to be obliged to give up
their faith in the character of the Germans whom they have hitherto
respected, explain the matter to themselves in the following manner:
they say, 'The German nation probably knows nothing of the horrible
massacres which are on foot at the present time against the native
Christians all over Turkey. How is it possible otherwise, having
regard to the veracity of the German nation, that articles should
appear in German papers showing complete ignorance of all these events,
and only stating that some individual Armenians were deservedly shot
by martial law as spies and traitors?' Others say: 'Perhaps the hands
of the German Government are tied by some convention regulating the
limits of its competence, or intervention does not appear opportune
at the present moment.'
"It is known to us that the Embassy at Constantinople was informed
of all these events by the German Consulates. As, notwithstanding
this fact, nothing has been altered in the system of deportation,
our conscience compels us to make this report." [26]
At the time I composed this report, the German Consul at Aleppo was
represented by his colleague from Alexandretta, Consul Hoffmann. The
latter told me that the Embassy at Constantinople was fully
informed of what was happening in the country by repeated reports
from the Consulates at Aleppo, Alexandretta and Mosul, but that a
report about the things which I had seen with my own eyes would be
welcome as a supplement to the existing records, and as filling in
the details. He promised to send my report by a sure agency to the
Embassy at Constantinople. I thereupon drafted a report in the desired
manner, giving a detailed description of the state of things in the
han opposite our school. The Consul wished to add some photographs
which he himself had taken in the han. They revealed heaps of corpses,
between which young children, still alive, were crawling about or
relieving nature.
In this revised form the report was signed not only by me, but also
by my colleagues, Dr. Graeter (higher grade teacher) and Frau Marie
Spiecker. The Director of our Institution, Herr Huber, also added his
name and the following words: "The report of my colleague, Dr. Niepage,
is not in any way exaggerated. For many weeks we have lived here in an
air poisoned with sickness and the stench of corpses. Only the hope
for a speedy change of things makes it possible for us to continue
our work." [27]
The hoped-for change of things did not occur. I then thought of
resigning my post as higher grade teacher at the German Technical
School, stating as the ground for my decision that it appeared
senseless and morally indefensible to give instruction and education
as a representative of European culture, and at the same time to have
to sit with folded hands while the Government of the country abandoned
persons belonging to the same nation as our pupils to an agonizing
death by starvation. But those around me, as well as the Director of
the Institution, Herr Huber, dissuaded me from this intention. My
attention was called to the fact that it would be useful for us
to remain in the country as eye-witnesses of the events which were
occurring. Perhaps our presence would have the effect of inducing
the Turks, out of consideration for us Germans, to behave somewhat
more humanely towards their unfortunate victims. I see now that I
have far too long remained a silent witness of all these wrongs.
Nothing was improved by our presence, and we ourselves were able to
give only very little help. Frau Spiecker, our energetic, brave fellow
teacher, purchased some soap, and the lice-covered bodies of the women
and children who were still alive in our neighbourhood were washed
and freed from vermin (there were no men left). Frau Spiecker engaged
some women, who prepared soup for those of the patients who were still
able to eat. I myself distributed, every evening for six weeks, among
the dying children the contents of two pails filled with tea, cheese
and soaked bread. But when the hunger-typhus or spotted-typhus spread
into the town from these charnel-houses, we succumbed, together with
five of our colleagues, and had to stop our relief work. Moreover,
no help given to the exiles who came to Aleppo was of any use. We
could only afford those condemned to death a few slight alleviations
of their death agony.
What we saw here in Aleppo with our own eyes was, in fact, only the
last scene of the great tragedy of the extirpation of the Armenians;
only a trifling fraction of the horrors which were being perpetrated
simultaneously in the other Turkish provinces. The engineers of the
Bagdad railway, on their return from the section under construction,
and German travellers, who on their way had met the caravans of the
deported, spoke of still more abominable horrors. Many of these men
could eat nothing for days; the impression of the loathsome things
they had seen was too overpowering.
One of them (Herr Greif, of Aleppo) reported that heaps of corpses of
violated women were lying naked on the railway embankment near Abiad
and Ras-el-Ain. In the case of many, sticks had been driven into
the anus. Another (Herr Spiecker, of Aleppo) saw Turks tie Armenian
men together, fire several volleys of small shot with fowling pieces
into the human mass, and go off laughing, while their victims slowly
perished in frightful convulsions. Other men were sent rolling down
steep slopes with their hands tied behind their backs. Below there
were women, who slashed those who had rolled down with knives until
they were dead. A Protestant minister who two years ago had given a
most cordial reception to my colleague, Dr. Graeter, had his finger
nails torn out.
The German Consul at Mosul said in my presence in the German Club at
Aleppo that he had seen so many children's hands lying hacked off on
his way from Mosul to Aleppo, that one could have paved the road with
them. [28]
In the German Hospital at Ourfa there is also a little girl, both
of whose hands have been hacked off. Herr Holstein, the German
Consul at Mosul, also saw, in the neighbourhood of an Arab village,
shortly before reaching Aleppo, shallow graves with freshly-buried
Armenian corpses. The Arab villagers asserted that they had killed
these Armenians by order of the Government. One of them said proudly
that he personally had killed eight.
In many houses in Aleppo, inhabited by Christians, I found Armenian
girls hidden away, whom some accidental circumstances had enabled to
escape death; they had either remained behind in a state of exhaustion,
having been taken for dead when their convoy was driven on; or some
European had found an opportunity to purchase these miserable beings
for a few shillings from the Turkish soldier who had last violated
them. All these girls are in a state of mental collapse. Many had been
compelled to look on while their parents had their throats cut. I know
some of these pitiable creatures, who for months were unable to utter
a word, and even now cannot be coaxed into a smile. A girl of the age
of 14 was received into the home of the depôt-manager of the Bagdad
railway at Aleppo, Herr Krause. The child had been raped so many times
by Turkish soldiers during one night that she had completely lost her
reason. I saw her tossing on her pillow in delirium with hot lips,
and I found it difficult to make her drink some water.
A German who is known to me witnessed the following incident in the
neighbourhood of Ourfa; hundreds of Christian peasant women were forced
by Turkish soldiers to take off all their clothes. For the amusement
of the soldiers they had to drag themselves through the desert for
days together in a temperature of 40° Centigrade, until their skin
was completely burnt. Another person saw a Turk tear a child out of
the womb of its Armenian mother, and throw it against the wall.
Other facts, some of them worse than the few instances given here,
are recorded in the numerous reports of the German Consuls at
Alexandretta, Aleppo and Mosul. [29] The Consuls are of opinion that,
up to the present date, about a million Armenians have perished by
the massacres of the last months. Women and children, who either were
killed or died from starvation, probably form one half of this number.
Conscience compels us to call attention to these things. Though the
Government, by the annihilation of the Armenian people, only intends
to further internal political objects, the execution of the scheme
has in many respects the character of a persecution of Christians.
All the tens of thousands of young girls and women, who have been
dragged away to Turkish harems, and the masses of children who have
been collected by the Government and distributed among Turks and
Kurds, are lost to the Christian Churches and are compelled to go
over to Islam. The opprobrious name of "Giaour" is again used against
the Germans.
In Adana I saw a troop of Armenian orphans marching through the
streets under the escort of Turkish soldiers. The parents have been
slaughtered; the children must become Mohammedans. It has happened
everywhere that adult Armenians were able to save their lives by
declaring their readiness to go over to Islam. In some places, however,
Turkish officials, wishing to throw dust in the eyes of Europeans,
replied grandiloquently to Christians who had applied for admission
into the Mohammedan fold, that religion is not a thing to play with,
and preferred to have the petitioners killed. Men like Talaat Bey and
Enver Pasha have repeatedly said, thanking distinguished Armenians, who
brought them gifts, that they would have been still better pleased if
the givers had presented them as Mohammedans. One of these gentlemen
said to a newspaper reporter: "Certainly we are now punishing many
innocent people, but we must protect ourselves, even from those
who might become guilty in the future." Such reasons are adduced by
Turkish statesmen in justification of the indiscriminate slaughter
of defenceless woman and children. A German Catholic priest reports
that Enver Pasha had told Monsignore Dolci, the Papal representative
at Constantinople, that he would not rest while one single Armenian
was still living.
The object of the deportations is the extirpation of the entire
Armenian nation. This intention is also evidenced by the fact that
the Turkish Government refuses all help from missionaries, Sisters of
Mercy, and Europeans settled in the country, and tries systematically
to prevent the giving of any such help. A Swiss engineer was to
have come before a court-martial, because he had distributed bread in
Anatolia among the starving women and children belonging to a convoy of
deported persons. The Government did not scruple to deport Armenian
pupils and teachers from the German schools at Adana and Aleppo,
and Armenian children from the German orphanages; the protests of the
Consuls and of the heads of the institutions were left unheeded. The
offer of the American Government to take the deported persons to
America on American ships and at America's expense was refused.
What our German Consuls and many foreigners residing in Turkey think
about the massacres of Armenians will one day be known from their
reports. As regards the opinion of the German officers in Turkey I
am unable to say anything. I often noticed when in their company an
ominous silence or a convulsive effort to change the subject whenever
any German of strong feelings and independent judgment began to speak
about the fearful sufferings of the Armenians. [30]
When Field-Marshal von der Goltz travelled to Bagdad and had to
cross the Euphrates at Djerabulus, there was a large encampment
of half-starved, deported Armenians there. Shortly before the
Field-Marshal's arrival these wretched people, as I was told in
Djerabulus, were driven under the whip a few miles off over the hills,
sick and dying persons among the number. When von der Goltz passed
through, all traces of the repulsive spectacle had been removed. When,
soon afterwards, I visited the place with a few colleagues, we still
found in the more out of the way places corpses of men and children,
remnants of clothes, and skulls and bones which had been partly
stripped of the flesh by jackals and birds of prey.
The author of this report considers it out of the question that the
German Government, if it were seriously inclined to stem the tide
of destruction even at this eleventh hour, could find it impossible
to bring the Turkish Government to reason. If the Turks are really
so well disposed to us Germans as people say, then it is surely
permissible to show them to what an extent they compromise us before
the whole civilised world, if we, as their Allies, are to look
on calmly, when hundreds of thousands of our fellow-Christians in
Turkey are slaughtered, when their wives and daughters are violated,
and their children brought up in the faith of Islam. [31] Do not
the Turks understand that their barbarous acts are imputed to us,
and that we Germans shall be accused either of criminal connivance
or of contemptible weakness if we shut our eyes to the abominable
horrors which this war has brought forth, and attempt to ignore facts
which are already known to the whole world? If the Turks are really
as intelligent as people say, it should surely not be impossible
to convince them of the fact that, by extirpating the Christian
nations in Turkey, they are exterminating the productive factors and
the intermediaries of European trade and general civilisation? If
the Turks are really as far-seeing as people say, they will not
be blind to the danger, that all civilized European States, after
having discovered the things which were done in Turkey during the
war, must form the conclusion that Turkey has forfeited the right
of governing herself, and has, once for all, destroyed all belief
in her capacity for becoming civilized, and in her tolerance. Will
not the German Government be acting in Turkey's own best interests,
if she prevents her from committing economic and moral suicide?
With this report I am attempting to reach the ear of the Government
through the accredited representatives of the German people. These
things, painful as they are, must no longer be passed over in silence
at the sittings of the Committees of the Reichstag. Nothing would
be more humiliating for us than the erection of a costly palace at
Constantinople commemorating German-Turkish friendship, while we are
unable to protect our fellow-Christians from barbarities unparalleled
even in the blood-stained history of Turkey. Would not the funds
collected be better spent in building orphanages for the innocent
victims of Turkish barbarism?
When, after the Adana massacres in 1909, a sort of "reconciliation
banquet" took place, in which high Turkish officials as well as the
heads of the Armenian clergy took part, an Armenian ecclesiastic made
a speech, the contents of which were communicated to me by the German
Consul, Büge, who was present. He said: "It is true we Armenians
have lost much in the days of these massacres, our men, our women,
our children, and our possessions. But you Turks have lost more. You
have lost your honour."
If we persist in treating the massacres of Christians in Turkey as
an internal affair, of no importance for us except as making us sure
of Turkey's friendship, then it will be necessary to alter the whole
orientation of our German cultural policy. We must cease to send German
teachers to Turkey, and we teachers must no longer speak to our pupils
in Turkey of German poets and German philosophers, of German culture
and German ideals, and least of all of German Christianity.
Three years ago the German Foreign Office sent me as higher grade
teacher to the German Technical School at Aleppo. The Royal Provincial
Education Board at Madgeburg, on my departure, specially enjoined me
to show myself worthy of the confidence reposed in me by the granting
of leave of absence to take up the office of teacher at Aleppo. I
should not perform my duty as a German official and as an authorised
representative of German culture if, in face of the atrocities of
which I was a witness, I were to remain silent and passively look on
while the pupils entrusted to me are driven out to die of starvation
in the desert.
To a person inquiring into the reasons which have induced the Young
Turkish Government to order and carry out these terrible measures
against the Armenians, the following answer might be given:--
The Young Turk has before him the European ideal of a united national
State. He hopes to be able to "Turkify" the non-Turkish Mohammedan
races--Kurds, Persians, Arabs, and so on--by administrative measures
and by Turkish school education and by appeals to the common Mohammedan
interest. He is afraid of the Christian nations--Armenians, Syrians
and Greeks--on account of their cultural and economic superiority,
and their religion appears to him an obstacle impeding "Turkification"
by peaceful measures. Therefore they must be extirpated or forced
into Mohammedanism. The Turks do not realise that they are sawing
off the branch on which they themselves are sitting. Who is to bring
progress to Turkey, except the Greeks, the Armenians and the Syrians,
who constitute more than a quarter of the population of the Turkish
Empire? The Turks, the least gifted among the races living in Turkey,
themselves form only a minority of the population, and are still far
behind even the Arabs in civilisation. Is there anywhere any Turkish
commerce, Turkish handicraft, Turkish manufacture, Turkish art,
Turkish science? Even law and religion, even the literary language,
is borrowed from the subjected Arabs.
We teachers, who for years have taught Greeks, Armenians, Arabs,
Turks and Jews in German schools in Turkey, can only declare that of
all our pupils the pure Turks are the least willing and the least
capable. Whenever one hears about anything accomplished by a Turk,
one can be sure, in nine cases out of ten, that the person concerned
is a Circassian, or an Albanian, or a Turk with Bulgar blood in his
veins. Judging from my own personal experience, I can only prophesy
that the real Turk will never accomplish anything in commerce,
manufacture or science.
The German newspapers have told us a great deal lately about the
Turkish "hunger for education"; it is said that the Turks are thronging
eagerly to learn German, and even that courses of instruction in
that language for adults are being arranged in Turkey. No doubt
they are being arranged, but with what result? They go on to tell
one of a language course at a Technical School, which started with
twelve Turkish teachers as pupils. The author of this story, however,
forgets to add that after four lessons only six, after five lessons
only five, after six lessons only four, and after seven lessons only
three pupils presented themselves, so that after the eighth lesson
the course had to be abandoned, before it had properly begun, owing
to the indolence of the pupils. If the pupils had been Armenians,
they would have persevered town to the end of the school year, learnt
patiently, and come away with a fair knowledge of the German language.
What is the duty of Germany, as well as of every civilized Christian
nation, in face of the Armenian massacres? We must do all we can to
preserve the lives of the 500,000 Armenian women and children who may
now [beginning of 1916] be still in existence in Turkey and who are
abandoned to starvation--to preserve them from a fate which would be
a disgrace to the whole civilized world. The hundreds of thousands of
deported women and children, who have been left lying on the borders
of the Mesopotamian desert, or on the roads which lead there, will not
be able to preserve their miserable existence much longer. How long
can people support life by picking grains of corn out of horse dung
and depending for the rest upon grass? Many of them will be beyond
help on account of the underfeeding, which has continued for many
months, and of the attacks of dysentery which are so prevalent. In
Konia there are still a few thousand Armenians alive--educated
people from Constantinople, who were in easy circumstances before
their deportation, physicians, authors, and merchants; help for
them would still be possible, before they succumb to the fate that
threatens all. There are still 1,500 healthy Armenians--men, women
and children, including grandmothers 60 years old and many children of
six and seven--who are at work breaking stones and shovelling earth,
on the part of the Bagdad Railway between Eiran and Entilli, near
the big tunnel. At the present moment Superintendent Engineer Morf,
of the Bagdad Railway, is still providing for them, but their names
too have already been registered by the Turkish Government. As soon
as their work is completed, that is to say, probably in two or three
months, and they are no longer wanted, "new homes will be assigned to
them"--which means that the men will be taken away and slaughtered,
the good-looking women and girls will find their way into the harems,
and the others will be driven about in the desert without food,
until the end comes.
The Armenian people has a claim to German help. When a few years ago
massacres of Armenians threatened to break out in Cilicia, a German
warship appeared off Mersina. The commander called on the Armenian
"Katholikos" in Adana and assured him that as long as there was any
German influence in Turkey, massacres tike those perpetrated under
Abdul Hamid would be impossible. [32] The same assurance was given by
the German Ambassador von Wangenheim [since deceased] at an audience
given to the Armenian Patriarch and the President of the Armenian
National Council in April, 1915.
Even apart from our common duty as Christians, we Germans are under a
special obligation to put a stop to the complete extirpation of the
surviving half million of Armenian Christians. We are the Allies of
Turkey, and having eliminated the influence of the French, English and
Russians, we are the only foreigners who have any say in Turkey. We may
indignantly repudiate the lies circulated in enemy countries accusing
the German Consuls of having organised the massacres. We shall not,
however, destroy the belief of the Turkish people that Germany has
ordered the Armenian massacres, unless energetic action be at last
taken by German diplomatists and German officers. If only the one
reproach remained that our timidity and our weakness in dealing with
our Ally had prevented us from preserving half a million women and
children from death by starvation, the image of the German War in
the mirror of history would be disfigured, for all time, by an ugly
feature. It would be a serious mistake to imagine that the Turkish
Government would, of its own accord, desist from the extermination
of the women and children, unless the strongest pressure were to be
exercised by the German Government. A short time before my departure
from Aleppo in May, 1916, all the women and children encamped at
Ras-el-Ain, on the Bagdad railway, whose number was estimated at
20,000, were mercilessly slaughtered.