“The railway discharges into the mountains vast numbers of Armenians, who are abandoned there without bread or water. In the towns and villages, the Arabs try to bring them some relief; but generally the Armenians are abandoned at five or six hours’ distance from their homes. We saw on the way numbers of women and old men and children dying of hunger, who did not know where to look for help.”
Some Armenians are leading a life of misery among the Arabs, forty or forty-five hours’ journey from Bagdad. Every day numbers of them die of hunger. The Government gives them no food. Moreover, fresh troops have been sent to Bagdad, and these will be a new scourge to the unfortunate exiles.
8. Three Special Commissions have been sent through the provinces to liquidate the abandoned goods and estates of the Armenians, in conformity with the new “temporary law” of the 13/26th September, 1915.
12. INFORMATION REGARDING EVENTS IN ARMENIA, PUBLISHED IN THE “SONNENAUFGANG” (ORGAN OF THE “GERMAN LEAGUE FOR THE PROMOTION OF CHRISTIAN CHARITABLE WORK IN THE EAST”), OCTOBER, 1915; AND IN THE “ALLGEMEINE MISSIONS-ZEITSCHRIFT,” NOVEMBER, 1915.
This testimony is especially significant because it comes from a German source, and because the German Censor made a strenuous attempt to suppress it.
The same issue of the “Sonnenaufgang” contains the following editorial note:—
“In our preceding issue we published an account by one of our sisters (Schwester Möhring) of her experiences on a journey, but we have to abstain from giving to the public the new details that are reaching us in abundance. It costs us much to do so, as our friends will understand; but the political situation of our country demands it.”
In the case of the “Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift,” the Censor was not content with putting pressure on the editor. On the 10th November, he forbade the reproduction of the present article in the German press, and did his best to confiscate the whole current issue of the magazine. Copies of both publications, however, found their way across the frontier.
Both the incriminating articles are drawn from common sources, but the extracts they make from them do not entirely coincide, so that, by putting them together, a fuller version of these sources can be compiled.
In the text printed below, the unbracketed paragraphs are those which appear both in the “Sonnenaufgang” and in the “Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift”; while paragraphs included in angular brackets (<>) appear only in the “Sonnenaufgang,” and those in square brackets ([ ]) only in the “Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift.”