Where Torture Thrives on “Kultur”

More Evidence of the Horrifying Brutalities of Turks, Who Have Grown More Fiendish Than Ever With the Support of the Teuton Allies–Girls Sold for $2 Each and Parents Killed Before Their Eyes

The following eyewitness stories of Armenian massacres at the hands of the Turks are among the first detailed narratives to reach this country. Civilization has known for some months that the Armenians were practically wiped out in the fiendish slaughter perpetrated by the Moslems, who in turn are protected by the Germans. But the terrible details have been for the most part hidden.

Incontrovertible proof from the testimony of guileless victims and from ministers and diplomats who had first-hand knowledge of the character of the depredations is now at hand. Abram I. Elkus, former ambassador to Turkey, lived through the period when the Armenians were all but annihilated; he went among the victims, saving whom he could and pleading with the insatiate monsters who were killing and ravishing everywhere. He says that Turkey bought the right to kill all but young female Armenians from Germany, paying military support for the privilege. Furthermore, the girl survivors were ravished by the tens of thousands and either killed or sold into harem at $1 and $2 apiece. More than 200,000 Armenian girls, says the diplomat, are today in Turkish harems or slaves in tents of the savage Kurds and of 2,000,000 Armenians in Asia Minor no more than 200,000 are alive today, and these are refugees, penniless, hungry and utterly dejected.

Mr. Elkus and Mr. and Mrs. Robert Stapleton, American missionaries in Armenia at the time of the destruction, vouch for the truth of the story by Zevart Khariban, the most lovely refugee from this lost people, Zevart meaning “The Beautiful.”

By Zevart Khariban

(Who was rescued from the Turks by Mr. and Mrs. Robert Stapleton, American missionaries in Armenia, and brought to the United State.)

The massacres at Sivas, where I lived with my parents and brothers and sisters, began on July 11, 1916, Sunday morning and lasted until Monday night. They were organized by the Turkish governors of Van and Bitlis and carried out in the presence of their representatives, among whom were Abdoullah Bey of Sipuk and the police officers.

The orders to massacre us came without warning.They came from the Turkish commander of the district.

Before the killing began all the prominent Armenians underwent indescribably sufferings. They were flogged and their limbs twisted until their thumbs began to bleed.

The second day all the peasant Armenians were arrested, the women and children with them. They wished to take holy communion first, but were refused. All the monks in the monasteries and the most prominent Armenians were slain this second day.

At the convent, where there were twelve Christian nuns, the Turks broke into the tomb of the bishop, Nerses Kharakhanian, who was buried there looking for money. They made the nuns dig open the tomb with their own hands.

When no money was found the Turks took the shroud in which the body had lain and, spreading it on the ground, compelled each of the nuns to submit to indignities with the shroud as her altar of shame. The nuns were brutally tortured to death when the Turks had satiated themselves.

The Turks gathered 3,000 Armenians in Sivas, and on the third day started with them to the north. We were not told where we were being taken. During the third day of the march all the men, even the little boys, were ordered to separate themselves from the women. As soon as this was done the Turks ran down upon them and stabbed them all to death.

Then they went among the women, who were shrieking and wringing their hands, and killed all the old women, leaving only the younger ones alive. Then the guards turned us toward Tokat, where, our guards said, we were to be sold.

A Turk who rode near me in the march told me I should feel proud because I would bring $2. The others, he said, would bring only $1 each. There were so many Armenian girls being sold, he said, there was hardly any market for them any more.

On the fourth night of the journey the Turks tore our clothes off of us, to use is making a fire with which to make hot drinks. They left us only our shoes. They robbed us even of our stockings. As the night wore on the Turks became especially cruel, and many of the girls were made to stand up while their guards stuck the points on their knives into their breasts. One officer ordered me to submit to this, but the officer who had kept me near him throughout the march interfered and said he was going to keep me for his own harem in Tokat.

When we arrived at Tokat there were only 200 of us left out of 400 girls. The rest had died either from tortures, indignities or weariness en route.

We were taken at once to the soldiers’ barracks, where we were herded into a great room. Tubs of water were brought and were ordered to bathe before the Turks came to purchase us. My officer took me to his quarters and shut me in a room, saying he was going to keep me out of the sale.

The next day Mr. Stapleton, who had hurried to Tokat when he heard girls were being taken there from Sivas, where there were missionary schools, learned of my being taken by the officer. He told me later one soldier told him the officer had “kept a nun for his own,” and Mr. Stapleton was determined to save the nun at least. When he found I was not a nun he did not let that him him from his efforts to save me. He persuaded the officer, with gifts, to give me to him. He and his wife took me to Trebizond.

“Raid College, Kill Men, Steal Girls”

The Rev. George E. White, president of Anatolia College, in Marvosan, northern Asia Minor, who has just returned from the desolate land, recites further instances of fiendishness which substantiate and elaborate the pitiful tale of Zevart Khariban. He knows that quantities of captive Armenian girls were sold in Marvosan for $2 apiece.

His story discloses the fact that Turkey began systematic elimination of the Armenians soon after her entrance into the war upon the side of Germany. The moment the Islamite felt the protecting hand of the kaiser about him he fell to murdering the hated Christians in his provinces without delay. From that time forth until the Armenians were gone the Turks raided the settlements, indulging their whims in every possible manner. Although there had been no revolutionary plots around Marvosan, the Turks arrested some 1,200 Armenian men in the first instance, and without pretense of trial marched them away to the mountains, where their graves had already been dug.

As the Turks had not then received their full complement of ammunition from their German protectors, they conserved what cartridges they had and killed the captive Armenians with axes.

With the elimination of the men the Turks took their time and selected women and girls for their own purposes. They brought scores of ox carts to the villages in the early hours of the morning and loaded the choicest and the most attractive young matrons therein, driving away to the slave marts, with cruelty and the wildest orgies of bestiality accompanying the trip.

Dr. White was able, after herculean labors, to ransom four of these girls at $4.40 apiece.

On his return to his college Dr. White was soon ordered by the Moslem authorities to surrender the Armenians who were within his scholastic walls. He had previously received assurance from Ambassador Morgenthau that the college precincts would not be invaded, but the Turks without his gates laughed at this claim from freedom and smote down the gates. Rushing in, they brushed the minister aside and loaded the Armenian faculty and students, men and women, into ox carts. After the party had been driven a few miles the men were slain. The last seen of the women was their compulsion to the terrible desires of their captors. The concerted action of the Turks was, without question, says Dr. White, a governmental move.

Another first hand narrative is that recited by Mooshek Vorperian, a 17-year-old Armenian boy who escaped through Russian to America.

He says that in March, 1915, the Turks suddenly swooped down upon their village and imprisoned the men. They tortured one of the professors in the American Missionary College, first beating him mercilessly, then burning his hair, and finally crucifying him. In July they deported all of the Armenian men, women and children to the Arabian desert, 3,000 being taken from his neighborhood.

The mothers, knowing what fate was in store for the young women, tried to render their daughters ugly. They cut off the luxuriant hair of the girls, knocked out their teeth, etc. The boy narrator tells of seeing his mother shear his sister’s hair, gaze tragically into the beautiful eyes of the girl and exclaim, “Daughter, I wish you were blind.”

Soon the party was divided, and the men being dispatched with axes to save cartridges, which cost 4 cents each. The women were stripped and paraded before their captor before the orgy began.