look after the wounded and the sick as early as the third day after
the arrival of the refugees at Port Said. By General Maxwell’s
orders, the Director of the Intelligence Office gave the Armenian
Red Cross official authorisation to work at Port Said in the
Refugees’ Camp. At present we have about seventy sick; all the
wounded are on the road to recovery. The whole Armenian colony in
Egypt has shown an exemplary diligence in collecting clothes, shoes,
soap, combs, etc., in the name of the Armenian Red Cross, and in
forwarding them to the refugees.
I have interviewed His Excellency Yakoub Artin Pasha to urge that
the Armenian General Union should undertake to supply clothes to the
refugees, and should occupy itself especially with the question of
their education, which constitutes one of their most urgent
requirements. His Excellency promised me to make all the necessary
arrangements.
I am glad to be able to tell you that the refugees are happy to be
at Port Said. At the same time, it is said that about 400 good
fighting men proposed, and even begged, that they should be sent
back to Turkey to bring aid to their compatriots who have taken
refuge in the mountains.
It is regrettable that in such Armenian centres as Zeitoun, Hadjin
and Kessab[170] the Armenians surrendered to the tyrannical Turkish
Government by the urgent orders of His Grace the Katholikos of Sis.
All these Armenians have been deported into the desert situated
between Aleppo, Der-el-Zor and Mosul. These deported people have
endured unheard of tortures and sufferings in the course of their
journey; the women and girls have suffered savage outrages. It is
said that the road is covered with unburied corpses of men, women
and children; in fact, the refugees who have arrived at Port Said
have seen these corpses with their own eyes, and it was the
cumulative effect of all this that made the inhabitants of the six
villages of Selefka decide to retire into the mountains and defend
themselves.
Since the month of May, I have had no direct news from Harpout or
Diyarbekir, but the news which I have gathered from other quarters
is very disquieting.
The first news received from Marash, Aintab and Killis was good, but
the last news, which comes from a trustworthy source, is equally
disquieting. It is said that there have been massacres at Marash,
and that the survivors, together with the Armenian inhabitants of
Aintab and Killis, have been deported bodily to the deserts to the
south of the province of Aleppo. We hear likewise that the Armenian
population of Mersina and Adana and the neighbouring villages has
been deported.
-----
Footnote 170:
See Doc. 143 page 559.
XVII.
THE TOWNS OF OURFA AND AC.
_The Armenian colony in Ourfa is the southernmost outpost of Armenia
east of the Euphrates, as the Jibal Mousa villages are of Armenian
Cilicia. Here, too, for many months, the Armenians had before their
eyes the fate of their compatriots from the north, for Ourfa is the
half-way house on the road from Diyarbekir to Aleppo, and the
remnants of many convoys from Mamouret-ul-Aziz, Erzeroum and beyond
passed this way on their journey to the Arabian desert. Thus, when
the order for deportation came in due course to Ourfa, towards the
end of September, 1915, they took the same action that the villagers
of Jibal Mousa had taken two months before. They fortified
themselves in their quarter of the town and resisted the order by
force, for they knew that it was simply the first stage in their
methodical extermination._
_Unhappily, the result of the struggle here was not the same as at
Jibal Mousa, and, indeed, the Armenians at Ourfa were in a hopeless
position from the first. They were far away from the sea, and even
in the town itself they were only a minority of the population. A
fully equipped expeditionary force of Turkish regulars was
immediately sent against them, and they succumbed, after resisting
desperately for a month._
_The town of AC. was another important Armenian outpost on the
south-eastern fringe, which cannot be mentioned by its real name
without compromising the persons referred to in the documents
relating to it. The Armenians at AC. did not resist, and the process
of deportation here followed its normal course._
133. OURFA: LETTER DATED OURFA, 14th JUNE, 1915, FROM MR. K.;
COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN
RELIEF.
I wish to inform you of conditions here. They are very bad, and
daily getting worse. I suppose the U.’s told you of the horrible
things taking place in Diyarbekir. Just such a reign of terror has
begun in this city also. Daily the police are searching the houses
of the Armenians for weapons, and, not finding any, they are taking
the best and most honourable men and imprisoning them; some of them
they are exiling, and others they are torturing with red-hot irons
to make them reveal the supposedly concealed weapons. Four weeks ago
they exiled fifteen men and their families, sending them to the
desert city of Rakka, three days’ journey south of here.
The Gendarmerie Department seems to have full control of affairs,
and the Mutessarif upholds them. They are now holding about a
hundred of the best citizens of the city in prison, and to-day the
gendarmerie chief called the Armenian Bishop and told him that
unless the Armenians deliver up their arms and denounce the
revolutionists among them he has orders to exile the entire Armenian
population of Ourfa, as they did the people of Zeitoun. We know how
the latter were treated, for hundreds of them have been dragged
through Ourfa on their way to the desert whither they have been
exiled. These poor exiles were mostly women, children and old men,
and they were clubbed and beaten and lashed along as though they had
been wild animals. Their women and girls were daily criminally
outraged, both by their guards and by the ruffians of every village
through which they passed, as the former allowed the latter to enter
the camp of the exiles at night, and even distributed the girls
among the villagers for the night.
These poor victims of their oppressors’ lust and hate might better
have died by the bullet in their mountain home than be dragged about
the country in this way. About two thousand of them have passed
through Ourfa, all more dead than alive; many hundreds had died
already from starvation and abuse along the roadside, and indeed
nearly all are dying of starvation or thirst, or through being
kidnapped by the Anaza Arabs in the desert where they have been
taken. We know how they are being treated, because our Ourfa exiles
are in the same place, and one young Armenian doctor, who was there
making medical examinations of soldiers for the Government, has
returned and told us[171].
Now this is the fate which is in store for the Ourfa Armenians also,
unless someone delivers them. Having seen how the Zeitoun exiles
have been treated, the Ourfa Armenians have said they will never
submit to exile but will die in their homes instead, and who can
blame them? We greatly fear that the cruel persecuting attitude of
the gendarmerie in seizing, beating, and torturing the people will
drive some of them to such desperation that they will resist, and
that will surely provoke a general massacre. Up to date the Armenian
Bishop and Protestant pastors have been most earnest and successful
in keeping the young men, especially, under restraint, and this has
prevented any outburst thus far, but as the Government is daily
taking the wisest and best leaders of the people and imprisoning
them, there are few left to restrain the others. The officers of the
Government told the Armenian Bishop plainly that unless they
delivered up their arms the Armenians here would be destroyed, but
the people fear to deliver up their arms, for they remember that in
1895 the Government made all the Christians deliver up their arms
and, as soon as they had done so, the Moslems fell upon the
Christians and killed six thousand of them in two days. Now, if the
Government would make the Moslems give up their weapons also, the
Christians would cheerfully deliver up theirs, but the Government is
not taking weapons from the Moslems. Ourfa is not a revolutionary
centre and never has been. The people here have always been loyal to
the Government and have never resisted, not even when they were
butchered like sheep. Why the local Government persists in
persecuting a population that has always had a good record for
loyalty is very strange. There is no revolutionary organisation
here; there may be thirty or forty men of revolutionary beliefs, but
there has been no propaganda and no organisation.
134. OURFA: EXTRACT FROM A LETTER[172] BY MR. TOVMAS K.
MUGGERDICHIAN; PUBLISHED IN THE ARMENIAN JOURNAL “GOTCHNAG,” OF
NEW YORK, 1st APRIL, 1916.
I had an interview with Mr. B. and Miss A. about the events in
Turkey which they had witnessed before they escaped to Cairo.
Miss A. (an Englishwoman) was the principal of the orphanage at AC.
for 18 years, and is acquainted with the Turkish language. She and
Mr. B. passed through Aleppo, BF. and BJ., and have collected their
information from trustworthy sources in these centres.
Two Armenians returned to Aleppo from Ourfa and reported that a
Persian prince had arrived in Ourfa from Constantinople with the
Ottoman deputy for Baghdad (probably Babanzadé Ismail Hakki Bey) and
that they were the guests of Herr Jacob Künzler, a German-Swiss.
Herr Künzler went with them to Severeg and on his return told some
friends, among whom were the two Armenians aforementioned, that
there was no more deliverance for the Armenians. The deputy for
Baghdad had said to him: “It was decided in the Ottoman Parliament
that we should massacre all the Armenians. We will not leave a
single Armenian alive, and thus we will correct the old Sultan’s
mistake.” At the same time he regretted that Herr Eckhard had
betrayed the Armenians and excited the Turks against them. Herr
Eckhard—the ex-president of the German Orphanage at Ourfa, and now
the head of the shop and rug factory—is a German artillery captain,
who came to Ourfa after the massacres of 1895-1896 as a missionary
and a spy. In the autumn of 1915 he encouraged the Turkish, Kurdish
and Arab mobs to attack the Armenians, and was responsible for a
three-fold repetition of the massacres. The first massacre took
place on the 19th August, 1915, in which 250 Armenians were killed;
the second took place on the 23rd September, and lasted for a week,
in which about 300 persons were killed and the city looted; the
third took place about the 1st October. First, all the Armenians
were ordered to get ready to go to Der-el-Zor. When they objected,
saying that they had lost everything and had nothing left to take
with them, Fakhri Pasha ordered them to be massacred. The massacre
lasted 10 days. The German artillerymen destroyed the Armenian
quarters, the church and everything, thus putting an end to the
Armenian population of Ourfa.
It was then that the Rev. Apelian, the druggist Apraham Attarian,
Solomon Effendi Knadjian, A. Abouhayatian and Hagopian were
imprisoned on the demand of Herr Eckhard. The Rev. Apelian, Attarian
and Hagopian were hanged, and Knadjian and Abouhayatian were shot.
-----
Footnote 171:
See Doc. 144
Footnote 172:
Date unspecified; the place of writing was apparently Cairo.
135. OURFA: INTERVIEW WITH MRS. J. VANCE YOUNG, AN EYE-WITNESS OF
THE EVENTS AT OURFA; PUBLISHED IN THE “EGYPTIAN GAZETTE,” 28th
SEPTEMBER/11th OCTOBER, AND REPRODUCED IN THE ARMENIAN JOURNAL
“HOUSSAPER” OF CAIRO, 30th SEPTEMBER/13th OCTOBER, 1915.
Mrs. J. Vance Young is the wife of an English doctor at
Beirout[173], and arrived in Egypt on board the American cruiser
“Chester.” She was among the last arrivals in this country from
Alexandretta, and brought with her terrible details regarding the
martyrdom of the Armenians at Ourfa. She was an eye-witness of the
occurrences in this ill-famed town, which has been drenched so many
times in Armenian blood.
An interview with Mrs. Young was published in the “Egyptian Gazette”
of the 28th September, and we reproduce the following lines, which
present the ghastly picture of the massacre:—
“On the 19th August the fusillade began, about five o’clock in the
evening. We heard it during supper-time, and it lasted far into the
night.
“Next morning Dr. J. Vance Young ventured to make his way into the
town to see if he could be of any service. He saw all the streets
littered with corpses. He got the impression that there was not a
single Armenian left in Ourfa.
“It appeared that the massacres had been organised in advance, for a
systematic domiciliary visit was made to every Armenian house; the
men were shot or otherwise assassinated, while the women were driven
from their houses with their children, to be marched away to the
desert and perish there of hunger.
“All along the road from Ourfa to the coast Mrs. Young saw hundreds
of putrified corpses, and also a few miserable survivors. The latter
looked more like wild beasts than human creatures. She described
this spectacle as being literally sufficient to unhinge one’s
reason.
“Almost all the business men at Ourfa were Armenians. Now they have
all been massacred, including the sole chemist capable of mixing
drugs.”
-----
Footnote 173:
One of the four hundred foreigners of Entente nationality in the
Syrian provinces who were interned at Ourfa after the outbreak of
war.
136. OURFA: POSTSCRIPT TO A MEMORANDUM (DOC. 141) BY A FOREIGN
WITNESS FROM ALEPPO; COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR
ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF.
Towards the end of September, the Armenians in Ourfa were ordered to
leave the town and to be exiled as the Armenians in all the towns of
this region have been. They refused to leave, however, and finally
orders were given to expel them forcibly, and, if they offered any
resistance, to take the necessary measures. They entrenched
themselves strongly in their quarter, built barricades, made
subterranean passages from one part of the quarter to another, and
generally took every measure possible to defend themselves against
attack. A force of about 6,000 soldiers, including artillery, under
the command of Fakhri Pasha, commenced operations against them, and
their quarter was bombarded during the first weeks of October. The
Armenians were all supplied with rifles and ammunition, and had even
managed to obtain mitrailleuses. They had apparently sufficient food
to withstand a siege of some duration. We heard about the middle of
October that seven officers and about 400 men had been killed on the
Turkish side. By some means or other the Armenians managed to obtain
possession of Mr. K. and seven belligerents who had been interned in
Ourfa. These eight men were retained by them in their quarter as
hostages. Mr. Jackson reported the detention of Mr. K. to the
Embassy, which, of course, took the necessary steps in the matter,
and about the 20th October a telegram was received in Aleppo from
Mr. K. reporting that he was out of the Armenian quarter and safe.
What happened to the seven belligerents could not be ascertained.
The position of the belligerents who are interned in Ourfa is
naturally somewhat critical. It has caused considerable anxiety to
the foreign consular officials in Aleppo, and they desire more
urgently than ever that these belligerents should be removed to some
place where they would be in greater safety.
137. AC.: STATEMENT BY MISS A., A FOREIGN RESIDENT AT AC., WRITTEN
SUBSEQUENTLY TO HER DEPARTURE FROM TURKEY IN SEPTEMBER, 1915;
COMMUNICATED BY THE REV. I.N. CAMP, OF CAIRO.
It was in March, 1915, that the first refugees began to pass through
AC. After they had once begun to come, there was scarcely a day when
one or more parties did not pass through. Some were large, and some
consisted of only five or six hundred. With the exception of one
party, they all had to stay out in an open field without any
protection from the cold and rain, or later, when summer came, from
the burning sun. The exception was a party from BM., who had paid
£400 (Turkish) for the privilege of resting under some trees where
there was water. This place was only five minutes’ walk from the
field where other parties were obliged to camp.
I myself one day saw an old woman beaten because, when opportunity
came, she rushed off to get some water for a sick child. I do not
want to give the impression that no one was allowed to get water,
but I suppose the privilege was given according to the “bakshish”
that had been paid. There were also some gendarmes who seemed to be
thoroughly ashamed of their work, and who, so far as they dared,
were merciful.
Each party had its own tale of horror. With few exceptions, they had
been robbed; young wives and girls had been carried off; many had
been dishonoured; many people had been brutally treated and had died
on the road. One large party that had been on the march for four
weeks were put into houses at Albustan, the occupants of which had
been previously deported. They thought then that their journey was
over, and held a praise-meeting after being comfortably settled. But
they were at the mercy of the Turks, and all their young women and
girls were carried off. Then they were sent on the march again; some
of the girls were returned by the Turks, but most of them were kept.
The hard part for them was that they never got to the end of their
journey. Just as soon as they thought they were at their destination
and began to settle down and get a little work to do, they would at
once be sent away from that place to another. We heard also that if
money was given them they were obliged to move on. Any effort to
give relief was looked upon as a defiance of the Government.
One Sunday afternoon a large party of refugees came to AC. just at
sunset. We heard they were faint with hunger, but no one was allowed
to give them any relief. We knew that there might be an opportunity
to give some relief after dark, if any one ventured to go then.
Feeling that I must do something, I took our matron and went to see
what we could do. As we drew near the camp, we met some Armenians
who were on the watch for a chance to give out some bread, and who
told us that it would evidently be impossible for us to give any
food that night, but that perhaps we could give some in the morning.
The next morning, before dawn, we went again and found about four
hundred Armenians of AC. along the road. As they saw us passing,
some called out: “It is no use for you to go; no one is allowed
near.” However, we passed on, and when we got to where the gendarme
was, he very crossly ordered us away. It was light by this time. Our
matron appealed to him for a long time without avail. Finally,
however, he said: “Well, give what you have quickly; but this
(pointing to me) must not go any further than here.” While we were
distributing the food, the gendarme got angry and ordered me away.
Then three horsemen appeared on the scene. They scolded the man in
charge because he had not already got the refugees started on their
march, and told him he was too lenient with them. One of them leaped
from his horse, and with a whip in each hand went towards the AC.
Armenians, who at once fled. He came to me and gave me a lash or two
with the whip. I asked him what harm I was doing. He came again and
shook me, saying: “You are from BN.” (I had to dress as an Armenian
in order to get to the refugees at all.) One of the two other
officers came deliberately towards me with the intention of riding
me down, but the horse turned his head after only bruising my arm.
The matron, an Armenian woman, on seeing it, said: “She has done
nothing wrong. She is no BN-li. Your horse is more merciful than
you.” We turned to go, and to my surprise the horsemen began
speaking German with one another. So far as I was able to tell, they
were not Turks but German officers. When we got on to higher ground,
we saw these three men ride on in the direction of BM. The refugees
were sent in the opposite direction, and all the time they were
preparing to start they were being beaten. Other gendarmes arrived,
and from every direction came the screams of the people as the whips
touched them.
One evening, Dr. E. and Mr. F. went for a walk just at dusk. They
saw along the road what they at first took to be a bundle of rags,
about which scavenger dogs were circling, but on going nearer they
found it to be a dying woman. After she had been refreshed by some
warm milk which Dr. E. brought, she said: “Would that you had not
brought me this, for I had longed to die.” She soon did die. She was
a rather young woman, and it was found out soon after her death that
she was from a very good family.
Occasionally Dr. E. could get permission for a sick woman to stay
until she was better; she would then be sent on with a later party.
The first woman he helped in this way went on after a few weeks’
rest with her new-born baby, but the second woman died[174]. On
another occasion, the head Armenian nurse at the hospital had been
sent down with some necessaries to help a party. When she first got
to the place, the gendarme refused to let her pass. She begged him,
as he hoped for mercy from Allah himself, to allow her to go to the
woman in particular need. Finally, he gave permission, but, having
already given the order for the party to move on, he said that
little time was left. When they were ready to depart, the gendarme
began to beat the father of the baby, and even gave the mother of a
few hours a lash with his whip. The nurse protested, and said that,
if the poor woman must go on, an animal must be given her; so the
gendarme went forward a few steps, knocked an old man off his
donkey, and told the husband of the woman to put her on. We heard
later that the woman died before she got to the opposite end of the
city.
Every party would bring with them either old people who had been
left on the road or children whose mothers had died and who had been
left behind. Whenever we went to see refugees, the piteous appeals
we heard to save young women and girls from the Turks were
heart-rending. And we were powerless to help them! Again and again
we were threatened with what would be done to anyone who dared to
help any of the refugees. But in spite of these threats several of
the AC. people took babies who were left without any relatives. It
was beautiful to see the love shown to these babies, many of whom
were not at all attractive. The sad part of it was that, when the
turn of the people of AC. came to go, some were too poor to take
these adopted children along with them; but all did so who possibly
could. One good man had adopted a sick baby and a lame girl. When he
and his large family were deported, he came to ask me whether I
could take or support his own three-months-old baby, in return for
which he offered me two rings, all that he could spare.
As the refugees were driven from their mountain homes, the blind,
lame, and invalids were at first left in BM. But after a time even
they were driven forth. They left AC. one hot afternoon, about three
hundred in number, under the care of a brave young widow, who had
had charge of them all the time. There were only fourteen donkeys
for the whole party.
When people left their homes, it was natural that they should want
to take as much as possible along with them—mats, food, clothing,
&c. Villagers who owned animals, especially muleteers, were the best
off, because when others wanted animals the Turks asked such
exorbitant prices that the poor people did not know what to do,
especially if they had old people or young children in their
families. So the owners of animals, not having to hire any of the
Turks, were better off. The load-animal question became more and
more difficult as the refugees got farther away from their homes,
till some in desperation would leave their few possessions by the
wayside. The gendarmes generally told them that their goods would be
forwarded to them. But in the case of some goods that one party had
left nine hours from AC., we know that a gendarme brought them on to
the city and sold them by public auction.