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
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:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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