had been emptied and their inhabitants had become victims of the
gendarmes and marauding bands. Three days before the starting of the
Armenians from Baibourt, after a week’s imprisonment, Bishop Anania
Hazarabedian was hanged, with seven other notables. After these
hangings, seven or eight other notables were killed in their own
houses for refusing to leave the city. Seventy or eighty other
Armenians, after being beaten in prison, were taken to the woods and
killed. The Armenian population of Baibourt was sent off in three
batches; I was among the third batch. My husband died eight years
ago, leaving me and my eight-year-old daughter and my mother a large
property, so that we were living in comfort. Since mobilization
began, the Ottoman Commandant has been living in my house free of
rent. He told me not to go, but I felt I must share the fate of my
people. I took three horses with me, loaded with provisions. My
daughter had some five-lira pieces round her neck, and I carried
some twenty liras and four diamond rings on my person. All else that
we had was left behind. Our party left on the 1st/ 14th June,
fifteen gendarmes going with us. The party numbered four or five
hundred[69] persons. We had got only two hours away from home when
bands of villagers and brigands in large numbers, with rifles, guns,
axes, etc., surrounded us on the road, and robbed us of all we had.
The gendarmes took my three horses and sold them to Turkish
mouhadjirs, pocketing the money. They took my money and the gold
pieces from my daughter’s neck, also all our food. After this they
separated the men, one by one, and shot them all within six or seven
days—every male above fifteen years old. By my side were killed two
priests, one of them over ninety years of age. The brigands took all
the good-looking women and carried them off on their horses. Very
many women and girls were thus carried off to the mountains, among
them my sister, whose one-year-old baby they threw away; a Turk
picked it up and carried it off, I know not where. My mother walked
till she could walk no farther, and dropped by the roadside on a
mountain top. We found on the road many of those who had been
deported from Baibourt in the previous convoys; some women were
among the killed, with their husbands and sons. We also came across
some old people and little infants still alive but in a pitiful
condition, having shouted their voices away. We were not allowed to
sleep at night in the villages, but lay down outside. Under cover of
the night indescribable deeds were committed by the gendarmes,
brigands and villagers. Many of us died from hunger and strokes of
apoplexy. Others were left by the roadside, too feeble to go on.
One morning we saw fifty or sixty wagons with about thirty Turkish
widows, whose husbands had been killed in the war; and these were
going to Constantinople. One of these women made a sign to one of
the gendarmes to kill a certain Armenian whom she pointed out. The
gendarmes asked her if she did not wish to kill him herself, at
which she said “Why not?” and, drawing a revolver from her pocket,
shot him dead. Every one of these Turkish hanoums had five or six
Armenian girls of ten or under with her. Boys the Turks never wished
to take; they killed them all, of whatever age. These women wanted
to take my daughter, too, but she would not be separated from me.
Finally we were both taken into their wagons on our promising to
become Moslems. As soon as we entered the araba, they began to teach
us how to be Moslems, and changed our names, calling me X. and her
Y.
The worst and most unimaginable horrors were reserved for us at the
banks of the Euphrates[70] and in the Erzindjan plain. The mutilated
bodies of women, girls and little children made everybody shudder.
The brigands were doing all sorts of awful deeds to the women and
girls that were with us, whose cries went up to heaven. At the
Euphrates, the brigands and gendarmes threw into the river all the
remaining children under fifteen years old. Those that could swim
were shot down as they struggled in the water.
After seven days we reached Erzindjan. Not an Armenian was left
alive there. The Turkish women took my daughter and me to the bath,
and there showed us many other women and girls that had accepted
Islam. Between there and Enderessi, the fields and hillsides were
dotted with swollen and blackened corpses that filled and fouled the
air with their stench. On this road we met six women wearing the
feradjé[71] and with children in their arms. But when the gendarmes
lifted their veils, they found that they were men in disguise, so
they shot them. After thirty-two days’ journey we reached our
destination.
-----
Footnote 69:
“4000-5000”—Doc. 2
Footnote 70:
_i.e._, the Kara Su.
Footnote 71:
Moslem veil.
60. BAIBOURT: STATEMENT, REPRODUCED FROM THE ARMENIAN JOURNAL
“HORIZON,” OF TIFLIS, IN THE ARMENIAN JOURNAL “GOTCHNAG” OF NEW
YORK, 18th MARCH, 1916.
On the 15th May, some of the prominent Armenians of
Baibourt—north-west of Erzeroum—Hadji Simon, Hamazasb, Arshag and
Drtad Simavonian, Hagop Aghparian, Vagharshag Lousigian, Garabed
Sarafian, Garabed Duldulian, and the Bishop were arrested. They were
then taken to a place called “Ourbadji Oghlou Déré” and killed. When
the Armenians heard of this they were terrified, but the Government
declared that these were traitors, that they had sent money to the
enemy and tried to persuade the people to revolt—that consequently
they were punished, but that nothing would happen to the other
Armenians. They were, in fact, really left in peace for some time,
but after the retreat from Van Turkish soldiers came and disarmed
them. They were then deported and massacred.
Forty armed young men from the village of Lsounk and 20 from Varvan
escaped to the mountains. They were pursued by regular soldiers and
forced to fight. Both sides lost heavily, and finally 12 of the
Armenians, by the help of Greek villagers, reached Caucasia.
61. BAIBOURT, KEGHI, AND ERZINDJAN: LETTER[72], DATED ERZEROUM, 25th
MAY/7th JUNE, 1915; COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR
ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF.
The districts of Erzindjan, Keghi, and Baibourt have been devastated
by forced emigrations. The Armenian population of the city of
Erzeroum has also received categoric orders to leave the city. They
will be deported _en masse_; 160 merchants are already _en route_
with their families. The Government has confiscated their goods. We
have no information about the deported people; they say they will be
sent to Mosul.
-----
Footnote 72:
Name of author withheld
62. ERZINDJAN: STATEMENT BY TWO RED CROSS NURSES OF DANISH
NATIONALITY, FORMERLY IN THE SERVICE OF THE GERMAN MILITARY
MISSION AT ERZEROUM[73]; COMMUNICATED BY A SWISS GENTLEMAN OF
GENEVA.
In March, 1915, we learnt through an Armenian doctor, who died later
on of typhus, that the Turkish Government was preparing for a
massacre on a grand scale. He begged us to find out from General
Passelt whether the rumour were true. We heard afterwards that the
General (a gallant officer) had his own fears of it, and asked, for
that reason, to be relieved of his post.... We fell sick of typhus
and ... in consequence of a number of changes in the hospital staff
... we were obliged to leave Erzeroum. Through the good offices of
the German Consul at Erzeroum, who also possessed the confidence of
the Armenians, we were engaged by the Red Cross at Erzindjan, and
worked there seven weeks.
At the beginning of June, the head of the Red Cross Mission at
Erzindjan, Staff-Surgeon A., told us that the Armenians had revolted
at Van, that measures had been taken against them which would be put
into general execution, and that the whole Armenian population of
Erzindjan and the neighbourhood would be transported to Mesopotamia,
where it would no longer find itself in a majority. There was,
however, to be no massacre, and measures were to be taken to feed
the exiles and to secure their personal safety by a military escort.
Wagons loaded with arms and bombs were reported, he said, to have
been discovered at Erzindjan, and many arrests were to be made. The
Red Cross staff were forbidden to have any relations with the
exiles, and prohibited any excursions on foot or horseback beyond a
certain radius.
After that, several days’ grace was given to the population of
Erzindjan for the sale of their property, which was naturally
realised at ludicrous prices. In the first week of June,[74] the
first convoy started; the rich people were allowed to hire
carriages. They were to go to Harpout. The three succeeding days,
further deportations followed[75]; many children were taken charge
of by Moslem families; later on, the authorities decided that these
children must go into exile as well.
The families of the Armenians employed in our hospital had to go
with the rest, including a woman who was ill. A protest from Dr.
Neukirch, who was attending her, had no effect except to postpone
her departure two days. A soldier attached to our staff as cobbler
said to Sister B.[76]: “I am now forty-six years old, and yet I am
taken for military service, although I have paid my exemption-tax
regularly every year. I have never done anything against the
Government, and now they are taking from me my whole family, my
seventy-year-old mother, my wife and five children, and I do not
know where they are going.” He was especially affected by the
thought of his little daughter, a year and a half old; “She is so
sweet. She has such pretty eyes”; he wept like a child. The next day
he came back; “I know the truth. They are all dead.” And it was only
too true. Our Turkish cook came to us crying, and told us how the
Kurds had attacked the unhappy convoy at Kamakh Boghaz[77], had
pillaged it completely, and had killed a great number of the exiles.
This must have been the 14th June.
Two young Armenian teachers, educated at the College of Harpout,
whose lives were spared, related that the convoy had been caught
under a cross-fire by the Kurds on the flanks and the Turkish
irregulars in the rear. They had thrown themselves flat on the
ground and pretended to be dead; afterwards they succeeded in
finding their way back to Erzindjan by circuitous paths, bribing
some Kurds whom they met on the way. One of them had with her her
fiancé in woman’s clothes. He had been shielded by a Turkish
class-mate. When they reached Erzindjan a gendarme tried to abduct
the girl and her fiancé interfered. He was killed, and the girls
were carried off to Turkish houses, where they were treated kindly
but had pressure put upon them to change their religion. They
conveyed this news to us through a young doctor who attended some
Armenian patients in our hospital, and was thereby enabled to get
into touch with us; he brought us an appeal from them to take them
with us to Harpout. If only they had poison, they said, they would
poison themselves. They had no information whatever as to the fate
of their companions.
The day after,[78] Friday, the 11th June, a party of regular troops
(belonging to the 86th Cavalry Brigade) were sent out “to keep the
Kurds in order.”
We heard subsequently from these soldiers how the defenceless
Armenians had been massacred to the last one. The butchery had taken
four hours. The women threw themselves on their knees, they had
thrown their children into the Euphrates, and so on.[79] “It was
horrible,” said a nice-looking young soldier; “I could not fire, I
only pretended.” For that matter, we have often heard Turks express
their disapproval and their pity. The soldiers told us that there
were ox-carts all ready to carry the corpses to the river and remove
every trace of the massacre.[80]
Next day there was a regular _battue_ through the cornfields. (The
corn was then standing, and many Armenians had hidden in it.)
From that time on, convoys of exiles were continually arriving, all
on their way to the slaughter; we have no doubt about their fate,
after the unanimous testimony which we have received from many
different quarters. Later, our Greek driver told us that the victims
had their hands tied behind their backs, and were thrown down from
the cliffs into the river. This method was employed when the numbers
were too great to dispose of them in any other fashion. It was also
easier work for the murderers. Sister B. and I, of course, began at
once to think what we could do, and we decided to travel with one of
these convoys to Harpout. We did not know yet that the massacre on
the road had been ordered by the Government, and we also thought
that we could check the brutality of the gendarmes and stave off the
assaults of the Kurds, since we speak Kurdish and have some
influence over the tribesmen.
We then telegraphed to the Consul at Erzeroum, telling him that we
had been dismissed from the hospital, and urging him, in the
interests of Germany, to come to Erzindjan. He wired back:
“Impossible to leave my post. Expect Austrians, who are due to pass
here the 22nd June....”
On the evening of the 17th June, we went out for a walk with Mr. C.,
the druggist of the Red Cross Staff. He was as much horrified as we
were at the cruelties that were being perpetrated, and expressed
himself very plainly on the subject. He also received his dismissal.
On our walk we met a gendarme, who told us that, ten minutes’
distance away, a large convoy of exiles from Baibourt had been
halted. He narrated to us, with appalling vividness, how one by one
the men had been massacred and cast into the depths of the
gorge[81]: “Kezzé, kezzé, geliorlar! (Kill, kill, push them over).”
He told how, at each village, the women had been violated; how he
himself had desired to take a girl, but had been told that already
she was no longer a maid; how children had had their brains battered
out when they cried or hindered the march. “There were the naked
bodies of three girls; I buried them to do a good deed,” was his
concluding remark.
The following morning, at a very early hour, we heard the procession
of exiles passing in front of our house, along the high road leading
in to Erzindjan. We followed them and kept up with them as far as
the town, about an hour’s walk. Mr. G. came with us. It was a very
large gang—only two or three of them men, all the rest women and
children. Many of the women looked demented. They cried out: “Spare
us, we will become Moslems or Germans or whatever you will; only
spare us. We are being taken to Kamakh Boghaz to have our throats
cut,” and they made an expressive gesture. Others kept silence, and
marched patiently on with a few bundles on their backs and their
children in their arms. Others begged us to save their children.
Many Turks arrived on the scene to carry off children and girls,
with or without their parents’ consent. There was no time for
reflection, for the crowd was being moved on continually by the
mounted gendarmes brandishing their whips. On the outskirts of the
town, the road to Kamakh Boghaz branches off from the main highway.
At this point the scene turned into a regular slave market; for our
part, we took a family of six children, from three to fourteen years
old, who clutched hold of us, and another little girl as well. We
entrusted the latter to our Turkish cook, who was on the spot. She
wanted to take the child to the kitchen of Dr. A.’s private house,
and keep her there until we could come to fetch her; but the
doctor’s adjutant, Riza Bey, gave the woman a beating and threw the
child out into the street. Meanwhile, with cries of agony, the gang
of sufferers continued its march, while we returned to the hospital
with our six children. Dr. A. gave us permission to keep them in our
room until we had packed our belongings; they were given food and
soon became calmer. “Now we are saved,” they had cried when we took
them. They refused to let go of our hands. The smallest, the son of
a rich citizen of Baibourt, lay huddled up in his mother’s cloak;
his face was swollen with crying and he seemed inconsolable. Once he
rushed to the window and pointed to a gendarme: “That’s the man who
killed my father.” The children handed over to us their money, 475
piastres (about £4), which their parents had given them with the
idea that perhaps the children, at any rate, would not be shot.
We then rode into the town to obtain permission for these children
to travel with us. We were told that the high authorities were in
session to decide the fate of the convoy which had just arrived.
Nevertheless, Sister B. succeeded in getting word with someone she
knew, who gave her the authorisation to take the children with her,
and offered to give them false names in the passport. This satisfied
us, and, after returning to the hospital, we left the same evening
with baggage and children and all, and installed ourselves in a
hotel at Erzindjan. The Turkish orderlies at the hospital were very
friendly, and said: “You have done a good deed in taking these
children.” We could get nothing but one small room for the eight of
us. During the night there was a frightful knocking at our door, and
we were asked whether there were two German ladies in the room. Then
all became quiet again, to the great relief of our little ones.
Their first question had been, would we prevent them from being made
Mohammedans? And was our cross (the nurses’ Red Cross) the same as
theirs? After that they were comforted. We left them in the room,
and went ourselves to take our tea in the hotel café. We noticed
that some discharged hospital patients of ours, who had always shown
themselves full of gratitude towards us, behaved as if they no
longer recognised us. The proprietor of the hotel began to hold
forth, and everyone listened to what he was saying: “The death of
these women and children has been decreed at Constantinople.” The
Hodja (Turkish priest) of our hospital came in, too, and said to us,
among other things: “If God has no pity on them, why must you have
pity? The Armenians have committed atrocities at Van. That happened
because their religion is _ekzik_ (inferior). The Moslems should not
have followed their example, but should have carried out the
massacre with greater humanity.” We always gave the same answer—that
they ought to discover the guilty and do justice upon them, but that
the massacre of women and children was, and always will remain, a
crime.
Then we went to the Mutessarif himself, with whom we had not
succeeded in obtaining an interview before. The man looked like the
devil incarnate, and his behaviour bore out his appearance. In a
bellowing voice he shouted at us: “Women have no business to meddle
with politics, but ought to respect the Government!” We told him
that we should have acted in precisely the same way if the victims
had been Mohammedans, and that politics had nothing to do with our
conduct. He answered that we had been expelled from the hospital,
and that we should get the same treatment from him; that he would
not stand us, and that he would certainly not permit us to go to
Harpout to fetch our belongings, but would send us to Sivas. Worst
of all, he forbade us to take the children away, and at once sent a
gendarme to carry them off from our room.
On our way back to the hotel we actually met them, but they were
hurried past us so quickly that we had not even a chance to return
them their money. Afterwards we asked Dr. Lindenberg to see that
this money was restored to them; but, to find out where they were,
he had to make enquiries of a Turkish officer, and just at the
moment of our departure, when we had been told that they had already
been killed, and when we had no longer any chance of making a
further search for them, the aforementioned Riza Bey came and asked
us for this money, on the ground that he wanted to return it to the
children! We had already decided to spend it on relieving other
Armenians.
At Erzindjan we were now looked askance at. They would no longer let
us stay at the hotel, but took us to a deserted Armenian house. The
whole of this extensive quarter of the town seemed dead. People came
and went at will to loot the contents of the houses; in some of the
houses families of Moslem refugees were already installed. We had
now a roof over our heads, but no one would go to get us food.
However, we managed to send a note to Dr. A., who kindly allowed us
to return to the hospital. The following day, the Mutessarif sent a
springless baggage cart, in which we were to do the seven days’
journey to Sivas. We gave him to understand that we would not have
this conveyance, and, upon the representations of Dr. A., they sent
us a travelling carriage, with the threat to have us arrested if we
did not start at once. This was on Monday, the 21st June, and we
should have liked to wait for the Austrians, who were due to arrive
on the Tuesday morning, and continue the journey in their company;
but Dr. A. declared that he could no longer give us protection, and
so we started out. Dr. Lindenberg did us the kindness of escorting
us as far as Rifahia[82]. During the first days of our journey we
saw five corpses. One was a woman’s, and still had clothes on; the
others were naked, one of them headless. There were two Turkish
officers on the road with us who were really Armenians, as we were
told by the gendarme attached to us. They preserved their incognito
towards us, and maintained a very great reserve, but always took
care not to get separated from us. On the fourth day they did not
put in an appearance. When we enquired after them, we were given to
understand that the less we concerned ourselves about them the
better it would be for us. On the road, we broke our journey near a
Greek village. A savage-looking man was standing by the roadside. He
began to talk with us, and told us he was stationed there to kill
all the Armenians that passed, and that he had already killed 250.
He explained that they all deserved their fate, for they were all
Anarchists—not Liberals or Socialists, but Anarchists. He told the
gendarmes that he had received orders by telephone to kill our two
travelling companions. So these two men with their Armenian drivers
must have perished there. We could not restrain ourselves from
arguing with this assassin, but when he went off our Greek driver
warned us: “Don’t say a word, if you do ...”—and he made the gesture
of taking aim. The rumour had, in fact, got about that we were
Armenians, which was as good as to say condemned to death.
One day we met a convoy of exiles, who had said good-bye to their
prosperous villages and were at that moment on their way to Kamakh
Boghaz. We had to draw up a long time by the roadside while they
marched past. The scene will never be forgotten by either of us: a
very small number of elderly men, a large number of women—vigorous
figures with energetic features—a crowd of pretty children, some of
them fair and blue-eyed, one little girl smiling at the strangeness
of all she was seeing, but on all the other faces the solemnity of
death. There was no noise; it was all quiet, and they marched along
in an orderly way, the children generally riding on the ox-carts;
and so they passed, some of them greeting us on the way—all these
poor people, who are now standing at the throne of God, and whose
cry goes up before Him. An old woman was made to get down from her
donkey—she could no longer keep the saddle. Was she killed on the
spot? Our hearts had become as cold as ice.
The gendarme attached to us told us then that he had escorted a
convoy of 3,000 women and children to Mamahatoun (near Erzeroum) and
Kamakh Boghaz. “Hep gildi, bildi,” he said: “All gone, all dead.” We
asked him: “Why condemn them to this frightful torment; why not kill
them in their villages?” Answer: “It is best as it is. They ought to
be made to suffer; and, besides, there would be no place left for us
Moslems with all these corpses about. They will make a stench!”
We spent a night at Enderessi, one day’s journey from Shabin
Kara-Hissar. As usual, we had been given for our lodging an empty
Armenian house. On the wall there was a pencil scrawl in Turkish:
“Our dwelling is on the mountains, we have no longer any need of a
roof to cover us; we have already drained the bitter cup of death,
we have no more need of a judge.”