Witness to GenocideBy Ara Oshagan and Levon Parian
This Thursday, April 24, Armenians all over the world mourn for their brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers who were brutally murdered in the first genocide of the 20th century. Here in L.A., the Armenian Youth Federation along with numerous collegiate associations will march in front of the Turkish Consulate to call attention to its long denial of the slaughters. In the afternoon, five to ten thousand will gather at the Genocide Monument in Bicknell Park in Montebello. It was 83 years ago--on April 24, 1915--that the Young Turk government, under the cover of World War I, began its systematic slaughter of an entire people. That night, the Young Turks summarily executed nearly 300 Armenian community leaders in the capital, Istanbul. Simultaneously, they disarmed and often killed all loyal Armenian men in the Turkish military. With leadership and able men destroyed, the extermination became easier. Within three years, 1.5 million Armenians -- nearly three quarters of the Ottoman Armenian population -- were wiped out: Some by cruel execution; some by slow, gruesome deaths of deprivation, exposure, starvation and disease during deportation. *Between 50-60 thousand of them were buried alive under the Syrian desert's sand. And 500 thousand were dispersed--according to archival records--in America, France and the U.K. And while the civilized world knew, it did nothing to intervene. So significant was the denial that it fueled a cunning Adolf Hitler to plan his holocaust. "Who, after all, speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?" he once remarked. (Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for Persecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume Seven) Three generations later, Armenians still carry the impact, while the Turkish government continues to deny their genocide, despite a mountain of evidence. The following photos and oral histories are excerpted from the exhibit by The Genocide Project, a not-for-profit organization founded by Armenian-American professionals to document, heighten awareness and give artistic expression to the genocide and its aftermath. The exhibit has been displayed at the Glendale Central Public Library, Glendale Community College, 2100 Square Feet Gallery (L.A.), L.A. City Hall Henry Rio Bridge Gallery, UCLA Kerkhoff Gallery and the Main Rotunda of the California State Capitol in Sacramento.
Photo 1: Sam Kadorian, b. 1907, Hüsenig, Kharpert
"They took us from Hüsenig, to Mezre, to Kharpert to Malatia and after a couple of day's walk, to the shores of the Euphrates river. Sometime later, Turkish gendarmes grabbed all the boys from 5-10 years old and threw us into a pile. They stabbed us repeatedly with swords and bayonets. I must've been in the center because only one sword got me... ripped my cheek... here, my cheek. I was covered with blood from the other bodies on top of me, but I couldn't cry -- if I had, I would not be here today.
Some of the parents came looking for their children, but they mostly found dead bodies. Some of them dug graves in the sandy river bed with their bare hands--shallow graves--and placed their children in them, trying to bury them. Others just pushed their children into the river, just pushed them into the Euphrates. The little bodies just floated down toward the ocean."
Photo 2: Starving Armenian Child c. 1915, from the Armin T. Wegner Collection"On the first of June, 3000 people, mostly women, girls, and children, left Harput, accompanied by 70 policemen...
"On the 15th day they were again troding their way through steep mountains, where the Kurds gathered 150 of the men... and taking them to some distance, butchered them... That day another caravan of exiles, only 300 of which were men, from Sivas, Egin, Tokat joined that from Harput, thus making a bigger caravan, 18,000 all counted...
"On the 52nd day they arrived at another village, here the Kurds took from them every thing they had, even their shirts and drawers and for five days the whole caravan walked all naked under the scorching sun. For another five days they did not have a morsel of bread, neither a drop of water... their tongues were turned to charcoal... At another place, where there were wells, some women threw themselves into it, as there was no rope and pail to draw water but these were drowned and in spite of that the rest of the people drank from that well, the dead bodies still staying and stinking in it...
"On the 70th day, when they reached Aleppo, 35 women and children were remaining from the 3000 exiles of Harput, 150 women and children from the whole caravan of 18,000."
J.B. Jackson, American Consul General at Aleppo, October 16, 1915
Photo 3: Sion Abajian, b. 1908, Marash"The crowds [of Armenians] were huge in Meskene where we awaited deportation to Deir-El-Zor. We were in the middle of a vast sandy area. We had no water, and the Turkish gendarmes would not give us any.
My father had brought along a tent, and each time gendarmes approached to deport another group, my father moved the tent and pitched it on the other side of the crowd--as far away as possible. We were constantly moving. He bought us quite a bit of time that way.
Eventually, we crossed the Euphrates river to Rakka where we found an abandoned house--with no doors or windows--and we squatted there. But we still had no food. We used to eat grass and pick grains from animal waste, wash them and then fry them in tin cans."
Photo 4: Starving Armenian deportees gathering roots along the Euphrates river, from the Armin T. Wegner Collection"Abou Herrera is a small locality north of Meskene on the bank of the Euphrates. It is the most complete desert. On a small hill 200 meters from the river are confined 240 Armenians under the surveillance of two gendarmes without pity, who leave them to die of hunger in most atrocious sufferings. The scenes which I witnessed surpass all horrors. Near the place where the carriage stops, women who had not seen me arriving, were searching in the dung of horses barley seeds not yet digested to feed on. I gave them some bread. They threw themselves on it like dogs dying of hunger, took it voraciously into their mouths with hiccups and epileptical tremblings. Instantly, informed by one of them, 240 persons or rather hungry wolves, who had nothing to eat for seven days, precipitated themselves towards me from the hill, extending their emaciated arms, imploring with tears and cries a piece of bread. It was mostly women, children and about a dozen old people."
August Bernau, Aleppo Agent of the Vacuum Oil Company of New York, September
10, 1916 Photo 5: Bedros Bahadourian, b. 1903, Gürün"I was 12 years old when the massacres began. I remember -- they first killed all the men of our village. The rest of us were put into caravans and deported. I don't know how many hundreds we were.
"We went from Albistan to Zeitun to Marash to Aintab. We camped on a farm behind Aintab College, near some newly dug housing foundations -- large holes in the ground. You understand? An epidemic had broken out in our caravan and people died all around us. The Turks just filled the foundations with dead bodies. Two, three, four, five bodies on top of each other.
"At Aintab, they ordered everyone over the age of 12 to Deir-El-Zor. I hid with a friend while they took a number of others away. We were eventually caught and sent to Bizib then toward Biredjig on the shore of the Euphrates -- on the other side of the river. You understand? The caravans -- hundreds and hundreds of Armenians sent toward the desert -- came through there. Dead, bloated bodies continually floated by in the river."
Photo 6: Armenian Deportees, from the Armin T. Wegner Collection
"A remarkable thing about the bodies that we saw was that nearly all of them were naked. I have been informed that the people were forced to take off their clothes before they were killed, as the Mohammedans consider the clothes taken from a dead body to be defiled. There were gaping bayonet wounds on most of the bodies, usually in the abdomen or chest, sometimes in the throat. Few persons have been shot, as bullets were too precious. It was cheaper to kill with bayonets and knives. Another remarkable thing was that nearly all the women lay flat on their backs and showed signs of barbarous mutilation by the bayonets of the gendarmes, these wounds having been inflicted in many cases probably after the women were dead. We also noticed that all the bodies in these valleys were apparently those of people who had been on the road at least one or two months, showing that they were not from Harput but were from distant places."
Leslie A. Davis, American Consul General at Kharpert, February 9, 1918
Photo 7: Kristine Hagopian, b. 1906, Smyrna (Izmir)"We had already been deported once, in 1915-16, sent towards Deir-El-Zor. But, my uncle's friend had connections in the government and had us ordered back to Izmir.
"Orders came again that everyone must gather in front of the Armenian church to be deported. My father told us not to worry. Because he was a government employee, he didn't think the Turkish government would do anything to him.
"Twelve Turkish soldiers and an official came very early the next morning, while we were still asleep. They dragged us out in our nightgowns and lined us up against the living room wall. The official ordered my father to lie down on the ground... And they raped him! Raped! And forced us to watch. If we turned away, the official whipped us. My mother lost consciousness and fell to the floor.
"fterwards, we couldn't find our father. My mother looked for him frantically and found him in the attic, trying to hang himself. She found him before it was too late. But he did eventually kill himself--later, after we escaped."
"The poor weak women and children died by the thousands along the roads and in the khan where they were confined. There must be not less than five hundred abducted now in the homes of the Moslems of this city and as many more have been sexually abused and turned out on the streets again. They have even abused these girls openly on the streets and before the eyes of the foreigners."
Rev. F. H. Leslie, American Missionary in Ourfa, August 6, 1915
Credits and sources: photographs selected from the photographic collection of Armin T. Wegner. Originals reside in the Armin T. Wegner Collection at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach, Germany. All the photographs have been authenticated. Reproduced with permission from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. and courtesy of Serop Nenejian of Oregon ANC.
Quotations that accompany Wegner's photographs selected from American consular and diplomatic reports on the treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917 logged by American officials and others stationed in different parts of the Empire. They are from the United States State Department archive microfilm collections The Internal Affairs of Turkey 1910-1923. General Records of the Department of State and The Papers of Henry Morgentau Sr., the American ambassador to Turkey between 1913 and 1916.
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