Part 6
At first the dead in Aleppo were brought to the cemetery in the coffins provided by the Armenian Church. This was done by "Hamals" (professional porters), who received two piastres for each dead. When the "Hamals" were unable to cope with the whole work, the women themselves brought their dead to the cemetery--the babies in their arms, the bigger children laid on sacks and carried by four women, one at each corner. I saw corpses carried to the cemetery across a donkey's back. A friend of mine saw a dead body tied to a stick, which was carried by two men. Another friend saw a cart drawn by oxen going to the cemetery with a full load of corpses. The two-wheeled cart was too large to pass the narrow cemetery-gate, whereupon the driver, without any hesitation, turned it round and emptied it; then he dragged the dead bodies to their respective graves by the arms and legs. At the present moment five or six carts are in use, which take the dead to the cemetery. In one of the hans, which is called a hospital, I saw on a Sunday something like 30 corpses lying about in a yard, which was about 25 yards wide and 50 yards long. About 20 had already been buried on that day. The 30 corpses remained lying there until the evening. My wife got them carried away in the darkness by engaging three "Hamals," to whom she gave a medjidié (about 3s. 2d.) each. In the case of one of the corpses the skin adhered to the hands of the "Hamals," showing how far the process of decomposition had already gone. Dying persons and persons suffering from serious illnesses, about 1,000 altogether, were lying among the dead, under the burning sun. The whole scene was more terrible than anything I had ever seen, even than the shooting of the 24 people at Marash in the summer, which has been described above. Nearly all the people suffered from diarrhoea. Channels had been dug in the ground within the courtyard, by the side of which the dying were placed, with their backs towards the channel, so that the emptyings of their bowels could pass into it at once. Whenever anyone died, he was removed, and his melancholy place was filled by another. It happened frequently that persons who were carried away as dead gave signs of life when they were near the grave; they were dragged aside, until it was certain that death had supervened. One young girl recovered so far that she could be carried back to the town, and one person who had been buried in the evening was found sitting on his grave the next morning. Several corpses had been thrown into one grave, and he was on the top; in the twilight only a thin layer of earth had been put over him. In Tel-Abiad Mr.-- saw open graves with 20-30 corpses. The graves were filled up with earth when it was no longer possible to put any more corpses into them. Mr.-- told me that it was impossible to go near these places owing to the stench, and yet the deported persons had to encamp in the immediate vicinity. Out of 35 orphans who were kept in one room at Aleppo, 30 died in a week for want of nourishment. Mr.-- says that on his journey to this place he saw corpses everywhere on the road, and that a Kurd boasted to him of having killed 14 children.
On Sunday, the 12th August, 1915, I had to go to the station of the Damascus railway at Aleppo, and was able to see the loading into cattle trucks of about 1,000 women and children. With us in Germany the cattle are allowed more space than those wretched people; 90 per cent. of them had death written on their faces. There were people among them who literally had no time allowed them for dying. On the previous evening a convoy had been taken away, and on the next morning the dead bodies of two children, about half grown up, were found, who had died during the loading of the trucks and had been left lying on the platform.
On the 13th September, 1915, the following telegraphic order from the Commander-in-Chief of the 4th Army, Djemal Pasha, was brought to the notice of the inhabitants: "All photographs, which may have been taken by the engineers or other officers of the Bagdad Railway Construction Company relating to the convoys of Armenians, are to be delivered within 48 hours, together with the negatives, to the Military Commissariat of the Bagdad Railway at Aleppo. Any contravention of this order will be punished by court-martial."
Several times I saw women and children search for scraps of food in the dustheaps: anything that was found was devoured immediately. I saw the children gnawing at raw bones which they had picked up in corners used as urinals.
On the road between Marash and Aintab the Mohammedan population of a village wanted to distribute water and bread among a convoy of 100 families, but the soldiers escorting the convoy prevented this. Four-fifths of the deported persons are women and children; the majority of the men have been called up for the Army.
Twenty thousand persons who had been deported by way of Marash were not allowed to pass on to Aintab and obtain supplies of food, though the direct caravan route goes through Aintab.
At Ras-el-Ain there are at present about 1,500 women and children, the only survivors out of several thousands, who, together with their husbands and fathers, were deported from Kharput and the surrounding country. Among these 1,500 persons there is not a single male over the age of 10-12 years. These people, healthy or sick, are left lying from morning till evening in the sun without food and without protection against a temperature of 109 1/2 degrees in the shade, and they are in the arbitrary power of their guards. Mr. L.-- who during the last month had, in conversation with me, used the expression "Armenian rabble"--spoke literally as follows: "I am not a man who is easily touched, but after what I have seen at Ras-el-Ain I cannot keep the tears away. I did not think it possible that such acts of ill-treatment and violence, outraging all rules of humanity, could be perpetrated in our century."
A "Tchaoush" (Sergeant-Major) of the name of Suleiman took 18 women and girls and sold them to Arabs, charging 2-3 mejidiés (6s. 4d.--9s. 6d.) for each of them. A Turkish police-commissary said to me: "We have lost all count of the numbers of women and girls who were taken away by the Arabs and Kurds, either by force or with the connivance of the Government. This time we have carried out our operations against the Armenians according to our heart's desire; not one out of ten has been left among the living."
While I am writing this down, my wife has returned from a walk into the town, and reports tearfully that she met a convoy of over 800 Armenians, all bare-footed, with torn clothes, carrying their scanty possessions on their backs, together with their babies.
In Besné the whole population, consisting of 1,800 souls, principally women and children, were expatriated; it was alleged that they were to be deported to Ourfa. When they reached the Göksu, a tributary of the Euphrates, they were compelled to take their clothes off, and thereupon they were all massacred and thrown into the river.
On a single day latterly 170 corpses were observed drifting down the Euphrates, on other days 50-60. Mr. A., an engineer, saw 40 corpses in the course of one ride. Those which are stranded on the river bank are devoured by the dogs, those on sandbanks in mid-stream by the vultures.
The above-mentioned 800 Armenians had been deported from the district of Marash. They had been told that they would be taken to Aintab, and they were to provide themselves with food for two days. When they reached the neighbourhood of Aintab the soldiers said: "We have made a mistake, we were meant to go to Nissibin." No food was supplied by the authorities, and no opportunities for the purchase of provisions were given. At Nissibin the word went round: "We came the wrong way; we were meant to go to Mumbidj." There again the soldiers said: "We came the wrong way; we were meant to go to Bab." In this manner they had to wander about for seventeen days, abandoned to the arbitrary pleasure of their escort. During the whole time no provisions were supplied by the Government, and their scanty possessions had to be given away in exchange for bread.
One mother, whose eldest daughter was taken away by force, threw herself in despair into the Euphrates with her two remaining children.
Said, an emigrant from Tripoli, who had been a groom in Mr. L.'s stables for four years with a monthly salary of 400 piastres (about £3), enlisted as a volunteer for the war, in order to be able, according to his own statement, to take part in the slaughter of a few Armenians. A nice house in an Armenian village near Ourfa was promised him (he hinted) by way of reward.
Two Circassians who were in the service of Mr. E., a storekeeper, enlisted as volunteers for the war on the same ground.
The head of a Circassian village community, Tchordekli, speaking of the war volunteers from his village, said to an acquaintance of mine: "Ev yikmak itchun giderler" (They go in order to ruin whole families).
At Arab Pounar a Turkish Major, who spoke German, expressed himself as follows: "I and my brother took possession of a young girl at Ras-el-Ain, who had been left on the road. We are very angry with the Germans for doing such things." When I contradicted them, they said: "The Chief of the General Staff is a German; von der Goltz is Commander-in-Chief, and ever so many German officers are in our Army. Our Koran does not permit such treatment as the Armenians have to suffer now." [22] At Nuss Tell a Mohammedan inspector made similar remarks to a clerk. When I taxed him with this utterance in the presence of others, he said: "It is not only I who say this; everyone will tell you the same tale."
At Biredjik the prisons are filled every day and emptied over night. Tell Armen, a village of 3,000 inhabitants, was raided, the inhabitants were massacred, thrown dead or alive into the wells, or burnt. Major von Mikusch was a witness of the devastation. A German cavalry captain saw unburied corpses between Diyarbekir and Ourfa on both sides of the road, with their throats cut. Innumerable unburied corpses of children were seen on the way by Mr. S.
At Tel-Abiad seventeen dead or dying persons were left behind near the station, on the departure of a convoy. Two railway officials afterwards had all seventeen buried.
All the convoys of Armenians have for the last few days been taken into these parts. The statement made by Mr. N. is entirely in accord with the reply given to me by the Chairman of the Deportation Commission, when I made an application in favour of four Armenian children: "You do not grasp our intentions; we want to destroy the Armenian name. Just as Germany will only let Germans exist, so we Turks will only let Turks." [23]
10. Narrative of a German Official of the Bagdad Railway.
When the inhabitants of the Cilician villages left their homes, many of them still had donkeys for riding or carrying packs, but the soldiers escorting the convoys would only allow the "Katerdjis" (donkey-drivers) to ride on these animals, saying that strict orders had been given that no deported persons, whether male or female, might ride. In the case of the convoy starting from Hadjin the "Katerdjis" simply took all the pack animals which they suspected of carrying money or valuables straight to their own villages. Other animals, which the people had taken with them, were taken away from them by force or purchased for prices so absurdly low that it would hardly have made any difference if they had been given away gratis. A woman whose family is known to me sold 90 sheep for a hundred piastres, which at any other time would have realised about T£60 to £70; in other words, she had to sell ninety animals for the proper price of one animal. The villagers of Shar had received permission to take away their oxen, carts and pack animals. Near Gökpunar they were forced to leave the carriage road and to take the shorter footpath which crosses the mountains. They had to march on without any food, for their journey or other equipment. The escort simply said that these were their orders.
At the beginning each deported person received from the Government one kilogram (2 lbs.) of bread per month (not per day). They lived on the provisions which they had taken with them. Small sums of money were afterwards paid to them. I was told of about 30 persons who had formerly been in good positions in the Circassian village of Bumbudj (Mumbidj, on the ruins of the ancient Bambyke), 1 1/2 days' journey from Aleppo, who had received 20 piastres in thirty days--not per head; but the 30 between them. That meant a penny a month each. About four hundred barefooted women, each with one child on her arm, one child on her back (often enough a dead one) and one held by the hand, passed through Marash during the first days. The Armenians of Marash--who afterwards were themselves deported--purchased £50 (Turkish) worth of shoes to supply those who passed through the town. Between Marash and Aintab the Mohammedan population in a Turkish village wished to give water and bread to a convoy of about 100 families. The soldiers refused to permit this. The American mission and the Armenians of Aintab--who later on were also deported--managed to bring bread and money during the night to the convoys which passed Aintab, and which totalled about 20,000 persons, mostly women and children. These were the villagers of the Sandjak of Marash. The convoys were not allowed to enter Marash, but encamped in the open. The American missionaries found it possible to provision them thus by night as far as Nisib (nine hours to the south-east of Aintab, on the way to the Euphrates).
While on the march the deported Armenians were at first robbed of their ready money, and afterwards of all their possessions. A deported Protestant minister saw T£43 being taken away from one family and £28 from another. This minister was himself newly married, and was compelled to leave his young wife at Hadjin, expecting her first child. Four-fifths of the deported persons are women and children. Three-fifths of them are barefooted. A former inhabitant of Hadjin who is known to me personally and who had a fortune of at least T£15,000 had, like everybody else, been robbed of his clothes, and clothes had to be begged for him here. The deported Armenians are specially troubled by the fact that they are unable to bury their dead. They are left dying anywhere on the road. The women often carry their dead children for days on their backs. At Bab, ten hours to the east of Aleppo, those who came through were lodged provisionally for a week or two, but they were not allowed to retrace their steps to bury the companions who had died on the way.
The hardest fate is that of the women who are confined on the way. They are hardly allowed sufficient time to bring their child into the world. One poor woman gave birth to twins during the night. In the morning she had to march on, carrying the two newly-born children on her back. After a two hours' march she collapsed. She had to put the children on the ground under a bush, and the soldiers compelled her to walk on with her companions. Another woman was confined during the march and was forced to proceed on her march immediately; she fell down dead. A third woman was surrounded by ladies belonging to the American mission, while she was confined in the neighbourhood of Aintab. They only succeeded in obtaining permission for her to ride an animal, and she continued her journey in this manner, holding the child in her lap with a few rags round it. These cases were witnessed merely on the section of road between Marash and Aintab. At Aintab the people clearing up a han, which an hour before had been left by a convoy, found a new-born child. In the Tash-Han, in Marash, three new-born children were found buried in dung.
Innumerable corpses of children are found lying unburied on the road. A Turkish Major, who returned with me three days ago, said that many children were abandoned by their mothers on the way because they could not feed them any more. Older children are taken away from their mothers by the Turks. The Major, as well as each of his brothers, had an Armenian child with him; they intended to educate them as Mohammedans. One of the children speaks German. It must be one of the inmates of a German orphanage. It is thought that about 300 of the women who passed through here were confined on the way.
In this place a family, in its dire poverty and despair, sold a girl of the age of 18 years to a Turk for T£6. The husbands of most of the women had been called up for service in the Army. Anyone who does not obey the summons calling him up is hanged or shot; there were seven cases lately at Marash. The conscripts are, however, generally used merely for mending the roads, and are not allowed to carry arms. Those who return home find their houses empty. Two days ago I met an Armenian soldier at Djerabulus, who had come from Jerusalem, having obtained leave to visit his native village, Geben (situate between Zeitoun and Sis). I have known this man for years. Here he heard that his mother, his wife and three children had been deported into the desert. All inquiries as to the fate of his family were fruitless.
Corpses drifting down the Euphrates have been observed every day during the last 28 days, pairs of them being tied together back to back, while others are tied three to eight together by the arms. A Turkish Colonel who is stationed at Djerabulus was asked why he did not have the corpses buried, whereupon he replied that he had no orders to do so, and that, moreover, it was impossible to ascertain whether they were Mohammedans or Christians, as their sexual organs had been cut off. (They would bury Mohammedans, but not Christians.) The corpses which had been stranded on the shore were eaten by the dogs. Others which had stuck on the sandbanks became the prey of the vultures. A German, in the course of one ride, saw six pairs of corpses drifting down stream. A German cavalry captain said he had, in the course of a ride from Diyarbekir to Ourfa, seen innumerable unburied corpses on both sides of the road, all corpses of young men whose throats had been cut. (These were the Armenians called up for military service and used for mending the roads.) A Turkish Pasha, addressing a distinguished Armenian, expressed himself as follows: "Be thankful, if at least you find a grave in the desert; many of you have to do without this."
Not one half of the deported persons remain alive. The day before yesterday one woman died here in the station yard; yesterday there were 14 deaths, and this morning a further 10. A Protestant minister from Hadjin said to a Turk at Osmanieh: "Not one half of these deported persons remain alive." The Turk replied: "That is what we are after."
It ought not to be overlooked that there are some Mohammedans who disapprove of the horrible deeds done against the Armenians. A Mohammedan Sheikh, a person of great authority at Aleppo, said in my presence: "When I hear talk about the treatment of the Armenians, I am ashamed of being a Turk."
Anyone who wishes to remain alive is compelled to go over to Islam. In order to promote this, isolated families are in certain cases sent to purely Mohammedan villages.
The number of deported persons who have passed through here and at Aintab has so far reached about 50,000. Nine-tenths of them were told on the evening before their deportation that they had to start in the morning. The majority of the convoys go through Ourfa, the minority through Aleppo. The first mentioned take the road for Mosul, the others for Der-el-Zor. The authorities say that they are to be settled there, but those who escape the knife will certainly perish of hunger. Some 10,000 persons have reached Der-el-Zor on the Euphrates; no news has so far been received of the others. As regards those who were sent towards Mosul, it is said that they are to be settled at a distance of about 16 miles from the railway; this probably means that they are to be driven into the desert, where their extirpation can proceed without witnesses.
What I have written down is only a small fraction of all the cruelties which have been practised here during the last two months, and which assume larger proportions every day. It is only a fraction of the things which I have seen with my own eyes and heard from acquaintances and friends who were eye-witnesses. I am prepared at any time to mention the dates of the events and to give the names of the witnesses.
11. THE AMANUS PASSES.
Statements by two Swiss Ladies, resident in Turkey. Communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief.
(a) Report by Fräulein M., dated 16th November, 1915.
I have just returned from a ride on horseback through the Baghtché-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 between 50 and 60 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 them 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 off my horse. A number of corpses were lying about unburied, and it was only by bribing the gendarmes that we could induce them to allow their burial. Usually the Armenians were not allowed to perform the last offices of love for their relatives. Dreadful 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 have dressed bleeding wounds on the bodies of women that had been caused by these bayonet thrusts. Many children had lost their parents and were now without any support. Three hours' distance from Osmania two dying men were lying absolutely alone in the fields. They had been here for days without food or even a drop of water, after their companions had continued their march. They had grown as thin as skeletons, and only their heavy breathing showed that there was still life in them. Unburied women and children were lying in the ditches. The Turkish officials in Osmania were very obliging; I succeeded in obtaining many concessions from them, and many hardships were remedied. I obtained carriages to pick up the dying people and bring them in to town.
(b) Report by Fräulein O. on a visit to the exiles' camp at Mamouret, 26th November, 1915.
We saw thousands of tiny low tents, made of thin material. An innumerable crowd of people, of all ages and every class of society! They were looking at us partly in surprise, partly with the indifference of desperation. A group of hungry, begging children and women were at our heels: "Hanoum, bread! Hanoum, I am hungry; we have had nothing to eat to-day or yesterday!"