The
Armenian Genocide:
Dr.
Martin Piege's Report
THE
HORRORS OF ALEPPO
SEEN BY
A GERMAN EYEWITNESS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A word
to Germany's Accredited Representatives by Dr. Martin Niepage,
Higher
Grade Teacher in the German Technical School at Aleppo
When I
returned to Aleppo in September, 1915, from a three months'
holiday
at Beirout, I heard with horror that a new phase of Armenian
massacres
had begun which were far more terrible than the earlier
massacres
under Abd-ul-Hamid, and which aimed at exterminating, root
and
branch, the intelligent, industrious, and progressive Armenian
nation,
and at transferring its property to Turkish hands.
Such
monstrous news left me at first incredulous. I was told that, in
various
quarters of Aleppo, there were lying masses of half-starved
people,
the survivors of so-called "deportation convoys." In order, I
was
told, to cover the extermination of the Armenian nation with a
political
cloak, military reasons were being put forward, which were
said to
make it necessary to drive the Armenians out of their native
seats,
which had been theirs for 2,500 years, and to deport them to the
Arabian
deserts. I was also told that individual Armenians bad lent
themselves
to acts of espionage.
After I
had informed myself about the facts and had made enquiries on
all
sides, I came to the conclusion that all these accusations against
the
Armenians were, in fact, based on trifling provocations, which were
taken
as an excuse for slaughtering 10,000 innocents for one guilty
person,
for the most savage outrages against women and children, and
for a
campaign of starvation against the exiles which was intended to
exterminate
the whole nation.
To test
the conclusion derived from my information, I visited all the
places
in the city where there were Armenians left behind by the
convoys.
In dilapidated caravansaries (hans) I found quantities of
dead,
many corpses being half-decomposed, and others, still living,
among
them, who were soon to breathe their last. In other yards I found
quantities
of sick and starving people whom no one was looking after.
In the
neighbourhood of the German Technical School, at which I am
employed
as a higher grade teacher, there were four such hans, with
seven
or eight hundred exiles dying of starvation. We teachers and our
pupils
had to pass by them every day. Every time we went out we saw
through
the open windows their pitiful forms, emaciated and wrapped in
rags.
In the mornings our school children, on their way through the
narrow
streets, had to push past the two-wheeled ox-carts, on which
every
day from eight to ten rigid corpses, without coffin or shroud,
were
carried away, their arms and legs trailing out of the vehicle.
After I
had shared this spectacle for several days I thought it my duty
to
compose the following report :--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"As
teachers in the German Technical School at Aleppo, we permit
ourselves
with all respect to make the following report :--
"We
feel it our duty to draw attention to the fact that our educational
work
will forfeit its moral basis and the esteem of the natives, if the
German
Government is not in a position to put a stop to the brutality
with
which the wives and children of slaughtered Armenians are being
treated
here.
"Out
of convoys which, when they left their homes on the Armenian
plateau,
numbered from two to three thousand men) women and children,
only
two or three hundred survivors arrive here in the south. The men
are
slaughtered on the way: the women and girls, with the exception of
the
old, the ugly and those who are still children, have been abused by
Turkish
soldiers and officers and then carried away to Turkish and
Kurdish
villages, where they have to accept Islam. They try to destroy
the
remnant of the convoys by hunger and thirst. Even when they are
fording
rivers, they do not allow those dying of thirst to drink. All
the
nourishment they receive is a daily ration of a little meal
sprinkled
over their hands, which they lick off greedily, and its only
effect
is to protract their starvation.
"Opposite
the German Technical School at Aleppo, in which we are
engaged
in teaching, a mass of about four hundred emaciated forms, the
remnant
of such convoys, is lying in one of the hans. There are about a
hundred
children boys and girls) among tbem, from five to seven years
old.
Most of them are suffering from typhoid and dysentery. When one
enters
the yard, one has the impression of entering a mad-house. If one
brings
them food, one notices that they have forgotten how to eat,
Their
stomach, weakened by months of starvation, can no longer
assimilate
nourisbment. If one gives them bread, they put it aside
indifferently.
They just lie there quietly, waiting for death.
"Amid
such surroundings, how are we teachers to read German Fairy
Stories
with our children, or, indeed, the story of the Good Samaritan
in the
Bible? How are we to make them decline and conjugate irrelevant
words,
while round them in the yards adjoiniug the German Technical
School
their starving fellow-countrymen are slowly succumbing? Under
such
circumstances our educational work flies in the face of all true
morality
and becomes a mockery of human sympathy.
"And
what becomes of these poor people who have been driven in
thousands
through Aleppo and the neighbourhood into the deserts,
reduced
almost entirely, by this time, to women and children? They are
driven
on and on from one place to another. The thousands shrink to
hundreds
and the hundreds to tiny remnants, and even these remnants are
driven
on till the last is dead. Then at last they have reached the
goal of
their wandering, the 'New Homes assigned to the Armenians,' as
the
newspapers phrase it.
"Ta'alim
el aleman' ('the teaching of the Germans') is the simple
Turk's
explanation to everyone who asks him about the originators of
these
measures.
"The
educated Moslems are convinced that, even though the German nation
discountenances
such horrors, the German Government is taking no steps
to put
a stop to them, out of consideration for its Turkish Ally.
"Mohammedans,
too, of more sensitive feelings--Turks and Arabs alike--
shake
their heads in disapproval and do not conceal their tears when
they
see a convoy of exiles marching through the city, and Turkish
soldiers
using cudgels upon women in advanced pregnancy and upon dying
people
who can no longer drag themselves along. They cannot believe
that
their Government has ordered these atrocities, and they hold the
Germans
responsible for all such outrages, Germany being considered
during
the war as Turkey's school-master in everything. Even the
mollahs
in the mosques say that it was not the Sublime Porte but the
German
officers who ordered the ill-treatrnent and destruction of the
Armenians.
"The
things which have been passing here for months under everybody's
eyes
will certainly remain as a stain on Germany's shield in the memory
of
Orientals.
"In
order not to be obliged to give up their faith in the character of
the
Germans, which they have hitherto respected, many educated
Mohammedaris
explain the situation to themselves as follows: 'The
German
nation,' they say, 'probably knows nothing about the frightful
massacres
which are on foot at the present time against the native
Christians
in all parts of Turkey. Knowing the German love of truth,
how
otherwise can we explain the articles we read in German newspapers,
which
appear to know of nothing except that individual Armenians have
been
deservedly shot by martial law as spies and traitors? Others again
say:
'Perhaps the German Government has had its hands tied by some
treaty
defining its powers, or perhaps intervention is inopportune for
the
moment.'
"I
know for a fact that the Embassy at Constantinople has been informed
by the
German Consulates of all that has been happening. As, however,
there
has not been so far the least change in the system of
deportation,
I feel myself compelled by conscience to make my present
report."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
At the
time when I composed this report, the German Consul at Aleppo
was
represented by his colleague from Alexandretta--Consul Hoffmann.
Consul
Hoffmann informed me that the German Embassy had been advised in
detail
about the events in the interior in repeated reports from the
Consulates
at Alexandretta, Aleppo and Mosul. He told me that a report
of what
I had seen with my own eyes would, however, be welcome as a
supplement
to these official documents and as a description in detail.
He said
he would convey my report to the Embassy at Constantinople by a
sure
agency. I now worked out a report on the desired lines, giving an
exact
description of the state of things in the han opposite our
school.
Consul
Hoffmann wished to add some photographs which he had taken in
the han
himself. The photographs displayed piles of corpses, among
which
children still alive were crawling about.
In its
revised form the report was signed by my colleague, Dr. Graeter
(higher
grade teacher), and by Frau Marie Spiecker, as well as by
myself.
The head of our institution, Director Huber, also placed his
name to
it and added a few words in the following sense: "My colleague
Dr.
Niepage's report is not at all exaggerated. For weeks we have been
living
here in an atmosphere poisoned with sickness and the stench of
corpses.
Only the hope of speedy relief makes it possible for us to
carry
on our work."
The
relief did not come. I then thought of resigning my post as higher
grade
teacher in the Technical School, on the ground that it was
senseless
and morally unjustifiable to be a representative of European
civilisation
with the task of bringing moral and intellectual education
to a
nation if, at the same time, one had to look on passively while
the
Government of the country was abandoning one's pupils' fellow
countrymen
to an agonising death by starvation.
Those
around me, however, as well as the head of our institution,
Director
Huber, dissuaded me from my intention. It was pointed out to
me that
there was value in our continued presence in the country, as
eyewitnesses
of what went on. Perhaps, it was suggested, our presence
might
have some effect in making the Turks behave more humanely towards
their
unfortunate victims, out of consideration for us Germans. I see
now
that I have remained far too long a silent witness of all this
wickedness.
Our
presence had no ameliorating effect whatever, and what we could do
personally
came to little. Frau Spiecker, our brave, energetic
colleague,
bought soap, and all the women and children in our
neighbourhood
who were still alive--there were no men left--were washed
and
cleansed from lice. Frau Spiecker set women to work to make soup
for
those who could still assimilate nourishment. I, myself,
distributed
two pails of tea and cheese and moistened bread among the
dying
children every evening for six weeks; but when the Hunger-Typhus
or
Spotted-Typhus spread through the city from these charnel houses,
six of
us succumbed to it and had to give up our relief work. Indeed,
for the
exiles who came to Aleppo, help was really useless. We could
only
afford those doomed to death a few slight alleviations of their
death
agony.
What we
saw with our own eyes here in Aleppo was really only the last
scene
in the great tragedy of the extermination of the Armenians. It
was
only a minute fraction of the horrible drama that was being played
out
simultaneously in all the other provinces of Turkey. Many more
appalling
things were reported by the engineers of the Bagdad Railway,
when
they came back from their work on the section under construction,
or by
German travellers who met the convoys of exiles on their
journeys.
Many of these gentlemen had seen such appalling sights that
they
could eat nothing for days.
One of
them, Herr Greif, of Aleppo, reported corpses of violated women
lying
about naked in heaps on the railway embankment at Tell-Abiad and
Ras-el-Ain.
Another, Herr Spiecker, of Aleppo, had seen Turks tie
Armenian
men ogether. fire several volleys of small shot with fowling-
pieces
into the human mass, and go off laughing while their victims
slowly
perished in frightful convulsions. Other men had their hands
tied
behind their back and were rolled down steep cliffs. Women were
standing
below, who slashed those who had rolled down with knives until
they
were dead. A Protestant pastor who, two years before, had given a
very
warm welcome to my colleague, Doctor Graeter, when he was passing
through
his village, had his finger nails torn out.
The
German Consul from Mosul related, in my presence, at the German
club at
Aleppo that, in many places on the road from Mosul to Aleppo,
he had
seen children's hands lying hacked off in such numbers that one
could
have paved the road with them. In the German hospital at Ourfa
there
was a little girl who had had both her hands hacked off.
In an
Arab village on the way to Aleppo Herr Holstein, the German
Consil
from Mosul, saw shallow graves with freshly-buried Armenian
corpses.
The Arabs of the village declared that they had killed these
Armenians
by the Government's orders. One asserted prondly that he
personally
had killed eight.
In many
Christian houses in Aleppo I found Armenian girls bidden who by
some
chance had escaped death; either they bad been left lying
exhausted
and had been taken for dead when their companions had been
driven
on, or, in other cases, Europeans had found an opportunity to
buy the
poor creatures for a few marks from the last Turkish soldier
who had
violated them. All these girls showed symptoms of mental
derangement;
many of them had had to watch the Turks cut their parents'
throats.
I know poor things who have not had a single word coaxed out
of them
for months, and not a smile to this moment. A girl about
fourteen
years old was given shelter by Herr Krause, Dept Manager for
the
Bagdad Railway at Aleppo. The girl bad been so many times ravished
by
Turkish soldiers in one night that she had completely lost her
reason.
I saw her tossing on her pillow in delirium with burning lips,
and
could hardly get water down her throat.
A
German I know saw hundreds of Christian peasant women who were
compelled,
near Ourfa, to strip naked by the Turkish soldiers. For the
amusement
of the soldiers they had to drag themselves through the
desert
in this condition for days together in a temperature of 40
degrees
Centigrade, until their skins were completely scorched. Another
witness
saw a Turk tear a child out of its Armenian mother's womb and
hurl it
against the wall.
There
are other occurrences, worse than these few examples which I give
here,
recorded in the numerous reports which have been sent in to the
Embassy
from the German Consulates at Alexandretta, Aleppo and Mosul.
The
Consuls are of opinion that, so far, probably about one million
Armenians
have perished in the massacres of the last few months. Of
this
number, one must reckon that at least half are women and children
who
have either been murdered or have succumbed to starvation.
It is a
duty of conscience to bring these things into publicity, and,
although
the Turkish Government, in destroying the Armenian nation, may
only be
pursuing objects of internal policy, the way this policy is
being
carried out has many of the characteristics of a general
persecution
of Christians.
All the
tens of thousands of girls and women who have been carried off
into
Turkish harems, and the masses of children who have been collected
by the
Government and distributed among the Turks and Kurds, are lost
to
Christendom, and have to accept Islam. The abusive epithet "giaour"
is now
heard once again by German ears.
At
Adana I saw a crowd of Armenian orphans marching through the streets
under a
guard of Turkish soldiers; their parents have been slaughtered
and the
children have to become Mohammedans. Even here there have been
cases
in which adult Armenians were able to save their lives by
readiness
to accept Islam. Sometimes, however, the Turkish officials
first
made the Christians present a petition to be received into the
communion
of Islam, and then answered very grandly, in order to throw
dust in
the eyes of Europeans, that religion is not a thing to play
with.
These officials preferred to have the petitioners killed. Men
like
Talaat Bey and Enver Pasha, when prominent Armenians brought them
presents,
often tempered their thanks with the remark that they would
have
been still better pleased if the Armenian givers had made their
presents
as Mohammedans. A newspaper reporter was told by one of these
gentlemen
"Certainly we are now punishing many innocent people as well.
But we
have to guard ourselves even against those who may one day
become
guilty." On such grounds Turkish statesmen justify the wholesale
slaughter
of defenceless women and children. A German Catholic
ecclesiastic
reported that Enver Pasha declared, in the presence of
Monsignore
Dolci, the Papal Envoy at Constantinople, that he would not
rest so
long as a single Armenian remained alive.
The
object of the deportations is the extermination of the whole
Armenian
nation. This purpose is also proved by the tact that the
Turkish
Government declines all assistance from Missionaries, Sisters
of
Mercy and European residents in the country, and systematically
tries
to stop their work. A Swiss engineer was to have been brought
before
a court-martial because he had distributed bread in Anatolia to
the
starving Armenian women and children in a convoy of exiles. The
Government
has not hesitated even to deport Armenian pupils and
teachers
from the German schools at Adana and Aleppo, and Armenian
children
from the German orphanages, without regard to all the efforts
of the
Consuls and the heads of the institutions involved. The
Government
also rejected the American Government's offer to take the
exiles
to America on American ships and at America's expense.
The
opinion of our German Consuls and of many foreigners resident in
the
country about the Armenian massacres will some day become known
through
their report I can say nothing about the verdict of the German
officers
in Turkey. I often noticed, when in their company, an ominous
silence
or a convulsive effort to change the subject when any German of
warm
sympathies and independent judgment began to speak about the
Armenians
frightful sufferings.
When
Field-Marshal von der Goltz was travelling to Bagdad and had to
cross
the Euphrates at Djerablus, there was a large encampment of half-
starved
Armenian exiles there. Just before the Field-Marshal's arrival,
so I
was told at Djerablus, these unhappy people, the sick and dying
with
the rest, were driven under the whip several kilometres away over
the
nearest hills. When von der Goltz passed through, there were no
traces
left of the repulsive spectacle; but when I visited the place
shortly
afterwards with some of my colleagues, we found corpses of men,
women
and children still lying in out-of-the-way places, and fragments
of
clothes, skulls and bones which had been partly stripped of the
flesh
by jackals and birds of prey
The
author of the present report considers it out of the question that,
if the
German Government is seriously determined to stem the tide of
destruction
even at this eleventh hour, it would find it impossible to
bring
the Turkish Government to reason. If the Turks are really so well
inclined
to us Germans as people say, cannot they have it pointed out
to them
how seriously they compromise us before the whole civilised
world,
if we, as their Allies, have to look on passively while our
fellow-Christians
in Turkey are slaughtered in their hundreds of
thousands,
their women and daughters violated, their children brought
up as
Mohammedans? Cannot the Turks be made to understand that their
barbarities
are reckoned to our account, and that we Germans will be
accused
either of criminal complicity or of contemptible weakness, if
we shut
our eyes to the frightful horrors which this war has produced,
and
seek to pass over in silence facts which are already notorious all
over
the world? If the Turks are really as intelligent as is said,
should
it be impossible to convince them that, in exterminating the
Christian
nations in Turkey, they are destroying the productive factors
and the
intermediaries of European trade and general civilisation? If
the
Turks are as far-sighted as is said, can they blind themselves to
the
danger that, when the civilised States of Europe have taken
cognisance
of what has been happening in Turkey during the War, they
may be
driven to the conclusion that Turkey has forfeited the right to
govern
herself and has destroyed once for all any belief in her
tolerance
and capacity for civilisation? Will not the German Government
be
standing for what is best in Turkey's own interest, if it hinders
Turkey
from mining herself morally and economically?
In this
report I hope to reach the Government's ear through the
accredited
representatives of the German nation.
When
the Reichstag sits in Committee, these things must no longer be
passed
over, however painful they are. Nothing could put us more to
shame
than the erection at Constantinople of a Turco-German palace of
friendship
at huge expense, while we are not in a position to shield
our
fellow-Christians from barbarities unparalleled even in the
bloodstained
history of Turkey. Would not the funds collected be better
spent
in building orphanages for the innocent victims of Turkey's
barbarities?
After
the massacres of 1909 a kind of reconciliation banquet was held
at
Adana, in which the heads of the Armenian clergy took part as well
as high
Turkish officials. The German Consul, Buge, who was present,
related
that an Armenian ecclesiastic got up and said in his speech "It
is true
that we Armenians have lost much in these days of massacre--our
men,
our women, our children and our goods. But you Turks have lost
more;
you have lost your honour."
If we
persist in treating the massacres of Christians as Turkey's
internal
affair, which is not important for us except as making us sure
of the
Turks' friendship, then we must change the whole orientation of
our
German culture policy. We must stop sending German teachers to
Turkey,
and we teachers must give up telling our pupils in Turkey about
German
poets and philosophers, German culture and German ideals to say
nothing
of German Christianity.
Three
years ago I was sent by the Foreign Office as higher grade
teacher
to the German Technical School at Aleppo. The Prussian
Provincial
School Board at Magdeburg specially enjoined upon me, when I
went
out, to show myself worthy of the confidence reposed in me in the
grant
of furlough to take up this educational post at Aleppo. I should
not be
fulfilling my duty as a German official and an accredited
representative
of German culture, if I consented to keep silence in
face of
the atrocities of which I was a witness, or to look on.
passively
while the pupils entrusted to me were driven out to die of
starvation
in the desert.
If
anyone enquires into the motives which induced the Young Turkish
Government
to decree and carry out these frightful measures against the
Armenians,
one might give the following explanation :--
The
Young Turk has the European ideal of a united national state always
floating
before his eyes. He hopes to turkify the non-Turkish
Mohammedan
races--Kurds, Persians, Arabs, and so on -- by
administrative
methods and through Turkish education, reinforced by an
appeal
to their common interests as Mohammedans. The Christian nations--
Armenians,
Syrians and Greeks--alarm him by their cultural and economic
superiority,
and he sees in their religion an obstacle to turkifying
them by
peaceful means. They have, therefore, to be exterminated or
converted
to Mohammedanism by force. The Turks do not suspect that, in
doing
this, they are sawing off the branch on which they are sitting
themselves.
Who is to bring progress to Turkey if not the Greeks,
Armenians
and Syrians, who constitute more than a quarter of the
population
of the Empire?
The
Turks, the least gifted of all the races living in Turkey, are
themselves
only a minority of the population, and are still far behind
even
the Arabs in civilisation. Where is there any Turkish trade,
Turkish
handicraft, Turkish manufacture, Turkish art, Turkish science?
Even
their law, religion and language, so far as it can be given
literary
form, have been borrowed from the conquered Arabs.
We
teachers who have been teaching Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Turks and
Jews in
German schools in Turkey for years, can only declare that the
pure
Turks are the most unwilling and incapable of all our pupils.
When,
for once in a way, a Turk achieves something, in nine cases out
of ten
one can be certain that one is dealing with a Circassian, an
Albanian,
or a Turk with Bulgarian blood in his veins. From my personal
experience
I can only prophesy that the Turks proper will never achieve
anything
in trade, manufacture or science.
We are
told now in German newspapers of the Turks' hunger for education
and of
how they are thronging eagerly to learn German. There are even
reports
of language courses for adults which have been started in
Turkey.
They are certainly started, but with what results? They go on
to tell
one of a language course at a Technical School which opened
with
twelve Turkish teachers as pupils. The anthor of this story
forgets,
however, to add that, after four lessons, only six pupils put
in an
appearance; after five lessons, five; after six lessons four,
and,
after seven lessons. only three, so that after eight lessons the
course
came to an end, through the laziness of the pupils, before it
had
properly begun. If the pupils had been Armenians they would have
persevered
until the end of the school year, learnt patiently, and come
away
with a respectable mastery of the German language.
What is
Germany's duty and, indeed, the duty of every civilised
Christian
nation in face of the Armenian massacres? We must try every
means
of saving the half million of Armenian women and children who may
still
be alive in Turkey to-day, and who are abandoned to death by
starvation,
from an end which would be a disgrace to the whole
civilised
world. The hundreds of thousands of deported women and
children
who have been left lying on the borders of the Mesopotamian
desert,
and on the roads leading thither, can only maintain their
miserable
existence a short time longer. How long can people really
support
life by picking grains of corn out of horse-dung and depending
for the
rest upon grass? Months of insufficient nourishment and the
prevailing
dysentery will have brought countless numbers into a state
past
help. But at Konia a few thousand Armenians are still aiive--
educated
people from Constantinople, who were in easy circumstances
before
their deportation, doctors, writers, merchants--and these could
still
be helped before they too succumb to the fate that threatens all.
There
are 1,500 Armenians in good health--men, women and children,
including
grandmothers sixty years old and many children of six and
seven-who
are still at work on a section of the Bagdad Railway between
Eiran
and Entilli, near the big tunnel, breaking stones and shovelling
earth.
For the moment they are being looked after by Herr Morf,
Superintendent
Engineer of the Bagdad Railway; but the Turkish
Government
has registered their names too. As soon as their work is
finished,
as it will be in perhaps two or three months' time from now,
and
they are no longer wanted, "new homes will be assigned to them,"--
that
is, the men will be taken off and slaughtered4 the pretty women
and
girls will find their way into harems, the remainder will be driven
hither
and thither without food through the desert until all is over.
The
Armenian nation has a claim to German help. When Armenian massacres
threatened
to break out in Cilicia several years ago, a German warship
appeared
off Mersina. The Commander called on the Armenian Katholikos
at
Adana and assured him that, so long as Germany had any influence in
Turkey,
massacres like those under Abd-ul-Hamid would be impossible.
The
same assurance was given by the German Ambassador, von Wangenheim,
to the
Armenian Patriarch and to the President of the Armenian National
Council
in an interview last April. [1915]
Even
apart from our common duty as Christians, we Germans are under a
special
obligation to stop the complete extermination of the half-
million
Armenian Christians who still survive. We are Turkey's allies
and,
after the elimination of the French, English and Russians, we are
the
only foreigners who have any say in Turkish affairs. We may
indignantly
refute the lies of our enemies abroad, who say that the
massacres
have been organised by German Consuls. We shall not be able
to
dissipate the Turkish nation's conviction that the Armenian
massacres
were ordered by Germany, unless energetic steps are at last
taken
by German diplomatists and officers. And even if we cleared
ourselves
of everything but the one reproach that our timidity and
weakness
in dealing with our ally had prevented us from saving half a
million
women and children from slaughter or death by starvation, the
image
of the German War would be disfigured for all time in the mirror
of
history by a hideous feature.
It is
utterly erroneous to think that the Turkish Government will
refrain
of its own accord even from the destruction of the women and
children,
unless the strongest pressure is exercised by the German
Government.
Only just before I left Aleppo last May, [1916] the crowds
of
exiles encamped at Ras-el-Ain on The Bagdad Railway, estimated at
20,000
women and children, were slaughtered to the last one.
1975
Reprint of Dr. Martin Niepage's original 1917 report.
(New
Age Publishers of Plandome, NY is the source of my 1975 reprint)
http://www.cilicia.com/armo10b_niepage.html