by Court Martial, besides the numerous victims murdered in the
course of the deportations. At _Panderma_ many important Armenians
have been condemned to death by the Court Martial. The vicar Barkev
Vartabed has been condemned to five years’ penal servitude. The
Archbishop of Erzeroum, His Grace Sempad, who, with the Vali’s
authorisation, was returning to Constantinople, was murdered at
Erzindjan by the brigands in the service of the Union and Progress
Committee. The bishops of Trebizond, Kaisaria, Moush, Bitlis, Sairt,
and Erzindjan have all been murdered by order of the Young Turk
Government. According to reports from travellers, all the Armenian
population of Trebizond has been massacred without exception. Almost
the whole male population in Sivas, Erzeroum, Harpout, Bitlis,
Baibourt, Khnyss, Diyarbekir, etc., has been exterminated. At
Tchingiler, a small village in the district of Ismid, 300 men have
been murdered because they did not obey the order to leave their
houses. The people deported from Rodosto, Malgara and Tchorlu, who
have been deprived of all their possessions in accordance with the
new “temporary law” of the 13/26th September, have been separated
from their families and sent on foot from Ismid to Konia on the
arbitrary order of the notorious Ibrahim, dictator of the Ismid
district. Thousands of poor Armenians expelled from Constantinople
are made to march on foot from Ismid to Konia and still further,
after they have delivered up everything they possess to the
gendarmes, including their shoes. Those who can afford to travel by
rail are also fleeced by the gendarmes, who not only demand the
price of the ticket from Constantinople to their destinations, but
extract the whole of their money by selling them food at exorbitant
prices. They demand payment even for unlocking the door of the
water-closet.
7. German travellers from Aleppo describe the misery of the deported
Armenians as terrible. All along the route they saw corpses of
Armenians who had died of hunger.
The Arab deputies from Bagdad and Syria report that the misery in
the deserts of Hauran is indescribable:—
“The railway discharges into the mountains vast numbers of
Armenians, who are abandoned there without bread or water. In the
towns and villages, the Arabs try to bring them some relief; but
generally the Armenians are abandoned at five or six hours’ distance
from their homes. We saw on the way numbers of women and old men and
children dying of hunger, who did not know where to look for help.”
Some Armenians are leading a life of misery among the Arabs, forty
or forty-five hours’ journey from Bagdad. Every day numbers of them
die of hunger. The Government gives them no food. Moreover, fresh
troops have been sent to Bagdad, and these will be a new scourge to
the unfortunate exiles.
8. Three Special Commissions have been sent through the provinces to
liquidate the abandoned goods and estates of the Armenians, in
conformity with the new “temporary law” of the 13/26th September,
1915.
12. 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 do not 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.
<It is said that they were to be taken to Mosul, but nothing more
has been heard of them.>
[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
prisoners 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 of them
escape. The clothes of these victims were sold in the market of
Diyarbekir.]
<About the same time 700 young Armenian men were conscribed, and
were then set to build the Karabaghtché-Habashi road. There is no
news of these 700 men either.
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 from 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 more definite 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 corpses are
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.]
<The following telegram was sent to Aleppo from Arabkir:—“We have
accepted the True Religion. Now we are all right.” The inhabitants
of a village near Anderoum went over to Islam and had to hold to it.
At Hadjin six families wanted to become Mohammedans. They received
the verdict: “Nothing under one hundred families will be accepted.”
Aleppo and Ourfa are the assemblage-places for the convoys 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 woman bore 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[27].
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.>
-----
Footnote 27:
“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._
13. STATEMENT MADE BY A FOREIGN RESIDENT AT CONSTANTINOPLE TO A
SWISS GENTLEMAN AT GENEVA; COMMUNICATED BY THE LATTER.
When I left Turkey early in March (1916), the Armenian situation was
as follows:—
In general deportations had ceased, but local interference with
Armenians continued. Quite often Armenians who had remained in the
villages or cities between the Taurus Mountains and Constantinople
have been sent from one locality to another within the province, or
even to localities in other provinces.
Arrests of Armenians in the Capital continue with considerable
frequency. Those arrested were usually sent to some interior
province, often to be killed or to be left to die from ill-treatment
or lack of food.
Extortion of money and supplies from Armenians, and discriminations
against them in the distribution of bread and other food supplies,
continue out of all proportion to these practices as applied to
other Ottoman subjects.
The suffering of all Armenians, and especially of those in exile, is
very great, and many are dying from lack of proper food and from
disease. Anti-Armenian feeling among Moslems is increasing.
Early in January of this year, trustworthy reports from Aleppo gave
492,000 as the number of deported Armenians who were at that time in
the regions of Mosul, Der-el-Zor, Aleppo and Damascus[28]. Most of
these are women and children and old men, practically all of whom
are in great need of food and other necessities of life. Without
physicians and medicine, disease is reaping a rich harvest from
these exiles.
The Turkish Minister of the Interior has stated that about 800,000
Armenians have been deported, and that about 300,000 of these people
have been killed or have perished from other causes. Other estimates
place the number of deported at 1,200,000, and the number who have
perished from all causes at 500,000.
-----
Footnote 28:
See Doc. 139, d.
14. CABLEGRAM, DATED 4th MAY, 1916, TRANSMITTED THROUGH THE STATE
DEPARTMENT AT WASHINGTON TO THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN
AND SYRIAN RELIEF, FROM THE COMMITTEE’S REPRESENTATIVES IN
TURKEY.
_Aleppo._
Relief work here supports 1,350 orphans, who are only a portion of
the destitute children now in the city. It has also furnished food
to families in nine destitute centres, including Hama, Rakka, Killis
and Damascus. £1,500 (Turkish) monthly are being used at Aleppo for
orphans; £600 (Turkish) are being used for the poor of Aleppo;
£2,245 (Turkish) are being used in the destitute centres. This is
considered to be a minimum allocation, and ten times the amount
would not meet the full needs. The work is being overseen by the
German and American Consuls. So insufficient are the funds that many
exiles in the destitute places have only grass to eat, and they are
dying of starvation by hundreds. £1,000 (Turkish) are required each
week for the Aleppo centre.
_Marash._
Ten thousand Armenians are threatened with deportation, and all are
in a most needy condition. Attempted industrial assistance for
Moslems and Christians was stopped by Government. Christians are not
allowed to do any business, and the price of food is very high.
Export from Agno to Marash has been forbidden, and many people are
dying of starvation. £1,600 (Turkish) are needed here monthly.
_Aintab._
Forty-five hundred Armenians remain here, two-thirds of whom are on
relief lists. Four hundred refugee women and children in city and
neighbourhood require £1,000 (Turkish) each month.
_Tarsus._
This being a station on the route taken by the exiles from the
region north of Tarsus, the roads are always full of people in
miserable condition. According to Government estimates, 92,000
exiles have passed through Tarsus, while, according to other
reports, the number is much larger. Typhus is very prevalent. The
needs here require £500 (Turkish) a month.
_Adana._
The situation here in general resembles that at Agno, with the
special feature that many children need to be saved and fed. £500
(Turkish) monthly are needed.
_Sivas._
In addition to the local Christian population remaining here, 25,000
destitute refugees, including women and children from coast cities,
have been added. All need help. Monthly requirements amount to £600
(Turkish).
_Konia._
Two thousand orphans. £1,500 (Turkish) monthly required for the
needs of this city and neighbouring places.
_Harpout._
This place asks for £400 (Turkish) monthly.
_Marsovan and Kaisaria._
£500 (Turkish) monthly are needed.
_Smyrna._
There has been much sickness here and there is a scarcity of food.
£400 (Turkish) monthly are needed.
_Broussa._
£200 (Turkish) monthly are being used here.
II.
VILAYET OF VAN.
_The Vilayet of Van had a higher percentage of Armenians in its
population than any other province of the Ottoman Empire; it was
also the border province of the north-eastern frontier, towards
Russian and Persian territory, and as such was the earliest to be
exposed to invasion after the breakdown of the Turkish offensive
against the Caucasus in the winter of 1914-1915._
_The documents contained in this section give a detailed and
perfectly self-consistent account, from five independent sources, of
those events at Van which led to the first open breach between the
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and the Turks, and which gave the
Government a pretext for extending the scheme of deportation already
operative in Cilicia to the whole Armenian population under its
jurisdiction._
_The evidence makes it clear that there was no unprovoked
insurrection of the Armenians at Van, as the Ottoman Government
asserts in its official apologia. The Armenians only took up arms in
self-defence, and the entire responsibility for the outbreak rests
with Djevdet Bey, the local governor—whether he was acting on his
own initiative or was simply carrying out instructions from
Constantinople._
15. THE AMERICAN MISSION AT VAN: NARRATIVE PRINTED PRIVATELY IN THE
UNITED STATES BY MISS GRACE HIGLEY KNAPP (1915).
_The first part of this narrative, down to and including the
sub-section headed “Deliverance,” has been transcribed almost word
for word by Miss Knapp from a letter she wrote at Van, on the 24th
May, 1915, to Dr. Barton, and has, therefore, all the value of
contemporary evidence._
_The period of the (first) Russian occupation of Van is also covered
by two further letters from Miss Knapp to Dr. Barton—a long one
written piece-meal on the 14th, 20th and 22nd June, and a second
dated 20th July. These contain much more detail than the three
corresponding sub-sections of her narrative, but the detail is
principally devoted to personal matters and to the care of the
Moslem refugees. As neither subject was strictly relevant to the
purpose of the present collection, it seemed better to reprint the
narrative rather than the letters in the case of these sections
also._
_There is also a letter (published in the Eleventh Report of the
Women’s Armenian Relief Fund) from Miss Louie Bond to Mrs. Orpin,
written on the 27th July, almost the eve of the evacuation; but
this, too, is practically entirely devoted to personal matters._
_For the period of the retreat there are no contemporary letters,
but only an undated memorandum by Miss Knapp, which agrees word for
word with the latter part of her present narrative, from the
beginning of the section headed “Flight” to the end._
THE SETTING OF THE DRAMA AND THE ACTORS THEREIN.
Van was one of the most beautiful cities of Asiatic Turkey—a city of
gardens and vineyards, situated on Lake Van in the centre of a
plateau bordered by magnificent mountains. The walled city,
containing the shops and most of the public buildings, was dominated
by Castle Rock, a huge rock rising sheer from the plain, crowned
with ancient battlements and fortifications, and bearing on its
lakeward face famous cuneiform inscriptions. The Gardens, so-called
because nearly every house had its garden or vineyard, extended over
four miles eastward from the walled city and were about two miles in
width.
The inhabitants numbered fifty thousand, three-fifths of whom were
Armenians, two-fifths Turks. The Armenians were progressive and
ambitious, and because of their numerical strength and the proximity
of Russia the revolutionary party grew to be a force to be reckoned
with. Three of its noted leaders were Vremyan, member of the Ottoman
Parliament; Ishkhan, the one most skilled in military tactics; and
Aram, of whom there will be much to say later. The Governor often
consulted with these men and seemed to be on the most friendly terms
with them.
The American Mission Compound was on the south-eastern border of the
middle third of the Gardens, on a slight rise of ground that made
its buildings somewhat conspicuous. These buildings were a church
building, two large new school buildings, two small ones, a lace
school, a hospital, dispensary and four missionary residences.
South-east, and quite near, was a broad plain. Here was the largest
Turkish barracks of the large garrison, between which and the
American premises nothing intervened. North and nearer, but with
streets and houses between, was another large barracks, and farther
north, within rifle range, was Toprak-Kala Hill, surmounted by a
small barracks dubbed by the Americans the “Pepper Box.” Five
minutes’ walk to the east of us was the German Orphanage managed by
Herr Spörri, his wife and daughter (of Swiss extraction) and three
single ladies.
The American force in 1914-1915 consisted of the veteran missionary,
Mrs. G.C. Raynolds (Dr. Raynolds had been in America a year and a
half collecting funds for our Van college, and had been prevented
from returning by the outbreak of war); Dr. Clarence D. Ussher, in
charge of the hospital and medical work; Mrs. Ussher, in charge of a
philanthropic lace industry; Mr. and Mrs. Ernest A. Yarrow, in
charge of the Boys’ School and general work; Miss Gertrude Rogers,
principal of the Girls’ School; Miss Caroline Silliman, in charge of
the primary department, and two Armenian and one Turkish
kindergarten; Miss Elizabeth Ussher, in charge of the musical
department; Miss Louise Bond, the English superintendent of the
hospital; and Miss Grisel McLaren, our touring missionary. Dr.
Ussher and Mr. Yarrow had each four children; I was a visitor from
Bitlis.
BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA.
During the mobilization of the fall and winter the Armenians had
been ruthlessly plundered under the name of requisitioning; rich men
were ruined and the poor stripped. Armenian soldiers in the Turkish
army were neglected, half starved, set to digging trenches and doing
the menial work; but, worst of all, they were deprived of their arms
and thus left at the mercy of their fanatical, age-long enemies,
their Moslem fellow-soldiers. Small wonder that those who could find
a loophole of escape or could pay for exemption from military duty
did so; many of those who could do neither simply would not give
themselves up. We felt that a day of reckoning would soon come—a
collision between these opposing forces or a holy war. But the
revolutionists conducted themselves with remarkable restraint and
prudence; controlled their hot-headed youth; patrolled the streets
to prevent skirmishes; and bade the villagers endure in
silence—better a village or two burned unavenged than that any
attempt at reprisals should furnish an excuse for massacre.
For some time after Djevdet Bey, a brother-in-law of Enver Pasha,
minister of war, became Governor General of Van Vilayet, he was
absent from the city fighting at the border. When he returned in the
early spring, everyone felt there would soon be “something doing.”
There was. He demanded from the Armenians 3,000 soldiers. So anxious
were they to keep the peace that they promised to accede to this
demand. But at this juncture trouble broke out between Armenians and
Turks in the Shadakh region, and Djevdet Bey requested Ishkhan to go
there as peace commissioner, accompanied by three other notable
revolutionists. On their way there he had all four treacherously
murdered. This was Friday, the 16th April. He then summoned Vremyan
to him under the pretence of consulting with this leader, arrested
him and sent him off to Constantinople.
The revolutionists now felt that they could not trust Djevdet Bey,
the Vali, in any way and that therefore they could not give him the
3,000 men. They told him they would give 400 and pay by degrees the
exemption tax for the rest. He would not accept the compromise. The
Armenians begged Dr. Ussher and Mr. Yarrow to see Djevdet Bey and
try to mollify him. The Vali was obdurate. He “must be obeyed.” He
would put down this “rebellion” at all costs. He would first punish
Shadakh, then attend to Van, but if the rebels fired one shot
meanwhile he would put to death every man, woman and child of the
Christians.
The fact cannot be too strongly emphasized that there was no
“rebellion.” As already pointed out, the revolutionists meant to
keep the peace if it lay in their power to do so. But for some time
past a line of Turkish entrenchments had been secretly drawn round
the Armenian quarter of the Gardens. The revolutionists, determined
to sell their lives as dearly as possible, prepared a defensive line
of entrenchments.
Djevdet Bey said he wished to send a guard of fifty soldiers to the
American premises. This guard must be accepted or a written
statement given him by the Americans to the effect that it had been
offered and refused, so that he should be absolved from all
responsibility for our safety. He wished for an immediate answer,
but at last consented to wait till Sunday noon.