57. ERZEROUM: STATEMENT BY MR. A.S. SAFRASTIAN, DATED TIFLIS, 15th MARCH, 1916.
Since last October, when the Armenian atrocities were disclosed to the world at large, we had hoped against hope that, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, all that was said to have occurred might not be confirmed; that there might have been outlying districts in Turkish Armenia where the local Armenians had been spared the horrors that had accompanied their destruction in areas situated on the main roads. Unfortunately, now that the entire provinces of Erzeroum and Bitlis have been cleared of the Turk and one is able to see for oneself what actually has taken place, one is simply staggered at the depth and extent of the great crime, and the unprecedentedly cruel means by which the Armenians were cleared out of those two provinces, as well as the adjacent districts.
After seeing something with my own eyes in Erzeroum and Van, and compiling the facts about Bitlis, Moush and Khnyss from Russian official and other sources, my impression is that, out of the 250,000 Armenians of the Erzeroum and Bitlis Vilayets that remained under the dominion of the Turk in April, 1915 (exclusive of some 50,000 who saved themselves last summer, either by fighting their way out or by the advance of the Russians, and are now in Trans-Caucasia), only some 10,000 can be accounted for since an estimate was made possible by the death-blow which the Turks suffered last month. The remaining 240,000 or so have apparently perished under circumstances of the most extreme violence and inhumanity of which any human being is capable.
I am now in a position to state that all the accounts of Armenian atrocities which have been published in Europe and the United States are not only completely true, but that they represent merely such facts as have come under the eyes of consular officers or missionaries of neutral states; whereas the most ghastly and heinous crimes have been committed in the unfrequented parts of the country, out of sight of any observer.
The city of Erzeroum, the great military stronghold in Turkish Armenia, contained some 50,000 inhabitants before the war, of whom 20,000 were Armenians. The so-called plain of Erzeroum, a fertile alluvial plateau extending north-west of the city, contained some 60 Armenian villages with at least 45,000 inhabitants, almost all of them belonging to a sturdy race of peasants.
As soon as the European war broke out, the Central Committee of the Young Turks sent one Boukhar-ed-Din-Shakir-Bey, one of the Committee leaders, to Erzeroum, to organise the annihilation of the Armenians. Another, Djemal Effendi, a fanatic of the foulest type, was sent later on to help him in the work. These two Committee stalwarts sent from Constantinople were assisted in their fiendish business by two notorious natives—Edib Hodja and Djafer Bey.
At Erzeroum, as everywhere else, the Armenians in particular were ruthlessly robbed of most of the goods they possessed under the cloak of military requisitions. The Turkish defeat at Sarikamysh in January, 1915, and the exaggerated accounts of the part played by Armenian Volunteers in that battle, envenomed relations at Erzeroum. A Turkish officer who returned from Sarikamysh told the Armenian Bishop Sempad at Erzeroum that they chiefly met Armenians on the battlefields: “Many of our soldiers were shot by Armenians,” he said, “and it was the Volunteers who destroyed our villages and scouting parties.”
Subsequently a campaign of slander and provocation was started by the Young Turk leaders against the Armenian people. Armenian soldiers in the Turkish army were disarmed and sent to labour battalions, and further severe measures were taken to squeeze every available asset out of the helpless people. A great mass meeting was held by the Turks on the 18th April just outside the city, in which the Armenians were publicly denounced as “traitors” and “dangerous to the Empire” and as supporters of the enemies of Turkey. Strict orders were issued to all Moslems who were inclined to shield their Armenian friends that they would be punished as severely as their protégés if they dared to protect them.
Fully aware of the fate that awaited them, the Armenians of Erzeroum made desperate appeals to Tahsin Bey, the Vali of the province, for protection. The latter’s reply was that he could not defy the instructions sent by the Central Government. The answer of Herr Anders, the German Consul at Erzeroum, to whom the Armenians appealed again for protection, seems to have been still more brutal. He definitely stated that the persecutions levelled by the Turkish Government and the mob against the Armenians were quite lawful, and that he could not interfere in the matter.
By an exercise of imagination one may perhaps visualise to some extent the anguish and agony those poor Armenians suffered during April and May. Trapped on all sides by the ruthless enemy and deprived of all means of armed or legal protection, they attempted to make the best of an unprecedentedly tragic situation. Almost all the intellectual leaders and teachers were openly done to death in prison under horrible tortures. Pilos, Atrouni and several others have never been heard of since their imprisonment. Pasdermadjian, a leading citizen of the town, was shot dead in the streets. This reign of terror also prevailed in the villages of the plain.
The capture of Van by the Armenians on the 16th May and the entry of the Armenian Volunteers, followed by the Russian Army, made a great impression on the Turkish authorities at Erzeroum. On the same day, the Armenians of Khnyss and of the neighbouring 38 villages were butchered almost to a man, and the women and children distributed among the Kurds. During the recent capture of Khnyss by the Russians, some 3,000 women and children were rescued in and around Khnyss. Apparently these represent the remnant of the 22,000 Armenians of the Sandjak of Khnyss.
In the meantime the Russians were advancing towards Melazkerd and Bitlis, and the Turks deported the Armenian peasants from Melazkerd and Passin and drove them towards Erzeroum. These half-starved peasants, exhausted and harried by forced marches, were not allowed to enter Erzeroum; they were kept out in the rain for seven days. Their situation became so shocking in May (1915) that even the German Consul was moved at the spectacle, and took some clothing and bread in his own car to distribute among “these rebellious scoundrels.” Later on they were driven towards Erzindjan and drowned in the Euphrates.
On the 4th June, the first batch of Armenian peasants from the plain of Erzeroum, amounting to some 15,000 persons, were forced by the gendarmes to leave their homes and proceed to Mamahatoun, west of Erzeroum. They were escorted by chetti (Moslem Volunteer) bands consisting of criminals released from prison since the proclamation of the Holy War. In the ankle-deep mud and along the rugged roads, children and weak women fell by the wayside amid the laughter of the chettis. Every evening a forced tribute was levied upon the peasants. Gradually they were robbed of everything they possessed—money, clothing, horses, etc. Girls and women were distributed among the Turks as they passed through Turkish villages. A few hours’ distance beyond Mamahatoun, at the entrance of a valley called the Kamakh gorge, this convoy was “ambushed by unknown robbers.” The signal was given by a revolver shot, whereupon a volley of fire was poured upon the Armenians. One of the survivors of this batch, a lad of 18 whom I saw in Erzeroum, told me that the shrieks and cries of the women and weeping children under fire were distracting. Many attempted to escape, but they were fired upon by their own escort. In two hours’ time the valley had become a vast cemetery of unburied human bodies. Out of the 15,000 thus disposed of, a few escaped and reached Erzeroum in the guise of Turkish peasants.
On the 18th June it was the turn of the city. A fortnight’s time-limit was given to the Armenians for settling their affairs; they packed their property in boxes and bales and stored them with Mr. Stapleton, the head of the American Mission, and in the Armenian Cathedral. The Governor took £1,000 (Turkish) from them in payment for a safe-conduct before their departure. A hundred and sixty leading families were selected first for deportation. They were all people of means and education. The German officers in Erzeroum behaved in an outrageous manner towards the Armenian women torn away from their men. The Germans, in fact, seem to have set the example of wrenching women from their homes. One Captain Schapner (?) is said to have forced Miss Tchilingarian, a handsome girl, to follow him. On her resisting and crying, she was dragged about in the streets and roughly handled. This worthy German also carried off Mrs. Sarafian, a young woman educated in Switzerland. Another German lieutenant, Karl (?), dragged five women to his rooms, and so on.
The convoy of 160 families started out with carriages and some luggage, and were sent off in the same direction as their predecessors—towards Mamahatoun and Erzindjan. As they travelled they were robbed of everything and even stripped of their clothing. They are reported as having skirted the town of Erzindjan, but beyond that nothing has since been heard of them.
Bishop Sempad was sent off alone in his own carriage to Erzindjan, and never heard of again.
In the last week of June, several parties of Erzeroum Armenians were deported on successive days and most of them massacred on the way, either by shooting or drowning. One, Madame Zarouhi, an elderly lady of means, who was thrown into the Euphrates, saved herself by clinging to a boulder in the river. She succeeded in approaching the bank and returned to Erzeroum to hide herself in a Turkish friend’s house. She told Prince Argoutian (Argoutinsky), the representative of the “All-Russian Urban Union” in Erzeroum, that she shuddered to recall how hundreds of children were bayoneted by the Turks and thrown into the Euphrates, and how men and women were stripped naked, tied together in hundreds, shot and then hurled into the river. In a loop of the river near Erzindjan, she said, the thousands of dead bodies created such a barrage that the Euphrates changed its course for about a hundred yards. Several Armenians of this last party, however, seem to have survived this dreadful journey. Recently some of them wrote from Rakka, in northern Syria, to Mr. Stapleton imploring money and help, as they were in the direst distress.
After the recent capture of the city by the Russians, there were some 100 Armenians altogether in Erzeroum and some 25,000 Turks. Thirty girls and women were protected by Mr. Stapleton in his house. A certain number of women are gradually being rescued from the Turks in the city, and perhaps thousands more may be saved, if the military authorities take the necessary measures and help the Armenians to discover their own people.
Most of the children converted to Islam are quite used to Moslem habits; they speak and behave as if they were Turks by birth. They are now changing these habits again in Armenian hands.
When one stood at the gate called Kars Kapou, the eastern entrance to the city, and looked at the panorama it presented in March, 1916, Erzeroum did not seem to have suffered great changes in its general aspect. But I suffered a rude shock in the interior of the city, when I saw Armenian houses occupied by Turks still gloating over their booty, the city deprived of its Armenian element, and the dome of the Cathedral broken away at its base.
The Armenians of Erzeroum to whom I have talked here about their prospects are consoling themselves—though it is a poor consolation—with the thought that thousands of them had left the city before the war, and that they will all return home and take possession of their property as soon as the conditions there become better defined.