sufficiently plain in the documents included in this section. Doc.
145 shows that by the 12th July there were already large numbers of
Cilicians bivouacked at Der-el-Zor, while it appears from Doc. 143
that they did not begin to arrive at Damascus until the 12th August,
1915._
143. DAMASCUS: REPORT FROM A FOREIGN RESIDENT AT DAMASCUS, DATED
20th SEPTEMBER, BUT CONTAINING INFORMATION UP TO THE 3rd
OCTOBER, 1915; COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR
ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF.
Since the 12th August, 1915, convoys of Armenian exiles, consisting
of from a few hundred to as many as two thousand individuals, have
been marched through this city at varying intervals, averaging about
two to three or more convoys per week.
On a sober estimate I should say that from 8,000 to 10,000 souls
have already thus come through Damascus up to the present time. This
has been going on since the 12th August, to my knowledge.
His Excellency the Governor-General of Syria informed me, upon my
request, that these people are all Armenians who, because of
uprisings and attempts to set up local revolutionary governments in
the Vilayets of Van and Bitlis, are being exiled to the country
round Damascus and will be distributed in groups of two, three and
so on among the various more important towns and villages. His
Excellency also informed me—upon my statement that, if the
Government permitted, I believed that I could secure funds from the
American Red Cross to aid these people, who undoubtedly would be
very needy—that the Government would not sanction this, and that the
Government was doing everything possible, furnishing food, tents,
etc.
Numerous stories are current of hardship, want, suffering from
hunger, forced marching when in no condition to walk, cruelty of
guards, seizure of young women, giving away and selling of children
that they might find homes, etc., etc., but I did not believe them,
and even now I am sure that many of the worst stories that are
circulating are much exaggerated. Still, there are some which I must
credit.
One is that of a woman who, though six or seven months pregnant and
naturally in no condition whatever to do the marches, was obliged to
keep up with the procession until she dropped in her tracks and
died. I have heard of several cases of young girls or boys being
bought by people who wished to aid in some way and were importuned
by parents to take their children as servants, that they might have
homes. It was stated to me also that some soldier guards, in order
to urge them on, whipped those who straggled on the march either
from utter exhaustion or in quest of food or money from
compassionate Christian inhabitants of the places through which they
passed.
I have also heard of kindnesses extended by good Moslems who pitied
these sufferers, and I overheard a common Moslem soldier—and it is
known that such have hardly enough money for themselves—say that he
had given two medjidias[185] to the Christian exiles.
Several times I went to the quarter through which the exiles were
marched, to see them with my own eyes. Never, however, could I time
my visit with their passage.
Kahdem, on the outskirts of the city, is a large piece of common
ground where, after passing through Damascus, all the exiles are
collected preparatory, it seems, to their being dispersed to the
various towns where they are finally to stay.
Some days ago I visited this place to get some idea of conditions.
It is a large open tract, practically devoid of grass and possessing
but few trees. It was nearly covered with groups of ragged,
road-stained, dejected, wholly dispirited individuals. There were
only a very few tents or shelters of any kind, and these had the air
of being mere improvisations. At the outer fringe of the people I
was met by a policeman, who conducted me to the man in charge of the
encampment. I saw practically nothing, and learned only what he told
me. He was most courteous. According to him (and he said he kept
count of it) there were that day something over 2,000 Armenians
present on this field; up to that time about 20,000 had passed
through Damascus for exile from practically all the vilayets
inhabited by Armenians, except the region of Van. He thought they
had not arrived from Van yet because it was so distant. A total of
100,000 Armenians were to be distributed among the towns surrounding
Damascus before this deportation scheme would be complete, he said.
A hospital for those who were ill had been instituted, and was then
occupied by about fifty persons, I was informed. He further told me
that there were practically no deaths, and that the Government
furnished food for them, _i.e._, for all the exiles. I left the
Director of the Encampment’s tent, and the only thing I saw while
being conducted to the road was the wagon, outbound, that plies
between camp and hospital. It appeared to be well filled. The
Spanish Consul took the road to Kahdem the same day. He did not go
as close as I, I believe.
One of the exiled Armenians who came to see me said he was a native
of Kessab, near Aleppo. According to his statements, he had been on
the march some ten days, and, upon being questioned, he told me that
the suffering en route had been extreme for those who were not very
strong. He said that along the road they had passed the bodies of
those in the convoy ahead of theirs who had succumbed. This man
declared that his wife and family were coming by train. He nearly
broke down in the telling, and said he had no idea what would become
of him and cared less.
On the 11th September, 1915, the Spanish Consul and myself happened
to be in the Christian quarter, when we came upon a procession of
the Armenian exiles on their way to Kahdem. One becomes accustomed
to poorly dressed, ragged people in the interior whose faces never
seem to have expressed joy, but in the faces of this band of
silently trudging automatons one saw written a great weariness,
despair and hopeless suffering stoically borne. There were men,
women and children, only some of whom took heed of us when we
offered them what change we happened to have. The greater part
seemed interested only in doggedly pursuing their march until the
night’s halt might allow them to rest. It was then a little after
six o’clock.
Old and young people were the chief components of the procession.
Here there passed a boy hardly over ten years of age, overburdened
by a smaller child upon his back; there a woman, with back bent by
age, crawling painfully along by the aid of her staff; now a wee
infant, crying for its mother lost on the march, on the heels of an
old patriarch, dragging along his last possession, a little donkey;
then a woman, evidently heavy with child, smothering a moan of pain
at each forced step. Young women and men of middle age were
noticeable by their absence. From various reports I have heard, it
would appear that many exiles have been arriving by train, and that
the total number that has passed this way now reaches 22,000.
From a person who has passed that way, I learn that, so far as he
could judge, all Armenians south of Ismid were being exiled, and
from the same informant, whose word cannot be questioned, I hear
that thousands of Armenians were passed by him on the road. They
were in the most horrible condition. At Osmania there were some
8,000 exiles quartered. He tells me that for some miles out from
this place a most foul odour was noticeable, like that rising from a
dirty chicken-run. Upon approaching the low ground on which the
exiles were concentrated, the odour became sickening and noisome
flies swarmed about him. Passing through the encampment, he saw many
people ill, and the bodies of others half-submerged in the water
that had collected in pools on the low-lying ground. Some told him
they were only waiting for death to free them. On the road from
there to Aleppo he passed thousands of exiles on the march, and at a
small town near Aleppo he found about 100,000 Armenians encamped. He
says that the mortality among these was very great. They had no food
nor money to buy any, as it appeared that many convoys had been
plundered on the road of what little they possessed by successive
armed bands. The party of which my informant was a member had
several times been accosted by armed persons in uniform, who thought
they were Armenians.
I have heard from a source not quite so authentic, but in which a
great deal of confidence may be placed, that the country lying north
and north-east of Marash is being entirely denuded of Armenians;
that at Homs there was a concentration camp of about 30,000,
practically all without shelter; that there had been a massacre at
Diyarbekir; that exiles from Kaisaria were allowed to sell their
property (a small price only could be obtained in this forced sale)
before being sent to Der-el-Zor. From this same source I was also
informed that it was rumoured that many exiles had been drowned (by
boats being overturned, and so on) in the Euphrates River, while
making their crossing.
Just within the last few days—it is now the 3rd October—I was told
by an eye-witness that a massacre took place on the 19th September
at Ourfa, and that the Armenians were shot, stabbed, bayoneted or
flayed by the population in general that day, but that afterwards
the slaughter was still being continued by soldiers with bayonets
and sharp sabres when this person left on the 22nd. It appears that
the Armenian men were collected together, and that one by one they
were led out to be slashed up and cut down by the long sabre-knives.
In the first day’s massacre three French and Russian civil prisoners
were wounded by knife or flail; but I gathered that they soon
recovered and that that was all that happened to these prisoners.
The person who came from Ourfa told me that en route many women,
children and old men were passed, and that soldiers were seen to
strike some of these when they stopped to get a drink of water.
Soldiers were overheard to say: “Wait until we get you to the
Euphrates, and see what happens to you there!” or words to that
effect. This information was given me by a person who, as stated
above, was actually present at the massacre and who heard the remark
above mentioned.
I do not know whether I shall be able to get this through or not. In
every instance the faith that might be placed in statements has been
indicated as precisely as the writer is able to judge; he can vouch
absolutely, of course, only for the things seen or heard by himself
as related above.
At Damascus everything appears to be very quiet. An egg was thrown
into my carriage yesterday, the 2nd October, but that was by a small
boy and indicated little. I do not believe that any trouble from the
population is to be feared, unless incited by authority, and of this
I have no apprehension.
144. EXILES ON THE EUPHRATES: RECORD, DATED ERZEROUM, JUNE, 1915, BY
M. HENRY BARBY, OF AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. H. TOROYAN, AN ARMENIAN
PHYSICIAN FORMERLY IN THE SERVICE OF THE OTTOMAN ARMY; PUBLISHED
IN “LE JOURNAL,” OF PARIS, 13th JULY, 1916.
Along the burning banks of the distant Euphrates, between sultry
Mesopotamia and the Badiet-esh-Sham, the desolate desert of Syria,
are encamped the several thousands of deported Armenians who have
escaped the great massacre.
Their condition there is such that no words can express the horror
of it. That is the unanimous testimony of the rare travellers who
have succeeded in visiting the camps where the unhappy victims are
dying off, between Aleppo and Baghdad. They are subjected to
frightful sufferings—without shelter either against the deadly cold
of last winter or against the terrific heat of the present summer,
which grows more pitiless every day—and daily they are perishing in
great numbers, though those struck down by death are the least to be
pitied.
I am now in a position to cite unimpeachable testimony as to the
facts of these unheard-of atrocities.
A Turkish army-physician, Dr. H. Toroyan—an Armenian by birth, as
appears by his name—was commissioned by the Young Turkish Government
to visit the exiles’ camps. The horrors of which he was a helpless
witness in the course of his mission, and the hideous scenes at
which he was present, affected him so deeply that he determined to
make his way out of Turkey, at the risk of his life, in order to
reveal to the civilised world the barbarity and infamy of the guilty
parties—that is, of the present rulers of Turkey and their
accomplices.
Dr. Toroyan, in spite of the almost insurmountable difficulties with
which he had to contend, succeeded in escaping and reaching
Caucasia. There I met him and his first words with me were these:
“My unhappy countrymen deported to Mesopotamia have besought me to
make an appeal on their behalf to the whole civilised world, to the
Caucasian Armenians in particular, and above all to the Armenians in
America, whose women and children are dying every day—decimated by
suffering, hunger and disease and subjected to the devilish cruelty
of the zaptiehs who are in charge of them in their place of exile.”
He proceeded to show me the notes which he had taken day by day in
the course of his tour of inspection down the Euphrates. It is a
long series of awful pictures—stories of murders and tortures and
revolting rapes. The bestial instincts of human nature are unleashed
in the presence of tears and blood. The Turkish butchers amused
themselves by massacring men “for pleasure” and hunting women like
beasts of the field.
It was on the 25th November, 1915, that Dr. Toroyan left Djerablous
and began to descend the Euphrates on a raft. At Djerablous he saw a
convoy of Armenians from Syria and twenty-five Armenian families
from Aintab, who were being driven along by gendarmes towards the
military tribunal under blows of the lash. Other Armenian families
were coming in from Kaisaria and Konia by railway. From the moment
they left the train they became the victims of the most atrocious
outrages. The Tchatchaus[186] carried off three hundred women and
girls (the prettiest) in order to sell them as slaves. All these
latter victims belonged to families from Diyarbekir, Mardin and
Harpout.
But I will let Dr. Toroyan tell his own story:—
“This camp,” he continued, “was still congested when I left it with
Armenians from Adana and Cilicia. Most of them were women and girls.
Two of them, whom I knew well but only recognised with difficulty,
to so lamentable a condition were they reduced, cast themselves at
my feet:
“‘Tell the gallant soldiers (of the Allies) to come quickly to
Mesopotamia,’ they cried to me between their sobs; ‘we are worse
than dead.’”
The doctor went down on his raft with the current as far as Meskené.
There he landed and, escorted by two Turkish gendarmes, paid a visit
to the Armenian camp.
“The poor people were in rags which barely covered their bodies,” he
said, “and had nothing to shelter them against the weather. Some of
them, crouched on the ground, were trying to protect themselves
beneath tattered umbrellas, but most of them had nothing at all. I
asked my gendarmes what all the strange little mounds of earth were
which I saw everywhere, with thousands of dogs prowling round about
them.
“‘Those are the graves of the infidels!’ they answered calmly.
“‘Strange, so many graves for such a little village.’
“‘Oh, you do not understand. Those are the graves of these
dogs—those who were brought here first, last August. They all died
of thirst.’
“‘Of thirst? Was there no water left in the Euphrates?’
“‘For whole weeks together we were forbidden to let them drink.’
“I arrived at last at the extremity of this vast field of graves.
There were two old men there, crouched on the ground, sobbing. I
questioned them: ‘Where are you from?’ They made no answer. They
were stupefied by suffering. Perhaps they had lost the power of
speech. Further on, however, another exile, prostrate on the ground,
in the midst of other victims belonging to the same family, did give
me an answer. I learnt that the camp contained 5,000 Armenians from
Mersina and other Cilician towns.
“But now my two gendarmes came up to me. They pointed to a girl:
‘Effendi, let us take her and carry her with us to Baghdad....’
“Without waiting for my answer they called the poor girl. She
approached, shrieking with terror. She said several words to me in
French. Before she was deported she had been a schoolmistress at
Smyrna. She was dying of hunger. I tried to learn from her precise
details about the martyrdom of the exiles, but she could answer
nothing but: ‘Bread! Bread!’ Then she fainted and fell down
unconscious.
“‘She is dead! the schoolmistress, too, has died of hunger!’ piteous
voices cried around us. But the gendarmes were anxious to take
advantage of their victim’s unconsciousness to gain possession of
her. Already they had seized her and were carrying her towards our
raft. I stopped them. Then I poured several drops of brandy between
the poor girl’s lips and she came to herself again.
“A mother came to implore me. She offered her honour and her life if
I would save her son, who was in agony, devoured by a fever. I gave
her a little aspirine.
“And now they crowded round me in thousands—these poor emaciated
beings with hollow cheeks and eyes, either dulled or unnaturally
bright. From every side they flocked together with all the haste
they could, and surrounded me with a tumult of despairing cries:
‘Bread! Medicine!’
“The gendarmes rushed at them. Into this pitiful crowd they struck
at random with kicks and blows as hard as they could. I left the
scene, desperate at my powerlessness to alleviate this infinite
suffering.
“I saw two women, one of them old, the other very young and very
pretty, carrying the corpse of another young woman; I had scarcely
passed them when cries of terror arose. The girl was struggling in
the clutches of a brute who was trying to drag her away. The corpse
had fallen to the ground, the girl, now half-unconscious, was
writhing by the side of it, the old woman was sobbing and wringing
her hands.
“I could not interfere. I had the strictest orders. Shaking with
rage and indignation, I took refuge on my raft, which was moored to
the river bank.
“In the middle of the night I was awakened by desperate shrieks. My
two gendarmes, who had remained on shore, had seized some Armenian
girls. It was their intention to violate them, and they were
striking savagely at the exiles who were trying to interfere. The
tumult, which I heard without seeing it, continued. At last the
gendarmes returned, the boatman unmoored the raft and bent to his
oars. We were starting. The great river boat glided slowly over the
smooth water. Suddenly the gendarmes shouted and guffawed as if they
were watching a fine farce: ‘The girl! the girl we had to-night!’ I
looked, and saw floating on the surface a corpse which they had
recognised and which I recognised too. It was the schoolmistress
from Smyrna, the poor girl to whom I had spoken only a few hours
before. It was she who, in the darkness, had been the victim of
these two wild beasts.”
145. DER-EL-ZOR: LETTER, DATED 12th JULY, 1915, FROM SCHWESTER L.
MÖHRING, A GERMAN MISSIONARY, DESCRIBING HER JOURNEY FROM
BAGHDAD TO THE PASSES OF AMANUS; PUBLISHED IN THE GERMAN JOURNAL
“SONNENAUFGANG,” SEPTEMBER, 1915.
At Der-el-Zor, a large town in the desert about six days’ journey
from Aleppo, we found the big han full to overflowing. All available
rooms, roofs, and verandahs were occupied by Armenians. The majority
were women and children, but there were also a certain number of men
squatting on their quilts wherever they could find a spot of shade.
As soon as I heard that they were Armenians, I started going round
and talking to them. They were the people of Furnus (a village in
the neighbourhood of Zeitoun and Marash); herded together here in
these narrow quarters, they presented an extraordinarily melancholy
appearance. When I enquired for children from our Orphanage at BM.,
they brought me a protégée of Sister 0., Martha Karabashian. She
gave me the following account of what had happened.
One day Turkish gendarmes had come to Furnus and arrested and
carried off a large number of men, to turn them into soldiers.
Neither they nor their families knew where they were being taken to.
Those who remained were told that they would have to leave their
houses within the space of four hours. They were allowed to take
with them as much as they could carry; they might also take their
beasts. After the lapse of the specified time the poor people had to
march out of their village under the escort of soldiers (zaptiehs),
without knowing where they were going or whether they would ever see
their village again. To begin with, as long as they were still among
the mountains and had some provisions left, things went well enough.
They had been promised money and bread, and were actually given some
in the early stages—as far as I can remember, it was 30 paras (1½d.)
per head per day. But very soon these rations ceased, and there was
nothing to be had but bulgur meal—50 drams (= 150 grammes) per head
per day. In this fashion the Furnusli, after four weeks of extremely
hard travelling via Marash and Aleppo, had arrived at Der-el-Zor.
They had already been three weeks there in the han, and had no idea
what was to happen to them. They had no more money left, and the
provisions supplied by the Turks had also dwindled almost to
nothing. It was days since they had had any bread. In the towns they
had been barred in at night, and not allowed to speak to the
inhabitants. Martha, for instance, had not been allowed at BM. to go
to the Orphanage. She said to me sadly: “We had two houses and we
had to leave everything; now there are mouhadjirs[187] in them.”
There had been no massacres in Furnus and the zaptiehs, too, had
treated the people well. They had suffered principally from lack of
food and water on the march through the burning hot desert. These
Yailadji or Mountaineers, as they called themselves, suffered twice
as much from the heat as other people.
The zaptiehs escorting them told us then that, since the massacres,
the Armenians had cherished such hatred against the Turks that the
latter had always to go in fear of them. The intention now, they
said, was to employ the Armenians in building roads, and in this way
to move them on gradually to Baghdad. When asked the “wherefore” of
this, the zaptiehs explained that the people had been in collusion
with Russia. The Armenians themselves declared that they did not
know the reason for their expulsion.
Next day, at the midday rest, we fell in with a whole convoy of
Armenians. The poor people had made themselves primitive goat’s hair
tents after the manner of the Kurds, and were resting in them. But
the majority lay on the burning sand without defence against the
scorching sun. On account of the number of sick, the Turks had
allowed them a day’s rest. It is simply impossible to conceive
anything more disconsolate than such a mass of people in the desert
under the given circumstances. One could tell by their clothes that
they had lived in considerable prosperity, and now misery was
written on their faces. “Bread!” “Bread!” was the universal cry.
They were the people of Geben, who had been driven out with their
Pastor. The latter told me that every day there were five or six
deaths among the children and the sick. This very day they had only
just buried the mother of a girl about nine years old, who was now
quite alone in the world. They besought me most urgently to take the
child with me to our Orphanage. The Pastor gave precisely the same
account of what had happened as the little girl at Der-el-Zor.
No one without personal experience of the desert can form anything
approaching a conception of the misery and distress. The desert is
mountainous, but almost entirely without shade. For days together
the route leads over rocks and is extremely difficult going. On the
left hand, as one comes from Aleppo, there is always the Euphrates,
which trails along like a streak of clay, yet not near enough for
one to be able to draw water from it. The poor people must suffer
intolerable pangs of thirst; no wonder that so many sicken and die.