Germany, Turkey, and Armenia: A Selection of Documentary Evidence Relating to the Armenian Atrocities from German and other SourcesAnonymous
History
Germany, Turkey, and Armenia: A Selection of Documentary Evidence Relating to the Armenian Atrocities from German and other Sources
Anonymous
Armenian question; World War, 1914-1918 -- Armenia
At the beginning each deported person received from the Government
one kilogram (2 lbs.) of bread per month (not per day). They lived
on the provisions which they had taken with them. Small sums of money
were afterwards paid to them. I was told of about 30 persons who had
formerly been in good positions in the Circassian village of Bumbudj
(Mumbidj, on the ruins of the ancient Bambyke), 1 1/2 days' journey
from Aleppo, who had received 20 piastres in thirty days--not per head;
but the 30 between them. That meant a penny a month each. About four
hundred barefooted women, each with one child on her arm, one child on
her back (often enough a dead one) and one held by the hand, passed
through Marash during the first days. The Armenians of Marash--who
afterwards were themselves deported--purchased £50 (Turkish) worth
of shoes to supply those who passed through the town. Between Marash
and Aintab the Mohammedan population in a Turkish village wished to
give water and bread to a convoy of about 100 families. The soldiers
refused to permit this. The American mission and the Armenians of
Aintab--who later on were also deported--managed to bring bread and
money during the night to the convoys which passed Aintab, and which
totalled about 20,000 persons, mostly women and children. These were
the villagers of the Sandjak of Marash. The convoys were not allowed
to enter Marash, but encamped in the open. The American missionaries
found it possible to provision them thus by night as far as Nisib
(nine hours to the south-east of Aintab, on the way to the Euphrates).
While on the march the deported Armenians were at first robbed
of their ready money, and afterwards of all their possessions. A
deported Protestant minister saw T£43 being taken away from one
family and £28 from another. This minister was himself newly married,
and was compelled to leave his young wife at Hadjin, expecting
her first child. Four-fifths of the deported persons are women and
children. Three-fifths of them are barefooted. A former inhabitant
of Hadjin who is known to me personally and who had a fortune of at
least T£15,000 had, like everybody else, been robbed of his clothes,
and clothes had to be begged for him here. The deported Armenians
are specially troubled by the fact that they are unable to bury their
dead. They are left dying anywhere on the road. The women often carry
their dead children for days on their backs. At Bab, ten hours to the
east of Aleppo, those who came through were lodged provisionally for
a week or two, but they were not allowed to retrace their steps to
bury the companions who had died on the way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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