the hours that followed on the train, from Kara Hissar to
Constantinople, were the saddest hours I ever spent.
I wish I could picture the scene in that Armenian home, and we knew
that in hundreds of other homes in that very town the same
heart-breaking scenes might be witnessed.
The courage of that brave little doctor’s wife, who knew she must
take her two babies and face starvation and death with them. Many
began to come to her home—to her, for comfort and cheer, and she
gave it. I have never seen such courage before. You have to go to
the darkest places of the earth to see the brightest lights, to the
most obscure spot to find the greatest heroes.
Her bright smile, with no trace of fear in it, was like a beacon
light in that mud village, where hundreds were doomed.
It was not because she did not understand how they felt; she was one
of them. It was not because she had no dear ones in peril; her
husband was far away, ministering to those who were sending her and
her babies to destruction.
“Oh! there is no God for the Armenians,” said one Armenian, who,
with others, had come in to talk it over.
Just then a poor woman rushed in to get some medicine for a young
girl who had fainted when the order came.
Such despair, such hopelessness you have never seen on human faces
in America.
“It is the slow massacre of our entire race,” said one woman.
“It is worse than massacre!” replied another man.
The town crier went through all the streets of the village, crying
out that anyone who helped the Armenians in any way, gave them food,
money or anything, would be beaten and cast into prison. It was more
than we could stand.
“Have you any money?” my husband asked the doctor’s wife. “Yes,” she
said; “a few liras; but many families will have nothing.”
After figuring out what it would cost us all to reach
Constantinople, we gave them what money we had left in our small
party. But really to help them we could do nothing, we were
powerless to save their lives.
Already the Turks had taken our American school and church, and
after a big procession through the streets had dedicated our church
as a mosque and turned our school into a Turkish school—taken down
the Cross and put up the Crescent.
Some weeks before, they had exiled our faithful Armenian pastor, who
for a great many years had toiled there, as he himself told us, “to
make a little oasis in that desert.”
For many weeks Mr. C. of our College in BO. had stayed in Kara
Hissar to try and get back our church and school, but nothing could
be done. The Turks had named our church “Patience Mosque,” because,
they said, they had waited so many years to get it.
It was with broken hearts that we left the town, and hardly had we
started on our way when we began to pass one train after another
crowded, jammed with these poor people, being carried away to some
spot where no food could be obtained. At every station where we
stopped, we came side by side with one of these trains. It was made
up of cattle-trucks, and the faces of little children were looking
out from behind the tiny barred windows of each truck. The side
doors were wide open, and one could plainly see old men and old
women, young mothers with tiny babies, men, women and children, all
huddled together like so many sheep or pigs—human beings treated
worse than cattle are treated.
About eight o’clock that evening we came to a station where there
stood one of these trains. The Armenians told us that they had been
in the station for three days with no food. The Turks kept them from
buying food; in fact, at the end of these trains there was a
truck-full of Turkish soldiers ready to drive these poor people on
when they reached the Salt Desert or whatever place they were being
taken to.
Old women weeping, babies crying piteously. Oh, it was awful to see
such brutality, to hear such suffering.
They told us that twenty babies had been thrown into a river as a
train crossed—thrown by the mothers themselves, who could not bear
to hear their little ones crying for food when there was no food to
give them.
One woman gave birth to twins in one of those crowded trucks, and
crossing a river she threw both her babies and then herself into the
water.
Those who could not pay to ride in these cattle-trucks were forced
to walk. All along the road, as our train passed, we saw them
walking slowly and sadly along, driven from their homes like sheep
to the slaughter.
A German officer was on the train with us, and I asked him if
Germany had anything to do with this deportation, for I thought it
was the most brutal thing that had ever happened. He said: “You
can’t object to exiling a race; it’s only the way the Turks are
doing it which is bad.” He said he had just come from the interior
himself and had seen the most terrible sights he ever saw in his
life. He said: “Hundreds of people were walking over the mountains,
driven by soldiers. Many dead and dying by the roadside. Old women
and little children too feeble to walk were strapped to the sides of
donkeys. Babies lying dead in the road. Human life thrown away
everywhere.”
The last thing we saw late at night and the first thing early in the
morning was one train after another carrying its freight of human
lives to destruction.
Another man on the train said that in one train he was in the
mothers begged him to take their children to save them from such a
death.
He said that an Armenian, a leading business man in Harpout, told
him that he would rather kill his four daughters with his own hand
than see the Turks take them from him. This Armenian was made to
leave his home, his business and all he had and start off with his
family to walk to whatever place the Turks desired to exile him to.
When we reached a station near Constantinople, we met a long train
of Armenians that had just been exiled from Bardezag.
My husband and Mr. A. talked with one of the native teachers from
our American school. Among other things he said that an old man was
walking in the street in Bardezag when the order came to leave. The
old man was deaf and did not understand what was going on, so,
because he made no move to leave the town, the soldiers brutally
shot him down in the street. The teacher said he could buy no food,
for the soldiers kept them from buying any.
The crying of those babies and little children for food is still
ringing in my ears. On every train we met we heard the same
heart-rending cries of little children.
109. Q.: REPORT FROM DR. D., DATED Q., 8th SEPTEMBER, 1915;
COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN
RELIEF.
The conditions are so bewildering here that it is hard to know how
to present a general view of the situation. The deportation is still
going on in full force, and yet shows unaccountable stoppages and
delays. I suppose that the _vis a tergo_ emptying out the population
is so out of proportion to the executive ability to keep the
channels of travel open that the result is this great damming back
of the current that has filled the cities from Eski Shehr to the
Taurus mountains. Beyond that I know very little. Exemptions and
delays are granted with no apparent reason, often, however, with the
plainest of reasons, viz., the enriching of the police. The amount
of extortion practised must extend into thousands of liras.
Dr. E. will tell you of what he has seen on the way here. I will try
not to duplicate what he says. The information that I have from P.
is reliable. The Protestants of Q. who were there have all returned
here, though many difficulties were thrown in their way. There were
about 15,000 exiles in P., but there has been a steady stream
pouring in that direction and the number must be larger now, except
for the number sent on into the mountains from there. How many there
are at Bozanti, the terminus of the railway, I have not been able to
learn. Whether they are now being sent on to Tarsus and Adana, I
cannot learn with certainty. Reports have it that travel beyond
Adana is cut off, and so the exiles are not being sent, as before,
beyond Aleppo.
In P. the exiles are encamped in the open fields in the
neighbourhood of the railway station. No protection is provided for
them, and they have none, except such tenting as they can make up
for themselves out of carpets, coarse matting, cloaks, gummy sacks,
sheets, cotton cloth, tablecloths, or handkerchiefs, all of which I
have seen used here in Q. There are no sanitary arrangements for
this horde, and every available spot is used for depositing
excrement. The stench of the region is described as appalling. Here
in Q. I have seen how the adjoining field, entirely open as it was,
was so thickly covered with excrement that it seemed impossible to
step anywhere, while women and girls, as well as others, were
defecating there in the daytime simply because there was absolutely
no screen or protection anywhere. When it is considered that
diarrhœa and dysentery are rife, you can imagine the results. The
region there, as well as here, is exceedingly malarial, and this is
the time of year for it. I have no knowledge of how many deaths have
taken place.
After a time, large numbers of the exiles at P. were allowed to find
shelter in the town, where they rented houses and for a time were
better off. But they were not allowed to rest in quiet. Suddenly the
order would come from the police that all were to leave for Bozanti,
and the whole number who were in the town, perhaps 5,000, would be
driven (and I mean literally driven under the lash) into the streets
with all their goods and be rushed to the encampment. There perhaps
100 wagons would be ready and 500 people find places and be sent
off. The rest were then left to stay in the encampment or bribe
their way back to the town again and re-rent their houses, until
another alarm and driving forth. Every such onslaught meant several
medjids of expense for every family for transporting their goods and
bedding to and fro, and this in addition to the bribes paid to the
police for the privilege of going back to the town. Such bakshishes
had to be paid to the police for every favour asked, from
medjids[147] to liras.[148] No one could go to present a petition to
the Governor without bribing the police first. In the encampment the
police would come along in the morning and order all tents in a
certain section to be taken down, saying they were to start for
Bozanti, and this order would be enforced instantly with scourge and
club. The terror of the people, from the reports they had of that
journey “beyond”—of pillage, murder, outrage, stealing of girls and
starvation—was such that they were always ready to purchase a few
days’ respite if they had any money to do it with. No train or wagon
is ready, so when enough money is brought out, the people are
graciously allowed to put up their tents again twenty feet away from
their former site. The sick, the aged—none were respected. The
people have described to me the terror of that constantly recurring
order, “Down with the tents!” with the whip behind it.
For those who did have to start, the conditions were still worse.
They must hire wagons brought there for them, and the drivers charge
four times the ordinary price. It must be paid, or they will be
driven out to go on foot, and, of course, in that case, can take no
bedding and hardly any food with them. The drivers acknowledge
afterwards that the police take one half of the price paid. It is
impossible for me to tell you all the means of extortion employed. I
know of a family here who had to pay nineteen liras to hire a wagon
and hamals and get permission from the police to move from the
filthy encampment to a small, horribly crowded hotel near by. The
hotel-keepers charge a lira a day for a little room with three or
four dirty beds in it, and then share this with the police.
Protestants are supposed to be freed. The story of my contest with
the officials here, before the Vali arrived, shows how they had
planned to get all sent away before his arrival by concealing the
order for exemption.
The Protestants who were already in P. were notified that they were
free, yet had to pay fifty liras to the police to get their permit
to leave. At the station, where they went to get third-class
tickets, they were told that there were no third-class coaches left
and that they must take second-class. After purchasing these tickets
two-thirds of them were put into third-class coaches after all. It
was merely a trick to separate them from more of their money. Of
course, they were glad to have third-class coaches, for, coming here
first, the exiles were compelled to pay the full fare and then
packed forty or fifty together in box-trucks, cattle-trucks, or even
open flat trucks. The Railway seems to be as conscienceless in
wringing the money out of them as the Government or the Turks.
The whip and club are in constant use by the police, and that upon
women and children too. Think what it is for people, many of them
cultivated, educated, refined, to be driven about in this way like
dogs by brutes. I have seen women black and blue from the beating
they have received. A woman with a fractured thigh at the station
was being helped by friends intending to bring her to the hospital.
A commissary of police came along and ordered her to be dragged back
into the carriage. A boy yesterday in the encampment here was struck
on the head by a policeman and killed. The pastor of the church at
O. was beaten with a whip and his forehead cut open, in a great
gash, by a blow from a club, for saying that he was a Protestant and
asking for his freedom. He is not freed yet in P. Two of his
daughters we took into the hospital as nurses when the family first
passed through here.
Dr. E. will tell you of conditions here in Q. The Vali is a good
man, but almost powerless. The Ittihad Committee and the Salonika
Clique rule all. The Chief of Police seems to be the real head. The
Vali came here on the promise that Q. should be spared. Then he was
delayed in Constantinople day after day until the deportation here
should be accomplished. He was furious when he heard of it on his
way here, and he is likely to resign soon. I am telling you what a
close friend of his, a travelling companion, told me.
The Armenians of N. sent here were forced to come by wagon. The
Circassians of the region knew of it and followed after and robbed
them, and shot one girl. Gendarmes were sent out after the
Circassians, but only took their turn in completing the stripping of
the party.
Another party was sent in the same way and was attacked at night by
Circassians, and one of the men was shot through the thigh—a
horrible wound. He died here in the hospital a few hours later. We
have one boy and one girl here in the hospital who were run over by
trains, compelling the amputation of the leg. Three hundred families
from Baghtchedjik are in Eski Shehr. About two hundred of the men
were in market, nearly a mile from the encampment, when the police
came on them and drove them out at once to start on foot for Q.,
without letting them go back to their families or get money. They
are here now, begging me to try to communicate with their families.
The mail is closed to all such communications. Telegrams innumerable
are given in at the office, the money received and then the telegram
never sent—(witness two long telegrams I sent you).
During the last four days the inhabitants of the villages above
Baghtchedjik have been poured in here, and are filling the
encampment. They come from a cool and well-watered region. They are
thrown out here in this burning heat, without shelter and with a
water supply so scanty that there is a constant struggle at the
fountain to get their jars filled. The sickness that we are seeing
among them is heart-rending. Many are simply overcome with the heat.
Our dispensary floor is covered all day with sick in all stages. A
little girl died here this morning. Others, moribund, will perhaps
hardly get back to their tents. We are trying to refresh them with
yoghourt and water-melons. They are too sick to take bread.
Hardly anything makes me so hot as the thought of the soldiers’
families. The men—the fathers, brothers, sons and husbands—are
serving in the Turkish Army as loyally as any, and their
families—their children, wives and sisters—are driven off in this
inhuman manner. Soldiers’ families are also said to be exempt from
deportation, but in countless cases they are swept away with the
rest. The wife must put in a special petition claiming her
relationship. This petition has to be paid for, for she cannot write
Osmanli. It must be stamped with the regular stamp, the additional
stamp, the Hidjaz Railway stamp and the War-Aid stamp. Then, after
the usual delays of “Go and come again,” a telegram is written to
the Army Post where she says the soldier is, and this she must pay
for—thirty to sixty piastres[149]—and all this when she and the
children are hungry for bread with no money to buy it. A woman came
for treatment yesterday with three children, two almost dying. She
happened to mention that she was a soldier’s wife. I asked why she
did not get free by that. “They wanted thirty-one piastres for the
telegram and I had nothing,” was her reply. Oh! I wish you could see
the abominable cruelty of their treatment and the diabolical
ingenuity of the ways devised to strip them of all their money
before bringing them to their deaths—for that is where it will
surely end for all these people, unless some means of stopping it is
soon found. Whether the taking of Constantinople will be such a
means or not will depend, I suppose, on whether the present
Government succeeds in making its escape and continuing its rule in
the interior.
An “Exiles’ Commission” has come here from Constantinople. It was
announced that their business was to be to settle the exiles in this
vilayet and not make them go further. Telegrams from Enver Pasha
were received stating this before the Commission came. Now they have
come, and it appears that their duty is merely to clear the choked
channels and speed up the traffic. They have announced that they
have come not to settle the exiles but to drive them on. Since
beginning this letter I have learned that the stream has begun to
flow again from P. and Bozanti to Adana and on, and it is reported
that now the destination is Arabia.
I must add a report from Angora, whence I have received to-night
what I have every reason to believe to be an accurate account. Some
two or three weeks ago, about two hundred of the chief Armenians at
Angora were imprisoned, then taken at night in wagons, thirty or
forty at a time, to the banks of the Kizil Irmak, and there killed.
Eighteen of the employees of the Railway and the director of the
Ottoman Bank were among these. I had this on good authority then,
and it is confirmed now. Within this past week all the Armenian men,
whether Gregorian, Protestant or Catholic, have been taken, stripped
to shirt and drawers, tied together and taken away and heard of no
more. The women and girls have been distributed to the Turkish
villages, the Turks coming and looking over the girls and choosing
what they wanted. I could give you the name of one of the wealthiest
men in Angora, whose wife and three daughters were taken away before
his eyes, and who went crazy. Three hundred boys were circumcised.
The name of the railway official was told me who saw one hundred of
these done, and reported it. The region from Angora to Polatlu (on
the railway) is said to have been the scene of such outrages as
cannot be described. It is reported that this complete extermination
applies to the whole of the Angora Vilayet outside the Kaisaria
Sandjak, but my accurate information does not cover this.
It is openly stated by officials here that the exemption of
Protestants and Catholics is only temporary, and the trend of events
seems to me to give colour to this.
The saddest part of all this is our utter impotence to do anything
to stay the awful deeds that are being perpetrated.
-----
Footnote 147:
About 3_s._ 2_d._
Footnote 148:
Slightly less than a pound sterling.
Footnote 149:
Five to ten shillings.
110. Q.: REPORT FROM DR. E., DATED Q., 3rd SEPTEMBER, 1915;
COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN
RELIEF.
Although you are already well informed as to the Armenian situation
in this region, I am taking the liberty to add a few notes from
personal observation on the way here, chiefly from what I saw at
Eski Shehr, Alayund and Tchai.
At Eski Shehr there are about 12,000 to 15,000 exiles in the fields
about the station, evidently in great need and distress. The
majority of them appear to be without shelter, and what shelter they
have consists of the flimsiest kind of tent, improvised out of a few
sticks covered with rugs or carpets in a few instances, but often
only with cotton cloth—absolutely no protection from the heavy
autumn rains which will soon be coming. The station-master, whom I
have known as a reliable man for several years, told me that the
people had been treated with every kind of brutality, the police
ostensibly trying to prevent the Turks from molesting them by day,
but aiding and abetting them by night. I myself noticed that in
several places large groups of young women and girls were being kept
separate from the rest and guarded (?) by the police, and was told
that in several instances the police had allowed them to be
outraged. At the present, instances of actual violence were not so
common, but there was no provision made for feeding them and the
people were quickly spending what little cash they had to buy
provisions at exorbitant rates. Certainly they seemed to have little
or nothing in the way of supplies, and many looked pinched and
sickly. About thirty to forty deaths were taking place every day.
Germans whom I overheard talking while on the way to Eski Shehr, and
also the German hotel-proprietress at Eski Shehr, were loud in their
condemnation of the whole affair as being conducted in the most
brutal and horrible way.
At Alayund there were perhaps 5,000 exiles in about the same
condition. They were from Broussa for the most part, and those with
whom I was able to converse told the same tales. Within two weeks
the Government had made two distributions of bread, neither of them
sufficient for more than one day, and had given nothing else. I
myself saw police beating the people with whips and sticks when a
few of them, in a perfectly orderly way, attempted to talk to some
of their fellow-exiles on the train, and they were treated in
general as though they were criminals who had no claim to
consideration of any kind. What talking I did, I had to do with them
rather surreptitiously, of course.
At Tchai I saw perhaps a couple of thousand in the same condition.
Here the men and women were together, and the Turks had not
succeeded in carrying off more than two girls. By keeping constant
guard the Armenians, although unarmed, had been able to frighten the
assailants away. They said that all the men there would die rather
than give up any of their women, and that, as the Turks were not so
numerous, they felt safer, but dreaded what was awaiting them when
the order came to move on. A heavy rain had fallen at Tchai and
occasioned great suffering, followed by sickness and some deaths,
especially among the children. A good many of the people had gone
insane.
A conductor on the train told me that, although the order had come
for the return of the Protestants and the Catholics, he had seen
about 100 to 150 of the latter from Ismid re-deported towards Angora
and in this direction, even after they had gone through the form of
having been returned to their homes. In their second deportation
they were to be scattered—a few to each Turkish village in the
region.