“I have just returned, November 16, 1915, from a ride on horseback through Baghche Osmanie Plain, where thousands of exiles are lying upon the fields and streets, without any shelter, exposed to the depredations of all kinds of brigands. Last night, at about twelve o’clock, a little camp of from fifty to sixty persons was suddenly attacked. I found men and women badly wounded, with broken skulls, their bodies cut upon, or in a terrible condition from knife stabs. Fortunately, I was provided with linen, so that I could change their bloody clothing. Then I brought them to the nearest inn where they could be nursed. Many of them were so exhausted from the great loss of blood that they died.
“In another camp we found from thirty to forty thousand Armenians. I was able to distribute some bread among them. Desperate and half starved, they fell upon it; several times I was almost unseated from my horse. A great many dead were lying about unburied, and only through bribes could the gendarmes be persuaded to permit their burial. Generally the Armenians are not allowed to perform the last offices of love for their relatives. Bad epidemics of typhoid fever had broken out everywhere; a patient lay in almost every third tent.
“Nearly everything was transported on foot; men, women, and children carried their few belongings on their backs. I often saw them collapse under their burden, but the soldiers kept on driving them forward with their bayonets. I have dressed bleeding wounds of women that resulted from these bayonet thrusts. Many children lost their parents.... Three hours from Osmanie, two dying men were there for days without any food or even a drop of water.... They were as thin as skeletons.... Unburied women and children were lying in the ditches....
“I visited the camp of Islahié on the first of December, 1915. It had rained for three days and three nights.... As soon as the weather permitted, I set out on my way to the exiles’ camp. About 200 families had been left behind at Mamouret, being unable to proceed on account of misery and illness ... the rags of their beds did not have a single dry thread in them. Many women had their feet frozen—they were entirely black and ready to be amputated. The wailing and the groaning was heart-rending. Everywhere the dead, and the dying in their last agonies, lay about before the tents. Only by baksheesh (bribes) could the soldiers be persuaded to bury them.
“The whole carriage was packed with bread; I just kept on distributing all the time. Three or four times there was an opportunity to buy some fresh bread. These thousands of loaves were a great help to us.
“The camp Islahié itself is the saddest thing I have ever seen. Right at the entrance a heap of dead bodies lay unburied. I counted thirty-five; and in another place twenty-two; right close by were the tents of those people who were down with bad dysentery. In one single day the burial commission buried as many as 580 dead. For weeks many camps have been daily supplied with bread. Of course, everything has to be done as clandestinely as possible....”[179]
An eye-witness at Aleppo says:
“... On August 2 (1915), about eight hundred middle-aged and old women, accompanied by children under the age of ten years, arrived afoot from Diyarbekir, after forty-five days en route. They were in the most pitiable condition imaginable. They report the taking of all the young women and girls by the Kurds, the pillaging even of the last bit of money and other belongings and scenes of starvation, or privation, and hardship of every description. I am informed that 4500 persons were sent from Sughurt to Ras-el-Ain, over 2000 from Mezereh to Diyarbekir, and that all the cities of Bitlis, Mardin, Mosul, Severeh, Malatia, Besneh, etc., have been depopulated of Armenians; the men and boys, and many of the women killed and the balance scattered throughout the country.... The Governor of Der-el-Zor, who is now at Aleppo, says there are 15,000 Armenians in his city. Children are frequently sold to prevent starvation, as the government furnished practically no subsistence.”
I quote the following from Toynbee:
“We have a detailed account of what is happening at Der-el-Zor, from a particularly trustworthy source—the testimony of Fraulein Beatrice Rohner, a Swiss missionary from Basle. Fraulein Rohner has personally witnessed the sufferings of the Armenians at Der-el-Zor, and has published her description of them in the ‘Sonnenaufgang’ (Sunrise), the organ of the ‘Deutscher Hilfsbund für Christliches Liebeswerk in Orient’ (German League of Help for Work of Christian Charity in the East). Here are some extracts from her narrative: