103. ADAPAZAR: FULLER STATEMENT BY THE AUTHOR OF THE PRECEDING DOCUMENT; PUBLISHED IN THE JOURNAL “THE NEW ARMENIA,” OF NEW YORK, 15th MAY, 1916.
For several months there had been occasional exiles from Adapazar, but we felt safe because we had a good Mayor and a good Military Commander in the city. They were our friends. The Commander frequently joined us in our daily games of croquet, while the sick soldiers watched us from the windows. We gave a garden party to all the officers. They liked us and would have spared the school and the Protestants had they been able. But one day little Arousiag, one of our youngest pupils, came to us, a refugee, with only the clothes on her back. She had been staying with relatives at Sabandja, but the whole village had been exiled. As she had been born in America, of naturalized parents, she was saved, and I was afterwards able to bring her to her parents in America.
Soon after, some villagers whom I knew came from another mountain village, Tchalgara, and from their lips I heard how for seven days the men had been shut up in the church and beaten—especially the priest—until some fainted. The Government was searching for weapons, and the men were beaten until they either produced their own or secured others to surrender. Then in Bardezag, our nearest neighbouring missionary city, similar things happened. We did not know what was going on in the interior, although occasional vague rumours had come to us.
Then horrible cruelties began in Adapazar. About 500 important men were imprisoned in the Gregorian church. Those belonging to the Socialist Party were mercilessly beaten. Most accepted their fate in silence, but one man said boldly: “You must answer to God in Heaven for these things.” “You have no God but me,” was the response, and the man was beaten till his feet were red with blood. “What do I care for your Mayor?” continued the Beast, as he was called: “He says you are good people, but he is no good himself. Kill me if you wish,” he continued, “but ten men will come to take my place.” A mother threw herself in front of her invalid son and herself received the stripes. A German woman tried to save her Armenian husband. “Get out of the way or I’ll beat you,” cried the Beast; “I do not care for the German Emperor himself, my orders come from Talaat Bey.” But afterwards the man was released. When I heard these things I knew it was of no use for me to try to interfere; if the Beast would not listen to a German, he certainly would not to an American.
One day two of our delicate ladies went to see the Beast—to plead, like Queen Esther, for their people—saying, by this act: “If I perish, I perish.” They found a man of fine appearance who had been educated in Europe, and who received them most politely. “We have heard bad things about you,” they said, “but[“but] now we see that you are a good man. Can’t you persuade the people to surrender their arms without beating them?” “I am glad to see you so patriotic,” he responded, “and would be glad of your assistance. You go, too, to the houses and persuade the people to give up their arms, and it will be well with them.” So these two ladies hired a carriage and drove up and down the city, exhorting the people to surrender all their arms.
For a day or two the beatings were less. Then came the awful Saturday—the day of darkness and horror. Someone came running to the school-house crying: “They are beating the men in the church to death, and are going to begin on the women next.”
I ran over to the neighbour’s house and there I found men and women crying. Two of our Protestant brethren had escaped from the church and were telling their story. “They are beating the men frightfully,” they cried. “They say they will throw us into the River Sakaria; they will send us all into exile; they will make Mohammedans of us. They are going to the houses to beat the women next.” I begged the women to come to the school and I would put up the American flag, but they did not wish to leave their houses to be pillaged, although they promised to come if necessary.
Soon after, more women came to the school, frantic to do something. “We will go to the Beast; we will go to the Mayor,” they cried, and we were all losing our heads. Then our lady doctor came. She had been to the church to care for the wounded and the tears were streaming down her face. Then one of the school trustees came. “I want you to take my money and give it to my son if I die,” he said. Then he sat down and the tears streamed down his face and mine. At last I could endure it no longer. “I am going to the church; I don’t care what you say!” I exclaimed, and I put on my hat and started. I did not know the way to the Gregorian church and everyone was afraid to show me, so I had to find my way by inquiry. “You are going to the church?” asked one man: “It is hell there.” I arrived. I walked past the guards without even looking at them, and there at the open door stood one of the trustees, Mr. Alexanian. “Can’t I speak to the police and get you out?” I asked. The other trustees had already left. “No,” he said, “I am superintendent now.”
The beatings had ceased for a time, in order that leading men might go out to search for weapons. Mr. Alexanian would write down their names as they went out, erasing them when the men returned. “I am glad I was here last night,” he continued, “for I have been able to help the poor people to-day.” How many of us would be glad of the privilege of spending a sleepless, bedless, chairless night for the sake of being useful? He told the same sad story of awful beatings. No Protestant had been beaten. The Turks have always been favourable towards the Protestants, especially in Adapazar. This trustee told how after the beatings he went outside the church and found a Turkish soldier in tears, who said he had been crying three days and nights because of the wrongs inflicted upon the Armenian people. So you see there are some good Turks. It is the Government that is responsible, not all the people.
Soon after this, an important exile returned, the father of our two sweetest kindergarten children, and the head of a society. Great anxiety was felt on his behalf, for we feared he would be hanged and we grieved for his refined and delicate wife. He answered boldly at the trial. “Why do you punish these men? If there is any fault it is mine, and yet I also am guiltless. This society was organized with the permission of the Government. You allowed us to obtain firearms.” Which was all very true. The Government was hatching a diabolical scheme to send all the Armenians into an endless exile, and wished first to disarm them.
Sunday brought new terrors but no especial troubles. On Monday the Beast left the city, and our hearts were filled with a subdued rejoicing, even though he said he would return on Wednesday. We did not believe it. We thought he had been recalled on account of his cruelties. As to the man himself, he was an ex-convict, having been implicated in a conspiracy against the Government and sentenced to a thousand years imprisonment. He was working for his liberty by carrying on this devilish work, and, to give himself courage for it, he drank heavily of the most intoxicating liquor.
During these ten days of imprisonment all Armenian shops were closed. The Armenians could not go to market to buy provisions or even to gather the produce of their gardens. Many were on the verge of starvation. On Saturday evening a few shops were opened, and we began to take heart a little. Some were fearful of exile, but I declared it would be impossible to send from twenty to thirty thousand Armenians from one city into exile, though a few would doubtless be sent. At this time the Government collected taxes from the Christians a year in advance—a bad sign. On Sunday morning I was awakened early by someone calling below my window. I put out my head and was informed that all the Armenians in Adapazar were to be sent into exile. As early as possible I went to the Mayor to intercede for the people, but it was useless. He would not even promise to protect our American property, and out of the entire city I could save only little Arousiag, who was American born.
From that Sunday onwards, the streets were full of Armenians trying to sell their possessions for a mere pittance. All was very quiet—the silence of despair. Even the Turks looked serious, for they knew that their city was financially ruined, as the Armenians are the most thrifty and skilful of all the peoples of Turkey. In spite of apparent quiet, however, robbery was not lacking. A poor servant girl was trying to sell her sewing machine—her only possession—and when she refused to sell it for four dollars, a man seized it and ran away with it. A few days later, the husband of one of our school servants was bringing their machine to our school when a man snatched it from his shoulders.
The people who had any money went to Konia (the ancient Iconium) in goods-trucks, being allowed to take only a few possessions with them. They were told to leave their possessions in the churches and they would be safeguarded, but the same promise had been made in Sabandja, and the church had been looted almost before the people were out of the city, so nobody trusted this promise. The exiles were crowded on the top of their possessions, sixty to eighty people in a truck marked for forty people. Some missionaries from the south met a train-load of these refugees and described their condition as miserable in the extreme. One girl had hanged herself on the way; others had poison with them. Mothers were holding out their beautiful babies and begging the missionaries to take them. A Turkish officer ordered the Americans off, saying: “These Armenians are dangerous people; they may have bombs.”
From Konia they were to go by foot or carriage to a desert place called Mosul, in Mesopotamia. Those who had no money must make the entire journey on foot. Such dreadful stories came to their ears as to the treatment of those who walked—of how people were not allowed to sell them bread, of how they were robbed, and families separated, the men slain and the women and girls given to the Turks, the children sold to be brought up as Mohammedans—that people sold their last possession so as to be able to go as far as possible by train.
They were afraid to take money with them, lest they should be robbed by the way. They must leave all their property behind, and as soon as they vacated their houses, refugees from Macedonia took possession of them. What a lamentable condition—to be poor and in danger of starvation; to be rich, accustomed to luxury and refinement, and then suffer all these things; to be a woman, especially a pretty woman, with all a woman’s dangers (some in Constantinople told me they would disfigure their faces if they were exiled); to be a man and see all these things and yet be unable to lift a finger in resistance; to be there and endure; to be here and imagine!
How can the people keep their faith in God during such trials? How many will deny and curse Him? How many will accept Mohammedanism? Or how many will remain faithful to the end, and say through their tears: “Though He slay me—or worse than slay me—yet will I trust in Him?” Again and again they said to me: “Oh, if they would only kill me now, I would not care; but I fear they will try to force me to become a Mohammedan.”
What was the meaning of all this? It was the death blow aimed at Christianity in Turkey, or, in other words, the extermination of the Armenian people—their extermination or amalgamation. And why? At the beginning of the struggle, or soon after, the Holy War was declared. This signified a purpose to kill all Christians, the reward for which is eternal pleasure in the Mohammedan paradise. At first Turkey declared that the Holy War was directed only against nations at war with herself, but later she waged it against all Christians.
The Armenians were so patient, so silent and uncomplaining. We came very near to each other in those days. “You have made our sorrows your sorrows,” they said to me: “You have an Armenian heart.” But as the realization of what their exile actually meant dawned upon me, I could neither eat nor sleep. One day I said to my friends: “I cannot comfort you to-day; you must comfort me. I think I feel worse than if I were going into exile myself.” And they were so brave and cheerful that I did actually carry away cheer and comfort from that home.
I had planned to remain with my friends until all were gone, but that was impossible. The Protestants were given special favours; they were the last to go, and were allowed to remain in their homes or in the church, while on the Wednesday of that week all other Armenians were turned out into the streets to wait their turn to go. There they waited, with their baggage, for days, by the roadside near the station.
So, with a sad heart, on the Friday of that exile week, I bade farewell to the group of friends gathered at the school-house door, and with little Arousiag mounted on to the top of my goods in the ox-cart, fearing to trust my possessions out of my sight a moment. I put up an umbrella to protect me from the rain and the curious gaze of others. I felt and looked like an exile myself.
When we reached Constantinople, everything looked so peaceful and quiet that I felt disappointed. We had received no news from the city for some time, and thought that it must be nearly in the hands of the enemy. To see women and children all dressed in the height of fashion, and seemingly indifferent to the misery of the world, was a painful contrast.
Not only did I leave terror behind me. In Constantinople also every man’s heart was failing him for fear. There were rumours that Constantinople also would be evacuated, and awful stories of the separation of families, of the Mohammedanizing of Christians, reached our ears. “This is worse than massacre,” again and again they said: “Only let them kill us now.” Everybody was frantic to leave the country, and the police stations were crowded with people seeking, too often in vain, for permission to go to America, Bulgaria, or Roumania. No men at all were allowed to go. They were left behind to be exiled or massacred. On some days women were given permission to leave, and on other days they were refused. It took me, an American, two days to get my papers, with help from the Embassy, and at every step I feared difficulty or refusal because of Arousiag, and also another Armenian girl whom I was bringing with me.
On the train just before we reached the boundary-line, an Armenian family was sent back. Two of our graduates joined us in Bulgaria, and they were said to be the last Armenians to leave Constantinople. I know that some American ladies who joined us later were not allowed to bring a servant with them, although she was badly needed to help them with their babies.
At last we were out of the land of the dreadful Turk, but alas! a part of us has been left behind. In all our silent hours visions float before our mental eyes. As we passed through desolate-looking provinces on our journey, I could see marching, marching, without food or water or rest, my poor friends—the sun beating down upon their heads, the cruel faces and rods of their oppressors urging them on when they were ready to faint with weariness and hunger. No place to buy bread, no bed to lie upon except the bare earth—only marching, marching always. And I wondered whether the sublime faith and courage with which they had started out would fail them in the end. And thinking of these things the words of the Psalmist became my words: “My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, ‘Where is thy God?‘”
But there is a brighter side to the picture. One Sunday on my voyage I turned to Revelation to see if I could find a message for these days, and lo! there it was in Rev. vii., 13-17:—“These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.... They shall hunger no more neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light upon them nor any heat.... And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”
XIV.
THE ANATOLIAN RAILWAY.
The Anatolian Railway runs diagonally across Anatolia from the Asiatic suburbs of Constantinople to the Gulf of Iskanderoun (Alexandretta), but, beyond Konia, the line is in the hands of the Baghdad Railway Company, and the construction of this section is still incomplete. The tunnel through the Taurus Range is not yet open to traffic, and the present rail-head is at Bozanti, on the northern side of the mountains. In the Adana plain, a short section of line has long been in working order between Adana itself and the ports of Mersina and Alexandretta. But beyond this, again, there is another breach of continuity at the Amanus Range, and this second mountain barrier has also to be crossed by road before the traveller reaches the railway system that radiates from Aleppo.
The Anatolian Railway follows an ancient artery of trade, and there were important Armenian colonies in the chief places along its course, as well as in places lying off the railway towards the north-east. But the track of the line forms the general limit of Armenian expansion, and defines the Armenian “sphere of influence” in Asiatic Turkey as against the Greek. The only considerable colony of Armenians south-west of the Anatolian Railway is at Smyrna, where they seem to have suffered less severely than in other parts of the Ottoman Empire—we know no more than that a few of the leading Armenians there were hanged.
The deportation of the Armenian colonies in the railway zone appears to have been started during the months of June and July. Their numbers were soon swelled by the still larger streams of exiles from the metropolitan districts (see section XIII. above), and the traffic on the line became hopelessly congested. The hardships of travel in crowded cattle-trucks were painful enough, but now at every station on the line crowds of exiles were detrained to await their turn for transport for interminable periods. The central table-land of Anatolia, which the railway traverses, has a very high average altitude, and even in summer the climate is severe. The exiles were turned out on to the open plateau in an absolutely destitute condition, without food or shelter—here 2,000, here 5,000, here 11,000, here 12,000, here 15,000, here 30,000. These facts and figures are vouched for, by a number of unimpeachable witnesses, in the documents contained in this section. The witnesses write from half-a-dozen different points along the railway, and one of them was himself an exile, experiencing in person the horrors of a concentration camp. But the misery of detention was as nothing compared with what the exiles suffered when their turn came to be carried on to rail-head and driven across the mountains on foot. There are frightful descriptions of their condition by a witness who saw them when they had reached the Adana Plain, and still more terrible accounts of the survivors who had lived to traverse the second mountain barrier and were dragging themselves towards Aleppo.
This agonising journey along the route of the railway was protracted for more than three months. The exiles were mostly uprooted from their homes in August; the first documents date from the beginning of September, and by that date the foremost batches had hardly begun their marches across the first mountain range; the last documents were written in November, and still the vast body of the exiles had not reached Adana, but were huddled together—stationary through exhaustion—on the south-eastern slopes of Taurus and Amanus, between the summits and the plain. One of the latest witnesses reckons the number here at 150,000.