and has been largely approved verbally. We are still in
correspondence over some minor details regarding texts. We shall not
be able to open work for the few boys who are available at the
present, and I confess my deep apprehension lest they and their male
teachers should all be rounded up, to go the same road that their
comrades followed in July.
It is hard for us to leave just at this juncture. Yet there seems no
advantage in our staying compared with the difficulties of leaving
later. We shall try to keep you informed of our curriculum.
VIII.
VILAYET OF TREBIZOND, AND SANDJAK OF
SHABIN KARA-HISSAR.
_The Vilayet of Trebizond lies between Erzeroum and the Black Sea,
and consists of a long, narrow littoral, shut off from its
hinterland by a wall of mountains on the south. The town of Shabin
Kara-Hissar is situated about seventy miles west of Baibourt, near
the upper course of the Kelkid Irmak._
_The population of this region is very mixed. The substratum is
Lazic (a Caucasian race) and Greek; but advanced guards of the
Kurdish migration have penetrated into the mountains overlooking the
coast, while the towns and ports have been occupied, since the
Ottoman conquest in the fifteenth century, by large colonies of
Armenians and Turks, who lived there peaceably side by side for four
centuries—until June, 1915._
_The deportations began in the last week of that month. Their
nominal destination was the same as that of the convoys from the
Vilayet of Erzeroum, but in this case there seems never to have been
any intention of conducting the Armenians alive to their journey’s
end. At Trebizond, a number of them were herded on to boats and
drowned in the open sea. Such convoys as started by land were
massacred within a day’s journey of the city, and their fate was
shared by the convoys from Kerasond. The Armenians of Shabin
Kara-Hissar took warning, and resisted the Government’s decree.
Troops were sent against them, and every Armenian in the town and
district was put to the sword._
72. TREBIZOND: REPORT FROM A FOREIGN RESIDENT AT TREBIZOND,
COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN
RELIEF.
_Passages included between brackets are inserted from the version of
the same document published in the brochure “Quelques Documents sur
le Sort des Armeniens, 1915” (Geneva, 1915)._
On Saturday, the 26th June, the proclamation regarding the
deportation of all Armenians was posted in the streets. On Thursday,
the 1st July, all the streets were guarded by gendarmes with fixed
bayonets, and the work of driving the Armenians from their homes
began. Groups of men, women and children, with loads and bundles on
their backs, were collected in a short cross-street near my
residence, and when a hundred or so had been gathered, they were
driven past my residence on the road toward ——, in the heat and
dust, by gendarmes with fixed bayonets. They were held outside the
city until a group of about 2,000 had been collected, and then sent
on. Three such groups, making about 6,000 altogether, were sent from
here during the first three days; and smaller groups from —— and the
vicinity, sent later, amounted to about 4,000 more.
The weeping and wailing of the women and children was most
heart-rending. Some of these people were from wealthy and refined
circles. Some were accustomed to luxury and ease. There were
clergymen, merchants, bankers, lawyers, mechanics, tailors, and men
from every walk of life. The Governor-General told me that they were
allowed to make arrangements for carriages, but nobody seemed to be
making any arrangements. I know of one wealthy merchant, however,
who paid £15 Turkish (about £13 10s. sterling) for a carriage to
take himself and wife to ——, and when he arrived at the station
where they were being collected, at ——, about ten minutes’ distance
from the city, they were commanded by the gendarmes to leave the
carriage, which was sent back to the city.
The whole Mohammedan population knew that these people were to be
their prey from the beginning, and they were treated as criminals.
In the first place, from the date of the proclamation, the 25th
June, no Armenian was allowed to sell anything, and everybody was
forbidden, under penalty, to buy anything from them. How, then, were
they to provide funds for the journey? For six or eight months there
has been no business whatever in Trebizond, and people have been
eating up their capital. Why should they have been prohibited from
selling rugs or anything they had to sell, to secure the needed
money for the journey? Many persons who had goods which they could
have sold if they had been allowed to do so, were obliged to start
off on foot without funds and with what they could gather up from
their homes and carry on their backs. Such persons naturally soon
became so weak that they fell behind and were bayoneted and thrown
into the river, and their bodies floated down past Trebizond to the
sea, or lodged in the shallow river on rocks, where they remained
for ten or twelve days and putrefied, to the disgust of travellers
who were obliged to pass that way. I have talked with eye-witnesses,
who state that there were many naked bodies to be seen on snags in
the river fifteen days after the affair occurred, and that the smell
was something terrible.
On the 17th July, while I was out on a ride with a German resident,
we came across three Turks digging a grave in the sand for a naked
body which we saw in the river near by. The corpse looked as though
it had been in the water for ten days or more. The Turks said they
had just buried four more further up the river. Another Turk told us
that a body had floated down the river and out into the sea a few
moments before we arrived.
By the 6th July (Tuesday) all the Armenian houses in Trebizond,
about 1,000, had been emptied of their inhabitants and the people
sent off. There was no inquiry as to who were guilty or who were
innocent of any movement against the Government. If a person was an
Armenian, that was sufficient reason for his being treated as a
criminal and deported. At first all were to go except the sick, who
were taken to the municipal hospital until they were well enough to
go. Later, an exception was made for old men and women, pregnant
women, children, those in Government employment and members of the
Roman Catholic Church. Finally it was decided that the old men and
women and the Catholics must go too, and they were sent along
towards the last. A number of lighters have been loaded with people
at different times and sent off towards <Samsoun>. It is
generally believed that such persons were drowned. During the early
days, before the deportation commenced, a large caique or lighter
was loaded with men supposed to be members of the Armenian
Committee, and sent off towards <Samsoun>. Two days later, <a
certain Vartan,> a Russian subject, who had been one of those who
started in the boat, returned overland to Trebizond, badly wounded
about the head and so crazy that he could not make himself
understood. All he could say was “Boom, boom.” He was arrested by
the authorities and taken to the municipal hospital, where he died
the following day. A Turk said that this boat was met not far from
Trebizond by another boat containing gendarmes, who proceeded to
kill all the men and throw them overboard. They thought they had
killed them all, but this Russian, who was big and powerful, was
only wounded and swam ashore unnoticed. A number of such caiques
have left Trebizond loaded with men, and usually they return empty
after a few hours.
Totz, a village about two hours from Trebizond, is inhabited by
Gregorian and Catholic Armenians and Turks. Here, according to a
reliable witness, a wealthy and influential Armenian, <Boghos
Marimian,> and his two sons were placed one behind the other and
shot through. Forty-five men and women were taken a short distance
from the village into a valley. <The wife and daughters of an
Armenian named Artes>[91] were first outraged by the officers of
the gendarmerie, and then turned over to the gendarmes to dispose
of. According to this witness, a child was killed by beating its
brains out on a rock. The men were all killed, and not a single
person survived from this batch of forty-five.
The plan to save the children by placing them in schools or
orphanages in Trebizond, under the care of a committee organized and
supported by the Greek Archbishop, of which the Vali was president
and the Archbishop vice-president, with three Mohammedan and three
Christian members, has been abandoned, and the girls are now being
given exclusively to Mohammedan families and thus scattered[92]. The
suppression of the orphanages and the scattering of the children was
a great disappointment to us and to the Greek Archbishop, who had
worked hard for the plan and secured the support of the Vali; but
<Nail Bey,> the local head of the Committee of Union and
Progress, who was opposed to the plan, succeeded in thwarting it
very quickly. Many of the boys appear to have been sent to ——, to be
distributed among the farmers. The best looking of the older girls,
who were retained as caretakers in these orphanages, are kept in
houses for the pleasure of members of the gang which seems to rule
affairs here. I hear on good authority that a member of the
Committee of Union and Progress here has ten of the handsomest girls
in a house in the central part of the city, for the use of himself
and his friends. Some of the younger girls have been taken into
respectable Mohammedan houses. Several of the former pupils of the
American Mission are now in Mohammedan homes near the Mission, and
have not been visited by <Nail Bey,> but of course the majority
of them are not so fortunate.
The 1,000 Armenian houses are being emptied of furniture by the
police one after the other. The furniture, bedding and everything of
value is being stored in large buildings about the city. There is no
attempt at classification, and the idea of keeping the property in
“bales under the protection of the Government, to be returned to the
owners on their return,” is simply ridiculous. The goods are piled
in without any attempt at labelling or systematic storage. A crowd
of Turkish women and children follow the police about like a lot of
vultures, and seize anything they can lay their hands on, and when
the more valuable things are carried out of a house by the police,
they rush in and take the balance. I see this performance every day
with my own eyes. I suppose it will take several weeks to empty all
the houses, and then the Armenian shops and stores will be cleared
out. The commission which has this matter in hand is now talking of
selling this great collection of household goods and properties, in
order to pay the debts of the Armenians. The German Consul told me
that he did not believe the Armenians would be permitted to return
to Trebizond, even after the end of the war.
<Arab merchants, under British protection, were included in the
deportation, as well as all Armenians with Russian, Persian or
Bulgarian passports. Ovhannes Arabian, the Dragoman of the British
Consulate, could take nothing with him but the clothes he stood
in.>
I have just been talking with a young man who has been performing
his military service on the “inshaat tabouri” (construction
regiment), working on the roads out toward Gumushkhané. He told me
that 15 days ago all the Armenians, about 180, were separated from
the other workmen, marched off some distance from the camp and shot.
He heard the report of the rifles and later was one of the number
sent to bury the bodies, which he stated were all naked, having been
stripped of clothing.
A number of bodies of women and children have lately been thrown up
by the sea upon the sandy beach below the walls of the Italian
Monastery here in Trebizond, and were buried by Greek women in the
sand where they were found.
-----
Footnote 89:
See Docs. 82, 94 and 122.
Footnote 90:
See Doc. 9, page 21.
Footnote 91:
“The women.”—_American version._
Footnote 92:
_The origination of this plan is recorded in an earlier (undated)
report from the same hand, from which the following sentences are
a quotation_:—
“The children attending the American school conducted by ——, also
those children left with them by persons being deported, have all
been taken and placed in a school organised by a local committee,
of which the Vali is president and the Greek Metropolitan
vice-president. Into this school all the Armenian children,
females up to fifteen years and males to ten years of age, are
being placed as soon as the parents are sent off. Children above
these ages go with their parents.”
73. TREBIZOND: EXTRACTS FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH COMM. G. GORRINI,
LATE ITALIAN CONSUL-GENERAL AT TREBIZOND[93]. OF ROME, 25th
AUGUST, 1915.
For over four years I was Consul-General at Trebizond, with
jurisdiction over practically the whole Black Sea littoral, from the
Russo-Turkish frontier to the neighbourhood of Constantinople, and
over five provinces in the interior of Asia Minor (Eastern Anatolia,
Armenia and Kurdistan)—districts chiefly inhabited by Turks,
Armenians and Kurds, with a considerable sprinkling of Persians,
Russians, Greeks and Arabs. For the last ten months, moreover, I had
also been responsible for the protection of the very numerous
Russian subjects and Russian interests, as well as the Greek and
Montenegrin, and also, to some extent, the French, the English, and
the American, with others of minor account....
As for the present internal condition of the Ottoman Empire, I can
only answer for my own district. In my district the present
condition of things is almost desperate. The population is showing
true Moslem resignation in the way it is bearing the existing
situation—the ruin and desolation of individuals and community, the
holocaust of all and everything for a war which no one desired, but
which was forced upon them by Enver Pasha, and which will lead to
the ruin and dismemberment of all that still remains of the Ottoman
Empire. But the Moslem and Christian populations can do nothing
more—they have reached the extreme limit of their effort. The oxygen
is being administered by the Germans, who are trying to prolong the
agony of the dying Empire, but will not be able to perform the
miracle of restoring life to a corpse. Apart from a few lunatics, a
speedy peace, even if it involves the foreign occupation of Ottoman
territory, is the prayer of all. There is no courage for a
rebellion. The Germans and the “Committee of Union and Progress” are
hated and detested by all, but only in the intimacy of the heart and
in confidential conversation, for the Germans and the Committee
constitute the one genuine, solid organisation at present existing
in Turkey—a masterly and most rigorous organisation, which does not
hesitate to use any weapon whatever; an organisation of audacity, of
terror, and of mysterious, ferocious revenge....
As for the Armenians, they were treated differently in the different
vilayets. They were suspect and spied upon everywhere, but they
suffered a real extermination, worse than massacre, in the so-called
“Armenian Vilayets.” There are seven of these, and five of them
(including the most important and most thickly populated) unhappily
for me formed part of my own Consular jurisdiction. These were the
Vilayets of Trebizond, Erzeroum, Van, Bitlis and Sivas.
In my district, from the 24th June onwards, the Armenians were all
“interned”—that is, ejected by force from their various residences
and despatched under the guard of the gendarmerie to distant,
unknown destinations, which for a few will mean the interior of
Mesopotamia, but for four-fifths of them has meant already a death
accompanied by unheard-of cruelties.
The official proclamation of internment came from Constantinople. It
is the work of the Central Government and the “Committee of Union
and Progress.” The local authorities, and indeed the Moslem
population in general, tried to resist, to mitigate it, to make
omissions, to hush it up. But the orders of the Central Government
were categorically confirmed, and all were compelled to resign
themselves and obey.
The Consular Body intervened, and attempted to save at least the
women and children. We did, in fact, secure numerous exemptions, but
these were not subsequently respected, owing to the interference of
the local branch of the “Union and Progress Committee” and to fresh
orders from Constantinople.
It was a real extermination and slaughter of the innocents, an
unheard-of thing, a black page stained with the flagrant violation
of the most sacred rights of humanity, of Christianity, of
nationality. The Armenian Catholics, too, who in the past had always
been respected and excepted from the massacres and persecutions,
were this time treated worse than any—again by the orders of the
Central Government. There were about 14,000 Armenians at
Trebizond—Gregorians, Catholics, and Protestants. They had never
caused disorders or given occasion for collective measures of
police. When I left Trebizond, not a hundred of them remained.
From the 24th June, the date of the publication of the infamous
decree, until the 23rd July, the date of my own departure from
Trebizond, I no longer slept or ate; I was given over to nerves and
nausea, so terrible was the torment of having to look on at the
wholesale execution of these defenceless, innocent creatures.
The passing of the gangs of Armenian exiles beneath the windows and
before the door of the Consulate; their prayers for help, when
neither I nor any other could do anything to answer them; the city
in a state of siege, guarded at every point by 15,000 troops in
complete war equipment, by thousands of police agents, by bands of
volunteers and by the members of the “Committee of Union and
Progress”; the lamentations, the tears, the abandonments, the
imprecations, the many suicides, the instantaneous deaths from sheer
terror, the sudden unhingeing of men’s reason, the conflagrations,
the shooting of victims in the city, the ruthless searches through
the houses and in the countryside; the hundreds of corpses found
every day along the exile road; the young women converted by force
to Islam or exiled like the rest; the children, torn away from their
families or from the Christian schools, and handed over by force to
Moslem families, or else placed by hundreds on board ship in nothing
but their shirts, and then capsized and drowned in the Black Sea and
the River Deyirmen Deré—these are my last ineffaceable memories of
Trebizond, memories which still, at a month’s distance, torment my
soul and almost drive me frantic. When one has had to look on for a
whole month at such horrors, at such protracted tortures, with
absolutely no power of acting as one longed to act, the question
naturally and spontaneously suggests itself, whether all the
cannibals and all the wild beasts in the world have not left their
hiding places and retreats, left the virgin forests of Africa, Asia,
America and Oceania, to make their rendezvous at Stamboul. I should
prefer to close our interview at this point, with the solemn
asseveration that this black page in Turkey’s history calls for the
most uncompromising reproach and for the vengeance of all
Christendom. If they knew all the things that I know, all that I
have had to see with my eyes and hear with my ears, all Christian
powers that are still neutral would be impelled to rise up against
Turkey and cry anathema against her inhuman Government and her
ferocious “Committee of Union and Progress,” and they would extend
the responsibility to Turkey’s Allies, who tolerate or even shield
with their strong arm these execrable crimes, which have not their
equal in history, either modern or ancient. Shame, horror and
disgrace!
74. TREBIZOND: NARRATIVE OF THE MONTENEGRIN KAVASS OF THE LOCAL
BRANCH OF THE OTTOMAN BANK, PUBLISHED IN THE ARMENIAN JOURNAL
“AREV” OF ALEXANDRIA, 2nd OCTOBER, 1915.
The Kavass of the Local Branch of the Ottoman Bank at Trebizond, a
Montenegrin, who left Trebizond in Signor Gorrini’s company[94] and
is at the present moment in Cairo, has made the following statement
to Mr. Malezian, Secretary of the General Armenian Union of
Benevolence:—
“The very evening of the day on which the order arrived from
Constantinople, they threw into the sea about forty of the
intellectuals and the members of political parties, saying to them:
‘You are to be sent into exile by the sea route.’
“At the present moment there is not a single Armenian left at
Trebizond except two employees of the Ottoman Bank, who will also be
deported as soon as other persons arrive from Constantinople to take
their place.
“Children have been converted to Islam and handed over to Mohammedan
families. Those who cry and do not keep quiet have their throats
cut.
“After the Armenians had gone, their houses were confiscated.
“The whole thing was organized by the members of the Committee of
Union and Progress.
“The exiles were not allowed to take with them either money or
clothes or provisions. Five hundred Armenian soldiers were disarmed,
and then deported and massacred on the road. As for the other
exiles, they must have been massacred without exception, for the
news received from Djevizlik (a village six hours from Trebizond, on
the one and only road leading to Gumushkhané) makes it certain that
the exiles were seen passing that place in batches, while beyond
Djevizlik no one has seen them pass. At the same time, the river
Yel-Deyirmeni brought down every day to the sea a number of corpses,
mutilated and absolutely naked, the women with their breasts cut
off.”
-----
Footnote 93:
Signor Gorrini left Trebizond on the 23rd July, 1915, in the
interval between the Italian declarations of war against
Austria-Hungary and against Turkey. He hired an open motor-launch
with a Lazic skipper and crew, and took with him two servants and
the Montenegrin Kavass of the local branch of the Ottoman Bank.
The coastwise voyage from Trebizond to Constantinople took seven
days and nights. They touched at Kerasond, Samsoun, Sinope,
Ineboli, Kidros, Zonguldak, Zacharia, Chilé and Faro d’Anatolia,
without landing, however, at any of these places. From
Constantinople Signor Gorrini travelled via Dedeagatch and Palermo
to Rome, where he gave this interview to the representative of “Il
Messaggero.”
Footnote 94:
“I hired the motor launch for myself and three members of my
household, one of them a Montenegrin kavass who was under our
protection.—_The Italian Consul, Signor Gorrini, in the interview
published in the Rome journal “Il Messaggero,” 25th August, 1915._
75. KERASOND (KIRESOUN), TREBIZOND AND SHABIN KARA-HISSAR: EVIDENCE
COLLECTED BY AN ARMENIAN GENTLEMAN FROM EYE-WITNESSES NOW IN
ROUMANIA; COMMUNICATED BY THE CORRESPONDENT OF THE LONDON
“TIMES” AT BUKAREST.
_Kerasond._—Much has been written lately about the Armenian
massacres in Turkey, but it is only now that we are receiving more
precise and detailed information, from eye-witnesses who, by some
means or other, have escaped the scene of the most horrible
atrocities ever known in this world.
The atrocities of Kerasond are described by a prominent Greek of
that town, who succeeded in obtaining a passage on board a Greek
ship bound for Roumania with a cargo of nuts. On her voyage across
the Black Sea, this ship was met by two Russian torpedo boats, which
took on board the crew and this gentleman among them, sank the ship,
transported the crew to Sevastopol, and there set them free. This
gentleman had been an eye-witness of all that happened in Kerasond,
and he describes the atrocities as follows:—