in the prisons have been hanged in batches. During the past month
alone, several dozen Armenians have been hanged in Kaisaria. In many
places the Armenian inhabitants, to save their lives, have tried to
become Mohammedans, but this time such overtures have not been
readily accepted, as they were at the time of the other great
massacres. At Sivas, the would-be converts to Islam were offered the
following terms: they must hand over all children under twelve years
of age to the Government, which would undertake to place them in
orphanages; and they must consent, for their own part, to leave
their homes and settle wherever the Government directed.
At Harpout, they would not accept the conversion of the men; in the
case of the women, they made their conversion conditional in each
instance upon the presence of a Moslem willing to take the convert
in marriage. Many Armenian women preferred to throw themselves into
the Euphrates with their infants, or committed suicide in their
homes. The Euphrates and Tigris have become the sepulchre of
thousands of Armenians.
All Armenians converted in the Black Sea towns—Trebizond, Samsoun,
Kerasond, etc.—have been sent to the interior, and settled in towns
inhabited exclusively by Moslems. The town of Shabin-Karahissar
resisted the disarming and deportation, and was thereupon bombarded.
The whole population of the town and the surrounding country, from
the Bishop downwards, was pitilessly massacred.
In short, from Samsoun on the one hand to Seghert[21] and Diyarbekir
on the other, there is now not a single Armenian left. The majority
have been massacred, part have been carried off, and a very small
part have been converted to Islam.
History has never recorded, never hinted at, such a hecatomb. We are
driven to believe that under the reign of Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid we
were exceedingly fortunate.
We have just learned the fate of some of the provincial bishops.
Mgr. Anania Hazarabedian, Bishop of Baibourt, has been hanged
without any confirmation of the sentence by the Central
Government[22]. Mgr. Bosak Der-Khoremian. Bishop of Harpout, started
on his road to exile in May, and had barely left the outskirts of
the town when he was cruelly murdered. But we have still no news of
the Bishops of Seghert, Bitlis, Moush, Keghi, Palou, Erzindjan,
Kamakh, Tokat, Gurin, Samsoun and Trebizond, or for a month past of
the Bishops of Sivas and Erzeroum. It is superfluous to speak of the
martyred priests. When the people were deported, the churches were
pillaged and turned into mosques, stables, or what not. Besides
that, they have begun to sell at Constantinople the sacred objects
and other properties of the Armenian churches, just as the Turks
have begun to bring to Constantinople the children of the unhappy
Armenian mothers.
It appears that the massacres have been less cruel in Cilicia, or at
least we have no news yet of the worst. The population, which has
been deported to the provinces of Aleppo and Der-el-Zor and to
Damascus, will certainly perish of hunger. We have just heard that
the Government has refused to leave in peace even the insignificant
Armenian colonies at Aleppo and Ourfa, who might have assisted their
unhappy brethren on their southward road; and the Katholikos of
Cilicia, who still remains at Aleppo, is busy distributing the
relief we are forwarding to him.
We thought at first that the Government’s plan was to settle the
Armenian question once and for all by clearing out the Armenians of
the six Armenian provinces and removing the Armenian population of
Cilicia, to forestall another danger in the future. Unhappily their
plan was wider in scope and more thorough in intention. It consisted
in the extermination of the whole Armenian population throughout the
whole of Turkey. The result is that, in those seven provinces where
the Government was pledged to introduce reforms, there is not one
per cent. of the Armenian population left alive. So far, we do not
know whether a single Armenian has reached Mosul or its
neighbourhood. And this plan has now been put into execution even in
the suburbs of Constantinople. The majority of the Armenians in the
district of Ismid and in the province of Broussa have been forcibly
deported to Mesopotamia, leaving behind them their homes and their
property. In detail, the population of Adapazar, Ismid, Gegvé,
Armasha and the neighbourhood has been removed—in fact, the
population of all the villages in the Ismid district (except
Baghtchedjik, which has been granted several days’ grace). The
Principal of the Seminary at Armasha has also been removed with his
colleagues in orders and his seminarists[23]. They have had to leave
everything behind, and been able to take nothing with them on their
journey. Six weeping mothers confided their little ones to the
Armenians of Konia, in order to save their lives, but the local
authorities tore them away from their Armenian guardians, and handed
them over to Moslems.
So now it is Constantinople’s turn. In any case, the population has
fallen into a panic, and is waiting from one moment to another for
the execution of its doom. The arrests are innumerable, and those
arrested are immediately removed from the capital. The majority will
assuredly perish. It is the retail merchants of provincial birth,
but resident in Constantinople, who are so far being deported—among
them Marouké, Ipranossian Garabed, Kherbekian of Erzeroum, Atamian
Karekin, Krikorian Sempad of Bitlis, etc. We are making great
efforts to save at any rate the Armenians of Constantinople from
this horrible extermination of the race, in order that, hereafter,
we may have at least one rallying point for the Armenian cause in
Turkey.
Is there anything further to add to this report? The whole Armenian
population of Turkey has been condemned to death, and this decree is
being put into execution energetically in every corner of the
Empire, under the eyes of the European Powers; while, so far,
neither Germany nor Austria has succeeded in checking the action of
their ally and removing the stain of these barbarities, which also
attaches to them. All our efforts have been without result. Our hope
is set upon the Armenians abroad.
-----
Footnote 19:
See Docs. 59, 60, 61, 62. The witnesses at Erzindjan were not
Norwegians but Danes—EDITOR.
Footnote 20:
See Docs. 23 and 62.
Footnote 21:
Sairt (?)
Footnote 22:
See Doc. 59.
Footnote 23:
See Doc. 99.
8. EXTRACTS FROM A LETTER, DATED ATHENS, 8th/21st JULY, 1915, FROM
AN ARMENIAN FORMERLY RESIDENT IN TURKEY TO A PROMINENT ARMENIAN
IN WESTERN EUROPE.
Events have been taking place in Turkey of which I imagine that you
have no first-hand or reliable information, on account of the strict
censorship and scarcity of travellers.... And as I have been able to
obtain reliable information, I have thought it my duty as an
Armenian to submit it to your Excellency.
Mr. A., who was a missionary teacher at the town of B. in Cilicia
for four years, and with whom I am acquainted personally (and I have
good reason to believe in every word he says), arrived in this city
only yesterday, coming from AE. in company with Miss B., the
daughter of the Director of Mr. A.’ s college, with whom I am also
acquainted personally.
They just began to inform me by saying that the condition of the
Armenians in Cilicia was awful. The town of Dört Yöl, after having
been cleared of its Armenian population, has been peacefully
occupied by Turkish families, and not by the military authorities.
The whole of the Armenian inhabitants have been sent away—turned out
of their homes—and are naturally suffering from hunger. The exposure
is something that cannot be described. Before evacuation, some nine
leading merchants were hanged, on the accusation that they were in
communication with the British fleet and were spying for the Allied
Forces[24].
Zeitoun has met the same fate. There is not a single Armenian left
in Zeitoun, and all the houses are occupied by Turkish people. My
friends could not understand what exactly had happened to the
Zeitounlis, but the fact is that special care has been taken by the
Turkish authorities that too many of them should not be left
together. Attempts have been made to make them Mohammedans, and it
is known that the authorities attempted to distribute one, two, or
three families to each Turkish village in the district of Marash.
They have attempted to do the same thing to Hadjin, but, somehow or
other, only half the inhabitants have left, whose homes have
naturally been occupied by the Turks.
The Turks of Tarsus and Adana are showing the same disposition as
they did before the massacres of 1909.
Missionaries from Beirout state that the same persecution is being
carried out against Christian Syrians.
Dr. C., for many years a missionary in Smyrna, and latterly in AD.,
was exiled to Angora. He states that there were thirty Armenians
exiled with him from AD. on the simple charge that they had either
themselves been Huntchakists or had friends belonging to the said
Party. Extortion of money, robbery and insults are usual, and
conditions in general are worse than at any period in the time of
Hamid. Dr. C. has been in Turkey for 35 years and knows Turkish.
At Kaisaria they hanged eight Armenians. About the same time they
hanged twenty-six at Constantinople, and this immediately after the
note of the Powers threatening to hold Turkish officials responsible
for massacres of Armenians. Imprisonment and exile are common
things, and the Reverend Missionary finished by saying that “I ought
to be glad I was out of it.”
Dr. C., coming from Constantinople, gave me the further information
that massacres had been going on round Bitlis for some time. And
then, from correspondents at Bitlis, his informants had had news
that whole villages were embracing Mohammedanism in order to escape
tortures, because the object of the massacres was not simply to
kill, but to torture.
A resident at Mardin had telegraphed by code to Constantinople
informing his correspondent there that the same conditions existed
at Mardin as during 1895.
The American Ambassador at Constantinople, after asking the Turkish
Government to stop the massacres, went to the German Ambassador. But
Herr Wangenheim said he could not interfere in any way with Turkey’s
internal affairs!!!
All these informants do not hide their belief, based on what they
have actually seen, that German policy is at the back of the
movement for a clean Mohammedan “Turkey for the Turks.”
I will give your Excellency another coincident piece of evidence. In
May, 1914, I travelled with Dr. Niazim Bey, who is the spirit of the
Union and Progress Party, when he was on the mission of establishing
a boycott—nominally against the Greeks only, though it proved to be
against the Armenians as well. The Doctor said that the work of the
Turkish Government was very complicated, and he laid all the fault
of it on the ancestors of the modern Turks, who, in spite of their
being victorious and defying all Europe, nay all the world, had not
been far-sighted enough to cleanse all the country they ruled of the
Christian element, but had yielded to their chivalrous feelings and
allowed the Christians to live. Had they done this bit of cleaning
up at a time when nobody could protest, there would have been an
easy task now for the heads of the Government in governing, and so
on.
The Russian retreat has intoxicated the Turks. They think they have
their chance now, and evidence shows that their almighty ally
Germany encourages them in their effort at house cleaning. The note
of the Allied Powers is no deterrent, even if the Turkish officials
were not sure of final victory, because they feel that, if they
lose, Turkey is not the place to offer them a happy shelter, and,
with the money they are making now, the officials responsible can
hide themselves in a country where they cannot be found or cannot be
extradited. And some of the bolder spirits, like Talaat and Enver,
have openly said that they do not expect to live if defeated, even
without the threat of the Allies to bring them to account.
The Armenians in Turkey have not been able to conceal their
feelings, and when I myself was in Constantinople, prudent man
though I am, I was unable to conceal my feelings myself, or at least
so effectively as not to be perceived by the Turks.
As early as September last, the Turkish comic paper _Karagoz_ had
written one day that “If the Armenians were cheerful, there was
certainly news of victory for the Allies; if not, it had been the
reverse.” But if, in spite of the Armenians concealing their
feelings, the Turks had definitely adopted the policy—as no doubt
they had—of exterminating the Christians in Turkey, then we have at
least the satisfaction that we have hurt them with the display of
what we felt.
I believe that the Germans did not want to exterminate the Armenians
unless the latter proved of military danger in the present game; but
I imagine the Armenians have incurred the Germans’ displeasure in
this regard.
That Germany, or the Germans in Turkey, are for the above reason
encouraging the Turks in their attempt at extermination, is proved
by the fact that wholesale massacres and deportations have been
specific to regions of which the inhabitants might be of especial
help to an invading army. For instance, Dört Yöl and Zeitoun would
be of excellent help had the Allies made a landing at Payas. Bitlis
is next door to Van; the Russian army is getting towards Bitlis, and
naturally the Armenians of Bitlis would be of great value to them,
as indeed the Armenians of Van have been already.
Take the case of Erzeroum, again a frontier town, which, besides
individual hangings, has been the scene of wholesale massacres;
while towns far away from the theatre of war, such as Angora,
Broussa, Konia, Constantinople, etc., although not exempted from
persecution, have still not been subjected to wholesale massacres
and deportations.
-----
Footnote 24:
See Doc. 123.
9. LETTER, DATED 3rd/16th AUGUST, 1915, CONVEYED BEYOND THE OTTOMAN
FRONTIER BY AN ARMENIAN REFUGEE FROM CILICIA IN THE SOLE OF HER
SHOE[25]
In haste and in secret I seize this opportunity of bringing to your
ears the cry of agony which goes out from the survivors of the
terrible crisis through which we are passing at this moment. They
are exterminating our nation, mowing it down. Perhaps this will be
the last cry from Armenia that you will hear; we have no longer any
fear of death, we see it close at hand, this death of the whole
people. We are waifs who cry for the lives of our brothers. These
lines cannot describe our misery; it would need volumes of reports
to do justice to that.
(1.) At the present moment there are at —— more than 10,000 deported
widows and children (among the latter one sees no boys above eleven
years of age). They had been on the road for from three to five
months; they have been plundered several times over, and have
marched along naked and starving; the Government gave them on one
single occasion a morsel of bread—a few have had it twice. It is
said that the number of these deported widows will reach 60,000;
they are so exhausted that they cannot stand upright; the majority
have great sores on their feet, through having had to march
barefoot.
(2). An enquiry has proved that, out of 1,000 people who started,
scarcely 400 reached ——. Out of the 600 to be accounted for, 380 men
and boys above eleven years of age, and 85 women, had been massacred
or drowned, out of sight of the towns, by the gendarmes who
conducted them; 120 young women and girls and 40 boys had been
carried off, with the result that one does not see a single pretty
face among the survivors.
(3.) Out of these survivors, 60 per cent. are sick; they are to be
sent in the immediate future to ——, where certain death awaits them;
one cannot describe the ferocious treatment to which they are
exposed; they had been on the road for from three to five months;
they had been plundered two, three, five, seven times; their
underclothes even had been ransacked; so far from being given
anything to eat, they had even been prevented from drinking while
they were passing a stream. Three-quarters of the young women and
girls were abducted; the remainder were forced to lie with the
gendarmes who conducted them. Thousands died under these outrages,
and the survivors have stories to tell of refinements of outrage so
disgusting that they pollute one’s ears.
(4.) The massacres have been most violent in the eastern provinces,
and the population has been deported wholesale towards the Hauran
Desert, Gereg and Mosul, where the victims are doomed to a death
from natural causes more infallible than massacre. When one
remembers that these people were leading a comfortable European
life, one is forced to conclude that they will never be able to
survive in an alien and inhospitable climate, even if the knife and
the bullet do not previously do their work.
My friends, I have not time to tell you more; one may say with truth
that not a single Armenian is left in Armenia; soon there will be
none left in Cilicia either. The Armenian, robbed of his life, his
goods, his honour, conveys to you his last cry for help—help to save
the lives of the survivors! Money to buy them bread! There is a
rumour here that the Government will allow the women and the
children under seventeen years of age to leave the country. How are
they to do it? Where are they to go? What ship is to take them? Who
will provide the funds? From moment to moment we are waiting for
relief, to stave off the death of the Nation. Be quick, never mind
how; send us money, we have no means of communication!
Send, through the agency of the American Government, _money_,
_money_, _money_; the bearer of this letter deserves every reward;
she will tell you all the details. Zohrab, Vartkes Daghavarian and
their five companions have been murdered by the gendarmes at
Sheitan-Deré, between Ourfa and Diyarbekir, where thousands of
headless corpses make the passers-by shudder; the Euphrates bears
down its stream thousands of corpses of men and women; photographs
of this have been taken by Europeans. Fifteen thousand Zeitounlis
have been deported to Der-el-Zor, where they are suffering the worst
atrocities. Thousands of babies at the breast have been thrown into
rivers or abandoned by the wayside by their mothers. The urgent need
is _money_! Make that clear to the Armenian colony in America.
_Money!_ _Money!_
One thousand six hundred Armenians have had their throats cut in the
prisons at Diyarbekir. The Arashnort was mutilated, drenched with
alcohol, and burnt alive in the prison yard, in the middle of a
carousing crowd of gendarmes, who even accompanied the scene with
music. The massacres at Beniani, Adiaman and Selefka have been
carried out diabolically; there is not a single man left above the
age of thirteen years; the girls have been outraged mercilessly; we
have seen their mutilated corpses tied together in batches of four,
eight or ten, and cast into the Euphrates. The majority had been
mutilated in an indescribable manner.
The above facts have been gathered from official sources and
eye-witnesses.
The American Consul is able to arrange for the despatch of funds. We
are unable to realise any of our property, either national or
private, because it has all been confiscated by the Government. The
Government has even confiscated the convents, the churches and the
schools. Black famine reigns in this town; we have 15,000 deported
Armenians here, who are being sent on in batches to Arabia. The
whole of Armenia is being cleared out.
I sign this letter with my blood!
-----
Footnote 25:
The author of the letter has been identified by an Armenian
resident abroad who recognised his hand-writing.—EDITOR.
10. LETTER FROM MR. N., A FOREIGN RESIDENT AT CONSTANTINOPLE, DATED
27th AUGUST, 1915; COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR
ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF.
The Armenians of Bardizag have generally speaking been deported. A
promise secured by Mr. Morgenthau that Protestants should be
exempted from deportation has kept the people at Nicomedia (Isnik)
for nearly a week. They are camped in the open near the Railway
Station, exposed to the weather and to the insults of the populace,
apparently to be deported a few days later on. Whether we shall
succeed in saving the Protestants remains to be seen. Deportation
has taken place generally throughout all the region contiguous to
Nicomedia, Adapazar, Konia, Marsovan, Sivas, Harpout, Diyarbekir and
to some parts of the American Central Mission. Many people have
already lost their lives, and others, as for instance those in this
city, have lost hope as to their final security. I shall enclose a
few letters which will give an idea of the situation throughout the
land.
Prof. QQ.[26] has just arrived from X. He has been four weeks on the
journey, having been delayed considerably at S. He states that the
Armenians have left, having been deported from X. and the vicinity.
Mr. Morgenthau endeavoured to save the Mission _entourage_ at X.
from deportation; the promises securing this, however, were not
fulfilled. Even the hundred girls and young women held in the
College Compound could not be saved from this dreadful fate. To the
bold stand made by the Mission people, on behalf of their pupils and
teachers, the Kaimakam himself opposed his personal authority,
threatening to hang anyone who attempted to prevent the carrying out
of his orders for the deportation of the people. These orders, here
as elsewhere, seemed to respect neither age nor condition....
The movement against the Armenians has now well-nigh covered the
entire country. Many prominent Armenians have lost their lives;
hardly a family has escaped experiencing to some extent the severity
of this blow. It looks as if the patronage from this community for
the American schools has been quite cut off. Teachers and pupils
alike have been sent into exile, or have suffered death or have been
carried off to Turkish communities or harems. There is an ugly
rumour that the turn of the Greeks will come next. Should Greece
move, this will probably be realised....
-----
Footnote 26:
Author of Docs. 56 and 57.
11. MEMORANDUM DATED 15/28th OCTOBER, 1915, FROM A WELL-INFORMED
SOURCE AT BUKAREST, RELATING TO THE EXTERMINATION OF THE
ARMENIANS IN TURKEY.
1. At _Vezir Köprü_ (district of Marsovan) all Armenian women and
girls from 7 to 40 years of age have been _sold at auction_. Women
were also presented to the buyers without payment.
2. At _Kaisaria_ more than 500 Armenian families were forced to
embrace Islam. A father asked his son in Constantinople to follow
his example, “in order to prevent worse consequences for his
parents.”
3. All Armenian judicial officials in the provinces have been
discharged. All Turkish officials who have shown special zeal in the
extermination of the Armenians have been promoted. Thus Zeki Bey,
Kaimakam of _Develou_ (Kaisaria), the man who directed in person the
terrible tortures of the Armenian prisoners and was responsible for
the death of most of them, has been made mektoubdji of the Vilayet
of Constantinople.
4. The Young Turk Government has published, as an excuse or perhaps
as a means of exciting greater hatred against the Armenians, a book
entitled _The Armenian Separatist Movement_, which is as ridiculous
as it is criminal. The reader finds in it not only copies of
entirely fictitious publications, but actually pictures of enormous
depots of arms and munitions purporting to be Armenian.
5. In _Konia_, and everywhere else, the wives of the Armenian
soldiers who have not been deported have been taken as servants or
concubines into Turkish families.