Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 Germany and the Armenian Massacres CURRENT HISTORY MAGAZINE [Nov.1919] A COLLECTION of German official documents compiled by Dr. Johannes Lepsius, founder of the German Orient Mission and President of the German Armenian Society, was published in Berlin with the authority of the Wilhelmstrasse toward the end of August, 1919. It is entitled "Germany and Armenia: 1914-1918," and is a volume of over 500 pages, issued by the Potsdam Tempelverlag. Dr. Lepsius asked leave last November, after the Berlin revolution, to consult the archives of the German Foreign Office for correspondence bearing upon Armenia, and Dr. Soft, then Foreign Secretary, informed him that if he would collate and publish the documents in question the Foreign Office would abandon its projected White Book upon Armenia in order to avoid duplication. The book that resulted from this arrangement is the first full and authentic account of the relations existing between Germany and Turkey. Basing his investigations on free and unlimited examination of all German official correspondence from Turkey, Dr. Lepsius, as editor, assumes complete responsibility for his exhaustively documented work. Dr. Lepsius disclaims any desire to accuse or to exculpate any one. But his array of evidence shows that from the Imperial Chancellor in Berlin down to the lowest grade official in Anatolia, the whole of the German Foreign Service knew day by day what was happening in Armenia. Hindenburg and Ludendorff were as well aware of every detail as were the veteran von der Goltz and Liman von Sanders. The Main Committee of the Reichstag shared the guilty secret. Yet nothing effective was done to bring the Turks to their senses. At Constantinople the German Ambassador of the day confined himself to making academic representations at stated intervals. The Turks in return gave Germany to understand that it was her business to win the war, and not to meddle in Turkish internal affairs. The Germans, for their part, appreciated only too clearly the retort to which their own policy of deportation in France and Belgium ultimately exposed them. Dr. Lepsiu's labors also afford the German public its first comprehensive view of what he describes as "perhaps the greatest persecution of Christians of all time." The drama opened in Constantinople with an Oriental St. Bartholomew's Night on April 25, 1915, when 600 Armenian notables were arrested, deported, and done to death. In Armenia itself a so-called "rising" at Van furnished the pretext for the wholesale massacres and deportations that continued until the end of the year. And from December, 1915, began the period of systematic conversion to Islam. In this proceeding German diplomacy was prepared to acquiesce, on the ground that "in the East creed and nationality are synonymous." But even the German diplomatists had to acknowledge that the Degree of Aug. 1, 1916, determining the political and religious rights of the Armenians, was designed to terminate the very existence of the Armenian Nation. Dr. Lepsius estimates that before the war 1.845.450 Armenians had their homes in the Ottoman dominions. During the war the Turks deported nearly 1.400.000 persons, and of these no fewer than 1.000.000 perished, not including some 50.000 to 100.000 Armenians of the Caucasus who are also "missing." No other nation, Dr. Lepsius observes, even among those that took direct part in the war, can show such a record of loss. The value of Armenian property confiscated by the Turks is estimated at 1.000.000.000 marks (nominally $250.000.000). Dr. Lepsius couples the ferocious greed of the Young Turks with the trumped-up raison d'état of the Nationalist Constantinople Committee as the mainspring of the policy of extermination. Talaat, Halil, and Enver are exhibited as its most conspicuous exponents. The Young Turks remained willfully blind to the inevitable loss of economic, and indeed of military, efficiency that followed from the persecution of the Armenians. But there is nobody here now [wrote Count Paul Wolff-Metternich, then Ambassador, to Herr von Bethmann Hollweg in 1910] strong enough to tame the many-headed hydra of the committee, with its chauvinism and fanaticism. The committee insists that the last remnants of the Armenians shall be devoured, and the Government has to submit. But there is now little left for the hungry wolves of the committee to extort from these wretched creatures. To "Turkify" means to expel or to kill everything that is not Turkish - it means to destroy and forcibly to annex other people's property. Herein for the moment, and in the childish repetition of French Liberal phrases, consists the vaunted new birth of Turkey. Prince Hohelche on one occasion, and Count Wolff-Metternich in another, urged von Bethmann Hollweg to consider the expediency of publicly dissociating Germany from the Armenian horrors by means of articles in the German press. The ingenuous proposal evoked no response from the Wilhelmstrasse. On the contrary, the North-German Gazette, the Berlin semi-official organ, was allowed to publish Turkish official denials of the massacres and vigorous protests against the enemy press that the Ottoman Government had anything to do with any "excesses" that might have been committed. The last phase of Turkish militancy was inaugurated by the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in March, 1918, and extended, as far as Dr. Lepsius's documents are concerned, down to the capture of Baku in September, 1918. On the strength of the Brest Treaty the Turks occupied not only the assigned districts of Ardahan, Kars, and Batum, but advanced into the more densely populated Armenian lands beyond. As this advance threatened to engage too deeply the Turkish reserves, which he desired to see employed nearer home, Ludendorff in June, 1918, addressed from German Main Headquarters a strong remonstrance, based entirely a strong remonstrance, based entirely on military considerations, to Enver. Hindenburg indorsed Ludendorff's injunction, and pleaded "as a Christian" that the Caucasus populations might be preserved. Enver returned an evasive reply. An indictment of the attitude of the Central Powers in the face of Turkey's avowed purpose to exterminate the Armenian Nation is contained in a dispatch from Tiflis addressed to the Berlin Foreign Office in Aug.20, 1918, by the Bavarian General, Baron Kress von Kressenstein, sometime Chief of Staff to Djemal *****'s Fourth Turkish Army in Syria, who, after the Brest-Litovsk conference, had been appointed German High Commissioner in the Caucasus, with instructions to study the Armenian question on the spot. In this dispatch Baron von Kressenstein said: If all the despairing cries for help on the part of the Government and clergy of Armenia pass unheeded, the responsibility for the annihilation of this ancient Christian people will lie forever upon Germany and Austria. History will not, and can not admit that the two great Christian empires of Central Europe were not in a position to impose their will upon their Asiatic ally, at least in such a case as this, where the life and death of a whole people are at stake. As for the entry of the Turks, under Nuri ***** into Baku on Sept. 16-17, 1918, it appears from an extraordinary dispatch sent by Lieut. Col. Paraquin, the German Chief of Staff to the Turkish Eastern Army Group, that the Turks did not even spare the nationals of their German ally. In this dispatch Colonel Paraquin said that he was besieged by German residents begging for protection, and on their heels followed the neutral Consuls on a similar errand. These appeals were communicated to the *****s with an urgent request for attention. But the *****s and their suites were engrossed in the preparations for a full-dress banquet. While the *****s and their German confederates made merry the inhabitants of Baku were being plundered and murdered. "The Turks," says Colonel Paraquin, "did not allow themselves to be disturbed." In the evening the Danish Consul appeared in the great hall of the Hotel Metropole, where the conviviality's were in full swing, and reported to Colonel Paraquin that German houses were being plundered and that the lives of the occupants were in danger. The German Colonel thereupon strode up to Nuri ***** and in a loud voice said to him: Your Excellency, I beg of you now at last to take effective steps for the protection of the Germans. If not, I shall be compelled to report to the German Embassy at Constantinople how little you protect German life and property! Nuri was taken aback, but protested that he had done everything possible. The Colonel pointed out that not a single senior officer had yet visited the town, and that the troops, instead of being told off on guard duty, had merely been paraded for inspection. The Colonel declares that, although the moment was not one for polite amenities, he employed no word or gesture that might be calculated to give offense. Nevertheless, on the following day, Sept.18, Halil ***** sent his aide de camp to Colonel Paraquin with a message to say that, in view of the Colonel's conduct toward Nuri ***** in public the day before, he was relieved of his post as Chief of Staff to the Eastern Army Group. All the satisfaction that General von Kressenstein, the German High Commissioner at Tiflis, could get from Nuri was an assurance in French that any "little accidents" that might have occurred would be repaired. 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Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 ARMENIA'S CRY FOR JUSTICE February 21, 1920 ARMENIA'S TRAGEDY IS TWOFOLD. She was "a victim of the war; now she is a victim of the peace. She was persecuted by her enemies; now she is almost deserted by her friends." This epigrammatic statement of Armenia's plight is found in one of the last pleas of a distinguished Armenian, the late Aram Raffi, secretary of the Armenian Bureau in London, and the burden of its plaint is heard from all natives of Armenia and their sympathizers. At the outbreak of the world-war, it is recalled, the Armenians cast their lot in with the Allies, formed volunteer forces, and led the Russian army into Armenia. After the fall of the Russian Government and the revolution, when the Bolshevski came into power, the Russian troops evacuated all the conquered parts of Armenia, and in The Asiatic Review (London) Mr. Raffi wrote: "For a long time the Armenians defended the front and checked the advance of the Turks. In Turkish Armenia a most horrible massacre took place; the whole Armenian population was deported into the interior of Arabia; a great number of the deportees were done to death during the journey. Thus, out of two millions of Armenians in Turkish Armenia, nearly half were wiped out. Now the Turks were trying to invade the Caucasus, where two millions of Armenians are living. After this, Bolsheviki came into power, the Caucasus - Armenians, Georgians, and Tatars - formed themselves into independent republics. The capital of the Armenian Republic is Erivan." "The Russian Armenians concentrated themselves in their territory, and single-handed, checked the advance of the Turks in the Caucasus, thus facilitating the march of General Allenby to Mesopotamia and Palestine by making it necessary to divert many Turkish troops to the Caucasus." "In the armistice concluded with Turkey (November 2, 1918) the following stipulation concerning Armenia was made: "In case of disorder in the six Armenian vilayets, the Allies reserve to themselves the right to occupy any part of them." Now what has been Armenia's recompense? Since the armistice date just quoted, Mr. Raffi relates, great disorder, murder, and pillage have prevailed in the six vilayets mentioned, but these regions have never been occupied by the Allies and the Armenian question is not yet settled. The peace delegates are "waiting until America makes up its mind whether she will accept the mandate for Armenia," and meanwhile Armenian blood is being freely shed. That the Armenian people desire greatly to have America accept, a mandate for Armenia is obvious in the utterances of various Armenian publicists. To the rooted American objection to the mere suggestion of foreign entanglement and petitioners on behalf of Armenia argue how limited in time and responsibility such a mandate would actually be. In any case, some mandatory must be appointed for Armenia, it is declared, if the rule of right according to which the Allies waged war is still to be kept. In The New Armenia (New York), Prof. Lawson P. Chambers, of Constantinople College, writes: "The question of a mandate for Armenia is an economic rather than a military problem. A large military expedition would be necessary to assure order. The prestige of Entente arms is sufficiently high to assure compliance with the decisions of the Supreme Allied Council on the part of Turks and Kurds, provided the decision is resolute and unambiguous. For the Turks love to fish in troubled waters, but readily submit to the accomplished fact. A just and resolute administration , with the prestige of a big Power at its back, and with a comparatively small expeditionary force at its command, would suffice to overawe the disturbing elements in the new Armenia; while the peoples of the land would furnish the men for the necessary police and defense forces. The very decision of one of the Great Powers to assume the mandate for Armenia would have a magical effect in calming the situation; while the arrival of the mandatory staff, with financial and material aid to the sore-priest people, would give them the respite they so richly deserve from the twin dangers of epidemic and massacre. The untapped resources of the land, together with the frugality and industry of the people, would soon fully repay any outlay that would have to be made to set the country on its feet." To any project for even a temporary united administration for Armenia and Turkey Professor Chambers is rigidly opposed, and he declares that the two inevitable conditions for the settlement of the Armenian question are: First, "the unequivocal assurance of complete independence for Armenia," and secondly, "the immediate assumption by some strong, disinterested Power of the mandate for Armenia." A provisional united administration for Armenia and Turkey would only - "work prejudice to the cause of Armenian independence in that it would make difficult the task of separating the administration of Armenia when the time should come for such separation and would necessitate the creation de novo of administrative machinery for Armenia. Furthermore, if the mandate over Turkey were to be withdrawn before a separate administration for Armenia had been achieved, such a separation would never be achieved. Now is the time, when reformed administrative machinery for Turkey has to be set up, to separate the administration of Armenia from that of Turkey, and to give the Armenians a chance to develop their own governmental machinery under the guidance and with the support of a mandatory Power. … The Armenians may now be a minority in the land they claim as their own; but their sons and daughters, scattered far and wide, will flock in large numbers to the land endeared by the blood of their own relatives and friends. Only, ere they return, they want to be assured that Armenia is to be free." A distinguished British supporter of complete independence for the Armenian nation is Viscount James Bryce, who assures one of his Armenian correspondents in America that "so far at any rate as England is concerned" the British Government "repeatedly declared that it considers all Turkish rule ought to cease in Armenia, Silicia, Syria, and the Arabian countries." The atrocious misgovernment of the Turks, Viscount Bryce says in his letter, published in The New Armenia, "makes it impossible to permit them ever again to attempt to govern these regions." Of the Republic of Armenia, which is distinct from Turko-Armenia and has been recognized by the Allied Powers, Viscount Bryce observes: "Respecting the Armenian Republic at Erivan. … I think it ought also to receive assistance from the Allies, and if possible, from the United States also, to enable its valiant troops to maintain themselves against the dangers which threaten them on the west and from the Tatars, who are being stirred up by the Turks on the east. This little republic is hard presst by these powerful and ferocious enemies and needs all the support the Allies can give it. But that does not settle the question as regards what was Turkish Armenia, which is not included in the Erivan Republic and the arrangement to be made for that much larger country still remains unsettled. ……" "I do not think that there is any opposition whatever between the interests of England in India and the welfare of Armenia, but, on the contrary, it would be a great advantage for the security of India that the Turkish power should be entirely expelled from the countries between the Caspian, the Black Sea, and Syria, and that those countries should be restored to prosperity by the reestablishment of an Armenian state, with the help and guidance of a civilized Western Power. The real enemy of civilization, as well as of England, is Turkey , who has shown such complete incompetence ever to be trusted with power over Christians again. This set of facts indicates the policy which the Armenians in the United States ought to pursue." "They ought to continue to insist that Turkish rule over Christians must entirely cease, and that the Armenian people should be given a chance of recovering their national existence as a state and of restoring prosperity to the districts which they inhabit. The friends of Armenia in England continue to hope that the United States will bear a leading part in this good work to be done in the interests of humanity and liberty. I am glad to know that so many of the best and wisest men in America have given their sympathy to the Armenian cause, and I have no doubt you will have their advice. You owe a great deal, also, to the American missionaries, and to those large-minded philanthropists who have helped the missionaries by sending out the Relief Commission, which has done so much to save the Eastern Christians from being destroyed by famines, as well as by slaughter." Literary Digest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 SHALL ARMENIAN PERISH? FEBRUARY 28, 1920 By Henry Morgenthau Former Ambassador to Turkey, and National Vice-Chairman of Near East Relief TWO hundred and fifty thousand Christian Armenian women enslaved in Turkey harems call to the people of America for liberation! One hundred thousand women already rescued by Near East Relief agents from harems will perish unless support from America is continued! Two hundred and fifty thousand children, orphaned by the unspeakable Turks, are calling in the only English they know, "Bread, and Uncle Sam." One million two hundred thousand destitute, homeless, clothe less adults look to the giant in the West for the succor that will keep them from annihilation. What shall our answer be? If they were good enough to fight and die for is when we needed their help so sorely, are they not good enough to be given some crumbs from our plenty? Since the beginning of the war, the Turkish Armenians have been largely refugees. A simple, agricultural people, they have been exiled from their farms and deprived of all opportunity to support themselves. Now, more than a year after the armistice, they are still living the life of nomads, able to continue alive only by virtue of American philanthropy. If ever unmerited suffering called for succor the plight of the Armenians should be heeded now. A few months more and it may be relief will come too late for those myriad's whom only we can save. Let the American slogan now become -- Serve Armenians for a little while longer with life's necessities that they may be preserved for the day of national freedom and rebirth, which no people more truly and greatly deserves. The belief, held by some persons, that Turkey has repented and can do no further harm, is without foundation. The group that led Turkey into war on the side of Germany is now in the saddle. The Turk has not been disarmed and these leaders are now aiding the Tartars. Kurds and Bolshevists are urging them on to kill and rob the surviving Armenians at every opportunity. The deportations and massacres during the war were not spontaneous uprisings of unorganized mobs, but were the working out of a well-plotted plan of wholesale extermination in which regular Turkish officers and troops took part as if in a campaign against an enemy in the field. More than 2,000,000 persons were deported. The system was about the same everywhere. The Armenians, men, women and children, would be assembled in the marketplace. Then the able-bodied men would be marched off and killed by being shot or clubbed in cold blood at some spot which did not necessitate the trouble of burial. Next the women would be sorted out. Agents of the Turk officers picked the youngest and fairest for their masters' harems. Next the civil officials had their pick, and then the remainder either were sold for one medjidi -- a silver coin valued at about 80 cents -- or were driven forth to be seized by the lower class Turks and Kurds. As a last step, those who remained, mothers, grandmothers, children, were driven forth of their death pilgrimages across the desert of Aleppo, with no food, no water, no shelter, to be robbed and beaten at every halt, to see children slain in scores before their eyes, and babies dashed to death against rocks or spitted of the bayonets of the soldier guards. If America is going to condone these offenses, if she is going to permit to continue conditions that threaten and permit their repetition, she is party to the crime. These peoples must be freed from the agony and danger of such horrors. They must not be saved for the present but either through governmental action of protection under the League of Nations they must be given assurance that they will be free in peace and that no harm can come to them. The Independent Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 TALAAT ***** SLAIN IN BERLIN SUBURB MARCH 16, 1921 Copyright, 1921, by The New York Times Company. Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. BERLIN, March 13, --Tallaat *****, former Grand Vizir of Turkey and one of the three leaders of the Young Turk movement, was assassinated here today. He was walking in a street in a western suburb with his wife when a young man who had been following overtook them and, tapping Talaat on the shoulder, pretended to claim acquaintance with him. Then, drawing a revolver, the man shot Talaat through the head and with a second shot wounded the wife. Talaat fell to the pavement, killed instantly. The deed was witnessed by many passersby, who seized the assassin, beat him and had almost lynched him when the police intervened. In broken German the murderer said to the police: "We are both foreigners. This has nothing to do with you." He was eventually identified as an Armenian student, and it is assumed that the deed was an act of revenge for the massacres of his compatriots. Talaat, whose name was on the second Entente list of Turkey was criminals left Constantinople two years ago and had been living as a fugitive ever since under assumed names, first in Switzerland and later in Germany. He evidently feared the fate which has now overtaken him, for he had frequently changed his address in Berlin and at the time of his death was living at a pension in the West End. BERLIN, March 15 (Associated Press). -- The assassin of Talaat ***** is said to be Solomon Tellirian. Condemned for War Rule in Turkey Talaat *****, with Enver ***** and Djemal *****, formed the triumvirate which controlled the Turkish Government during the war. In July, 1919, a Turkish court-martial investigating the conduct of the Government during the war period, condemned the three to death. At the time the sentence was pronounced, however, Talaat had already fled to Germany, in which country Enver ***** and Djemal also took refuge. Enver has since returned to Turkey and joined the Nationalists. Responsibility for the massacres of Armenians was thrown on Talaat *****, and shortly after his arrival in Berlin it was reported that the Turkish Government would demand his extradition, along with that of other Turkish Generals. It was said that the Turkish Government intended to punish Talaat and the others for the Armenian atrocities, but #he never was extradited. Talaat ***** had held many portfolios in the ministers of Turkey including those of the Interior. Marine and war, and Posts and Telegraphs. In May 1919, Cecil Harmsworth, British Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, announced in the House of Commons, that the British Government would take steps to bring Talaat ***** to account for his share of Turkey's war guilt, but nothing was done in this regard. An unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Talaat was made in Constantinople early in 1915, at which time he was seriously wounded by the would-be murderer's bullet. Morgenthau Blamed Him for Massacres Henry Morgenthau, who dealt extensively with Talaat while he was Ambassador to Turkey and who probably knew him better than any other American, said last night that his investigations had left in his mind no doubt that Talaat was responsible for the Armenian massacres. He added that Talaat was a man of great cleverness, but absolutely ruthless. In his book, "Ambassador Morgenthay's Own Story," Mr. Morgenthau refers repeatedly and vividly to Talaat, whom he describes as the "Big Boss," of Turkey. The book describes in details how Germany through military and political penetration forced Turkey into the war and how Talaat and Enver, as tools of the German war machine, brought about numberless atrocities. Describing his work of getting foreign residents out of the Ottoman Empire during the war, Mr. Morgenthau tells of Talaat's promise to prove that the Turks were not barbarians by showing that they could treat foreigners decently, of how a train that was to take a number of aliens out of the country was held up repeatedly and then of a visit to Talaat to find out why his promise had not been kept. Mr. Morgenthau contrasts the aristocratic, luxurious life of Enver with the unpretentious Talaat, whom he found living in a squalid, narrow street guarded by a policemen at each end. "Talaat's house," Mr. Morgenthau writes, "was an old, rickety wooden three-story building. All this, I afterward learned, was part of the setting which Talaat staged for his career. Like many an American politician, he had found his position as a man of the people a valuable political asset, and he knew that a sudden display of prosperity and ostentation would weaken his influence with the Union and Progress Committee, most of whose members, like himself, had risen from the lower walks of life." Visit to Turkey's "Big Boss" Mr. Morgenthau describes the humble interior of the home, and continues: "Amid these surroundings I waited for few minutes the entrance of the Big Boss of Turkey. In due time a door opened at the other end of the room and a huge, lumbering, gaily decorated figure entered. I was started by the contrast which this Talaat presented to the one who had become such a familiar figure to me at the Sublime Porte. It was no longer the Talaat of the European clothes and the thin veneer of European manners; the man whom I saw looked like a real Bulgarian gypsy. "Talaat wore the usual red Turkish Fez, the rest of his bulky form was clothed in thick gray pajamas, and from this combination protruded a rotund smiling face. His mood was half genial, half deprecating; Talaat well understood what pressing business had led me to invade his domestic privacy, and his behavior now resembled that of the unrepentant bad boy in school. He came and sat down with a good-natured grin and began to make excuses." The account goes on the tell of Talaat's unveiled, intelligent-looking wife punishing the Grand Vizier's adopted child not the room with coffee and cigarettes, of the debate in which Talaat blamed the Germans and in which Mr. Morgenthau warned him that to yield was to place himself in the Teuton's power and of how Talaat finally yielded to argument. It continues: "Talaat turned around to his table and began working his telegraph instrument. I shall never forget the picture; this huge Turk sitting there in his gray pajamas and his red fez. Working industriously his own telegraph key, his young wife gazing at him through a little window and the late afternoon sun streaming into the room. "We remained there more than two hours," writes Mr. Morgenthau, "My involuntary host pausing now and then in his telegraphing to entertain me with the latest political gossip." In the end, he tells at the conclusion of the chapter, everything was arranged. New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 ASSASSIN BOATS OF TALAAT'S DEATH 'It Is Not I Who Am the Murderer, It Is He' Says Young Armenian TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 1912 Copyright, 1921, but The New York Times Company. Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. BERLIN, March 16. -- The assassination of Talaat ***** was really the last act of a tragedy whose earlier deserts of Asia Minor. "It is not I who am the murderer. It is he," said the young Armenian, Solomon Teillierian, to the police a moment after firing the fatal shot. In the course of a later examination Telieran told, how one night his aged parents were dragged from their village home near the Persian frontier by one of the Commissioners of Talaat, who was then Grand Vizier, and were driven into the desert, where they perished. "Enver since," he said, "I have lived only to revenge the death not only of my own mother and father, but also the persecution and massacres of the Armenian people, of whom Talaat ***** was the wholesale murderer." To fulfill that oath of revenge, sworn long ago, is the task to which Teilerian devoted three years. He was baffled again and again, but he perished driver by undying hatred and Oriental cunning. Even so it is still a mystery how at last he tracked down his victim. It was nearly three years ago when Talaat disappeared from Constantinople and only a few intimate friends knew that he was identical with "All Sali Bey," living in complete retirement in Berlin. Teilerian admits that he spent months wandering over Turkey searching for his prey and says it was an accident which put him on the right trail and brought him here. Without means according to his own story, be worked his devious way to Germany, spurning all hardships, in the certainty that he would find his enemy here. At the end of his examination he said to the police that he regarded the crime with a light heart, adding: "It fills me with happiness to know that when my compatriots hear of his death they will be proud of the deed of their fellow-countryman." The authorities are aseptically as to Teilerian's boast that his discovery of his victim's whereabouts and identity was entirely his own work. They are inclined to the view he is an agent of the Armenian Revolutionary Committee and find support for this theory in the fact that his passport was issued in Paris and has a Geneva visa. New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 TALAAT IS MOURNED AS GERMANY'S FRIEND MARCH 18, 1921 Copyright, 1921, by The New York Times Company. By Wireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES. BERLIN, March 16, -- The German press morns in Talaat ***** the loss of a friend of Germany who remained true up to the last few days before Turkey finally collapsed. The authorities say they had been ignorant of Talaat's presence in Berlin. He lived in Hardenbergstrasse under an assumed name. but some of his many countrymen here knew of his presence, and sometimes he went to the Turkish Club on Motzatrasse, where he was generally regarded as the coming man who would pull his country out of its misery. The wife of Talaat, too, was well known in certain Berlin circles in the character of Said Ali Bey's wife. She was considered to be a very refined modern woman and a champion of woman's emancipation. There was a story that even before she married Talaat she used to brave the wrath of the Turkish clergy by appearing publicly unveiled. She took a deep interest in Talaat's work, and is said to have been in constant communication with certain circles in Constantinople. Talaat had plenty of money, which enabled him to rent a very large flat on the fashionable Hardenbergstrasse and surround himself with European and Turkish comforts. There are stories that the Deutsche Bank has his fortune of more than 10,000,000 marks in safekeeping. A check for 12,000, marks which Saloman Teilirian, the assassin of Talaat, received two days before the crime was committed leads the authorities to believe that this money was sent him by conspirators to enable him to fly after the deed, which he had prepared for and rehearsed many days but only decided to commit after he had cashed the check and thus recurred means for escaping. New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 SAYS MOTHER'S GHOST ORDERED HIM TO KILL JUNE 3, 1921 Copyright, 1921, by The New York Times Company. Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. BERLIN, June 2, -- "I am not guilty because my conscience is clean. A fortnight before this deed the scenes of the massacre of Erzerum reappeared to me. I saw my mother, brother and ravished sisters lying as corpses. Suddenly the dead body of my mother stood up, placed itself before me and said: You know that Talaat ***** is here. You are utterly indifferent. You are therefore not my son. I then become suddenly awake and reached a decision to kill Talaat." That was the dramatic defense today of Salomon Teilirian 24 an undersized, swarthy pale faced Armenian at his trial for the shooting and killing of the Young Turk leader. Talaat ***** in March of last year in thronged Hardenberg Street, the fashionable West End section. There Talaat a refugee and condemned to death a Turkish was criminal, lived incognito as plain Herr Ali Saly Bey. Berlin's most picturesque and most sensational criminal trial in years is in reality the case of the massacred Armenian people versus the Turkish and German war leaders who perpetrated, ordered and condoned the many massacres. Berlin's entire Armenian colony turned out for the occasion today. There were many in the courtroom an those unable to gain admission besieged the street entrance. Berlin's most famous criminal lawyers are defending the young Armenian murder and with them is associated one of the foremost, German international law authorities, Privy Councilor Niemeyer, of Kiel. The damning German angle to the Turkish war atrocities in Armenia was patient to all present, but counsel for the defense announced they would do everything possible to protect "Germany's legitimate interests." The defense of Teilirian is that he acted in a brainstorm. Witnesses summoned included General Liman von Sanders German Commander in Chief in the late Turkish Empire. Talaat's attractive young Turkish widow, fashionably attired in modern black silk mourning, was also present. A half dozen professional German alienates completed the picture. As Teilirian was narrating, through an Armenian interpreter, the Turkish atrocities in Armenia, his Oriental temperament got the better of him and he shrieked, "Rather will I die than again live through the black days when my mother and sisters were outraged and murdered and my father and brother were butchered. I won't discuss it further." Finally persuaded by the presiding German Judge, the accused told the following story: In 1915 the Armenian populace of Erzerum was suddenly alarmed by the news that the Turkish Government planned violent measures. Shortly afterward the populace was herded together and driven off in columns under the conduct of Turkish soldiers. After being robbed of their money and belongings the massacre, in which my family were victims, took place. After I had seen my brother's skull split. It was hit on the head and lay unconscious probably one or two days. "In a neighboring village an aged Kurdish woman gave me some food and old Kurdish cloths in exchange for my blood-covered Armenian garments, but she feared to conceal me any longer. After two months of wandering I reached Russian territory in the Caucasus. I wandered about in Russia and Persia until I heard of my home town being freed again, I returned there and found only two Armenian families still living. "My paternal house was deserted and devastated. I knew my father had buried some gold in the ground so I searched and found 4,800 Turkish pounds. Then I went to Tiflis and remained there two years until the beginning of 1919. I went then to Constantinople, then to Saloniki and to Serbia, back to Saloniki and then to Paris, where the Persian Consul gave me a pass to Geneva where the German consulate gave me a vise to Berlin. "I accidentally recognized Talaat on the street, found out where he lived, rented a room in a house opposite and then observed him." Then followed his dramatic story of his murdered mother's ghost inspiring the shooting. The pain taking German Justice must now decide whether the brainstorm was bona fide?? or whether Teiliran made his long journey from Armenian to Berlin with infant to kill Talaat. New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 ARMENIAN ACQUITTED FOR KILLING TALAAT Defense Introduces Accounts of Grand Vizier's Brutality in Conducting Massacres. JUNE 4, 1921 BERLIN, June 3 (Associated Press). -- Salomon Teilirian, the Armenian student who in March last shot and killed Talaat *****, former Grand Vizier and Minister of Finance of Turkey, was acquitted in the Assize Court here today. Teilirian n his defense asserted that his mother, who was murdered in 1915 during the massacres in Armenia, had appeared before him in a vision and exhorted him to kill Talaat in revenge for the massacre of 10,000 Armenians. Talaat was killed in Charlottenburg, a suburb of Berlin. The Armenian accosted him in the street and shot him dead, also wounding Talaat's wife. "Their destination is the void." Professor Lepsius, an Armenian leader, told the court today were Talaat *****'s instructions when ordering the deportation of Armenians into the Mesopotamian desert. Professor Lepsius, in his testimony for the defense, unfolded a gruesome tale of how tens of thousands of the deportees succumbed to starvation and exhaustion. The Turkish gendarmes, Professor Lepsius asserted, frequently tied ten of twenty Armenians together and threw them into the water. Another witness testified that he had seen a telegram from Talaat to a high Turkish official, which said: "Wire me how many are dead and how many still are alive." Five messages signed with Talaat's name were introduced in evidence, one of which contained orders to "remove the children from orphanages in order eliminate future danger from antagonistic elements." New York times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 They Simply Had to Let Him Go JUNE 6, 1921 By acquitting the young Armenian who shot dead Talaat ***** of the street in a Berlin suburb where that too eminent Turk was quietly living, the court before which the case was tried practically has given, not only to this young man, but to the many others like him and with like grievances, a license to kill at discretion any Turkish officials whom they can find in Germany. That was going rather far. Of course, death was about the least of the punishments for his innumerable and most atrocious crimes that was deserved by Talaat *****. The world's atmosphere is the more safely and pleasantly breathed now that he is gone, and there will be as little sympathy with his fate as regret his loss. The fact remains, however, that he was assassinated, not put to death with the judicial formality that is the right of even such as ha, and to hold, as the German jurors did, that his taking off was "morally right" both reveals a queer view of moral rightness and opens the way to other assassinations less easily excusable than his or not accusable at all. And yet -- and yet -- what other verdict was possible? An acquittal on the ground of insanity, the usual device of jurors who do not want to punish a killing of which they approve, would have been more than ordinarily absurd in the case of a man as obviously sane as this Armenian is, and to have hanged him, of even to have sent him to prison, would have been intolerably to overlook has provocation. The dilemma cannot be escaped -- all assassins should be punished: this assassin should not be punished. And there you are! The solution lies further back and long, when German officers in Turkey permitted the massacres of Armenians, though they had the power to prevent them. New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 TURKS TO REBUILD MOSQUES WITH ARMENIAN SKULLS "CHARITY MAY BIND UP WOUNDS and pour in the oil of consolation," but is it not time that the systematic destruction of Christian peoples in the Near East be made to cease? asks a special committee of the Near-East Relief Association, which stands appalled at the threat of the Turks to rebuild their mosques with Armenian skulls. "before it is too late," before this dire threat can be carried into execution, the Association is sending a warning to all members of Congress, to all churches and church assemblies, and to 110.000 individuals who have contributed to the work of the organization. Something more than charity is needed now. The danger of the complete annihilation of peoples subject to Turkish rule is said to be imminent, and only quick and concerted, we are told, can avert the tragedy. A million Armenians have been slaughtered by the Turks, Professor Lepsius testified before the Berlin District Court which recently tried and acquitted the Armenian youth who assassinated Talaat *****, former Turkish Grand Vizier. "The Armenians were systematically led to slaughter as soon as the concentration-camps became overcrowded," the German professor is quoted as saying in the news dispatches. "They were led out upon the desert, where they were decimated in wholesale fashion. The object of the Turks was not to exile the Armenians but to slaughter them in cold blood, the scheme being to kill off a whole people." Thus the purpose of the Turkish Government is revealed in the land of its ally in the war. For centuries the minority populations in the Turkish domain have been subjected to a deliberate process of extinction, we are reminded by the American relief workers. Out of 1,850,000 Armenians living in Turkish territory before the war there are said to be only 850,000 left. The rest were butchered to make a "Turkish holiday." America has done much to relieve the misery in the Near East, but "her task is not yet finished." For five years the work of life-saving has continued, and nearly 1,000,000 human beings, who otherwise would have perished, form a living memorial to American aid. In this benevolent work approximately $60,000,000 have been used by the Near-East Relief Association in the form of money, clothing, supplies, shelter, food, medicines, medical care, and supervision. But it is practically useless to stanch the flow of blood while the Turks continue to slaughter their helpless victims, informed writers say. On January 3, 1920, Leland Rex Robinson, who had spent some time in Persia and the Caucasus as a member of a Near-East Relief Commission, wrote on The Survey (New York): "Until America - or England - accepts the mandate for Armenia (perhaps we should say the Caucasus rather than Armenia alone) there is little hope that order can rise out of pandemonium. . . . Unless the mandate is taken, relief work is three-fourths lost." In an official report for the American Government when the advisability of an American mandate for Armenia was under consideration, Maj.-Gen. James G. Harbord said: "Mutilation, violation, torture, and death have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages." The Near-East Relief's manifesto, which is signed by a special committee consisting of James L.Barton, chairman of the Association, and Secretary of the American Board of Foreign Missions; Stanley White, Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, and Walter George Smith, of Philadelphia, relates that "contrary to expectations, national conditions in the Near East remain so threatening that it has been impossible to return the hundreds of thousands of exiled refugees to their homes where they could become self-supporting, or to gather the vast number of dependent orphans into anything but temporary orphanages. On the contrary, renewed atrocities have created additional hordes of refugees and added to the number of dependent children faster than their needs can be met." The statement covers the entire present area of the American relief operations, in the country reaching from the Dardanelles to the Caspian Sea, and south across Asia Minor, Syria, And Mesopotamia eastward into Persia. Here political conditions are chaotic. Anatolia, Armenia, Kurdistan, and Asia Minor are under Mustafa Kemal *****, leader of the Turkish Nationalist party. Now that the French are withdrawing from Cilicia, where they had assembled large numbers of Armenians for protection - "It is reported by absolutely trustworthy Americans that Turkish Nationalists have proclaimed that the mosques and minarets destroyed in their conflict with the French they will rebuild with the skulls of Armenians. Women and children declare that they would choose death, in whatever form it might come, to such a state of distress, of hopelessness, and of perpetual terror, and yet no way of escape opens before them. Among these distracted Christian peoples a state of panic prevails. Their safety seems to lie only in flight. There appears to be no protection for them in territory controlled by the Turkish Nationalists and the French protest their going into French protest their going French Syria. They can not immigrate to a foreign country, for the most of them are absolutely destitute, and no country will receive them as refugees. They seem condemned by circumstances beyond their control to certain death." "As conditions now are it would seem that the giving of food and shelter alone will not suffice for future protection. What seems to be impending disaster to the unprotected Christian minorities under the control of the Nationalist Turks must be averted or the wards of our philanthropy and care may be destroyed under conditions of surpassing cruelty." "If the contributions of past years are not to be wasted and our sacrificial work come to nothing, we must take the next step of appealing to our own and Allied governments to protect these threatened people. America is in a position to secure the protection required if it acts promptly and decisively. To achieve this she must act promptly and take the leadership in this matter. She alone can with absolute political disinterestedness." It is suggested that we insist that "England, France, and Italy, who have incensed the Turk by depriving him of much of his choicest territory and created in him a spirit of revenge," shall demand that exiled and menaced peoples be restored to their homes and be protected there. To this end the 20.000.000 of people who contributed to the Near-East Relief "must follow their gifts by action and by personal expression of determination that something be done by our Government." So, continues the committee - "In the name of that charity which knows no bounds of race or creed we urge every one who reads these lines to write at once to his Senator and member of Congress urging that early action be taken at Washington. No political emergency can serve as an excuse for inaction on the part of our own Government and the Allied governments. Each one should regard himself as an agent to get others also to write that Washington may know and feel the true heart of America." "We do not assume to dictate to the President and to Congress what shall be their method of attaining the end in view. We are certain that the means are at their command to make it known to the Allied Powers that the people of the United States look to them to end the Turkish destruction of Christian peoples under their control, and we are equally sure of the goodwill and humanity of the high officers of our Government; but if they are assured that the public is back of them, their hands will be strengthened. What we ask is that they bring home to the European Powers a realizing sense of the fact that the American people are in earnest in their demands that these people shall be saved from utter destruction." We must not stand by and let the Armenians die, insists The Congregationalist - "The Allies have punished Germany with reparations, but the evil Turk seems likely to resume his chronic sport of Christian-baiting, with only a murmur of protest from the Western nations at whom he laughs in his sleeve. America sends missionaries, and builds orphanages for the children of those whom the dragon has slain, but America is helpless before the shrewd but unspeakable Turk. It is our shame that it is so. It is time we did something to meet our moral obligations to these weak ones who are the prey of race and religious hate. Let the Church speak and demand action from the Government at Washington. Let America speak with all the force that her prestige carries in the councils of the nations. And let the nations that claim privileges in the Near East be responsible for the safety of those who are in a peculiar and tragic sense civilization's wards." 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Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 An Armenian in America June 29, 1921 "How does it feel to be an Armenian in America?" asks a thoughtful friend. I stare at him. Does he wish to change places with me just once? "Write it, if you can't tell me," he urges. Yet even while I write these lines I wonder if he will really read promises to be so painful. Being an Armenian - an Armenian anywhere - gives one strange feelings. My mind is torn by the conflict of opposing-emotions growing out of my racial inheritance and my living experience. Fear struggles with courage; pain with the will to endure; worry with optimism; depression with buoyancy; sorrow with faith; despair with hope; overshadowing death with promising life. The injection of my friend's question into such a consciousness makes me gather my life into a shifting scene in which we Armenians, bleeding, wounded, murdered, outraged, drowning in the sea of barbarism, beaten by the waves of civilized cruelty, call out to the multitudes dwelling on the shore of security. We cry the story of our life-long suffering, of our murdered manhood, our outraged womanhood, our drying babies, our tortured mothers, our crucified leaders. We cry in anguish and pain. We show our wounds. We cal for help. The crowd on the shore throw out some handfuls of pennies which fall leaden into the waters. Our cry has not been understood. Perhaps that band of strangers will be stirred by the story of our marvelous history of heroism. We tell of our struggle for liberty through the ages, of our martyrs who are countless, of the ever-undaunted courage of our men and women, of our undying faith in the triumph of right, and our unfailing hope of human goodness. Again we have failed to thrill the crowd upon the shore. What has happened to the people who look out at the Armenian sea of suffering. They are incomprehensibly unresponsive. They seem almost motionless. We detect, however, a slight movement. It seems to spring from an emotion like that described in a cartoon published in a well-known American magazine, showing the gaunt figure of Armenia disturbing the peace of a fat congressman, who, handkerchief to his eyes, exclaims, "Get out. You are breaking my heart." Yet, there almost seems to be a slight movement, a turning of the back to avoid a harrowing picture. The scene gives way in my mind to a question that stands out in letters of living fire: Has the world a heart? Alas! This is Armenia's eternal and unanswered question. People who appear great and noble talk about the heart of the world. Do they really believe in it? Are they sincere? Have virtue and love of human valor died? Is there only the false and pretentious? The suffering that comes from feeling that we live in a shallow and isolated world is more tragic than the danger of impending death. For death we have always met fearlessly, but is life, -- good, brave, real, serious life, -- which Armenia craves; and the time when she feels her wings most broken is not when the Turk is out killing and plundering, but the time when England is deceiving her and France is betraying her, and when America is to be bitterly disappointed. To this country, this America so beloved, so rich, free, happy, it seems impossible to impart the sadness of an Armenian's life. But why do I suffer? Haven't I the privilege of living in America, a privilege envied by others of my countrymen? Haven't I all the opportunities of an American? All this I have, freedom, position, opportunities, friends, but the happy smile of an American I can neither achieve nor buy. I walk about like one in a dream, my head heavy, my throat choked, my spirit crushed. I go to church and the minister reads from the old prophet of Israel, "How do the City sit solitary that was full of people! She is become like a widow, that was great among the nations! Is it nothing to you, all that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow." I do not comprehend the application of the words. I keep asking myself, "Isn't it of me that the minister speaks? Is there anyone else in the congregation who has lost his country, even as did the prophet?" I review the desolate cities of Armenia, its burned homes and ruined churches, its solitary hills and deserted streets. The rest of the minister's words are lost to me. As I walk out I cry silently to the passing crowds, "Is it nothing to you, O Americans, that I suffer, that my people are murdered, that my country is destroyed, that the virgins of Armenia die in shame in Turkish harems, that our children are starving, that our youth are still falling in the field so sacred to you, the battlefield of liberty? Is it nothing to you?" I go to the mountains and the memory of the green hills of Armenia takes me back to its present valleys of tears. I leave the mountains and run away to the beach in despair. The gay crowds marching up and down bring to me the dark picture of columns of women and children marching up and down the plains of Armenia in search of herbs for food. I attend a dinner party and note the luxurious gowns and wasted food, and I am forced to think of the rags in which the once wealthy and beautiful women of my land are now clad. I pass through the streets where American children play, pretty, happy, careless, and in my vision rise the rows of our orphanages with their pale, solemn-faced babies. The bright side of every situation points out to me with unmistakable clearness the other, the darker side, the Armenian side, and so, confined in my Armenian being, I cannot step out into the freedom of America. I wait, still I wait for America to break my chains. This is how it feels to be an Armenian in America. AGHAVNIE YEGHENIAN New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 WHY TALAAT'S ASSASSIN WAS ACQUITTED Official Turkish documents produced in Berlin at the trial of the young Armenian, Teilirian, proved beyond question that Talaat ***** and other officials had ordered the wholesale extermination of the Armenians, including even little orphans children -- Facsimiles of the order AN Armenian named Teilirian was tried at Berlin of June 2-3 for the murder of Talaat *****, who was chief of the Young Turk Party, and who was, during the latter part of the war, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. The murder of Talaat of March 15, 1921, drew general attention to the fact that the German Government was allowing Talaat to use Berlin as a center of Turkish Nationalist intrigue. It was expected that the known sympathy of the German Government for the Young Turks would result in the prompt conviction and execution of the Armenian. To the surprise of the world, he was acquitted. Teilirian and the Armenian Nation, it appeared, had found a champion in the person of Professor Lepsius, who was not only bold in bringing out unpleasant truths irrefutable. The trial of the Armenian developed into the trial of the murdered Talaat ***** as the greatest of the war criminals. It developed into a case against the German military authorities, who had at least allowed the massacres to continue without protect. Even General Liman von Sanders, who had had charge of the German military forces in Turkey, was called as a witness. His testimony opened the eyes of the German people, as nothing else had yet done, to the fact of the terrible massacres and to the callousness of the German military authorities to the horrors that were going on under their eyes. Professor Lepsius produced German official reports to show that the total number of Armenians who perished as a result of the so-called deportations was over a million. Although the technical defense of Teilirian was temporary insanity brought on by a vision of his murdered mother, the real defense was the terrible record of Talaat *****; so that in the eyes of Germany the acquittal of the Armenia of the charge of murder became the condemnation to death of the Turk. That such a trial and such a result occurred in Germany with Germans as jurors is particularly significant. With respect to the present situation in the Near East, the most important phase of this dramatic trial was the ability of Professor Lepsius to produce Turkish official documents which proved the heads of the Turkish Government at Constantinople -- and particularly Talaat himself -- to be directly responsible for converting the deportation into shambles. Heretofore there have been defenders of the Ottomans who held that the massacres were not a plan of the Government, but were due to the brutality of those who carried out the deportation instructions. At the trial of Teilirian there were placed in evidence facsimiles and translations of signed orders from Talaat -- letters and cipher telegrams which proved that the instructions to massacre originated in Constantinople. As Aleppo was the headquarters of the "Deportations Committee," the capture of Aleppo by the British made possible the securing of these official documents from the archives. This evidence directly linking the murdered Talaat with the inhuman deeds that were covered by the general term "deportation" was irrefutable and overwhelming. The documents established once and for all the fact that the purpose of the Turkish authorities was not deportation by annihilation. The object of the present article is to present translations -- with facsimiles -- of some of the Turkish official documents that created such a sensation when read into the evidence during the trial at Berlin. The first document, although not singed by Talaat, is from the committee of Young Turks of which he was the head, and, inasmuch as its contents are referred to in dispatches signed by him, was valid as evidence. It was written in the Spring of 1915, before the massacres had begun, and shows the extermination of the Armenians to have been the determined policy of the Government. Jemal, to whom the document is addressed, was the third in the triumvirate of Young Turks -- Tallat, Enver and Jemal. At that time he was Governor of Adana and soon afterward became Governor of Aleppo: March 25 1915. To Jemal Bey, Delegate at Adana: It is the duty of all of us to effect on the broadest lines the realization of the noble project of wiping out of existence the well-known elements who have for centuries been constituting a barrier to the empire's progress in civilization. For this reason we must take upon ourselves the whole responsibility, saying, "come what may," and appreciating how great is the sacrifice which has enabled the Government to enter the World War, we must work so that the means adopted may lead to the desired end. As announced in our dispatch dates Feb. 18, the Jemiet [Young Turk Committee] has decided to uproot and annihilate the various forces which have for centuries been an obstacle in its way, and to this end it is obliged to resort to very bloody methods. Be assured that we ourselves were horrified at the contemplation of these methods, but the Jemiet sees no other way of insuring the stability of its work. Ali Riza [the committee delegate at Aleppo] criticized us and called upon us to be merciful; such simplicity is nothing short of stupidity. For those who will not co-operate with us we will find a place that will wring their delicate heartstrings. I again recall to your memory the question of the property left. It is very important. Do not let its distribution escape your vigilance; always examine the accounts and the use made of the proceeds. Reference to this document is contained in the following order, signed by Talaat and sent to the same Jamal. This order shows that women and children were to be included in the holocaust: Sept. 3, 1915 To the Prefecture of Aleppo: We recommend that you submit the women and children also to the orders which have been previously prescribed as to be allied to the males of the intended persons, and to designate for these functions employs of confidence. The Minister of the Interior, TALAAT. Apparently the instructions regarding the women and children called for some reiteration, for on Sept. 16 the following cipher telegram, which showed the instructions as going back to the decision of the Jeimet, or Young Turk Committee, was sent: [TRANSLATION] Sept. 16 To the Prefecture of Aleppo: It has been previously communicated to you that the Government, by order of the Jehmed [the Young Turk Committee] has decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons living in Turkey. Those who oppose this order and decision cannot remain on the official staff of the empire. An end must be put to their existence, however tragic the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or to conscientious scruples. The Minister of the Interior, TALAAT. Mr. Morgenthau, the American Ambassador at Constantinople, began to exert himself in behalf of the Armenians, and the result was an official order suggesting caution: Nov. 18, 1915. To the Prefecture of Aleppo: From interventions which have recently been made by the American Ambassador at Constantinople on behalf of his Government, it appears that the American Consul are obtaining information by secret means. In spite of our assurance that the [Armenian] deportations will be accomplished in safety and comfort, they remain unconvinced. Be careful that events attracting attention shall not take place in connection with those [Armenians] who are near the cities and other canters. From the point of view of the present policy. It is most important that foreigners who are in those parts shall be persuaded that the expulsion of the Armenians is in truth only deportation. For this reason it is important that, to save appearances, a show of gentle dealing shall be made for a time, and the usual measures be taken in suitable places. It is recommended as very important that the people who have given such information shall be arrested and handed over to the military authorities for trial by court-martial. The Minister of the Interior, TALAAT. Reference to the effort of the American Consul at Aleppo, Mr. Jackson, to send information to Mr. Morgenthau is contained in the following cipher dispatch: Dec. 11, 1915. To the Prefecture of Aleppo: We learn that some correspondents of Armenian journals are obtaining photographs and letters which represent tragic events, and are giving them to the American Consul at Aleppo. Have dangerous persons of this kind arrested and suppressed. The Minister of the Interior, TALAAT. The need for caution is further indicated in the following telegram: Dec. 29, 1915. To the Prefecture of Aleppo: We learn that foreign officers are encountering along the roads the corpses of the intended persons and are photographing them. I recommend you the importance of having these corpses buried at once and of not allowing them to be left near the roads. The Minister of the Interior, TALAAT. The heartlessness of the Turks in regard to the doomed children made a deep impression on the Berlin jury. The following are some of the documents presented on this point: Nov. 5, 1915 To the Government of Aleppo: We are informed that the little ones belonging to the indicated persons [Armenians] from Sivas Mamuret-ul-Aziz, Diarbekir and Erzeroum are adopted by certain Moslem families and received as servants when they are left alone through the death of their parents. We inform you that you are to collect all such children in your province and send them to the places of deportation, and also to give the necessary orders regarding this to the people. The Minister of the Interior, TALAAT. Jan. 15, 1916. To the Government of Aleppo: We hear that certain orphanages which have been opened received also the children of the Armenians. Whether this is done through ignorance of our real purpose, or through contempt of it, the Government will regard the feeding of such children or any attempt to prolong their lives as an act entirely opposed to its purpose, since it considers the survival of these children as detrimental. I recommend that such children shall not be received into the orphanages, and no attempts are to be made to establish special orphanages for them. The Minister of the Interior, TALAAT. The production of the following cipher telegram (No. 830) was particularly telling in its effect on the jury: From the Ministry of the Interior to the Government of Aleppo: Collect and keep only those orphans who cannot remember the terrors to which their parents have been subjected. Send the rest away with the caravans. The Minister of the Interior, TALAAT. That the Moslem population was not to be held accountable for its share in the massacres was ordered in a telegram dated Oct. 8, 1915: The reason why the Sanjak of Zor Was chosen as a place of deportation is explained in a secret order dated Sept. 2, 1915, No. 1,843. As all the crimes to be committed by the population along the way against the Armenians will serve to effect the ultimate purpose of the Government, there is no need for legal proceedings with regard to these. The necessary instructions have also been sent to the Governments of Zor and Ourfa. The Minister of the Interior, TALAAT. All the evidence tends to show, with cumulative effect, that it was the pity awakened in the hearts of some of the local Turkish officials by the miseries of the Armenians which produced a certain mitigation of the heartless orders that emanated from Constantinople. A small remnant of the race survived. Talaat and his group in the Government were obliged continually to spur some of their tools on to greater severity. New York Times - Current History Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 ARMENIAN'S TRAGIC FINISH PUBLIC OPINION (New York) combined with THE LITERARY DIGEST The Literary Digest for February 25, 1922 TURKISH BUTCHERIES OF ARMENIANS have reached the point where a remnant of 120,000 has besought the Council of the League of Nations to send ships to transport them beyond the reach of their hereditary enemies. Persecuted for centuries, and deserted, we are told by those on whom they had most relied, the Armenians have no recourse other than evacuation of their country and many of servers agree that the spectacle of these being hounded from their native soil is a reflection of civilization. Ancient history records many moving tragedies of which whole nations were the victims, but, says the Kansas City Journal, "modern times have written no such chapter as that which puts the finish to the national history of the Armenians, who . . . are to leave their immemorial homeland and abandon Armenia for an indefinite period, if not forever." Whether the "pitiful remnant" of 120,000 is all that is left of the 1,500,000 who were in Armenia when the war ended is not stated, but it is regarded as probable that the number refers only to those who were in Cilicia at the time of the French occupation. It is certain, however, "that hundreds of thousands have been ruthlessly slaughtered and starved by their infamous Moslem and Russian persecutors." Turkey has been permitted to wreak her barbarous will upon the Christian Armenians while "the world stood supinely by," continues the Journal, and -- "Christian civilization can not evade the condemnation that is involved in such a situation. What is every nation's business is proverbially no nation's business, but it is one of the most frightful ironies of history that the Turk, hurled out of Palestine and reduced to a mere shadow of his former national power, should still be able to slay and torture and starve Armenians until, despairing of rescue by men and even of the mercy of God, a whole nation emigrates to an unknown destination. "The Russian Bolsheviks have proved more ruthless oppressors than the unspeakable Turk, yet millions in treasure are poured into Russia, while the Bolsheviks and the Kurds unite in crushing Armenia into the bloody mire of multiplied massacres, her daughters dragged into Turkish harems, her men butchered, her land made a bloody waste, without a hand being raised in her defense. That is the tragedy of modern history, the shame of Christendom." The Armenia's various appeals for help against her oppressors have, so far, been without avail, the American Near East Relief is attempting to feed the refugees population and is maintaining what is said to be the largest orphan asylum in the world at Alexandropol, in Caucasian Armenia. Defeat of Turkey in the World War have new hope to the country, but the treaty of Angora between the French and the Turks, mentioned in these pages on January 28, resulted in the withdrawal of the French from Cilicia, and, says the Des Moines Register, "turned forlorn hope into despair." France has taken measures, through an understanding with the Turks, to protect the Armenians and other Christians in Cilicia, a French delegate stated to the League of Nations, and the French Government has voted 50,000,000 francs for the care of the Armenian refugees. But the past experiences of the Armenians confirm them in their fears that the persecutions will not be halted, and, according to the Christian Science Monitor, secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, insists that the French withdrawal from Cilicia "would undoubtedly open up the way for further attacks by the Turks upon unprotected Armenians and other Christians in the Cilician districts." Systematic annihilation of the Greek populations in Asia Minor is also a part of the Turkish program, according to news dispatches. Just before he sailed from New York recently, the Patriarch of Constantinople received a statement, says The Living Church (Episcopalian), giving details of various massacres of the Greeks. Among several other barbarities reported to the Patriarch, according to The Living Church, are these in the city of Merzifoun (or Marsovan) and in Samsoun: "Osman Agha, after seizing the property of all the Christians, set fire to the Greek and Armenian quarters. The sight was most horrible. All the streets and alleys were blocked by the culprits to that those attempting to escape were either shot or pushed back into the fire irrespective of age or sex. In less than five hours 1,800 houses were burned down with their residents. Crimes, unheard of in the history of vandalism, were committed against maidens and children. And while they did this, they cried, 'Let your Englishmen and Americans, your Christ Himself, come now and save you!' "All the Greek villages of the region of Samsoun were burned, the property of the inhabitants seized, young men and women violated and carried off to the mountains. Many a young woman, choosing to die rather than be disgraced, committed suicide. Parents, unable to bear the sight of their children thus disgraced in the hands of the Turks, killed them. "The above is a rough online of the horrible picture reflecting on the martyrdom of the Hellenism of Pontus." According to a cablegram received by the near East Relief at its New York officers on January 16, more than 200,000 Cilician refugees evacuated the country after the Franco-Kemalist treaty, and are now scattered through the Beirut and Constantinople areas. Literary Digest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 CRIMES OF TURKISH MISRULE By Albert Mackenzie Recently connected with relief work in Turkey Freshly gleaned facts and personal observations offered in refutation of Rear Admiral Chester's statements - A massacre of 2,000 Armenians and Greeks that took place only a year ago The article, "Turkey Reinterpreted," by Rear Admiral Colby M. Chester, in the September Current History, calls for a refutation. Nothing could be more pernicious. The author's contention that "Turkey joined the Germans with reluctance" is, if true, the most singular truth in captivity. Turkey's armies were trained, officered and equipped by Germany before the war started. The Goeben and the Breslau, German cruisers, were bought by Turkey. It was the only move Turkey had on the board to prevent her complete disintegration. Her lot was already cast wit Germany's. To fight on the side of Russia, her traditional enemy, would have been suicide in view of the indications of that moment. Even to win the war with Russian as an ally would have meant the swamping of Turkey by the big Slav neighbor. Turkey's political dissolution is classic, and is only because of her flagrant misrule. Since her very advent into history she never ruled over a country that was content with her domination. The Turks are parasites; they have never built a city, their language is a hybrid of other tongues, the paucity of their literature is beyond discussion. Turks never make mechanical or scientific inventions. The Great Mosque of St. Sofia in Constantinople is a rebuilt Byzantine Church, and the greatest monument of her construction, aside from mosques, anywhere in the empire is Roumeli Hissar on the Bosporus. The Turks fight with foreign guns and ammunition; an Austrian firm used to make their fezzes, an Austrian today runs the establishment which supplies uniforms to the army. They make no automobiles, battleships, and airplanes - not even telephone and telegraph sets where there are such. Before 1915 the Christians were, generally speaking, the economic and intellectual developers of Turkey. It is that very thing which let loose the massacres. The Turk was in despair; brains he had not, but might he had. In the last century Turkey's control at any time over Northern Africa was only nominal. In 1912 the Balkans exploded against her abominable lordship. She lost Tripoli. The Arabs - brother church members - revolted against Turkey, and now have a free State, the Hedjas. The Near East question is not religious, but racial and cultural; religion, however, aggravates it. The Arabs - more devout Mohammedans than the Turks - broke from Turkish misrule. The Kurds were never propitiated. The Syrians and Palestinians importunes the members of the Paris conference to grant them independence. Subjects of Turkey in those two regions inundated the Crane commission with petitions for independence, or, as an alternative mandate control by America (1.152 petitions to the latter effect). In regard to the Turk as a husband, I will simply relate an incident in the American Hospital in Harput, where I was stationed seven months as a relief worker in 1921-22. A Turk brought his shrouded wife one day to the American Hospital and asked if there was any way of curing her of sterility. He was informed that, if he consented to let her undergo an operation, the woman would in all likelihood be able to bear him children. Fine! When could it be done? He was then told that the operation would cost him four golds, or about $16. Up went his arms in despair and indignation. "What, pay four golds to operate on her, when I can get another wife for a medjidie!" (40 cents). And off he stalked, out f the hospital. But Admiral Chester writes: "In Turkey every man by law and by religion must adequately support and treat with kindness and faithful respect whomsoever he may marry, and, moreover, this he does." The retired Admiral says that the Adana massacre of 1909 was an "affair" in which "the Armenians, fully armed, arose in their might and drove the Moslems from Adana, killing more of them than they lost by their own causalities." Herbert Adams Gibbons, the author of several admirable books on international affairs, was in the courtyard of the Adana Government building when the massacre of 1909 broke out, and he attests with feeling to the crimes by the Turks. No more trustworthy witness could be found that Mr. Gibbons. I have but recently come from the interior of Turkey, where I lived eight months. With my own eyes I have seen thousands upon thousand of Greek families tramping over the snow-covered mountains of that country .I have seen groups of 3.000 to 4.000 refugees moaning, freezing, dying, with typhus, gangrene, pneumonia, starvation, insanity - mothers so weak they could not lift their dead babies from their backs where they had been strapped. I have watched dogs and vultures eat so many bodies that I can tell now just where a dog will start on a fresh carcass for the choicest pieces, and his whole modus operandi until the bones are clean. We have pleaded with officials for mercy to the specters that still survives to allow them to be taken to the American Hospital for treatment. Oft-times permission was refused. In any case, every refugee we did not treat had to be O.K.'d by a callous Turkish Sanitary Inspector, who had less sympathy for the patients than he would have had for a dog. He begrudged them their lives. As to the virtue of honesty in business, another of Admiral Chester's arguments, when the Turk is honest it is not a matter of principle, but only because he can't get away with anything else. Through my hands passed between $ 30.000 and $ 60.000 each month. It was my duty to pay all bills, and I had to exchange our Turkish paper banknote appropriations into gold and silver, because paper was not the currency in the vilayet of Mamuret-ul-Aziz. From this contact, day in day out, I grew to know, not only Turkish and Armenian merchants as classes, but the reputation of scores of individuals. The Treasurer of the Province tricked us out of $3.360. One day, nearly half a year afterward, we arranged a trap, to sell him a draft which was later dishonored and in that way got back the money. The son-in-law of the Governor of the province sold us wagonloads of wheat that he stole from military warehouses. Even when the owners are alive, the Turks rarely - and rarely means once in twenty-five or thirty cases - pay rent on the shops and homes which they took from the Armenians in the massacre of 1915. On the other hand, the Government collects taxes, where it finds any one to tax, on the Armenian shops which they burned in 1915. Last spring they collected taxes for six years on Armenian shops from any persons who were supposed to have once owned them; and they collected taxes on shops whose sites are now ash-heaps that they themselves made. All this is paltry, however, when compared to the heinousness of the massacres. When I left Constantinople, where I had lived all Summer, to go to the interior, I was pro-Turkish. I felt the majesty of the Turk's religion, I admired his inscrutable face., his reserved mien. I condoned his evil, because I didn't know and couldn't understand. Since then I have seen sights that have made me know and understand. I find another glaring point in the Admiral's description of the Armenian deportations. "So the Armenians," he says, "were moved from the inhospitable regions where they were not welcome, and could not actually prosper, to the most delightful and fertile part of Syria. Those from the mountains were taken into Mesopotamia, where the climate is as benign as in Florida and California, whither New York millionaires journey every year for health and recreation, All this was done at great expense of money and effort." How beautiful to contemplate! Does Colby M. Chester know that the world knows - and knows that he knows - that some 800.000 Armenians perished in those deportations? Even the Turkish newspapers themselves estimated that they had cleared the land of 800,000 "giaours." I personally know Turks -- have been on parties with them -- who boast of the number of Armenians they killed. One Kurd in Harput, a member of the old Committee of Union and Progress, glories in the fact that he used seventy-two Armenian girls in the deportations. Today the Turkish peasants, riding on their oxcarts, sing songs about the Paradise of the "sufkiet" (deportations), when they had the prettiest women all to themselves for nothing, and how they chased the ugly ones down the road. If the deportees returned "fat and prosperous" from their voyage, as Mr. Chester writes, why has the Near East Relief spent over "70,000,000 and why is it feeding over 100,000 orphans every day, whose only prayer is "Give us daily bread"? In regard to the "benign" climate of the country in the Summer of 1915, I shall quote from Viscount Bryce's "The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire." This extract is a memorandum by a foreign resident in Turkey at the time of the "sufkiet." Obviously the source of this lostimony coming as it does from a neutral resident, is above reproach. To satisfy myself of its correctness I elicited the story from an Armenian lad in Turkey, who had been in this deportation. His story, of course, was more elaborate, but there was not a single discrepancy to be found, though the boy knew nothing of Voscount Bryce's book: On the fortieth day the convoy came in sight of the River Mourad, a branch of the Euphrates. Here they saw the bodies of more than 200 men floating in the river, with traces of blood and blood-stained fezzes, clothes and stockings of the bank. The chief of the neighboring village took one lira in toll from each man as a ransom for not being into the river. On the fifty-second day they arrived at another village, and here the Kurds took from them everything they had, even their shirts and drawer, so that for five days the whole convoy marched completely naked under the scorching sun. For another five days they did not have a morsel of bread nor even a drop of water. They were scorched to death by thirst. Hundreds upon hundreds fell dead on the way, their tongues were turned to charcoal, and when. at the end of the five days, they reached a fountain, the whole convoy naturally rushed toward it. But here the policemen barred the way and forbade them to take a single drop of water. Their purpose was to sell it at from one to three liras the cup, and sometimes they actually withheld the water after getting the money. At another place, where there were wells, some women threw themselves into them, as there was no rope or pail to draw up the water. These women were drowned, and in spite of that the rest of the people drank from that well, the dead bodies still remaining there and stinking in the water. Sometimes, when the wells were shallow and the women could go down into them and come out again, the other people would rush to lick or suck their wet, dirty clothes, in the effort to quench their thirst When they passed an Arab village in their naked condition the Arabs pitied them and gave them old pieces of clothes to cover themselves with. Some of the exiles who still had money bought some clothes: but still some remained who traveled thus naked all the way to the City of Aleppo. The poor women could hardly walk for shame: they walked all day and night. Even in their nakedness they had found some means of preserving the little money they had. Some kept it in their hair, some in their months.* * * On the sixtieth day, when they reached Viran Shehr, only 300 exiles remained out of all the 18,000. On the sixty-fourth day they gathered together all the man and sick women and children and burned and killed them all. On the seventieth day, when they reached Aleppo, thirty-five women and children were left out of the 3,000 exiles from H., and 150 women and children altogether out of the whole convoy of 18,000 Regarding the sufferings of Greeks in Asia Monor, we have the facts presented By Mr. Venizelos before the Council of Ten of Dec. 30,1918. in addition to which I have my own figures on the number of Greeks know to be alive now in Eastern Anatolia; these figures, collected in towns which I passed through, were supplemented with data from non-native sources with which I got into communication. Basin an estimate on my own investigations, I am positive that 225,000 Greeks -- men, women and children -- have met death in Eastern Asia Minor since May, 1921. In September 1921. I stayed three days in Marsovan and gathered the story of a new massacre there from foreign residents who had been compelled to turn Christians out of their premises to be killed, and who had watched the actual murdering and burials in pits from their windows and even saw some of them being buries alive. So recently had the massacre of these 2,460 taken place that the air was still polluted with decomposed bodies upon my arrival. I smell it yet! The whole Christian quarter of the town was looted and burned and the only moot question is -- which official is most responsible? That was just one year ago. No one gets rich laying the Turkish crimes before the world. Rather, one gets into a certain type of disrepute with those whose commercial aims would be best served by smothering such news. The greatest obstacle to imprinting the story of the Turkish massacres on our minds is its inconceivableness. It is almost beyond contemplation. After each outrage on the Armenians and Greeks, the American public is electrified with horror, and being a homage public it will -- if dollars and cents do not stuff its ears and blindfold it -- ultimately mete out justice where the vanishing peoples cry in supplication. 109 South Twenty-second Street, Philadelphia, Pa., Sept. 6, 1922. New York Times - Current History Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted May 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2008 THE MASSACRES OF ARMENIANS IN 1915 By George R. Montgomery Director of the Armenia-America Society A refutation, from authentic sources, of the allegation that the Turks were not guilty of wholesale slaughter of the Armenians - Testimony of German and Turkish eyewitnesses of the crime In the September issue of Current History Rear Admiral Colby M. Chester (retired) had an article entitled "Turkey Reinterpreted," in the course of which, along with other misstatements, he made the following assertion: So, the Armenians were moved from the inhospitable regions where they were not welcome and could not actually prosper to the most delightful and fertile part of Syria. Those from the mountains were taken into Mesopotamia , where the climate is as benign as in Florida and California, whither New York Millionaires journey every year for health and recreation. All this was done at great expense of money and effort, and the general outside report was that all, or at least many, had been murdered. It seems almost a pity to upset the good old myth of Turkish viciousness and terribleness, but in the interest of accuracy I find myself constrained to do so, although it makes ma feel a bit like one who is compelled to tell a child that Jack the Giant Killer really found no monstrous men to slay. In due of time the deportees, entirely unmassacred, and fat and prosperous, returned (if they wished so to do), and an English prisoner of war who was in one of the vacated owns after it had been repopulated told me that he found it filled with these astonishing living ghosts. A against these untrue words I quote extracts from a letter addressed in January, 1919, from Berlin, to President Wilson by Ramin T. Wegner, a German eyewitness of the Armenian deportations: A one of the few Europeans who have been eyewitnesses of the dreadful destruction of the Armenian people from its beginning in the fruitful fields of Anatolia up to the wiping out of the mournful remnants of the race on the banks of the Euphrates, I venture to claim the right of setting before you these pictures of misery and terror which passed before my eyes during nearly two years, and which will never be obliterated from my mind. * * * * * * But what is Siberia compared with the Mesopotamian steppes? There we find a long tract of land without grass, without trees, without cattle, covered with stunted weeds, a country where the only inhabitants are Arab Bedouins, destitute of all pity; a stretch of gray limestone plains miles in extent, bare wastes of rock and stone, ruined river banks, exposed to the rays of a merciless sun, ceaseless Autumn rains and frosty Winter nights. Leaving sheets of ice behind them. Except its two large rivers there is no water. The few small villages scarcely suffice to feed a handful of Bedouins, who in their wretched poverty regard any traveler as a welcome prey. * * * The Armenians were driven into this desolate waste with the alleged purpose of forcibly transplanting them from their homes to a strange land - a purpose which, even had it been the real one, is repugnant to every human feeling. * * * Parties which on their departure from the homeland of High Armenia consisted of thousands, numbered on their arrival in the outskirts of Aleppo only a few hundreds, while the fields were strewn with their odors, lying about desecrated, naked, having been robbed of their clothes, or driven, bound back to back, to the Euphrates to provide food for the fishes. When in the desert I went through the deportees' camp. When I sat in their tents with the starving and dying I felt their supplicating hands in mine, and the voices of their priests, who had blessed many of the dead on their last journey to the grave, adjured me to plead for them, if I were ever in Europe again. * * * I am making no accusation against Islam. The spirit of every great religion is noble, and the conduct of many a Mohammedan has made us blush for the deeds of Europe. I do not accuse the simple people of Turkey, whose souls are full of goodness; but I do not think that the members of the ruling class will ever, in the course of history, be capable of making their country happy, for they have destroyed our belief in their capacity for civilization. * * * With the ardor of one who has experienced unspeakable, humiliating sorrows in his own tortured soul, I utter the voice of those unhappy ones whose despairing cries I had to hear without being able to still them, whose cruel deaths I could only helplessly mourn, whose bones bestrew the deserts of the Euphrates, and whose limbs once more become alive in my heart and admonish me to speak. Once already have I knocked at the door of the American people when I bought the petition of the deportees from their camps at Meskene and Aleppo to your embassy at Constantinople, and I know that this has not been in vain. If you, Mr. president, have, indeed, made the sublime idea of championing oppressed nations the guiding principle of your policy, you will not fail to perceive that even in these words a mighty voice speaks, the only that has the right to be heard at all times - the voice of humanity. As against Admiral Chester's words, I quote also from the pen of Ali Kemal Bey, then Minister of the Interior at Constantinople: What are the facts of the case? Four or five years ago a crime universal and unique in history was being perpetrated in our country. Taking into consideration the gigantic magnitude and extent of the crime, it could not have been committed by four or five people, but proportionately by hundreds of thousands. If the victims had been 300.000 instead of 600.000 - if they had been even 200.000 or 100.000, 100.500 or even 1.000 criminals could not have wiped out so many people. It is already a proved fact this crime was mapped out and decreed by the General Centre of the Ittihad. The following letter was written by a Swiss who had an opportunity to visit some of the deportees while they were passing through Cilicia and before they had reached the desert. It is dated Nov.16, 1915, and is printed in the late Lord Bryce's notable book, "The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire": I have just returned from a ride on horseback through the Baghtche-Osmania Plain, where thousands of exiles are lying out in the fields and on the roads, without any shelter, and completely at the mercy of all manner of brigands. Last night, about 12 o'clock, a little camp was suddenly attacked. There were about fifty to sixty persons in it. I found men and women badly wounded - bodies slashed open, broken skulls and terrible knife wounds. Fortunately I was provided with clothes, so I could change their blood-soaked things, and then bring then to the next inn, where they were nursed. Many of them were so much exhausted from the enormous loss of blood that they died, I fear, in the meantime. In another camp we found thirty or forty thousand Armenians. I was able to distribute bread among them. Desperate and half-starved, they fell upon it: several times I was almost pulled down off my horse. A number of corpses were lying about unburied, and it was only by bringing the gendarmes that we could induce them to allow their burial. Mostly, the Armenians are not allowed to perform the last offices of love their relatives. Dreaded epidemics of typhoid fever broke out everywhere; there was a victim of it practically in every third tent. Nearly everything had to be transported on foot; men, women and children carried their few belongings on their backs. I often saw them break down under their burden, but the soldiers kept on driving them forward with the butt-ends of their rifles, even sometimes with their bayonets. I quote the words written by Deschanel, when President of the French Chamber of Deputies and later President of France, in the introduction to "Au Pays de l'Epouvante," which was written by Henry Barby, the war correspondent of Le Journal: At the beginning of 1915 there were in Turkey 2.000.000 Armenians, of whom less than 900.000 survive today, and the murdering of these more than a million people has been carried out with the most shameful cruelty. They were not all sent in platoons to execution. Those who were shot were the least unfortunate, because their suffering was short. Many hundred thousands of them were deported , constituting those sinister death caravans. * * * The Armenians furnished no provocation; they were mere victims. Their killing was consummated through a carefully prearranged plan. The infamous work was carried out systematically, so that not a city, not a village, not a family was spared. I quote the words written by Herr Stuermer, Constantinople correspondent of the Kölnische Zeitung, in his book, "Zwei Kriegsjahre in Constantinople," published in 1917: Here I can only give my final judgment on all these pros and cons, and say to the best of my knowledge and opinion that after the first act in this drama of massacre and death - the brutal "evacuation of the war zone" in Armenia proper - the meanest, the lowest, the most cynical, most criminal act of race fanaticism that the history of mankind has to show was the extension of the system of deportation, with its willful neglect and starvation of the victims, to further hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the capital and interior. And these were people who, through their place of residence, their preoccupation in work and wage-earning, were quite incapable of taking any active part in politics. * * * With the most cold-blooded calculation and method, the numbers of Armenians to be deported were divided out over a period of many months; indeed, one may say over nearly a year and a half. * * * For the most part it was the sad fate of those deported to be sent off on an endless journey by foot to the far-off Arabian frontier, where they were treated with the most terrible brutality. There, in the midst of a population wholly foreign and but little sympathetic to their race, left to their fate on a barren mountainside, without money, without shelter, without medical assistance, without the means of earning a livelihood, they perished in want and misery. The women and children were always separated from the men. That was characteristic of all the deportations. It was an attempt to strike at the very core of their national being and annihilate them by the tearing asunder of all family ties. That was how a very large part of the Armenian people disappeared.*** That stream of unhappy beings trickled on ever more slowly to its distant goal, leaving the dead bodies of women and children , old men and boys, as milestones to mark the way. The few that did reach the "settlement" alive - that is, the fever-ridden, hunger-stricken concentration camps - continually molested by raiding Bedouins and Kurds, gradually sickened and died a slower and even more horrible death. Herr Stuermer's courageous setting forth of the facts in his correspondence to the Kölnische Zeitung and in letters to the German Foreign Office during the war resulted in his losing his position and necessitated his becoming an exile. Had Admiral Chester looked the subject up in Current History he would have read in the July number for 1921 an article where facsimiles were given of some of the official Turkish documents bearing on the horrors of the deportations. The incriminating character of these documents was sufficient to win the acquittal of Talaat *****'s assassin before a German jury. The official Turkish documents proved to be the express intent of the Turkish authorities and proved that they were not due to the savagery of unrestrained soldiers. A report dated Feb.26, 1916, from Committee for Settling the Deportees, was found among the official papers, and along with many similar documents has been included by Aram Andonian in "The memoirs of Naim Bey," published by Hodder & Stoughtin. It reads as follows: I report for your information that hardly a quarter of the Armenians sent to the desert have arrived at their destination, with the exception of those sent to Syria as artisans. The rest have died from natural causes on the way. We have taken in hand measures to send also those that were for various reasons left in Aleppo. The horrors and massacres of the deportation are not something with regard to which there are two sides. No Turkish writer has ever ventured to deny them, because they are established and attested beyond the shadow of a question. Yet in the face of facts never before denied, Admiral Chester does deny them, and says that doing s makes him feel "a bit like one who is compelled to tell a child that Jack the Giant Killer really found no monstrous men to slay." The Admiral quotes "an English prisoner of war who was in one of the vacated towns after it was repopulated" as saying that "he found it filled with these astonishing living ghosts." The Admiral adds: "In due course of time the deportees, entirely unmassacred and fat and prosperous, returned if they wished to do so." The vacated town to which he refers is doubtless Adana. Does the Admiral not know that after the armistice the French gathered up the 150.000 of the deportees that had survived them into Cilicia, whose capital city Adana is, with the promise and expectation of making Cilicia into an autonomous Armenia? Dr. Johannes Lepsius, who has had access to German and Turkish official reports, in his book, "Deutschland und Armenien," published in 1919, makes the following estimate of losses: According to the Patriarch's lists, the total number of Armenians in Turkey [at the beginning of the war] was 1.845.450. If those who fled into the Transcaucasus and into Egypt are estimated at 244.400, and those who were not deported at 204.700, the total number of deportees would be 1.396.350. According to the latest accounts, those who are still living in the districts around the desert [Mosul, Mesopotamia and Syria] are some 200.000 to 250.000. If, furthermore, we assume that 200.000have either become Moslems or represent the women and children in Turkish homes, that would mean that a round million of the Armenians met their death. To show the utter untruth of Admiral Chester's assertions. I have brought forward testimony of Germans and Turks because such testimony is rather unfamiliar to the American public and also because the Germans were allies of the Turks in the war. I could adduce any amount more of testimony if more were required. Perhaps I have attached too much importance to Admiral Chester's misstatements. It is important, however, that there remain clear-cut on the pages of history, as one phase of the World War, the terrible tragedy of the Armenian deportations. As Herr Stuermet says in his book already quoted from: This terrible catalogue of crime on the part of the Government of Talaat is, however, in spite of all censorship and obstruction, being dealt with officially in all quarters of the globe - by the American Embassy at Constantinople and in neutral and Entente countries - and at the conclusion of peace it will be brought as an accusation against the criminal brotherhood of Young Turks by a merciless court of all the civilized nations of the world. * * * The mixture of cowardice, lack of conscience and lack of foresight of which our [imperial German] Government has been guilty in Armenian affairs is quite enough to undermine completely the political loyalty of any thinking man who has any regard for humanity and civilization. Every German cannot be expected to bear as lightheartedly as the diplomats of Pera the shame of having history point to the fact that the annihilation, with every refinement of cruelty, of a people of high social development, numbering over one and a half million, was contemporaneous with Germany's greatest power in Turkey. These great facts must be perfectly clear, and the ill-informed or careless words of a retired American Rear Admiral, falsifying the facts, should not be allowed to stand without complete refutation. New York Times - Current History Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yervant1 Posted January 13, 2015 Report Share Posted January 13, 2015 MILLION ARMENIANS KILLED OR IN EXILE - THE NEW YORK TIMES, DECEMBER 15, 1915January 11, 2015American Committee on Relief Says Victims of Turks Are SteadilyIncreasing ________________________________POLICY OF EXTERMINATION________________________________ More Atrocities Detailed in Supportof Charge That Turkey Is Acting Deliberately.December 15, 1915In a statement issued yesterday from the offices of the AmericanCommittee for Armenian and Syrian Relief at 70 Fifth Avenue, furtheratrocities committed by Turks upon Armenian Christians were detailedand additional evidence was given to support Lord Bryce's assertionthat the massacres are the results of a deliberate plan of the Turkishgovernment to "get rid of the Armenian question," as Abdul Hamid oncesaid, by getting "rid of the Armenians."Professor Samuel T. Dutton, Secretary of the committee said:"According to all the best evidence which the American Committeehas received, it is probably well within the truth to say that ofthe 2 million Armenians in Turkey a year ago, at least 1 millionhave been killed or forced into Islam, or compelled to flee thecountry, or have died upon the way to exile, or are now up on theroad to the deserts of Northern Arabia, or are already there. Thenumber of victims is constantly increasing. Surely there can be nogreater need of immediate help, even in these troublous times, thenthe desperate need of the Armenian refugees. The American Committeehas already done much in collecting and sending funds, as has alsothe English Committee, but there is still the direst need of generouscontributions. All contributions should be sent to Charles R. Crane,Treasurer, 70 Fifth Avenue."Walter H. Mallory, Executive Secretary of the American Committee, saidthat the committee was in close touch with the Lord Mayor's committeeof London and that "daily authentic reports of almost unbelievableatrocities" were received. In the statement made public there wasan excerpt from a letter received by the American Committee from theEnglish committee, which read:"The committee knows that there are 180,000 refugees still in theCaucasus besides 30,000 who have died there, and 70,000 who havereturned to parts of Turkey and Persia.A large part of the statement is taken up with a letter received bythe American Committee from a missionary stationed in Konia. In part,the letter read:"Soon after the great deportation that preceded the arrival of the newVali, Miss C. and I drove out to Kachin Han, the first station of therailroad toward Eregli. Just to follow the crowd, as a large number hadbeen driven off on foot with the expectation of taking the railroadlater on. Kachin Han is about three hours from here by carriage,and even so near to Konia as this we found about one hundred people,sitting and lying about the station in utter desolation. They hadbeen there three days: most of them had eaten up all the provisionsthey had and looked haggard and emaciated, veritable famine victimssuch as one sees in pictures of a scene in India."The train from Konia arrived while we were there, and the greaternumber of the of the people dragged themselves to the cars in aneffort to get on board, but were pushed back by the gendarmes, partlybecause they had no tickets and partly because there was no room:so the poor people were forced to turn back.http://www.horizonweekly.ca/news/details/58567 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yervant1 Posted October 1, 2015 Report Share Posted October 1, 2015 On This Day, Sept 30, 1915: Wiping Out The ArmeniansOn this day: Sept 30, 1915The Times, UKSeptember 29, 2015 Tuesday 6:35 PM GMTWiping out the ArmeniansWe publish today from our Cairo correspondent further details of thewholesale massacres of Armenians in Asia Minor, now being conductedunder the direction of the Young Turkish leaders who have seizedauthority at Constantinople. The Young Turks apparently propose tosettle "the Armenian question" for ever by exterminating the entireArmenian population in Turkish dominions. The massacres of 1894, 1896,and 1909 were small by comparison with the destruction of Armeniansnow being pursued.The heads of the Committee of Union and Progress succeeded for atime in persuading Western Europe that they were not responsiblefor the brutal murder of thousands of Armenians at Adana, Tarsus,and elsewhere in 1909. It is now being realized that the allegationsthen made by prominent Armenians were true, and that the members ofthe Committee, who were then posing before the Powers as the apostlesof a new era in which Turkish subjects of all creeds should enjoyequality, had in fact both countenanced and incited the 1909 massacres.The two men directly responsible for the present methodicalextermination of the Armenians are Enver ***** and Talaat Bey. Enver isreputed to be furious with the Armenians because they are alleged tohave helped the Russians in the Caucasus campaign. Talaat, the mostpowerful member of the Committee, has apparently followed Enver'slead with alacrity; and has ordered the Armenians to be ruthlesslywiped out. It is strange to reflect that, less than six years ago,the principal author of this monstrous regime was being feted in Londonas one of the introducers of "Parliamentary government" into Turkey.Enver's murderous career has been promoted solely at the point ofthe revolver. He has marked every step by brutal assassinations; butTalaat is a far more capable man, has always remained a civilian, andwas not until recently thought capable of atrocities which make theworst deeds of the ex-Sultan Abdul Hamid seem almost mild and humaneby comparison. All the Allies can do at the moment is to warn Talaatand his evil associates that the war is undergoing marked changes,and that the time will come when they will be hunted down as commonmurderers by the avenging Powers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yervant1 Posted November 19, 2016 Report Share Posted November 19, 2016 November 18, 2016 Swiss teacher Beatrice Rohner managed to save 720 Armenian orphans in Aleppo http://www.horizonweekly.ca/upload_files/wysiwyg/rohner100_v-zweispaltig.jpgBeatrice Rohner1876-1947Beatrice Rohner was born in Basle on 24 April 1876 and grew up in Switzerland. After working as a teacher in both Paris and Istanbul, in 1900 she moved to Marash (today Kahramanmaras) where she joined the Hülfsbund für christliches Liebeswerk im Orient, a humanitarian organization set up in Frankfurt in 1896.Entitled to the protection granted to German diplomats between 1915 and 1917, she became a leading member of the Aleppo resistance movement that tried to counteract the extermination of the Armenians. The temporary permit that allowed Beatrice Rohner to run an orphanage effectively enabled her to rescue a large number of Armenian children whose parents had perished during the genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman authorities.Despite knowing all too well that her actions were absolutely unacceptable for the Ottoman government, and that her position as a woman made things even more difficult, Beatrice Rohner took full responsibility for them. She also accepted the risk of managing the very considerable funds donated mainly by Swiss aid organizations and by the German and American consulates. Though sizeable, these were never enough for the enormous task in hand or for the corrupt and avid Turkish government officials. Despite all this, Beatrice Rohner continued her dual existence with one official job and another clandestine activity under the threat of martial court, going far beyond any formal observance of legality. In her humanitarian aid work she was fortunate enough to count on an extensive network of volunteers from the local Armenian communities. They shared her strong moral convictions and carried on working despite incessant threats and persecution. In the end, many of her collaborators lost their lives. In spite of all this, the orphanage held out until 1917 when the children were abducted by force and sorted into different government-run orphanages. Only then Beatrice Rohner was forced, against her will, to give up her brave and tireless efforts and return to Europe, where she died at home in Wüstenroth on 9 February 1947.Thanks to her efforts, a large number of children escaped the genocide (it is calculated that in 1916 Beatrice Rohner managed to save 720 Armenian orphans, the only ones to survive out of approximately 3336 child deportees). Her courage also provides us with fundamental historic testimony of what happened in Aleppo between 1915 and 1917, thanks to her reports, regularly filed in the archives of the German Foreign Ministry and by the American Committee for Foreign Missions.http://www.horizonweekly.ca/news/details/95893 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MosJan Posted May 1, 2024 Report Share Posted May 1, 2024 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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