The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon
History
The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon
Armenian question; Armenians; World War, 1914-1918 -- Atrocities; World War, 1914-1918 -- Refugees
Such statements as you print are the best evidence which, in the
circumstances, it is possible to obtain. They come from persons
holding positions which give weight to their words, and from other
persons with no motive to falsify, and it is impossible that such a
body of concurring evidence should have been manufactured. Moreover,
it is confirmed by evidence from German sources which has with
difficulty escaped the rigid censorship maintained by the German
authorities—a censorship which is in itself a confession, since
there is no reason why the Germans should not give full currency to
such evidence unless the authorities felt themselves in some way
responsible for what it discloses.
In my opinion, the evidence which you print is as reliable as that
upon which rests our belief in many of the universally admitted
facts of history, and I think it establishes beyond any reasonable
doubt the deliberate purpose of the Turkish authorities practically
to exterminate the Armenians, and their responsibility for the
hideous atrocities which have been perpetrated upon that unhappy
people.
Yours truly,
MOORFIELD STOREY.
LETTER, DATED ALEPPO, 8th OCTOBER, 1915, FROM
FOUR MEMBERS OF THE GERMAN MISSIONS
STAFF IN TURKEY TO THE IMPERIAL GERMAN
MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AT BERLIN.[4]
We think it our duty to draw the attention of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs to the fact that our school work will be deprived,
for the future, of its moral basis and will lose all authority in
the eyes of the natives, if it is really beyond the power of the
German Government to mitigate the brutality of the treatment which
the exiled women and children of the massacred Armenians are
receiving.
In face of the scenes of horror which are being unfolded daily
before our eyes in the neighbourhood of our school, our educational
activity becomes a mockery of humanity. How can we make our pupils
listen to the Tales of the Seven Dwarfs, how can we teach them
conjugations and declensions, when, in the compounds next door to
our school, death is carrying off their starving compatriots—when
there are girls and women and children, practically naked, some
lying on the ground, others stretched between the dead or the
coffins made ready for them beforehand, and breathing their last
breath!
Out of 2,000 to 3,000 peasant women from the Armenian Plateau who
were brought here in good health, only forty or fifty skeletons are
left. The prettier ones are the victims of their gaolers’ lust; the
plain ones succumb to blows, hunger and thirst (they lie by the
water’s edge, but are not allowed to quench their thirst). The
Europeans are forbidden to distribute bread to the starving. Every
day more than a hundred corpses are carried out of Aleppo.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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