12. “A word to the accredited representatives of the German people,” by Dr. Martin Niepage, Higher Grade Teacher at the German Technical School at Aleppo, at present at Wernigerode.
On my return in September, 1915, from Beirut to Aleppo, after a three months’ holiday, I heard, to my horror, that a new period of Armenian massacres had been initiated. I was told that they were far more terrible than those under Abdul Hamid; and that their object was to exterminate, root and branch, the intelligent, prosperous and progressive nation of the Armenians and to transfer their property to Turkish hands.
At first I was unable to believe such a monstrous report. I was told that in various quarters of Aleppo there were masses of half-famished human beings, the survivors of so-called “deportation-convoys,” and that in order to cover the extermination of the Armenian people with a political cloak, military reasons had been put forward, which were alleged to necessitate the expulsion of the Armenians from the homes they had occupied for over 2,500 years, and their deportation into the Arabian Desert. It was also said that individual Armenians had lent themselves to acts of espionage.
After having investigated the facts and made enquiries on all sides, I came to the conclusion that the accusations against the Armenians related in all cases to trifling matters, which were taken as a pretext to slay ten thousand innocent persons for one who was guilty, to commit the most savage outrages against women and children, and to carry on a war of starvation against the deported persons with the object of destroying the whole nation.
In order to test the judgment which I had formed from the information I had obtained, I visited every place in the town in which there were any Armenians who had formed part of one of the convoys and had been left behind. I found in dilapidated caravansaries (hans) heaps of dead bodies, many of which were in an advanced state of decomposition, with living persons interspersed among them who were all near to the agony of death. In other yards I found heaps of sick and famished persons who were absolutely uncared for. Near the German Technical School, of which I am one of the higher grade teachers, there were four hans of this class with 700–800 deported persons who were starving. We, the teachers at the school, and our pupils had to pass them every day. Through the open windows we saw, each time we went out, the emaciated forms, covered with rags, of these miserable beings. Our school children had every morning almost to touch the two-wheeled carts drawn by oxen which they had to pass in the narrow streets, and in which every day 8–10 rigid corpses were carted away without coffins and without covering of any sort, the arms and legs protruding from the cart.
After having been a witness of these scenes during several days, I thought it my duty to draft the following report—
“As teachers at the German Technical School at Aleppo we take leave humbly to submit the following report:—
“We deem it our duty to call attention to the fact that our educational work will lose its moral foundation and the esteem of the natives, if the German Government is not in a position to prevent the brutality with which the wives and children of slaughtered Armenians are treated in this place. The convoys which, on the departure of the exiles from their homes in Upper Armenia, consisted of 2,000–3,000 persons—men, women and children—arrive here in the south with a remnant of only two or three hundred survivors. The men are killed on the way, the women and children, excepting those of unattractive appearance and those who are quite old or quite young, are first abused by Turkish soldiers and officers, and then brought into Turkish or Kurd villages, where they have to go over to Islam. As regards the remnant of the caravans, every effort is made to reduce them by hunger and thirst. Even when a river is passed, those who are dying of thirst are not permitted to drink. As their only food a small quantity of flour is strewn on their hands as a daily ration; this they greedily lick off, but its only effect is to delay death from starvation for a little while longer.
“Opposite to the German Technical School at Aleppo in which we do our work as teachers, a remnant of some of these convoys is lying in one of the hans; there are about 400 emaciated forms; about 100 boys and girls, from five to seven years old, are among them. Most of them are suffering from typhoid and dysentery. On entering the yard one has the impression of coming into a lunatic asylum. When food is brought to them, one notices that they have lost the habit of eating. The stomach, weakened by months of starvation, has ceased to be able to receive food. Any bread that is given to them is laid aside with an air of indifference. They just lie there quietly, waiting for death.
“How can we teachers read German fairy tales with our pupils, or, indeed, the story of the Good Samaritan in the Bible? How can we ask them to decline and conjugate indifferent words, while round about in the neighbouring yards the starving brothers and sisters of our Armenian pupils are succumbing to a lingering death? In these circumstances our educational work flies in the face of all true morality and becomes a mockery of human feeling.