were, and give them some help, if he could get any money from the
United States. This request was most emphatically refused. He said:
“Why, they will die.” The answer of the Turkish official was: “What
do you suppose they are sent there for?”
When the first parties came, the Government sometimes issued bread,
but this policy did not last long. Sometimes the people of the city
would be allowed to give bread, but this was rare. There were always
people waiting for a chance to get near and give aid to the
refugees. We were on the opposite side of the city, but our
colleagues were nearer to the refugees. So the head of the
institution gave permission for the food to be cooked there. Then it
would be taken secretly by the students to the refugees. Usually
only one guard was on duty at night, so the food was usually sent
down at three or four in the morning, the best being given to the
guard in order that he might allow it to pass in. Later on, the
women of the city formed a committee and collected food from anyone
able to give it. There was also a relief committee of four, who did
a great deal towards alleviating the distress by giving bread and by
furnishing native shoes to those who had none. Later, one of the lay
members of this committee, the one who had been most active in the
relief work, was the first among the people of AC., after the
exemption of the Protestants, to be deported. When he asked why he
had to go, he was told that it was because he had fed the enemies of
the Government.
If I remember correctly, it was either on the 30th or the 31st July
that the first people from AC. were deported. First the richest
families of the Gregorians, and, later, the richest Protestants,
were sent away. Just as the Protestants were leaving, we heard a
rumour that they would not have to go, but they were hurried
straight through to Hama, and other places, without the long delays
on the road that others had had. We thought it was done purposely.
The first party that went were attacked before they got to their
first night’s stopping-place, and had to protect their wives and
daughters all night long. We heard later from Dr. L., who was then
in Aleppo, that he had seen many of them and been told their story:
how they had to be on the alert all night long; how one or two were
killed and some wounded, and how one had gone mad. Before we got
this news, the brother of one of our teachers, who had been sent
into the city by the officer whose servant he was, told us that
while nearing the city the previous evening he had seen the
Mutessarif’s son and four or five companions, all well armed, riding
quickly out of the city in the direction in which the refugees had
gone. We all thought that he had perhaps been sent to recall them,
and were quite expecting to see them all come back again. Later, we
understood that it was this party who had attacked and robbed them.
Soon after the first party of Protestants were sent away, Dr. E.
received telegrams from the U.S. Ambassador, from the Consul in
Aleppo, and from Mr. N. of Constantinople, saying that there would
be no deportation of Protestants. Dr. E. took the three telegrams to
the Mutessarif, who was not pleased and said that he had received no
such news. Still, for a short time all was quiet, and it being time
for College to open, the matter was talked over. Before any decision
was reached, a student, a Turk, went to Dr. E. and asked when it
would open, as if he were anxious to be back. Dr. E. took this as a
sign that the Turks were not only willing but anxious for the
College to begin; so, after conferring with the faculty, he told the
enquiring Turk that they would open the following week. This, I
think, was on Friday, and on Saturday all but two of the professors
and teachers had notice that they must leave the city the following
Monday morning. Dr. E. pleaded for time, but the Mutessarif was
angry and asked him whether he did not know that he had power to
send him away too if he wished to do so.
The professors were sent away the following Monday morning. A German
lady, Mrs. C., formerly Miss D., who was the matron of the hospital
at AC., was ordered to go along with her husband, an Armenian
professor, into exile. When Dr. E. went to the Mutessarif about it,
he answered: “Is she not his property, and is he not an Armenian?”
The German Consul was not able to get permission for her to leave
the country when her husband was anxious for her to get away. We
heard later from Mrs. C. that they had only got just outside the
city when a gendarme came round to each of them and said that, if
they wanted to be guarded, they must give money. This they did. When
they reached a little wayside station, they found many thousands of
refugees waiting in an open field. On the fourth day of waiting,
Mrs. C. saw some German officers on a train, and obtained from them
a pass which enabled her to board the train for Aleppo. On the fifth
day, she and her husband and baby were allowed to go by train to
Aleppo, but his family had to wait and go on with the rest of the
refugees. They, after many weeks of travel and after paying
exorbitant sums of money, were sent to a fellahin village. Prof. C.,
according to the latest report, was teaching for nothing in a Moslem
school in Aleppo.
Three of the pastors at AC. were imprisoned for months in dirty,
dingy cells of the common prison. Three of the College professors
had the same experience. Finally, permission was given for the
gendarmes to take the pastors out long enough to preach, for it was
feared they would otherwise go mad. The sermons they preached were
said to be wonderful. These pastors were later released, but all the
professors in the College were exiled except one, and another who
had previously succeeded in getting away to Constantinople.
Soon after the crowds started, all kinds of sickness began and
spread among the people, and later one of the two doctors left in
AC. was sent to look after them. Sometimes they would wait for
weeks, expecting to be taken by train to whatever place they were to
be sent to. Then they would be told that each must hire an animal
for himself. The hire would be put up so high that all their baggage
would have to be left behind. The gendarmes told them that it would
be forwarded to them, but a little later it was placed in a house
from which some of the people had been deported, and sold at
auction.
When the people were told that they must go, they at once tried to
sell some of their goods, so that they might have a little money in
hand. But it cannot be said that they really sold them, for one
heard of good wool mattresses selling for one piastre; the highest I
heard of was for twenty piastres, while in ordinary times they would
sell for a hundred. Large copper pans and basins were sold for a
mere song, until one day two Jews appeared on the scene and began
paying much better prices. But in three days these men were
imprisoned, so that the Turks could once more get things for as
little as they pleased. Even goods that were being given to the poor
by those having to leave were confiscated by the Government. Some
antiquities and books that were being taken to the College shared
the same fate. Anyone walking with a parcel was liable to be held
up, searched, and robbed.
After the professors had been sent away, the pastors of the
Protestant churches and the two remaining professors who had not
been deported were put into prison. First, their homes were searched
and all papers and any written matter were taken to the Sarai. The
secretaries of the Christian societies were enquired about, and when
it was found that some of them had been deported it was thought that
they might be brought back; but they had not been brought back at
the time of my leaving. While waiting in BJ., I heard that those who
had been imprisoned had been released.
About the time deportations began in AC., all the non-Moslem schools
were taken possession of by the Government, except those belonging
to the American Board. At the same time, the large Armenian church
and one of the Protestant churches were seized, but before I left
AC. they were restored to their owners.
After the professors had been taken away, it was reported that no
more Protestants, except those found at fault, would be sent away.
But every day they kept sending a family or two away on the
slightest pretexts. One of the relief committee workers was the
first to be sent away. A letter said to have been sent to them, but
which they never saw, was actually the alleged cause of deportation.
The censor said that no mention of high prices, poverty, sickness,
need of money, or slackness of work must be mentioned in letters. So
we prayed that any letters that might be sent to us should make no
mention of relief money or of any other forbidden subject.
As soon as it was officially announced that the Protestants would
not be deported, they held a thanksgiving service, at which the one
in charge said: “Now that we are permitted to stay in our city, we
must be very careful to give no occasion of complaint to the
Government. If they ask for our sons as soldiers, we must give them
up without murmuring; if for money, or goods, or clothing for the
soldiers, let us give as if we appreciated the privilege of staying
in our homes. Let us show them that we are loyal to the country. Let
no one take into his home a child or anyone else who has been told
to go, whether they be of those passing through the city as refugees
or from among our own friends and relatives in the town. Let us show
the Government that we will do all that is asked of us.”
The goods in the drapers’ shops all belonged to the Armenians; but
during the deportations the Turks took whatever they wanted and paid
nothing, so the owners in some cases sold their goods for almost
nothing, or gave them away, or closed their shops. Soon after
deportation, it was impossible to buy a button, though some native
material could be secured in native houses where they had looms.
When the first lot of people from AC. were sent away, they were told
that they were only going for a short time, and that they need not
trouble about their homes and belongings, for the Government would
carefully seal them and take care of their property. They had not
been out of the city long when soldiers were quartered in the larger
houses, some of which were rented for a trifle, the rent being paid
to the Government. The poorer houses were given to the poorer Turks.
Every evening all the possible exits from the city were carefully
guarded; if we went from one building to another, we were held up
and asked where we were going and for what. If our servant was found
outside, he would always be searched and sometimes struck at, and
told not to be out so late again. In the early days we were not
allowed out after sunset, and later we were told the same, even if
the sun were shining. This was said not only to me, the subject of a
belligerent country, but also to neutrals as well.
An old college student, whose home was at E., managed, through the
kindness of a friendly Turk, to escape to AC. He told us that the
men of his town were all killed. We had previously heard that the
men of that town and of the next village had been taken for military
service, and set to making a road to BL. As soon as the road was
finished, the men were taken to the side of the road they had made
and were killed—chiefly by the knife, for the officer in command had
told the soldiers he commanded not to waste powder on the Armenians.
An Englishman who had been given permission to leave the country (we
wondered whether he ever got out) told one of our ladies of the
sights he had seen while waiting for the train. He had seen feet
swollen all out of shape lifted up and beaten with the heavy end of
a gendarme’s gun, just because people had said they could not walk
any faster.
The steward of the College at AC. was sent away because his
brother-in-law had sent his dentist’s instruments to him with a
letter, asking him to sell them and send the money on to him later,
when he could tell him—the steward—where they were being deported
to. But neither the instruments nor the letter ever reached the
steward. He was merely told that they had been sent and that,
because of it, he and his family of small children must go into
exile. This was after the Protestants were told that they might
stay.
Whenever the Turks thought that they had won any victory, they were
almost unbearable, as, for instance, when word came that they had
taken the Suez Canal. They then rejoiced both by day and by night,
and were most insolent to Christians. An English flag was dragged
through the filth of the streets, spat and trampled upon, &c. The
noise continued all night long. At these times of supposed
victories, they showed what they would do if ever they were really
victorious.
It was beautiful to see the faith of some of the villagers. One
evening a large party came in and very soon began singing hymns and
holding a prayer-meeting. The following morning, when asked about
it, they said that their pastor had been taken from them and killed,
and that his last word to them was: “Keep up the prayer-meeting.”
And with kindling eyes they said: “We have never once missed it,
though we have been seven weeks on the march.”
Another party told how they had prayed that, if it were God’s will,
they might be spared the horrors of deportation, and said: “There
must be some good in it for our nation, or God would not permit it.
The only thing that troubles us is: Will our husbands ever be able
to find us?” They little knew, poor women, that their husbands had
already been killed, as we were told by others.
Just before the deportation began at AC., a high official, T. Pasha,
came and called together the leading people, both Moslem and
Christian. In a very kindly manner, he asked the Christians whether
they were being kindly treated by the Moslems, &c., &c. He said that
he had heard certain things, and that, if there was any truth in the
statement that Armenians were being ill-treated, he himself would
hang the Turk, were it his own brother, who should dare to treat a
Christian unkindly; and he begged the Armenians to speak out without
fear. He then went straight from AC. to BN., where he arranged for
the deportation of all the BN. and BM. districts. Such plans were
evidently intended to throw the Armenians off their guard.
In T. Pasha’s party there were three German officers, but I could
not say that German officers were supervising the deportations. The
German Consul went through AC. to BM. and BN. before the deportation
began. Though some people blamed him for it, we did not think he had
so much power.
A great many of the Armenian doctors were taken for the Army. When
there was any sickness among the service corps, one of the three
Armenian doctors left in AC. was sure to be sent to attend the sick.
In this way we lost a dear friend, who in the early days had been an
assistant to Dr. L. He was sent to a camp where the soldiers, nearly
all of them Armenians, were working on a section of a branch of the
Baghdad Railway; typhus had broken out among them. Very soon a
telegram came, saying that the old doctor was ill. Though he was the
oldest doctor in AC. and had more Moslem patients than any other
doctor in the city, no mercy was shown to him. Did he not belong to
the accursed Armenian race? And was not his death of typhus, in the
camp to which he had been obliged to go, a fate good enough for any
such as he?
Early in March, 1915, the BM. Government took possession of Miss
S.’s Orphanage and put Turks in charge of the girls and young women.
Miss O., a Swiss lady in charge of a German Orphanage at BM., after
all her charges[175] had been turned loose for deportation, as were
the inmates of all the German orphanages early in the war, took
under her care some of the old girls who were married and living in
the districts in which the first deportations had taken place. After
she had kept them for a short time, she was told by the German
Consul that she must give them up. She thought that if she could get
to someone in authority she could present the situation in its true
light, so she went to Constantinople, but returned disappointed.
Early in the autumn we heard of a reign of terror at Ourfa, so that
the very mention of the place seemed to alarm people. We heard that
three men, one of them being H. Effendi, Miss J.’s faithful helper
in charge of industrial work employing more than 2,000 persons, had
been banished. Later, they were brought back to the city and
tortured. Later still, in writing to his wife, Mr. K. said that H.
Effendi’s children were in the same case as some other children,
whom we knew to be orphans; so we inferred that he had certainly
been killed[176]. Still later, a driver told how he had been engaged
to take three men to Diyarbekir for court-martial. They had gone but
a short distance from Ourfa when the men were told to get out of the
wagon. They were taken down a gully a short distance, and soon the
driver heard shots. The four gendarmes came galloping up to the
wagon and told the driver to drive on. One of them looked into the
wagon and asked where the prisoners were. When the driver asked if
they had not called them out of the wagon, he was told that he had
allowed them to escape and that he himself must go before the court.
So he had to drive back to Ourfa to the Sarai, where he was told to
leave the things that belonged to the men he had started out with.
Then he was allowed to go away free.
Q., Miss J.’s servant, had been killed, we heard, in a brutal way
while he was going to Garmoush with some relief for a poor family.
We also heard that there were two massacres at Ourfa, in the first
of which only the men found in the streets were killed. The second
time, homes were entered.
M., one of my orphan boys, had gone with Dr. P., and was working for
him when he was told to leave the country. He was tortured to make
him tell something incriminating about Dr. P. Later, when Dr. L.
tried to get some news about the boy from the Diyarbekir refugees at
Aleppo, their answer was: “Do not ask us about any male over twelve
years old, for, as far as we know, they were every one of them
killed.”
The general impression was that Mr. K. was poisoned. We heard that
he was in danger of a mental breakdown; but, on the evening previous
to my leaving AC., Dr. E. was told by a Moslem muleteer who had come
from Ourfa that Mr. K. had either died or been killed. I was told
that I must acquaint the Consul with what Dr. E. had heard as soon
as I reached Aleppo. On my telling the Consul, he showed me a
telegram he had recently received from Mr. K. himself, which read:
“Am safe and well in Government House.” Later, in BJ., when we heard
that he had poisoned himself, someone remarked that it would be easy
for Mr. K. to be obliged to write and say that there was danger of a
nervous breakdown, and then the way would be prepared for the news:
“Poisoned himself.” Someone else added: “Yes, just as was done when
the prisoners were obliged to sign a letter, stating that they were
all well, while at the very time there was an epidemic in their
camp.”
When we travelled ourselves from AC. to Aleppo, we saw a large camp
of refugees, some distance from the road which we were on, but close
to the small station of Kotmo, which connects with the Baghdad
Railway. We had heard before leaving AC. that 37,000 were waiting
for a train to take them on, but, judging from what we could see,
there could not have been more than seven or eight thousand of them.
As we got near to Aleppo we passed a very long convoy of ox-wagons,
mules, donkeys, and a few horses, carrying women, children, and some
old men. Our driver got down and talked with a few. He was told that
they were being sent from Adana and Mersina. They looked so much
better off in every way than any refugees we had seen that they
hardly seemed like refugees at all. There were many more men than
usual among them.
Later, when we reached Aleppo, we were told that there were 20,000
refugees there, and that on some days the death-rate was as high as
400. A native doctor and his wife, wishing to give all their time to
helping these poor people, had left their home and gone to the hotel
in which we were staying. From them we got reports twice a day.
We heard of one party, who, when they left Harpout, numbered 5,000.
Of this number, only 213 reached Aleppo. When they started, they
were of all ages and both sexes. They went towards Aleppo down the
Euphrates. When they came to cross the rivers that flow into the
Euphrates, all the able-bodied men were drowned and their bodies
left in the water. Farther on, all the survivors—now only old men,
women and children—were entirely stripped of their clothing. Naked
they waded through streams, slept in the chilly nights, and bore the
heat of the sun. They were brought into Aleppo the last few miles in
third-class railway carriages, herded together like so many animals.
When the doors of the carriages were opened, they were jeered at by
the populace for their nakedness. On their journey, they had come on
a hot day in August to the banks of a river. There was a general
rush to get water, but the gendarmes who were with them drew their
revolvers and told them that anyone who got any water must pay a
medjidia (about 3_s._ 2_d._) for it. Some were able to give it, but
the majority were not. After waiting there for some time, they were
told that they must strip and get through the water as best they
could. They had the right to the animals that carried their
possessions, for they had paid for them for two days longer. They
clasped hands and waded across, but waited in vain for the gendarmes
to come across with their animals and provisions.[177] In this party
were refined girls and young women from the best Armenian homes, who
had been educated in the American colleges.
While waiting in BJ., the President of the College got a telegram
from the U.S. Consul in Aleppo, asking him to send some doctors, as
the death-rate was very high—as high as 400 a day, we heard. The
President thought it best to ask Djemal Pasha before doing anything.
When he did ask him, the answer came: “No, you must not send anyone.
Let your Consul mind his own business!”
-----
Footnote 174:
“Outside AC., a woman gave birth to a child in the refugee camp.
She was taken to the College and put into a small room there. In
spite of the best of care, she died in a few days and the child a
little later. In her most delicate condition, she had been driven,
cursed and beaten along the road from BM., some sixty miles
away.”—_Earlier and less detailed statement by the same witness._
Footnote 175:
“More than a thousand.”—_Earlier statement._
Footnote 176:
“The Protestant pastor and a doctor were also killed.”—_Earlier
statement._
Footnote 177:
“Later, another convoy of exiles came up, and took this party of
forty women on with them.”—_Earlier statement._
138. AC.: LETTERS FROM AN ARMENIAN INHABITANT[178], DESCRIBING THE
DEPORTATION OF ARMENIANS FROM CILICIA; COMMUNICATED BY THE
AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF.
=Letter dated 6/19th April, 1915.=
Every day two or three hundred people from Zeitoun are transferred
to BM., under severe guard, and, after a short halt at night, are
deported in unknown directions. The hotels and the two Armenian
schools are full of these deported families from Zeitoun, Alabash
and Furnus. The Government has decided to evacuate by force all the
other Armenian regions. It is impossible to describe the misery
which is resulting. Old men, invalids, and children four or five
years old go in masses, barefooted.
=Letter dated 17/30th May, 1915.=
Since the first days of April, convoys have been coming from Zeitoun
and the neighbourhood and passing southward towards the steppes of
Mesopotamia. Reckoning only those that have crossed our city, the
number of the deported rises to 6,700 persons. Furnus, Geben,
Alabash, and the whole region of Zeitoun have been evacuated.
Bosniak mouhadjirs replace the Armenians thus exiled. The Turks are
in a perfect delirium. It is impossible to describe the horrors
suffered by the deported Armenians. Violation, conversion and the
rape of women and girls are ordinary and daily facts. The Armenian
population of Zeitoun has been annihilated, one or two villages
excepted. We are informed that 150 Armenians from Dört Yöl and 1,350
from Hassan-Beyli have been deported to Aleppo.
-----
Footnote 178:
Name withheld.
XVIII.
VILAYET OF ALEPPO.