94. X.: NARRATIVE OF MISS CC., COMMUNICATED BY HER TO A SWISS GENTLEMAN AT GENEVA DURING HER PASSAGE THROUGH SWITZERLAND IN DECEMBER. 1915.
It was on the 29th April that the Turkish Government began to arrest the leading Armenians at X.
Mr. OO., Professor of Armenian, was sent to Z. with sixteen other Professors; they suffered fiendish atrocities. Their hair was plucked out by the roots; they were burned with red hot irons; they were sprinkled with boiling water; they were flogged daily; some of them died in prison. Mr. OO. himself had his eyes gouged out, and was then hanged.
At X., the arrests continued, and the Armenians were flogged to make them confess to pretended revolutionary preparations. The surrender of a definite number of rifles were demanded of them; some of them bought rifles from the Turks in order to be able to deliver them up to the Government. They were tortured to make them bring in their arms[[136]].
The Turkish villagers were paid to flog the Armenians, because the Turkish townspeople of X. might possibly have taken pity on them.
PP., the college blacksmith, was so terribly beaten that a month later he was still unable to walk. Another was shod with horse-shoes. At Y., Mr. AD. (brother-in-law of the pastor AE., who suffered martyrdom at Sivas twenty-one years ago) had his finger-nails torn out for refusing to accept Islam. “How,” he had answered, “can I abandon the Christ whom I have preached for twenty years?”
The search for rifles lasted several weeks. In the Armenian cemetery the Turks found several bombs, buried there since 1908 and now absolutely rusty and unusable.
By the end of June, all the men were in the prisons, barracks or cellars. The women, who went to visit their husbands and bring them clothes and food, were beaten and driven off by the gendarmes.
After several days’ imprisonment, those who had promised to embrace Islam were released, as well as those who had paid very large sums of money. Mr. AF., a colporteur, had been willing to embrace Islam, but his wife refused to recognise his apostasy and declared that she would go into exile with the rest of the people, so he went with his wife and was killed.
The remainder were sent in batches out of the town and killed on the road. The Turks told their Armenian friends what was happening, and promised them the same fate.
No sooner were all the men disposed of, than they began to deport the women and children and even the sick; the ox-carts kept passing day and night. A Turk, the landlord of our house, told us that he had watched this procession, covered with dust and tortured by the heat and lack of water, and that he had said to himself that they would all be dead before they reached their destination. A woman who got back to X. by accepting conversion, after being on the road about ten days, gave an account of their heart-rending condition. Even mothers abandoned their children or handed them over to the Kurds; the Kurds for that matter took them by force and violated the girls, some of whom were carried off for their harems. After several days’ journey, the carts turned back and the exiles had to proceed on foot.
Those connected with the American college gave the Turkish officers large sums to procure their exemption, but this brought them nothing but a postponement of their cruel fate. Meanwhile, the efforts of the American Embassy obtained for Professor DD. permission to go to Constantinople with his wife and eight-months-old baby, as well as his old mother, and my own family was permitted to leave for Smyrna. After several days travelling by carriage, we all arrived at S. There my father and mother were arrested, as well as Professor DD.
Everything we could do to get them released was in vain. It was impossible to learn anything about their fate. The Mudir said: “They have reached their destination safe and sound.”[[137]]
Several days later all Armenians, with the exception of a few Protestant ladies, were cleared out of S.
Later, some of the missionaries from X. passed through S. and found us there in the desperate state we were in. They told the American Embassy as soon as they reached Constantinople, and that is how we obtained permission to proceed to Constantinople.
Here it took us three months to obtain a passport for America.
At X. several families made up their minds to take poison. Mr. GG. was imprisoned. He apostatized and returned home, and his wife fainted at the sight of him. Professor B. accepted Islam, and became head of the printing works. F., E., and the photographer D. have all three apostatized to Islam. There was no revolutionary movement. Frightful atrocities occurred. There was a dark underground cellar into which the Armenians were crowded, one on the top of the other. One night one of them cried out in his sleep: “Escape,” and the other prisoners began to shout as well. Then the guards were given the order to fire into the living mass, but they showed some human feeling and fired against the wall.
[125]. Name withheld. It is possible that the scene of the events described by this witness may be, not X., but Cilicia.—Editor.
[126]. Six of the names here follow in the original: M., OO., AN., AO., AP., AQ., AR.
[127]. Four names here follow in the original: AS., AT., AU., AV.
[128]. Seventeen names here follow in the original: C., BC., O., B., D., BD., G., BE., BF., AN., BG., BH., BI., BJ., P., BK., BL.
[129]. Greek and Armenian, respectively, for “Good morning.”—Editor.
[130]. The treatment of this victim is described in more detail in a narrative subsequently published by the author of the present document:
“Some died as a result of torture. I saw Garabed GG., who, after having been whipped and beaten a whole day and night, at intervals of two hours, was moaning in his bed with excruciating pain. He was confined to bed for weeks. He related to me how one gendarme had sat on his mouth, that he might not scream, while two others had held up and bastinadoed his feet, which were bound with ropes attached to a strong rod. Sometimes they would beat him on any part of his body, indiscriminately. The poor fellow, a strong, brave young man, the leader of the college firemen, who, in the presence of all the leading Turkish officials, had extinguished some time ago a big fire in the town, was in despair and longed to die. His body was all blue as a result of the beating.”
[131]. Further details in the narrative subsequently published:
“I visited a great many Armenian families while they were preparing for this Babylonian captivity. I could not stand the sight, neither could I find any words of comfort for them. The scene varied from house to house, but everywhere there was the same feeling of suspense, dread and despair. In some houses one saw a feeling of true resignation and heroism. There was a retired pastor, sixty-eight years old. He did not pack anything in the house, but left it as it was. Taking his staff in his hand, he said: ‘I am ready to go wherever they send me. The Lord is my guide!’”
[132]. The fate of Mr. OO. himself is recorded in the narrative subsequently published:
“Mr. OO. was put to death at Z. with excruciating tortures—his eyes being gouged out, and red-hot irons driven under his nails.”
[133]. Daughter (?). See Doc 94.—Editor.
[134]. Further instances of Turkish kindness are recorded by the writer in his subsequently published narrative:
“The poor Armenians sold their few possessions, but the transaction was really a legalised plunder. Everything was sold at one-tenth of its value. Here is a conversation between two Turks in a coffee house: ‘What a pity things were sold at such a low price! I could not stand the sight in the streets; I saw many cheap things, but my conscience would not permit me to buy anything.’ The other fellow replied: ‘Well done! What a conscience you have! If you really pitied them, you should have bought something and offered them a good price! If you and I do not buy, to whom will the poor people sell?’ It is to their credit that many of the old school Turks really took pity on the persecuted Armenians. During the massacres of 1895 many Turks had shielded and saved Armenians, but in this instance no one dared express his feelings or do an act of kindness. It is said that a Turk was hanged in front of his own house in Vezir Köprü, in the Vilayet of Sivas, for giving shelter to an Armenian.”
[135]. This is brought out very clearly in the narrative subsequently published by the same writer:
“A blind old man named CZ., whose son is a physician in the United States, was scarcely able to walk, even with the aid of a staff. The Mohammedan neighbours took pity upon him and promised to take care of him if the Government permitted. I appealed to the Kaimakam and the commandant of the gendarmes. The answer was: ‘Impossible; all have to go; no Armenian is to be left behind, whether blind, deaf or paralytic.’
“The Kaimakam regretted that he found himself in office at such a time; he was sorry he had ever entered the official life. His father, a professor in the Turkish University in Constantinople, had advised him to go into business, but, as he had had no capital, he entered the Government Service.”
[136]. See Docs. [68], [82] and [122].
[137]. We know from other sources that Mr. CC. was put to death.—Editor.
XII.
THE CITY OF ANGORA.
Angora is the capital of a vilayet, and the terminus of a branch line of the Anatolian Railway. It is the half-way house between Constantinople and Sivas, and the focus of traffic with all the provinces of the north-east. It is naturally an important centre of commerce as well as of administration, and there was a strong Armenian element in the population of the town.
Our information regarding the destruction of the Armenians at Angora is comparatively scanty—scantier, perhaps, than in the case of any other Armenian centre of equal importance in the Ottoman Empire. Yet the documents included in this section, together with incidental references in other pieces of testimony (e.g., Doc. [109], suffice to show that the Government’s order was executed here in the same fashion as at Sivas and at X.