Armenian Genocide Contemporary Articles

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Land of the Stalking Death

 

November, 1919

 

A Journey Through Starving Armenia on an American Relief Train

 

By Melville Chater

 

Ask the average American what he knows about the Transcaucasus, and he will probably draw from his boyhood memories the fact that it produced those blonde-haired beauties who used to be headline curiosities in dime museums. And if you particularize in Transcaucasian topography by asking "What do you know about Georgia?" it is ten to one that he will answer promptly, "Sherman marched through it."

 

And so, it was not without curiosity that I, as an average American, caught from a British transport's deck my first glimpse of those mountain-ringed shores which the maps of one's childhood depicted as a pea-grean isthmus lying between the Black and Caspian Seas.

 

Everyone was on deck for the night - British Tommies and their officers, the little Mongol-faces Ghurkas, the tall and dignified Sikhs, the gray-clad nursing sisters - and even the Punjabi cooks in our fore hatchway ceased work on the flour-and-water cakes, which they had been baking incessantly for four days, and shaded their eyes toward the wide, squat port of Batun, with its foreground of British warcraft and its sky-line where the pear-shaped church domes of Russian civilization spired upward.

 

Out went the Black Sea's raw wind, like an extinguished candle, and over us crept a soft, warm land-breath, heavy with springtide, from the base of snow-capped mountains. And hardly were we trudging off over Batum's waterside ways - cobbled in high relief like Spotless Town, in the country of Advertismentia - when the dingy scene burst into brilliant patches of blue and yellow, where February's violets were hawked for sale and mimosa trees drooped, heavy with bloom and scent - a sight to stun sea-wearied eyes, and to make one believe again in long-lost miracles.

 

I visited the British base-commander and mentioned Tiflis and a first-class carriage.

 

"Good Lord!" ejaculated the B. C. "Wish I could wave a wand and produce such a thing! Try the American flour-train that's moving out tonight. And here's an order for three days' rations. One never knows, you know."

 

And so I climbed aboard a stumpy little living-car, hitched midway on a long freight train, to be welcomed by a genial-faced American doctor, who was en route to gather data for one of the various relief commissions at home.

 

The B. C.'s warning that "one never knows" was well founded. As we lounged lethargically over the distance that required but sixteen hours from Batum to Tiflis in peacetime, days passed uncounted, and the engineer held us ip while he dropped off at various towns to spend the night with friends; and dogs snoozed and cats kittened under our car between the rails during lenthy waits on sidings.

 

Though we had American flour aboard, a British guard, Russian-built cars, an Armenian cook, and a Georgian engineer, we were not sufficiently polyglot to read the station signs, all of which had been changed from Russian lettering to that of Georgia's own peculiar alphabet. Yet the red flags which presently sprouted all along the line apprised us that we were traveling on the anniversary of the Russian revolution, and hence of Georgia's second birthday as a republic.

 

To Igdir Through 40 Miles of Desolation

 

A war-battered motor of American body, Russian tires, and second-hand parts from every country in the world jounced us to Igdir across forty miles of flat country, throughout which mud-hut villages clustered and old trenches scored the plain, while Ararat loomed ever ahead, more dazzlingly white and sky-filling, as morning turned to noontide. Cutting his right shoulder, a faint line betrayed the cleft through which the great hordes of refugees had filed in their flight from Turkish Armenia during the massacres of 1915.

 

Three times in as many years have masses of these 300,000 people crossed and recrossed the mountains, advancing and retreating, as Russia threw the Turkish armies back or withdrew before them. In 1916 the refugees were even repatriated long enough to sow the soil, but not to reap the crops, which were abandoned to the enemy. Finally, at Bolshevism’s outbreak, the disorganised Russian troops went home, leaving the Transcaucasus undefended. Of its main peoples, the Georgians welcomed the Germans, while the Tatars were co-religionists with the Turks; wherefore the latter’s despoliations were directed solely against the Armenians.

 

The country through which we were passing revealed neither sowed acres nor cattle, nor sheep at graze: for seed, agricultural implements, and all else had been swept away by the Turks.

 

Once the Arax River was passed, however. one could recognise the Tatar villages by the presence of field animals and husbandry. Still farther on. the population became preponderatingly Armenian once more. And now, across the wide plains which must lie tragically idle through these, the fleeting precious hours of sowing, everywhere we beheld women astoop. in the attitude of those who fill Millet’s canvas, "The Gleaners". Had another Millet been there to study those emaciated figures and downcast. painfully searching faces. he could have touched the world’s heart with a second masterpiece, called "The Root Diggers".

 

"...We Are Dying, All Dying"

 

Suddenly an Armenian came dashing across the fields, to bar our passage - his face wild, his voice shrill with anguish. But he was not seeking protection from pursuing Tatars. as I had thought. He had seen American uniforms in our car - the first promise of hope which had passed through that desolate section in many weeks - and he was telling us of the many refugees who lived over there. among that cluster of war-demolished mud huts, starving in this wilderness.

 

"We are dying, all dying !" he reiterated in a kind of delirium. And, though we told him we had not bread, it became necessary to remove him from the road. where he had thrown himself face downward under the car’s wheels to prevent our departure.

 

Another, and a happier figure, was that of an old woman who hobbled up with a bright smile on her face to show us that day’s bonanza - a miserable apronfull of the roots which would keep her three motherless grandchildren alive for twenty-four hours more. Indeed, watch those painfully scrutinising diggers, and the way they flock from spot to spot whenever some luxurious patch is detected. and you would think that they were searching for yellow metal, not mere roots, in the first feverish hours of a gold rush.

 

"Dying or Deads?"

 

As we neared Igdir our interpreter, a cheery, affable young Armenian, who had long since grown accustomed to the horrors of this famine-blighted land, turned to us from the front seat and inquired with just a trace of the showman’s manner:

 

"What you like to see, gentlemens ?"

 

"Conditions?" snapped the doctor.

 

"You like best conditions of dyings or deads? Dyings is easy to see everywhere in the streets. But I know where many deads are, too -in what houses - if you like."

 

"Drive on !" I said hastily. "‘We’ll decide later."

 

The town of Igdir, with its local and near-by populations of 30,000 Armenians. 20,000 Tatars. and 15,000 Yezidis, revealed some squalid streets with but a few people seated disconsolately here and there, as we drove in. Throughout those tortuous, sun-beaten, byways no children played and no animals roamed. The air was heavy with dreadful silence, such as hangs over plague-smitten communities.

 

We found the children, such as they were, inhabiting an orphanage wherein one sickened at putridity’s horrible odour, and were informed that there were neither medicines nor disinfectants wherewith to allay the condition of the many little sick-beds.

 

Sick? Say, rather, the bed-ridden - a word which more justly describes those tiny, withered up, crone-like creatures, upon whose faces the skin seemed stretched to a drumhead’s tightness: whose peering eyes shot terror and anguish, as if Death’s presence were already perceptible to them, and who lay there at Famine’s climax of physical exhaustion. In those young, yet grotesquely aged faces, we seemed to see a long lifetime of tragedy packed into eight or ten childish years.

 

"They’ll all die," was the brusque observation of the doctor, who had taken one glimpse and gone out. "We can’t do them any good. Silly business anyway - to come out here in a broken-down car."

 

"We will see now conditions of the deads ?" inquired our interpreter, sweetly. "Twenty-five deads was took out of one house here in one day. It is a big house, or khan. There would be plenty more deads in it by now."

 

The local manager of the American Committee, having heard of our arrival. turned up to greet us. With him we walked through the local bazaar - rows of mean shops that mocked starvation with their handfuls of nuts and withered fruit.

 

The mud huts which we visited presented an invariable picture - a barren. cave-like interior, lacking one stick of furniture or household utensil, and with a few bleached bones scattered here and there. The occupants, stretched on the clay floor, would half lift themselves to regard us with dazed and questioning eyes.

 

Those gaunt faces, those attenuated bodies clad in a shagginess of filthy rags, seemed centuries removed from civilisation. You felt that you had stumbled into prehistoric man’s den during some great famine year.

 

The Human Levelled to Brute Beast

 

Suddenly a shriek went up and a woman rushed out of her hut. with agonised face and with hands lifted to heaven. Hers was such abandonment as proclaims that death has struck the firstborn; yet it was a tale of mere robbery. What the captured thief delivered back to her proved to be a paltry handful of roots. And upon entering the woman’s house we found, in fact, her only daughter lying dead, not yet cold, while the mother crouched dry-eyed before a tiny fire, intently watching the pot wherein bubbled those precious roots, her next stomachful. It was to have seen the soul dead and the human levelled to the brute beast.

 

Nearby, in the open, fifty wizened children sat about a long board, eating the American Committee’s daily dole of boiled rice. This was accomplished at a gulp: then the children scattered, searching the ground as I had seen others do beside our car at Alexandropol. Soon one was chewing a straw, another the paring of a horse’s hoof, a third a captured beetle. One seven year old girl crouched by herself, cracking something between two stones and licking her fingers. The doctor bent over, examining the object. He asked with peculiar sharpness, "Where did she get that - that bone ?" The child looked up with a scared, guilty glance; then her answer came through the interpreter, who said in a low voice, "Yonder in the graveyard."

 

I am not sure that we preserved our composure.

 

Starvation Outruns Typhus

 

We passed on, the doctor asking of our guide: "Is there much typhus ?"

 

"Not so much now," was the rejoinder, "for the reason that starvation is killing them more quickly than typhus could."

 

"What is the death-rate in the villages hereabout ?"

 

"I will give you a few instances. There are some thirty villages in this district, and a recent census showed 2,277 deaths for a period of fifty days. Etchmiadzin contains 7,000 refugees, of whom 1,000 are dying each month. At Evgilar a population of 1,900 was reduced to 1,519 in ten days. During those same ten days Alletly’s 965 people were diminished to 612, and Atgamar’s 2,093 people to 1,530."

 

"In reality, the death-rate is much higher than these figures indicate. We cannot search every house once a day. The best we can do is to send ox-carts through the street each morning, so that the people can bring out their dead; but often they are too weak to rise from their beds for that purpose, and so the living and dead remain lying side by side. Perhaps a week or two will pass before..."

 

"I understand," said the doctor, briefly. "I also understand that American flour is not yet arriving in sufficient quantities to feed what must amount to half a million starving people. Tell me, then, what they eat beside mere roots?"

 

"Cats and dogs, for example. These have been sold at thirty to fifty rubles apiece. The other day a famished horse dropped dead in the streets, and in half an hour it was picked clean. And then - yes, I have seen it myself, between dead brother and living sister. She lay there beside him and told me what she was going to do. I urged her against it, but there was no bread to give her that day. And later, when they called to remove her brother’s body, his right arm was gone."

 

Graves Dug With Human Bones

 

We had taken a short cut toward where our car waited, and by chance we were skirting the cemetery. Our guide pointed thither and said:

 

"It is not a pleasant sight. You must understand that the Turks left this country so bare that there are not even spades. Graves must be dug with any available thing, even with human bones. If the dead has a relative - someone who is still strong enough to carry a weight - big stones are placed on the grave; but if not" - he shrugged significantly.

 

I asked, hardly knowing how to frame my question, "Exactly what - exactly whom do you mean? "I mean," he answered, "the pariah dogs by day, and under cover of night - well, come and see for yourselves."

 

I will never forget that terrible acre of earth - the low, boulder-heaped mounds, and those others, the unprotected graves, now revealed as empty, scooped-out holes, whose brinks were strewn about with remnants of torn-off garments, among which lay vague, blackened semblance of humanity. As we turned away, the apparition of a great yellow pariah dog, pawing among the graves, drew from us a volley of stones. Then, as he slunk guiltily off, a skeleton-like man sprang up from behind the wall (under cover of which he had been stalking his prey), and, braining the beast with a club, disappeared, carrying its carcass with him.

 

Having seen enough, we started to leave Igdir with all the dignified speed possible, being halted by unlooked for obstacles, such as impede one in an evil dream.

 

National Geographic

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Heir Apparent Blames ex-Ministers

 

NOVEMBER 27, 1918

 

Abdul Medjid Effendi, heir to the Ottoman throne, who also received the correspondent, said that this last war had been the most disastrous in the history of Turkey, not because she was beaten "but because it made enemies of nations naturally our friends." He continued:

 

"The present Sultan and myself denounced the proposal that Turkey enter the war. Mohammed V., who was then reigning, showed weakness before a clique of adventurers like Tallat Bey and Enver *****, then Cabinet Ministers and now fugitives, whom Germany had fed with dreams of power.

 

"I am more ashamed of the Armenian atrocities committed during the war than of anything in our history, but I must insist that they were against the will of the present Sultan and the nation as a whole. They were instigated my unpatriotic ministers who were guaranteed in their places by their services to German militarism. The fanaticism of remote tribes in their dislike for their neighbors and the brutality of provincial officers served as the mediums, while the censored press here concealing the facts from the general public. The members of the imperial family tried to make use of their prestige against this, but were imprisoned in the, palace.

 

New York times

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MILLIONS SLAIN BY TURKS

 

Moslems Made Money in the Midst of War Slaughter

 

DECEMBER 6, 1918

 

LONDON, Dec. 5. -- Throughout the last four years the Turks, acting under the orders of the Committee of Union and Progress, have done their best to ruin Turkey and have succeeded "extremely well, " says the Constantinople correspondent of The Morning Post, in describing the corruption and misery of Turkey. Three million persons, he says, have been massacred and another million is on the verge of starvation this Winter.

 

"The greater portion of the Ottoman Empire," the correspondent continues, "has been conquered and parsed out among different races, and what remains is a total ruin.

 

"It is probably true that never before have the Turks in the empire been so rich. An ordinary policeman in Pera is estimated to be worth anything between 10,000 and 15,000 Turkish pounds.

 

"This accumulation of wealth has been a part of the program of the committee to enrich the Turks at the expense of the Christians, and was carried out especially in Smyrna and Constantinople. The consequence is that prices in Constantinople today are enormously exorbitant. It must not be supposed however, that Constantinople lacks anything. There is probably enough food were to feed the population for at least eight months. The committee, by means of requisitioning from the Christians, has concentrated all the trade in the hands of the Mohammedans. German officers had their share also in this plunder.

 

SALONIKI, Dec. 4. -- M. Khanzadian, an Armenian leader and a former officer of high rank in the Turkish Navy, on his arrival here today declared that German and Turkish statistic which he saw in Constantinople in 1916 showed that 1,396, 350 Armenians had been deported and that of that number 1,056 550 had been massacred.

 

He expressed thanks to the Greek Government for its sympathy with the cause of the Armenians, and said that the Greeks and Armenians should combine their efforts against Turkish oppression.

 

New York Times

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SULTAN SEARCHING OUT AUTHORS OF KILLINGS

 

DECEMBER 7, 1918

 

LONDON, Dec. 6. -- The London Newspapers today print an interview with Mohammed VI., the Turkish Sultan, obtained by a British correspondent in Constantinople, who describes that ruler as a very different personality from his two brothers who preceded him on the throne.

 

Mohammed VI., says the correspondent, gives one the impression of possessing a strong character and considerable intellectual force. He is tall and slender, and his appearance suggests that of a university professor.

 

In talking with the correspondent the Sultan condemned the unwisdom and lack of foresight which brought Turkey into the war and led her to the calamity which had befallen her. He declared that if he had been Sultan this would never have happened.

 

The ruler expressed great sorrow at the treatment of the Armenians by "certain political committees of Turkey," and added:

 

"Such misdeeds and the mutual slaughter of sons of the same fatherland have broken my heart. I ordered an inquiry as soon as I came to the throne so that the fomenters might be severely punished, but various factors prevented my orders from being promptly carried out. The matter is now being thoroughly investigated. Justice will soon be done and we will never have a repetition of those ugly events."

 

The Sultan asked the interviewer to publish the following from him:

 

"The great majority of the nation is entirely innocent of the misdeeds attributed to it. Only a limited number of persons are responsible."

 

New York Times

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TURK CHAMBER DISSOLVED

 

Court-Martial to Try Officials Responsible for Massacres

 

DECEMBER 27, 1918

 

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26. -- Dissolution of the Turkish Parliament was proclaimed yesterday by the Minister of the Interior, according to a dispatch from Constantinople to the Petit Parisian, reported to Washington today through official channels. It had been expected that the Cabinet would fall, the report said, but instead the House of Deputies was dissolved by proclamation.

 

The Minister read a long declaration in reply to an interpolation from the Deputies of the Opposition in which he outlined the history of the war and pointed out that Turkey was led into it through no necessity but to content the ambitions of some high officials.

 

It also was reported from Constantinople, the advises said, that the Ottoman Government had decided to create a general court-martial for the trial of all functionaries responsible for the recent massacres of Armenians, although most of them have fled the country with Enver ***** and Djemal.

 

The dispatch noted that Marshal Liman von Sanders, formerly head of the German military mission to Turkey and one of those primarily responsible for the massacres, was allowed to leave Constantinople freely.

 

New York Times

Edited May 7, 2008 by Ashot

[Ashot]

ARMENIANS ISSUE PROTEST

 

Do Not Want Authors of Massacres Tried by Turks

 

DECEMBER 30, 1918

 

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29.-- Armenians in America are much exercised over the report that the Ottoman Government proposes to form a court-martial for the trial of those responsible for the Armenian massacres, and through Miran Sevaly, Charman of the Armenian National Council of America, have protested to the State Department, against such a trial.

 

"The Armenians," said Mr. Sevasly today," cannot have any trust in justice being meted out by Turkish judges, who were themselves either actual participants in the Armenian massacres of were in sympathy with them. Any such trial should be presided over by allied and American representatives. Otherwise it would be a mockery, a denial, and a travesty of justice.

 

"Not one of the authors of the massacres of 1915 and 1916 has over been punished. On the contrary the promoters of these massacres have been honored and decorated. It appears quite obvious that this publication of a purpose to try the culprits is intended to deceive the Allies and deceive public opinion in America and all for the purpose of gaining easier and more advantageous terms in the peace conference."

 

New York Times

Edited May 7, 2008 by Ashot

[Ashot]

TELLS OF TURK ATROCITIES

 

French Writer Says 30,000 Armenians Were Slain at One Place

 

JANUARY 3, 1919

 

PARIS, Jan. 2, (Havas.) -- In giving details of the Armenian massacres in Turkey in the last five years, the Constantinople correspondent of the Petit Parisien says that at one time 100,000 Armenians were concentrated for alleged strategically reasons at Dorgor, Arabia. The Turkish authorities in Constantinople thought the number was too high and gave orders that 80,000 of the Armenians be put out of the way.

 

In the Mush Valley, the correspondent adds, the Kurds robbed 2,000 Armenian women. Later discovering, that the women had swallowed their jewels, the Kurds killed them in a horrible manner and burned the bodies. The next day "these monsters quietly sifted the ashes seeking the jewels."

 

The correspondent reports that in the same region 7,000 children between 3 and 10 years of age died of starvation and 100 women were buries alive in trenches which the Turks first forced them to dig.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

SAW TURKISH ATROCITIES

 

FEBRUARY 1, 1919

 

Special To The New York Times. CHICAGO, Jan, 31. -- Hidden in a Maine town is a young American woman who may be the only living eye-witness, except the Turks themselves, of the atrocities practiced upon the Armenians in the enforced deportations from Armenia, and who, by virtue of her knowledge, may some day find herself advanced from a waitress in a Portland restaurant to a position of international importance.

 

Abram I, Elkus, former American Ambassador to Turkey, told of her in Chicago for the first time today. He declined to make public her name or address, giving as his reason the statement:

 

"She has escaped a lot of dangers, but it is not too late for something to happen to her yet."

 

Her testimony would be mainly valuable, Mr. Elkus explained. as evidence that the Turks could control the outrages upon Armenians when they had sufficient reason.

 

"This young woman had married a barber in Portland," and had gone with him to his native country to claim a patrimony when the war broke out. She became an eye-witness to the Turkish atrocities, was taken prisoner by the Turks, confined in a prison in Aleppo, and subsequently released on the urgent denied of the American Ambassador and returned to the United States."

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

SAW ARMENIANS DROWNED IN GROUPS

 

FEBRUARY 3, 1919

 

Special To The New York Times. PORTLAND, Me., Feb. 1. -- The young American woman who Abram I. Elkus, former American Ambassador to turkey, says is the only living eyewitness to the atrocities of the Turks against the Armenians, excepting the Turks themselves, was found in this city today by newspaper men. She is Mrs. George Dar Arsanian of 27 Washington Avenue, and through the assistance of Mr. Elkus and ex-Ambassador James W. Gerard she escaped from Turkey and eventually returned to American.

 

Her first husband, Robert Agasarian, an Armenian by birth, but a naturalized American citizen and resident of this country for twenty years was murdered, she says, by the Turks along with hundreds of others, and her little son was drowned in a river near the town of Chmeshgasak, Turkey.

 

Before her first marriage Mrs. Dar Arsanian was Miss Ethel Marston, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Jackson Marston, and before going To Turkey was employed as a waitress in local hotels. She was married to her present husband, George Dar Arsanian, in May of last year.

 

"My husband," she said, "was born in Armenia, came to this country when a child, and had lived here eighteen years when we were married in 1909. He was a naturalized American citizen, and was a barber. In November, 1913, we went to Turkey to look after some property interests. Within one-week after our arrival he was conscripted into the Turkish army. He protested that he was an American citizen. We were a long way from an American Consulate, and the Turks refused to release him until we paid them $50 in English money. He was not molested again until the fall of 1914, when he was taken for the second time, and forced to buy his freedom.

 

"Things went well with us until early in June of 1915. The war had involved all the nations, and Turkey had cast her lot with the Germans. Then the Turks started devastating the smaller States, plundering and murdering. Turkish police came into our village of Chmeshgazak and rounded up all but seven men. These seven escaped into Russia.

 

"The men captured were marched off to the Turkish detachment in the village. My husband was taken along with the rest and later marched to another village. Finally my husband sent a note by a boy for me to come and see him. "You and the children will not be harmed, but I am doomed," he said. He realized that he would be murdered, and that money could not save him, as the Turks were determined to be rid of all able-bodied Armenians who refused to serve in the Turkish Army.

 

"I never saw him again. He was taken with other prisoners to Harpoot a few days later. His aunt afterward told me that she saw him bound, as was the custom, but she was not allowed to speak to him. He and the others were on their way to an execution of the grossest cruelty. We had seen these so many times there was no mistaking the inevitable result.

 

"I saw men taken from our village and marched in pairs to the banks of the river. They were bound up securely and ranged up in a long line along the bank of the river. They were then driven into the water at the point of bayonets and sabers and as they rose again to the surface of the water they were beaten senseless and then left to drown. My godfather and his brother were among them, their request that they might die together being granted even by the cruel Turks. Old men were killed in their beds in the village. They brought even the priest, and a soldiers slashed his head off, and it, was kicked around the streets by these brutes in, Turkish uniforms. I cannot begin to describe all the revolting scenes like this that I have witnessed.

 

"Kurds waylaid and robbed us, on our way to a neighboring village, where we women and our children were ordered rounded up. Mobs came and looted the village, taking everything of value they wanted. Soldiers mingled in this robber band.

 

"I was taken to the house of a Turk and placed under his protection. Some one asked who the American woman was and I came forward and was assured that no harm would befall me. There I was kept a prisoner, but it was better for me, as Armenian Women were massacred. My husband's cousin escaped by putting on a Turkish costume.

 

"An entire village population of women was marched around for a week lined up and driven into a river bed, but the water was not deep enough to drown them and the poor wretches, those not murdered, were allowed to return home and I know they later met the same death as their companions.

 

"Mothers were torn from their families and little children were seized and their brains dashed out by these soldier guards. But for the fact that I was recognized as an American, both my children and I would have met the same fate. We met a Turkish officer while on the way from Armenia to Constantinople in 1913. When my troubles had become most acute I chanced to meet him again, and he confirmed my story, so that I received the protection of the Turkish Mayor of the village. Eventually I was permitted to go to Harpoot, and there I remained with the American consul until I was taken ill and became a patient in a Red Cross hospital. There I remained for three months, having suffered complete exhaustion from the harrowing experiences of nearly three years in a country where a Christian's life was of no value in the eyes of Turk.

 

"While I was in the hospital the Turks on one night forced all the Armenian patients in the institution to leave the building, and would have slaughtered them by wholesale but for the interference of the American Consul.

 

"When I had regained my strength I was permitted to go to Constantinople and there met with another great misfortune when my little was drowned, July 10, 1916. I was in Constantinople until Dec. 23 of the same year. Here Ambassador Elkus heard my story in all its details, names, and dates. He has it all written out for whatever used it may serve. Mr. Elkus gave me every courtesy, and as a Christmas present he gave me my passports and I arrived in Berlin Christmas Eve. I made my way to Ambassador James W. Gerard's quarters, and he later provided safe passage for me to Copenhagen, where I boarded the steamer for New York, arriving home the early part of February, 1917."

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

TURKISH TRIALS BEGIN

 

FEBRUARY 12, 1919

 

PARIS, Feb. 11. -- The trial of those responsible for the Armenian massacres by the Turks has begun in Constantinople. The leader of the Turkish officials being tried at present is Keimal Bey, Governor of Diarbekir.

 

The prosecutor in opening the trial, said it was necessary to punish the authors of the massacres which had filled the whole world with a feeling of horror.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

'RAVISHED ARMENIA' IN FILM

 

FEBRUARY 15, 1919

 

Many persons prominent in society attended a private showing of "Ravished Armenia," the official photo-drama of the National Motion Picture Committee of the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, held yesterday in the east ballroom of the Hotel Commodore. The regular showing starts tomorrow afternoon at the Hotel Plaza and will be continued for ten days.

 

The first half of the picture consists of four reels of scenes showing Armenia as it was before Turkish and German devastation, and led up to the deportation of priests and thousands of families into the desert. One of the concluding scenes showed young Armenian women flogged for their refusal to enter Turkish harems and depicted the Turkish slave markets.

 

Auror Mardiganian, whose experiences in Armenia furnished the story on which the picture was founded, and who was injured in an accident that occurred during the making of the picture, was carried into the ballroom on a chair.

 

Mrs. Oliver Harriman, Charman of the National Motion Picture Committee, delivered an address in which she said that Miss Mardiganian had come to this country because she was a typical case selected form among her people as one of many victims of the terrible desolation wrought in Armenia By the Turk. The young woman, said Mrs. Harriman, established direct contact between a stricken people and a generous human America.

 

"The whole purpose of the picture is to acquaint America with ravished Armenia," said Mrs. Harriman," to visualize conditions so that there will be no misunderstanding in the mind of any one about the terrible things which have transpired. It was deemed essential that the leaders, social and intellectual, should first learn the story, but later the general public shall be informed. It is proposed that before this campaign of information is complete, as many adults as possible shall know the story of Armenia, and the screen was selected as the medium because it reached the millions, where the printed word reaches the thousands."

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

SHOW "RAVISHED ARMENIA"

 

FEBRUARY 17, 1919

 

The first public presentation of "Ravished Armenia," the official motion picture of the Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, will take place at 3 o'clock this afternoon at the Hotel Plaza. Brig. Gen. William H. Creassy will talk during the intermission and will introduce to the audience little Aurora Mardiganian, on whose life's story the scenario of the picture is based.

 

General Cressy witnessed the frightful results of some of the Turkish atrocities committed on the Armenians. At a meeting held yesterday the women forming the committee in charge of arrangements at the Plaza showing decided not to eliminate any of the scenes shown in the pre-view presentation last Friday. Announcement to this effect was made by Mrs. Oliver Harriman and Mrs. George W. Vanderbilt.

 

At that time 900 prominent men and women who were invited to view the picture discussed it, and it appeared to be the consensus of opinion that, although some of the scenes are more harrowing than ever before shown in a moving picture, they were necessary to awaken people to a full realization of the conditions existing in Armenia. Tickets are $10 each.

 

New York Times

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A Scapegoat Sought in Turkey

 

FEBRUARY 19, 1919

 

It is a fact both curious and interesting that in Constantinople, first of all places, high officials have been brought to trial on charges of having committed or permitted atrocities in the course of carrying on war. Already the prosecution has begun of KAIMAL BEY, who was Governor of Diarbekir, and the accusation against him is that he is responsible for a wholesale massacre of Armenians in the territory he ruled. He deserves punishment, according to a brief report of the prosecutor's opening speech, because this and other massacres of the same kind "filled the whole world with horror."

 

The characterization is true, but other Turkish Governors have done the same thing so many times, and so often produced the same emotion, without exciting any comment except praise in Turkish official or judicial circles, that KAIMAL BEY has some right to regard himself as ill-used in being brought to book for following what after all was a well-established custom.

 

He is a victim of what for Turkey is a new form of morality, or rather, perhaps, of a new respect for foreign opinion . His conviction will presumably be easy. If it is really intended, and intended it may be as a convenient way of concentrating responsibility on a dead man. That has been done before -- in the case of poor Captain Kidd, to mention only one instance nearer home than Turkey.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

ENVER'S 100,000

 

MARCH 11, 1919

 

Et d'un! as Monte Cristo used to say. RESHID BEY, sometime Governor of Diarbekir, one of the guiltiest planers, and executors of the Armenian butcheries, killed himself the other day when caught by the police. He seems to have been intending to take refuge in Anatolia, where he might have made trouble. The arrest of drivers and unary grandees of the Committee of Union and Progress spoiled his plans, and the police were too hot on his track. If he dies unwipped of justice, yet "suicide is confession."

 

Perhaps the strangest story in all the motley multifarious history of the Committee attributes to it the dispatch of missionaries to the Russian Bolsheviki. Turkish nationalism has vanished; but the far-scattered survivors of the Committee may well have seen that their sole, if desperate, chance lay or lies in the spread of Bolshevism to the west. TO the Turks themselves the economic, social, and political doctrines and practice of Bolshevism would be about as intelligible and interesting as the nebular hypothesis. In so far, however, as it is mere looting and murder, it has been practiced by the Turks in Asia and Europe for hundreds of years. The assassins of Armenians, Greeks, Arabs, Syrians, understand that part of the Bolshevist gospel. The Kurds are illustrious professors of it.

 

The Committee of Union and Progress, or its thriftiest members now in exile, are supposed to have plenty of money in Swiss, German, Austrian, Dutch banks. It will require a credulity almost unimaginable to believe that these chevaliers of political and financial industry will be inclined to waste any of the proceeds of their virtue on the dissemination of Bolshevism. In Constantinople an unexpected but lovely fruit of the Bolshevist missionary work carried on by the Committee or its colporteurs is the belief, according to a London Correspondent, that ENVER ***** "will shortly return from Russia with an army of 100,000 desperate characters who will restore Committee rule." Evidently ENVER is rapidly becoming a legendary character. It is only just to his merits to say that, compared with his gentle character and achievements, the 100,000 desperadoes, if he could raise them, would be like an infant school headed by one of those eminent pirates, Flint or Blackbeard.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

WANTS AN ARMENIAN INQUIRY

 

Tewfik ***** Asserts That Atrocities Were Not Confined to Turks

 

MARCH 13, 1919

 

Special Cable to New York Times.

 

ROME, March 10. -- Tewfik *****, until recently Grand Vizier of Turkey, has given an interview to the Giornale d' Italia, in which he says:

 

"I have asked for the constitution of an international commission to ascertain the facts about the Armenian massacre. In this way the Armenian massacre. In this way Europe will begin to know the truth. We not only do not deny the painful fact of the occurrences in Armenia, but deplore them deeply. We are now trying those responsible for them. At the same time, I wish that the facts be known in their true light."

 

Tewfik says that ever since 1876 Russia has done her utmost to bread ill-feeling between the Armenians and their Mussulman compatriots. This, he says, is a historical fact, as demonstrated by the publication of the secret Russian archives by the revolutionists in Petrograd. He asserts that Armenian committees organized a general uprising, instigated by Russian agents, the moment the war broke out.

 

"The Ottoman army," says Tewfik, "attacked in front by the armies of the czar, saw itself also attacked in the rear by the Armenian bands. Consequently, the Supreme Command ordered the deportations. Crimes were here committed by both sides. The Mussulman criminals have been arrested and will be punished as public opinion in Turkey demands, with the extreme rigor of the law. I demand, however, that the heads of the Armenian bands, who were guilty of all kinds of crimes and destruction among the Mussulman population of a million souls, shall also be judged and punished. Justice must make no difference between Christians and Mussulmans. It must be the same for all."

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

Turks Hang Kemal Bey For Armenian Massacres

 

MONDAY, APRIL 14, 1919

 

CONSTANTINOPLE, April 12. -- Kemal Bey, Governor of Diarbekir, has been publicly hanged in Bayazid Square in Stamboul, in the presence of the Military Governor of Constantinople and other high officials. Kemal Bey was sentenced to death as one of those responsible for the Armenian deportations and massacres in the Yozghad district.

 

The former commander of the gendarmerie in Yozghad was sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment in the fortress.

 

These sentences were confirmed by an imperial irade.

 

The trial of those responsible for the Armenian massacres by the Turks began early in Fe3bruary at Constantinople. The prosecutor declared that it was necessary to punish the authors of the massacres, which had filled the whole world with a feeling of horror.

 

Kemal Bey was former Turkish Minister of Food.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

STILL MURDER ARMENIANS

 

Armistice Makes No Change in Turk Methods, Says Finley

 

APRIL 19, 1919

 

Withdrawal of the American Red Cross from relief work in Aleppo, Aintab Marash, and other countries north of Jerusalem in Asia Minor and its administration by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief was announced today by John H. Finley, Commissioner for the Red Cross for Palestine, who has just returned from a trip to the Near East. Five hundred tons of cloth and general supplies, valued at $366,706, which have been in warehouse here awaiting shipment, will be turned over to the American committee by the Red Cross together with considerable equipment now in Syria.

 

Describing conditions in the Near East, Mr. Finley said: "From the one town of Aintab 30,000 Armenians were driven into the desert to die, and now there are, so far as we can learn, only 4,000 or 5,000 alive. If this proportion holds true throughout, then nearly 650,000 men, women, and children perished in that desert.

 

"Throughout Asia Minor, beyond the points to which the British and French troops have advanced, the Armenians are still being persecuted by the Turks. The fact that the armistice has been signed makes no difference. In one way or another, by individuals and by groups, Armenians are being killed. I know of one case where 100 Armenians were slaughtered, and another where forty were shot down -- all of this since the armistice was signed."

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

EXECUTION OF KEMAL BEY

 

APRIL 20, 1919

 

Special Cable to New York Times.

The news from Constantinople this morning about the hanging of Kemal Bey is not entirely displeasing.

 

Kemal Bey, Governor of Diarbekir, was one of the most vicious and cruel murderers of Armenian women and children, but his part was that of an executioner.

 

The originators of the plan to exterminate the Armenians were primarily Enver, Tallat, and Djemal.

 

We trust this time no Turkish trickery of any kind will affect the claims of justice. The conscience of mankind will not be appeased until these three bloodthirsty friends of the Young Turks, who cause the atrocious massacre of over 1,000,000 Armenians, are hanged together in Bayazid Square in Stamboul.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

ARMENIAN GIRLS TELL OF MASSACRES

 

JUNE 1, 1919

 

Personal narratives told by Christian women and girls of Armenia, who were deported from their homes to virtual captivity or slavery in the camps of the Turks, Circassians and Arabs, or were held captives in Turkish harems in Asia Minor, have been received by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief. A statement issued by the Committee says that the women whose stories are now made p[public, were released by their masters or rescued by allied troops.

 

"After the signing of the armistice," says the Committee's statement, "many of the Turks, believing that by so doing they could escape punishment, turned the women -- many of them with babies -- into the streets, Cable dispatches to the Committee have reported that numbers of these women were wandering about the country, crazed by starvation and exposure. As fast as possible they are being gathered up by the Committee's relief workers and placed in homes established for their care. A late telegram said that fifteen such homes have been established in Asia Minor."

 

Stories of these Armenians victims of Turkish atrocity were obtained by Dr. Loyal L. Wirt, member of an expedition sent to Turkey by the Committee. They were taken down as related by Dr. W. A. Kennedy, Field director of the Lord Mayor's Relief Fund of London Dr. Kennedy assured Dr. Wirt that he personally reread the affidavits to the narrators and they signed them in this presence.

 

The Committee says that, taken together, these fails constitute one of the tragic chapters of the war. They were not isolated cases, but in some instances the experiences of as many as 5,000 refugees, who had been driven from their homes and forced on journeys of hundreds of miles from fertile Armenia into the borders of the Syrian desert. One the way, hundreds at a time were often separated and massacred.

 

Hundreds of girls were torn from the other members of their families and taken, none knows where, by the Turks. Kurds or Circassians. Scores were compelled to live in captivity naked for months and suffering from sun blisters and beatings.

 

Armenian girls who escaped death, the Committee declares, were bartered like cattle after their fathers or relatives had vainly paid ransom for them. Some saw their fathers or friends murdered. In the tents of the Arabs in the Syrian desert, many were bound and forcibly tattooed on the forehead, lips and chin, to mark them as Moslem women.

 

Escaped Girls Tell of Massacres.

 

Generally, the stories indicate that the captives were moved sometimes in large groups from Armenian southward toward the desert of Syria. The Stories told by at least three Armenian Christian girls deal with the movement of one of these great groups, consisting of 2,000 families or 5,000 persons.

 

One story of this journey into the desert was told by Takouhi Guezekuchukian, a girl of 18 years, who, with her father, mother, four sisters and a brother was deported from Hadjin, in Adana province, in May, 1915. They were moved southward to Aleppo, and thence further on toward the Syrian desert, until the party numbered about 2,000 families. At Sivaria, she said, they were told that on payment of 5,000 Turkish liras they would be allowed to return.

 

"The refugees said they could not give this amount," the Armenian girl told Dr. Kennedy. "Then the Circassians of the tribe of Chechens who had control of them separated out 1,100 of the poorer families and took them away. The same day some of these people returned and said they had escaped, and that four hours after they left the Chechens had begun to kill members of their party with iron-studded clubs. The remaining families raised $1,500 and sent a deputation of fifty-two men with it to buy their security. The amount was refused and the men were beaten and sent back.

 

"They raised an additional 550 liras and took Turkish pounds in gold to the Circassian Bey, who took the money and tried to force them to sign a paper saying the Armenians had paid no money to them. The deputation refused to do this and the fifty-two men were bound and taken away."

 

A few days later, according to the furls story, the remaining families were deported from Sivaria and after eight days arrived at Shedadieh, on the River Habour, east of Deir-Es Zor.

 

"On the way," the girl's story went on, "150 men were separated and taken away and soon after the Circassians returned and divided among themselves some of the clothing which she recognized as belonging to some of the men which they had taken away. The next day 800 more men were taken away and killed."

 

As the refugees resumed their journey on the following morning she saw the bodies of some of the men she knew. They had been clubbed to death.

 

"A few days after this," reads the narrative, "they were told that for safety each family of women and children was to go to the house of an Arab. The Arabs robbed them and stripped them of their clothing and sent them back to the Circassians, who commenced at once to kill them with knives, attacking women and children, about 150 in all. Twenty-two boys and eleven girls were saved and taken to the tents of the sister to the village of Gerbelleh, where she was beaten because she did not give them gold that they believed she had."

 

After having been kept awhile by a Circassian, she and her sister were sent to another Circassian in Shegrush. She is now in the orphanage at Aleppo and her sister is in an Armenian house in Nusebin.

 

Victim from American Girls' School. Other incident evidently dealing with this terrible journey of the Armenians to shedadieh were related to Dr. Kennedy by Araxa Barutjian, a girl of 17 years, who was a pupil in the American girls' school at Ada Bazaar, in the western portion of Asia Minor, near Constantinople. She spoke English.

 

"At Shedadieh," the narrative says, "she saw a party of 300 men, women, and children all naked. It was in July and their backs had been blistered by the sun, and many of them had bruises all over their limbs and bodies, and sores caused by the beatings they had received. During the heat of the day they would be covered in the water, as the pain in the sun was unbearable.

 

"Before she arrived at Shedadieh two of her brothers died at Bab, and her father at another place. As the Arabs were taking only unmarried girls from among the refugees her mother told them she was married. At Shedadieh her mother was sold to one Arab and she to another, and the girl lived in his house for a year.

 

"She ran away and an Arab girl took her into a tent, where she stayed for eighteen months, when she again ran away and finally reached Nusebin."

 

This journey from Ada Bazaar across Asia Minor to Deir-Es-Zor occupied a year and a half, according to the story told by another girl of 17 years, Arpeneh Der Harutunian, doughtier of a teacher in a high school at Bardizag, a bright intelligent girl, whose family was known to Dr. Kennedy. Reporting her story of the journey, Dr. Kennedy wrote:

 

"Her grandfather was killed before her eyes and she saw between 200 and 300 men shot and cut down by the sword. These men were bound in groups of ten, arms to arm. She saw at the same place women and children killed with iron-studded clubs or knives. The bodies were afterward soaked with paraffin and set on fire. This was done by Chechen Circassians on the side of a hill near Shedadieh.

 

"About 100 young Armenian men who dressed as girls were discovered and put to death by the Chechens. One of these was flayed alive and thrown into the River Habour.

 

After this the Circassians would not allow them to get food and two weeks later they were sent to Sivaria. Mariam Gumushjian bribed the Chechens not to send them further into the desert Arpeneh was taken to the tent of an Arab and kept for eight months, when she escaped with the assistance of her younger brother. During her stay Arpeneh moved from place to place as the Arabs changed the tents for better pasturage for their camels. She was firmly bound and held to the ground by Turkish soldiers while her face was being tattooed. The family was united afterward, with the exception of the father, who disappeared at Deir-Es-Zor."

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

REPORTS ASIA MINOR LOOKING TO AMERICA

 

JUNE 7, 1919

 

ROME, June 4, (Associated Press) -- The people of Armenia, Syria, and Turkey are most eager that the United States shall have the League of Nations mandate for their countries, according to Bishop H. H. Fout of Indianapolis, the head of one section of the American Commission for Relief in the Near East. The Bishop, who belongs to the United Brethren, arrived in Rome today on his way to the United States, accompanied by seventeen other members of his commission.

 

"These people," he added, "look to the United States in their present appalling condition. They cry out for the United States. America in their first choice, with Great Britain second.

 

"Turkey by her inhuman treatment, in my opinion, has list the right to be entrusted with authority to rule. From various estimates I have reached the conclusion that out of the Armenian nation of 3,000,000 at the outbreak of the war, 1,000,000 were massacred. The condition of the remainder is most appalling.

 

"There is plenty of mute evidence in the hundreds of thousands of skeletons scattered throughout the Turkish Empire that the Turks sought to exterminate the Armenians by systematic massacre. The Armenians were driven like herded cattle from one locality to another until they were exhausted by tortures and torments of unbelievable character. In addition the Turks sought to wipe out the clergy of Armenia. Only eight out of forty-four Bishops survive, while only 10 per cent. of the clergy is living today."

 

The Rev. Paul F. B. Chappell of Nashville, Tenn., told the correspondent of what he had seen in traveling from Port Said to Aleppo.

 

"Poverty is most profound, although the prospects for the next harvest are good," he said. "Even at the present time the people fall dead in the streets from the effects of Turkish treatment. The Turks could not invade Syria as they invaded Armenia, but they were successful in preventing food from going to Syria. Starvation is wide-spread throughout the region.

 

"Colonel Hawker, the British commander at Beirut, told me he thought it would be found that only 30 per cent. of the Armenians were living when final accounts were taken. He said the Armenians were hounded and driven over an area 1,200 square miles in extent. They were harassed by armed and mounted Turks who worked in relays.

 

"The Turkish plan was to take all the able bodied men from the community and tie them up. Then they would torture them by cutting their flesh and burning the wounds. Finally, they would cut off their heads in the presence of the wives and children of the victims. The old men, women, and children were herded together and driven from place to place."

 

A large number of photographs taken in Armenia, showing piles of skulls and skeletons and pictures of deformed children and tortured women were shown the correspondent by the Rev. Samuel T. Bartlett of Toronto, a member of the committee who penetrated into Eastern Turkey.

 

"At Ourfa," Mr. Bartlett said, "I saw a deep well filled with skulls of dead Armenians. There must have been several thousand of them. At Malatee there is a pit containing thousands of skeletons. A little girl at Sivas told us the Turks had taken her father and other men, tied and tortured them and then killed them.

 

"The Turks also took all the babies in the town and threw them into the river until it overflowed its banks. They let out the priests, put red-hot iron shoes on their feet, tied them to wagons and forced them to walk long distances. The finger and toe nails of the priests were pulled out, and the priests finally were compelled to say the rites over the dead, while the Turks looked on and laughed and mocked. At other places they pulled out the beards of the priest and tortured them until they fell dead from exhaustion. It was a tale of bloody butchery that we heard."

 

Mr. Bartlett said that the committee traveled across Central Asia Minor from Aleppo to Samsun to Constantinople they were the guests of Rear Admiral Mark L. Bristol, the American commander in Turkish waters, en the Destroyer 149.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

TURKEY CONDEMNS ITS WAR LEADERS

 

JULY 13, 1919

 

CONSTANTINOPLE, July 11. -- Enver *****, Talaat Bey, and Djemal ***** the leaders of the Turkish Government during the war, were condemned to death today by a Turkish court-martial investigating the conduct of the Turkish Government during the war period.

 

Enver and his two leading associates in the Young Turk Government fled from Turkey several months ago, and their whereabouts is uncertain.

 

Djavid Bey, former Minister of Finance, and Alusa Mussa Kiazim, former Sheik-ul-Islam, were sentenced to fifteen years at hard labor.

 

The court-martial acquitted Rifaat Bey, former President of the Senate, and Hachim Bey, former Minister of Post and Telegraph.

 

Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador at Constantinople, and Sir Lois Mallet, the British Ambassador at the same place, have left no doubt in their dispatches, books, articles, and interviews of the guilt of the Young Turk leaders which has just been proclaimed with sentences pronounced by a Turkish court-martial ordered by the new Grand Vizier Damad Ferid ***** and convened by Ahmed Abouk *****, the Minister of War.

 

It is the climax of a long series of prosecutions undertaken by the officials of the new regime to velar the skirts of the Turkish people from blame for joining in the war and for the Armenian, Greek, and Syrian atrocities and deportations. It reached its practical climax on April 12, when Kemal Bey, former Minister of Food and Governor of Diarbekir, was actually executed in Bayazid Square, Stamboul.

 

For, in the present instance, the sentences will not be carried out so summarily. Enver, Talaat, and Djemal fled to Germany a few days before the Sultan, Mohammed VI, managed to send his personal envoys in the last days of October, to the British Vice Admiral Calthrop, announcing the surrender of Turkey. Then in March Djavid Bey also fled when it became obvious that his "doctoring" of the Treasury books and his scheme for financial reforms had not impressed the Inter-Allied Commission.

 

For most of the time during the war Talaat Bey was Grand Vizier and Minister of interior, and Enver was Minister of War, while Djemal was the Military Governor of Syria, which position he took after, as Minister of Marine, placing the fleet under a German Admiral.

 

Enver was an enthusiastic pro-German, a pupil of General von der Goitz, Whose drilling of the Turkish Army from 1910 till 1912 did not prevent it from being defeated in the latter year by the Serbs, Greeks, and Bulgars. In a report made to the British Foreign Office, on Nov. 20, 1914, Sir Louis Mallet declared that the rise of Enver and the dominance of Germany had dated from the last week in July. In the heat of the Callipoll campaign a year later, Enver, in an interview, unblushingly declared that Turkey would be rescued in the following Autumn by Germany operating from the north -- an eventuality which actually took place when Bulgaria joined the Central Empires. In interviews with the Ambassador mentioned not only Enver, but Talaat and Djemal have admitted the necessity for the Armenian massacres on the frowned that these people were troublesome.

 

As Military Governor of Syria, Djemal was instrumental in carrying out the massacres against the Beirut Reform League, by first pretending to be in sympathy with their program an then by betraying them when he had secured the list of members. In Armenia, as the special agent of Talaat, he instigated the atrocities of the Kurds against the population.

 

Enver after Tewfik became Minister of Finance, on March 17, Djavid Bey still hung round the Treasury. He showed by his books that he had really tricked Germany and that if the allied and associated powers would only lend Turkey $500,000,000 gold he would give them German paper worth $850,000,000, which, as the victors, they would have no trouble in collecting with a profit of $350,000,000. When they rejected his offer and experts began to audit his books he disappeared. According to the Ambassadors, Djavid was not a pronounced Germanophile, although a very bad financier.

 

Mussa Kiazim, who like Djavid, receives a sentence of fifteen years, is a Kurd from the Kharput District, and a protégé of Enver. He became Sheik-ul-Islam after the mysterious disappearance of Hairi Bey, who held that office of ecclesiastical head of State when the war began. As early as 1913 Mussa Kiazim, as an assistant to the Sheik, was known for his German sympathies, which conflicted with the Anglophilia of Hairi.

 

Long before the court acquitted Rifaat Bey and Hachim Bey these men were merely considered as tools in the hands of the more powerful leaders of the Young Turks -- the so-called Committee of Union and Progress.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

Turks to Ask Allies to Let Them Extradite Enver *****

 

SUNDAY, JULY 20, 1919

 

PARIS, July 15. -- The newspapers of Constantinople assert that the Turkish Government has decided to ask the Entente to permit the extradition of Tallat Bet, Enver ***** and Djemal Bey, leaders in the Turkish Government during the War.

 

According to a dispatch under date of Saturday received by the Havas Agency, Talaat Bey, Enver ***** and Djemal Bey were condemned to death of July 11, in default of their appearance, by Turkish court-martial which has been investigating the conduct of the Turkish Government during the period of the War. The three men are now in Germany.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

TELLS OF ARMENIAN'S WOES

Dr. Leinbech Says 50,000 Women are Still Captives of Turks

 

SUNDAY, JULY 20, 1919

 

Special Cable to The New York Times. PHILADELPHIA, July 19. -- Fifty thousand Armenian women and girls are held captive by the Turk in Syria and Mesopotamia alone. More than 250,000 Armenian children are orphaned as a result of deportations and massacres conducted by the Turkish Government during the war.

 

These two statements will form part of an amazing report of conditions in the Near East by a commission of editors and religious leaders who have just returned to this country after a four months tour of the Holy Land, Syria, Cilicia, Mesopotamia, Armenian, and other portions of the old Turkish Empire.

 

Dr. Paul S. Leinbach, Editor of The Reformed Church Messenger, the official organ of The Reformed Church in the United States, was one of the Commission of eighteen men who was chosen by the American Committee for Relief in the Near East to investigate conditions.

 

On his return today, Dr. Leinbach, in making known some of the findings of the commission, revealed a remarkable story of Turkish Outrages that are still being perpetrated. A keen observer of conditions, Dr. Leinbach have his awaiting for an opportunity further to oppress the peoples under the Turkish Yoke.

 

"One outstanding fact in the East," he continued, "is that the Turk has never been soundly punished for all of his crimes. Despite repeated massacres jealousies of the great Powers of Europe have always prevented just punishment of the Ottoman Empire.

 

"Today, as we have observed all indications, the Turk is expecting that by book of crook he will escape. There is absolutely no safety. I fear, for the Armenians of the other peoples dominated by the Turk. There is an intense hatred of the Armenian due in part to the fear that the Armenians will rise in rebellion against the Turkish Government, but even more than because the Armenian surpasses the Turks in ability and wealth."

 

Dr. Leinbach says that Armenia is anxious to have this country accept the mandatory for that country.

 

"It is the conviction of all the members of the commission," he says, "that investigated the stricken though necessary to sustain the lives of the suffering thousands, will be only temporary expedients unless a just government is established to prevent repetition of these outrages against mankind."

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

ARMENIAN TELLS OF DEATH PILGRIMAGE

 

JULY 27, 1919

 

A tale of cruelty by the Turks to Armenians is told in a letter just received by a New York woman from her brother, who, with his family, was part of the great host that was driven from their homes. The refugee had his two children torn from him, and he saw his wife sold into slavery. He saw his countryman beaten or stabbed to death and hundreds left to die from hunger and sickness as they were being driven from place to place.

 

The letter was sent to THE TIMES by the sister, who has received word that her brother is back in his native town after five years of suffering and wandering.

 

"It was on a Tuesday morning in August, 1914. " the letter says, "when our priest was called by the Turkish Government and was told that all Armenians Oflon-Kara-Hissan should get ready within forty-eight hours to be deported.

 

"Long before the time given in which we were to make our preparations the Turkish Gendarmes came. With whips, and by beating, they compelled up to leave everything and go to the railroad station. Here they gave us tickets to Konia only.

 

"We reached Konia in the night. A few days later Brother Hagop, with his family, were sent here. Upon seeing each other we resolved not to part until the end. But here, too, the head police soon began to put into practice the cruel and vicious plans of Valy ***** of the said Province and ordered the refugees, numbering about 5,090 to 6,000 families deported.

 

Families Tern Apart.

 

"Those who were in their homes were made to come out; others who were caught in the market place were killed or imprisoned. Women were separated from their husbands, children from their mothers. We, too, were thus broken up, and I lost trace of the children and my wife; also of my brother and his family.

 

"We were set on the road again. This time the caravan was headed for Tarsus. Fortunately, the children and my wife happened to be in the same caravan that I was in and we once more were together. While we were marching the Turkish soldiers with drawn swords suddenly made their way through the crowd, and, like beasts let loose in a flock of sheep, killed and wounded many. The rest still dragged on under the influence of the bloody swords until Ras-ul-Ain. Desert was reached. This place was especially noted for the carrying o of their butchery, for all that were sent to these parts were sent there to die.

 

"In accordance with the instructions of the Government, upon reaching Ras-ul-Ain an order was issued by the General asking for about 100 recently arrived refugees to be sent to Der-el-Zor to help build up that place. We were to be in the chosen lot and were sent to that place. Here we were asked to build houses with our own money. We were glad to do this and set to work immediately.

 

"After five of six months' the fear of deportation began to startle us again. Those who were out in the desert nearby were being sent to interior parts and put to death. Those here were dying by the hundreds daily of hunger and others of sickness. As the number of our caravan decreased the Government began to impose heavy tasks upon the living. Women were sent to fetch wood from distant places for fuel to cook food for the soldiers, While the men loaded and unloaded cargo from the trains.

 

Women and Girls Sold.

 

"Those who slowed up under their heavy loads were beaten to death by the gendarmes, who walked behind them and applied the whip freely to right and left.

 

"One morning, when we get up, we saw were surrounded by, Tchetchens, who were hired by the Porte and instructed to kill the Armenians, to carry off their women and children, to sell them as slaves, and to do all sorts of vicious deeds. We were ordered out of our houses and again were put on the road.

 

"Often on the way we pleaded for mercy. The Tchetchens refused to listen and said they must carry out the orders of the Government, and that they were to be paid for so doing. They told us they would be killing, but would leave that to the Arabs. So we found ourselves once more out on the desert, making our way through the hot sands of Arabia, bare-headed and bare-footed. Agavani, who is now about 16, and Vehanoosh, about 14, could not stand the heat. They fainted and fell in my arms. Even the grown-ups could not stand these long marches.

 

"Those who fell behind instantly were killed by the Arabs, who carried stone-headed clubs and hit the refugees on the head as they passed by on their horses. All that day we marched. That night the Tchetchens made us take off all our clothing, leaving nothing to us, not even our underwear. Then they picked out some of the men and shot them before us. They came again, and this time they chose some of the women and girls and sold them among themselves.

 

The second day my children were taken away and their mother sold before my own eyes. After their work was completed they again pushed us onward. Having marched for twelve days under the hot, blazing sun, the attacks were renewed. The Turks , having consulted with the Kurd, leaders regarding the extermination of all that was left of our company, came upon us like a herd of animals with daggers in their hands. They ruthlessly cut many into pieces. Many from our town were killed.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

Stories of Liberated Armenians

 

July,1919

 

by MAJOR STEPHEN TROWBRIDGE, ALEPPO, SYRIA

Member of the American Red Cross Commission to Palestine

 

A BIG British transport steamed slowly through the Suez Canal, approaching Port Said. The decks were covered with men in khaki returning from Mesopotamia and along the rails of the lower decks were crowded 586 Armenian refugees from Baghdad. Scarcely a man was to be seen among them and very few middle aged or old women. The majority were young women and children. Here was one of the waves of the war, started upon its course by the tempest of cruelty which raged in Asia Minor, Armenia, Kurdistan and Northern Mesopotamia. The Turkish Government, with calculating malice and brutal effectiveness, had driven southward and eastward into exile hundreds of thousands of the Armenian race. The British forces entering Baghdad and Ramadieh found many fragments of these Armenian people shut up in Arab huts and tents and city houses. Orders were issued to liberate every refugee and gather all in Baghdad. The widows and orphans were placed under the care of Dr. Lavy, American Consul and representative of the American committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief. In seven or eight months thousands of the deportees were set free from their humiliating bondage in the plains of Nineveh and Babylon and many found employment in the market of Baghdad or in the camps about the city. "But the girls and young women had been through such an odyssey of suffering, and so many of the little children were orphans, without even a relative to volunteer to care for them, that the British authorities decided to send these 586 down the Tigris and around Arabia to the refugee camp on the sands at Port Said - a name meaning "the Blessed Haven." Scarcely any of these Armenians wish to emigrate to North or South America. From every corner of the provinces of Turkey have these people come and they are intent upon returning to their home towns. This is desire, although they know that their houses have been looted and occupied by the Turks or have been burned to ashes. They look to the British to protect them and have strangely bright and persistent hopes that they will find at least some of their at least some of their men folk men still in the land of the living.

 

The tragic narratives of these people show what a shame it would be if America and the Allies should compromise with the Turkish Government or deal leniently in the final terms. It is not a question of restricting the Turks. They should not be allowed to maintain any fraction of power, for they do not govern and do not know what government is. The Turks, the Circassians and the Kurds wreck and ruin everything they touch. They are never constructive, but only destructive and their alliance with Germany has made them worse than before. The Arabs, too, have used the dreadful opportunity to violate and steal. Let the Armenian women and girls give their own statements. And I who have seen their scars and have watched their faces and their eyes as they speak, can vouch for the veracity of the witness they bear.

 

Aghavni came from Solos in the province of Brousa. Aghavni means "Dove" in Armenian. Solos was an entirely Armenian village of more than eight hundred families.

 

"All of us were driven out in the deportations of the summer of 1915. My husband was drafted and sent to the Dardanelles. Whether he was killed or not I do not know. I have lost him completely. Chazar was his name and he was a stonemason by trade. I was still counted a bride though we had been married three years. My little boy could not stand the marching in the summer heat and he died on the road from sunstroke. My father, mother and sister were ordered to stay for a time in Konia. I was told to move on. Later I heard that my father had died at Masken near Aleppo. My older brother, twenty-two tears of age, died of hunger, and my little brother, a lad of ten, perished from the cold in December in the foothills of the Taurus. My third brother, age eighteen, was seized by the Circassians at Dier Zoar on the Euphrates and cut to pieces. I was made a servant in an Arab hut. From that house I was roughly turned out and taken by another Arab to Ramadieh, far to the southeast. When the British advanced from the direction of Baghdad the Arab locked me up, but I knocked and called and at last they heard me." "What is your idea of the British" I asked.

 

"God bless them one and all. They saved our lives, and had they come sooner they would have saved thousands more. I can never express to you how very kind they were. They took us to a large comfortable house in Baghdad where each of us was given a bed. The American Consul, Dr. Lavy, took care of us."

 

"What are the scars on your forehead, your cheeks and your chin?"

 

"The Arabs had tattooed me with indigo, after the manner of Mohammedan women and when I was set free I felt the shame of these marks so keenly that I persuaded a British doctor to cauterize each spot. I would rather be disfigured than branded as I was before."

 

The story of Kronik, the wife of Toros Karasarkisian of Bilejik near Brousa is as follows:

 

"My husband was a carpenter and was sent by the army to work at Kerkuk, near Baghdad. Then our family made the long journey and joined him. My brother-in-law, who was a sergeant in the Kerkuk garrison, was taken to Bitlis. One night he was strangled, then slashed to death, as I know from eye-witnesses who escaped. A telegram was sent to his wife to say that he died in hospital." (Note the craft of sending this telegram to avoid any punishment after the war, if the British should make an enquiry.) "My little girl Anna was scarcely two when the Turkish mounted police came and tied my husband hand and foot and dragged him off to Mosul. They charged him with being a spy. This was utterly false. He always stuck to his trade and never mixed in political affairs. I have never since heard a word from him.

 

"Beautiful young girls, even some five and six years old, were violated by the Turks, especially the Army officers, and were then passed on to the Arabs, Circassians and Kurds. They dragged the girls by the hair and arms. Every one over eight was violated and they were left to wend their way into the towns to beg for bread. We were tattooed by force, our arms and feet being firmly bound beforehand."

 

"The English sought out every house in Baghdad and freed the Women and children. They opened an orphanage and Consul Lavy, who was put in charge, cared for us with gifts from America."

 

Santoukht of Sivas is a most attractive girl, fourteen years of age, with an inexpressible sadness in her face. Her father died of typhus before the deportation. Her brother, twenty-five years of age, was drafted into the Turkish army and has not been seen since. Santoukht and her mother were ordered to take the road to Aleppo. They were driven purposely by waterless routes from Aleppo to Deir Zoar and the mounted police kept them away from the wells so that they were obliged to drink foul water. Her mother became exhausted and was just able to drag herself along. After two days without water they came to a filthy greenish pool, into which a corpse and a camel had been thrown the day before. The mother was so weak and so parched that she bowed herself down and drank of this awful water and soon afterward died in great pain.

 

Santoukht had a sister with two babies, and on the way to Aleppo the soldiers separated the sisters saying, "Let whoever will have these two." At Kerkuk (near Baghdad) a Turk sent his wife to the bath one day and dragged Santoukht into his house. For nearly a year he kept her secretly as a slave. When the English entered the town she escaped, pregnant, and appealed to an English officer who rescued her and took care of her like a father.

 

Angele of Akshehir, province of Konia, fourteen years old, is a large plump rosy girl with blue eyes and soft brown hair, a good evidence of Dr. Lavy's generous care during the months of convalescence. She told me this pitiful story:

 

"My father by paying a £45 tax according to Turkish law had been let off from military service, so when the deportation orders came my mother and father, my sister eighteen years old, my two brothers and myself all went off together. Most of the Armenians leaving Akshehir had to walk or hire wagons, but by paying one pound each through a brakeman on the railway we managed to board a cattle car as far as Bozanti in Konia province in the Taurus Mountains. Thence we marched to Osmanich and Maskanieh. By paying two pounds each we secured a raft and floated down the Euphrates, for our orders were to proceed to Dier Zoar."

 

"From there we went on foot to Miadin where the Arabs tortured my father until he died of fever and fear. The Turkish guards now drove us off into the Eastern desert, a fearfully hot waste, with no trees or grass, or inhabitants. The guards picked out all the boys above ten and shot them."

 

My big brother was also dragged off in this way and put to death. We were withdrawn by the Circassians one hour from the village, to a certain hill, twelve or fourteen were taken at a time, heads cut off and the bodies thrown into a large hewn tank which had served as a reservoir or well.

 

"When my group was taken the well was full. The Circasians had become tired of the horrid work and they threw me unwounded into the reservoir where I fell in the midst of the bleeding corpses. By and by some Arabs of the worst sort came and dragged out the bodies to steal the clothing. They stripped off my dress and threw me back again. I was too nauseated and too terrified to speak or to resist. The cries of the living were awful. Some were suffocated by bodies thrown in by the Circassians. When I cried for mercy an Arab came and slashed my arm, and as he climbed past me he struck me on the head. Then a Circassian noticed that I was slowly crawling out and he fired, wounding me in the foot.

 

"For six days I was in that terrible place, without food or drink. My lips became cracked and parched from thirst so that I rubbed blood on them to moisten them. I longed to die and prayed to God mercifully to shorten my agony. After the first day there was an awful stench. The Circassians, looting and reviling, ordered the Arabs to gather brushwood and burn the bodies in the tank. We who still survived dragged out selves to the farthest corner. Brush was thrown in and then splashed with petroleum and set on fire. There were piteous cries as the smoke and flames spread in our direction."

 

Here the girl broke down and it was some time before she could continue her narrative.

 

"Finally an Arab came and found me and declared that he would take me to be his wife. An Arab woman standing at the mouth of the tank said, 'Leave her alone. She is smeared with blood and she is deformed by her wounds. She will die anyway.' But the Arab replied, 'If she lives she is ours. If she dies what do we care? I am going to take her.' He carried me to a stream, utterly exhausted and nauseated. Here he brought me some water to wash, and some coarse bread. But I could not eat it that day. For six months I lay sick and wounded, outside the Arab's goats' hair tents. My wounds festered at first but slowly began to heal. An aged Arab took pity and bound them up and changed the rags once in a while. At last I recovered."

 

"These Arabs migrated and sold me for three lean sheep to people of the town of Ramadieh. A small Armenian boy went and told the British soldiers that a Christian girl named Angele was held as a servant in a certain Arab house in Ramadieh. The British came into the house and gave me medical treatment and set me free, they put me in a lorry and sent me to Baghdad. And now God has given me strength to recover and to make the journey to Port Said."

 

Seranoush Ghazarian of Tokat is a beautiful girl of thirteen, with clear skin and dark eyes and early brown hair. She bears conspicuous tattoo marks upon her forehead, nose, cheeks, chin and wrists. By nature she is a graceful, gentle girl, and through her experiences an infinite sadness has come into her face. It was with an effort that she controlled her sobs and told of her experience in the deserts. She was nine years old when set out on the march with her mother, aunt and cousins. Her father was bound and carried off to Sivas where he was killed. Her aunt died of thirst in the mountains.

 

At last they came to a stream and drank and drank. The Turks commanded them all to become Moslems but they refused to deny Christ.

 

The Turks took the young cousin by force, after beating the mother for objecting. One of the Arab women seized Seranoush by the arm and threw her into the stream, but afterwards dragged her out and made her a slave. She was so ill from exhaustion that she could not eat and was so wasted and thin that the Arabs counted her as good for nothing and abandoned her. Then an Arab from a different tribe found her and an Arab woman took care of the child after a fashion. Later she was given in marriage to a certain Arab who sometimes petted her and again he beat her. He was forty years of age and kept the ten-year-old wife for about fourteen months.

 

An Armenian steward from Dr. Lavy's orphanage came to buy dates and discovered. Seranoush and several other girls. An Armenian young man was sent from Baghdad on horseback to rescue her, but as she was dressed in ragged Arab clothes and her skin was tanned and tattooed, he did not know that she was an Armenian girl when he passed her in the market-place. As she walked by him a second time she quickly made the sign of the Cross and in a moment he had her with him in the saddle and galloped away. The older girls had Arab babies and for utter shame they dare not go to the home provided by the American Consul. So they remained in Felluja for some time and refused to disclose their identity.

 

Among the 586 survivors who have reached the shelter of the refugee camp at Port Said there are 200 women, five infants, six men, 186 girls and 189 boys. The American Red Cross Commission to Palestine and the Near East maintains a diet kitchen where 1.235 convalescents and young children are provided for daily. A group of industrial shops have been started where embroidery, refugee garments, army shirts, wooden combs, blue cotton cloth, woolen rugs and many other useful things are made. The Red Cross has also provided baths and school tents, and has built a children's ward as part of the camp hospital. In a large tent near the Suez Canal eighty lively children have the happiest kind of a time in their day nursery. The camp is administrated by British officers serving under General Allen by, but much of the actual relief distribution and the employment of more than one thousand of the refugees is entrusted to the American Red Cross. Captain J.A. Brown, formerly of the faculty of the Syrian Protestant College, Beirut, Syria, is the Red Cross officer commanding. He is ably assisted by Lieutenants Loehr and MacQuiston and by Miss Kinney, Miss Putney, Miss Blake and Miss Campion. There is a good team spirit, and America has, through these representatives, won the esteem and affection and fervent gratitude of these eight thousand homeless Armenians.

 

Missionary Review