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
The whole city was awake, singing and rejoicing all night. In the
morning its inhabitants could go whither they would unafraid. And
now came the first check to our rejoicing. Miss McLaren was gone!
She and Schwester Martha had been sent with the patients of the
Turkish hospital four days before to Bitlis.
Mr. Yarrow went to the hospital. He found there twenty-five wounded
soldiers too sick to travel, left there without food or water for
five days. He found unburied dead. He stayed all day in the horrible
place, that his presence might protect the terrified creatures until
he could secure their removal to our hospital.
On Wednesday, the 19th May, the Russians and Russo-Armenian
volunteers came into the city. It had been the knowledge of their
approach that had caused the Turks to flee. Some hard fighting had
to be done in the villages, however, before Djevdet and his
reinforcements were driven out of the province. Troops poured into
the city from Russia and Persia and passed on towards Bitlis.
Aram was made temporary governor of the province, and, for the first
time for centuries, Armenians were given a chance to govern
themselves. Business revived. People began to rebuild their burned
houses and shops. We re-opened our mission schools, except the
school in the walled city, the school-house there having been
burned.
THE TABLES TURNED.
Not all the Turks had fled from the city. Some old men and women and
children had stayed behind, many of them in hiding. The Armenian
soldiers, unlike Turks, were not making war on such. There was only
one place where the captives could be safe from the rabble, however.
In their dilemma the Armenians turned, as usual, to the American
missionaries. And so it came to pass that hardly had the six
thousand Armenian refugees left our premises when the care of a
thousand Turkish refugees was thrust upon us, some of them from
villages the Russo-Armenian volunteers were “cleaning out.”
It was with the greatest difficulty that food could be procured for
these people. The city had an army to feed now. Wheat—the stores
left by the Turks—was obtainable, but no flour, and the use of a
mill was not available for some time. The missionaries had no help
in a task so distasteful to the Armenians except that of two or
three of the teachers of the school in the walled city, who now had
no other work. Mr. Yarrow was obliged to drop most of his other
duties and spend practically all his time working for our protégés.
Mrs. Yarrow, Miss Rogers and Miss Silliman administered medicines
and tried to give every one of the poor creatures a bath. Mrs.
Ussher had bedding made, and secured and personally dispensed milk
to the children and sick, spending several hours daily among them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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