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The Central Government now announced its intention of gathering
the two million or more Armenians living in the several sections
of the empire and transporting them to this desolate and
inhospitable region [the Syrian desert]… The real purpose of the
deportation was robbery and destruction; it really represented a
new method of massacre. When the Turkish authorities gave the
orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death
warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their
conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal
the fact.
All through the spring and summer of 1915 the deportations took
place. Scarcely a single Armenian, whatever his education or
wealth, or whatever the social class to which he belonged, was
exempted from the order…
Scarcely had the former possessors left the village, when
Mohammedan mohadjirs - immigrants from other parts of
Turkey - would be moved into the Armenian quarters. Similarly all
their valuables… [were] then parceled out among the Turks.
Before the caravans were started, it became the regular practice
to separate the young men from the families, tie them together in
groups of four, lead them to the outskirts, and shoot them. Public
hangings without trial - the only offense being that the victims
were Armenians - were taking place constantly. The [soldiers]
showed a particular desire to annihilate the educated and the
influential… I was constantly receiving reports... [of Armenian
men marched to a] secluded valley, a mob of Turkish peasants fell
upon them with clubs, hammers, axes, scythes, spades, and saws.
A guard of [soldiers] accompanied each convoy…
From thousands of
Armenian cities and villages these despairing caravans now set
forth; they filled all the roads leading southward… When the
caravans first started, the individuals bore some resemblance to
human beings; in a few hours, however, the dust of the road
plastered their faces and clothes, the mud caked their lower
members, and the slowly advancing mobs, frequently bent with
fatigue and crazed by the brutality of their "protectors,"
resembled some new and strange animal species. Yet for the better
part of six months, from April to October 1915, practically all
the highways in Asia Minor were crowded with these unearthly bands
of exiles. They could be seen winding in and out of every valley
and climbing up the sides of nearly every mountain -
moving on and
on… every road led to death. Village after village and town after
town was evacuated of its Armenian population… about 1,200,000
people started on this journey to the Syrian desert.
Detachments of [soldiers] would go ahead, notifying the Kurdish
tribes that their victims were approaching, and Turkish peasants
were also informed that their long-waited opportunity had arrived.
The Government even opened the prisons and set free the convicts…
Thus every caravan had a continuous battle for existence… Turkish
roughs would fall upon the women, leaving them sometimes dead from
their experiences or sometimes ravingly insane.
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Fig. 50 -
Those Who Fell By The Wayside |
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Scenes
like this were common all over the Armenian provinces,
in the spring and summer months of 1915. Death in
its several forms - massacre, starvation, exhaustion -
destroyed the larger part of the refugees. The
Turkish policy was that of extermination under the guise
of deportation. |
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And thus, as the exiles moved, they left behind them another
caravan - that of dead and unburied bodies, of old men and of
women dying in the last stages of typhus, dysentery, and cholera,
of little children lying on their backs and setting up their last
piteous wails for food and water.
The most terrible scenes took place at the rivers, especially the
Euphrates. Sometimes, when crossing this stream, the gendarmes
would push the women into the water, shooting all who attempted to
save themselves by swimming. Frequently the women themselves would
save their honor by jumping into the river, their children in
their arms… In a loop of the river near Erzinghan… the thousands
of dead bodies created such a barrage that the Euphrates changed
its course for about a hundred yards.
At another place, where there were wells, some women threw
themselves into them… [and] were drowned and, in spite of that,
the rest of the people drank from that well, the dead bodies still
remaining there and polluting the water.
In one particular death march… On the seventieth day a few
creatures reached Aleppo. Out of the consigned convoy of 18,000
souls just 150 women and children reached the destination. A few
of the rest… were still living as captives of the Kurds and Truks;
all the rest were dead.
I have no means told the most terrible details…
Whatever crimes the most perverted instincts of the human mind can
devise, and whatever refinements of persecution and injustice the
most debased imagination can conceive, became the daily
misfortunes of this devoted people. I am confident that the whole
history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as
this. |
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