The blight of Asia : $b An account of the systematic extermination of Christian populations by Mohammedans and of the culpability of certain great powers; with the true story of the burning of SmyrnaHorton, George
History
The blight of Asia : $b An account of the systematic extermination of Christian populations by Mohammedans and of the culpability of certain great powers; with the true story of the burning of Smyrna
Horton, George
Christians -- Turkey; Fires -- Turkey -- İzmir; Greeks -- Turkey; Turkey; İzmir (Turkey) -- History
“I was twelve years old, I was with my mother. They drove us
with whips and we had no water. It was very hot and many of us
died because there was no water. They drove us with whips, I
do not know how many days and nights and weeks, until we came
to the Arabian desert. My sisters and the little baby died on
the way. We went to a town, I do not know its name. The streets
were full of dead, all cut to pieces. They drove us over them.
I kept dreaming about that. We came to a place on the desert, a
hollow place in the sand, with hills all around it. There were
thousands of us there, many, many thousands, all women and girl
children. They herded us like sheep into the hollow. Then it
was dark and we heard firing all around. We said, ‘The killing
has begun.’ All night we waited for them, my mother and I, we
waited for them to reach us. But they did not come, and in the
morning, when we looked around, no one was killed. No one was
killed at all. They had not been killing us. They had been
signaling to the wild tribes that we were there. The Kurds came
later in the morning, in the daylight; the Kurds and many other
kinds of men from the desert; they came over the hills and rode
down and began killing us. All day long they were killing; you
see, there were so many of us. All they did not think they
could sell, they killed. They kept on killing all night and in
the morning—in the morning they killed my mother.”
This quotation is given because it condenses in a few vivid and
convincing words the clearest description that has appeared anywhere of
the character of the Turkish “deportations” of the Armenians. All the
official documents and the testimony of a host of American, German and
other eye-witnesses corroborate the accuracy of this picture.
In the report of the Military Mission to Armenia, commonly known as
the “Harbord Mission,” published by the American Association for
International Conciliation, in June, 1920, is to be found the following
passage:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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