Out of 18,000 persons who were deported from Kharput and Sivas, 350 arrived at Aleppo (consisting of women and children); out of 1,900 deported from Erzeroum, only eleven—one sick boy, four girls and six women—reached that town. A convoy of women and girls had to walk the 65 hours from Ras-el-Ain to Aleppo along the railway line, notwithstanding the fact that at the same time the railway carriages, which had been used for the transport of soldiers, were returning empty. Mohammedan travellers, who came along this way, report that the roads are impassable owing to the many corpses lying unburied on both sides of the road, the smell of which is poisoning the air. Of those “remaining over,” who so far have not been sent further on, 100–120 persons have died at Aleppo up to the present, in consequence of the hardships of the journey. The starving and emaciated women and children, on their arrival at Aleppo, fell on the food like wild beasts. In the case of many of them the digestive organs had ceased to work; after having devoured one or two spoonfuls they put the spoon aside. The Government alleges that the deported persons receive food, but in the case of the above-mentioned convoy, which came from Kharput, a distribution of bread took place only once in three months.
The Government does not merely neglect to make any provision for the people; on the contrary, it causes everything to be taken away from them. At Ras-el-Ain a convoy of 200 girls and women arrived in a state of complete nudity; their shoes, their chemises, everything, in short, had been taken away from them, and they were made to walk for four days under the hot sun—the temperature was 122 degrees in the shade—in their condition of nakedness, jeered at and derided by the soldiers of their escort. Mr. X. told me that he himself had seen a convoy, consisting of 400 women and children, in the same state. Whenever the wretched exiles appealed to the humanity of the officials, the reply was: “We have strict orders from the Government to treat you in this way.”
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 diarrhœa. 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 109½ 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.”