Armenian Massacre Unparalleled in World’s History for Extent and Cruelty
Herewith is presented the first official and complete story the Armenian massacres. He was covered by Camillo Ginnferra, Rome Correspondent of the I. N. S. It will be given in two sections the first dealing with the situation in various Armenian provinces and showing that 950,000 Armenians are counted as destroyed since the recent massacres. The second will show the motives for the massacres.
By Camillo Cianfarra,
- N. S. Staff Correspondent
Rome, Nov. 29-‘We solemnly believe that out of the million or more inhabitants of the princes of Trebizond, Sivas, Van, Bitlis Diarbekr and Kharput hardly 50,000 have escaped.’
These few words reveal a tragedy without parallel in the war. They show that the fragmentary reports which have reached the outside world of the Armenian massacres gave only glimpses of the actual situation.
It was an Armenian prelate who made this statement to the International News Service correspondent today. He has a personal knowledge of conditions in Armenia and has received reports telling of the fate suffered by the helpless Armenians. Commander Agostino Gorrini, who was Italian consul-general at Trebizond for six years, gave to the world the first authentic news of conditions in Armenia and it was through him that the International News Service correspondent was enabled to get the interviews with the Armenian prelate. While Commander Gorrini had partially lifted the veil behind which was being enacted the Armenian horrors, it remained for this prelate to reveal the fact that 950,000 Armenians are believed to have been massacred after suffering terrible fortunes or been driven into the desert to die of hunger and thirst. It was in the Armenian college at Rome, also the residence of the general procurator of the Armenian patriarchate of Constantinople that the prelate received the correspondent. He said:
‘We have only been able to collect facts regarding the massacres in five provinces of the Ottoman empire, namely, Trebizond, Sivas, Van, Bitlis and Erzerum. These facts have been revealed to us by the few of four people who, having been warned in time, were able to escape to Russian Armenia. But the facts are hard to collect even for people like us. A thorough investigation either by a neutral country’s accredited representative or by those of the clergy also for one reason or another are still alive is out of the question for the present. It will be a year or two because we shall be able to reconstruct in full the greatest of the massacres which Constantinople has ordered against our people.
‘Yes, the greatest thing that of 1894-97 ordered by Abdul Hamid, when two hundred thousand Armenian men, women and children were slaughtered in the streets of the capital and in the principal cities, is nothing compared with the magnitude of the present one carried on under the auspices of the Young Turks, or rather, their committee of Union and progress. I deem it superfluous of the 1909 massacre ordered by the Young Turks soon after having overthrown the Hamidian despotic regime and securing a constitution; in that massacre only thirty thousand were slain.
‘But today we are confronted with a determined, well organized better executed attempt to wipe off the face of the earth the Armenian race. Even the methods employed to accomplish this end are different. Abdul Hamid was a poor, primitive savage compared with the refined Young Turk. In those days we knew the massacre would last only a few hours or a few days and that those who had somehow succeeded in avoiding the fury of the mod would be safe when the trumpet was sounded to stop the massacre. Beside, this method was quickest and less painful. A man was slain and his torture ended then and there. Also we were able to count the dead.
‘Today the method is radically different. Blood is no longer flowing under the eye of the shocked European in the streets of the cities of Turkey; the heads of the victims are no longer carried on the pike on the brute Turk nor ornament the gates of the mosques and the entrance of the victims houses. The Young Turk knows that this offends the sense of justice and humanity of even his allies, and in the present massacre he has endeavored to hide the appalling crime he has planned.
‘But the Kurds and the Ottoman fanatics lust for blood could not be wholly restrained. Here and there in the cities of the interior blood has flown as in the Hamidian days. At Angora ten Armenian priests were slaughtered before the altar of their church and twenty-seven Armenian employees of the Angora Constantinople railway were found along the tracks with their heads severed.
‘The bishop of Mardin in the province of Diarbekr, Monsignor Mahojan, was beheaded on the threshold of the voneent where he was endeavoring to prevent the mob from breaking in.
‘At Direbakr, three Armenian bishops were burned in the public square before the eyes of the assembled population on the point of being interned in the desert.
‘But these are only few instances hardly worth mentioning in the great catastrophe which has befallen our race. From the reports already received we know as a positive fact that out of sixty or seventy thousand Armenians inhabiting the province of Van only ten thousand succeeded in crossing the border and finding a place of refuge in Russian Armenia.
‘Of the sixty or more thousand Armenian inhabitants of the Bitlis province-of the well to do, thrifty, frugal population prospering in the plains between Bitlis and Mush-we have been able to account for only one thousand.
‘Out of the 14,000 Armenians residing within the city of Trebizond only about a hundred are left, but we don’t know anything of the forty thousand Armenians residing in the province of Trebizond. Nor do we know about the hundred thousand Armenians of the province Sivas (correct). We know that Sivas has been burned to the ground and that the same fate has befallen Tokat, Amassin, Gurin and Mersiffin. From a priest of Amassia we known the Catholic convents of Tokat and Amassia were destroyed and the most shameful of all fates befell the harmless, defenseless inmates whose only crime was that of assisting the destitute Mohammedan women and girls.
‘Of the provinces of Kharput, Diarbekr, of the Armenians residing at Smyrna and Beirut, of the small communities of the interior, we known nothing yet and will probably known little for a long, long time. The facts are slow in coming; above all it is difficult to collect them and avoid exaggerations. But we are working hard.
‘One of our trusted men has already left for Egypt, where a few days ago a French steamer landed some 5,000 Armenians, miraculously escaped from Asia-Minor. These Armenians had sought refuge on a rocky hill below Smyrna and the Turks had left them unmolested knowing that their death by starvation and thirst was only a question of days. The Armenians signaled a French steamer, however, and were saved. Out of these 5,000 refugees only two hundred were young men, the rest are women and children and a few old men.’
The second and concluding part of Mr. Cianfarra’s interview with the Armenian prelate will be published tomorrow.”