The first act of the Vali was the sudden arrest of 26 Armenians who were sitting in a café. They were sent to Samsoun on a sailing ship, but on the way there all of them except one were killed; he was able to rescue himself by swimming. He looked for refuge with the Italian consul, but at the demand of the Turkish authorities the consul turned him over and the man was buried alive. The Vali then had a town crier report to the population that only the Armenians were to be ready for deportation in five days' time. They were allowed to take food and clothing with them, but no money. They had to deposit their money at the post office, where it would be returned to them later on. Children under the age of five were not allowed to be taken along: they were put up in a school. Armenians from Trebizond were not permitted to save themselves by converting to Islam. The Catholic priests and nuns were among the first to be taken away. They were sent away in small groups, in other words: not everyone at once. No one knows where they were sent to.
All of the inhabitants in the surrounding villages of Güshana (6 hours south-east of Trebizond) and Mala (10 hours south-west) were killed on the spot, because they did not want to leave of their own free will. Turks (Mohadjirs) now live in the Armenian village of Safila.
When the sailing ship of the travelling Turk arrived in Terme – between Unieh and Samsoun – he embarked and held his 'Namaz' prayer in the Armenian church, which had been converted into a mosque, and on this occasion he saw Armenian priests who, adorned with a turban, held Turkish services.
In Unieh, Samsoun, Ineboli and everywhere else along the coast of the Black Sea, masses of Armenians have converted to Islam, and despite this some of them have been deported. An Armenian priest burned down his own house and his entire family inside it in order to protect his faith and the honour of his family.
Here ends the tale of the Turk, who left Trebizond on the third day of the deportations.
It is reported in a letter written 14 days ago in Mersina that the government ordered the Armenians to prepare for deportation in ten days' time. It was learned from another source that 150 families have already been deported.
A traveller and eyewitness – namely: an Armenian who disguised himself as a Turk and was thus able to see everything – tells how about 1,500 Armenian families in Erzingan were taken out of the town and all of them, men and women, children and old people, murdered in the most terrible way in a ravine. He watched with horror as mainly children's, women's and girls' corpses floated along the banks of the Euphrates River. He can describe thousands of individual cases concerning the atrocities, breaking the hearts of those who listen to him.
Almost the same atrocities took place in Sivas.
No difference is made between the Catholic Armenians and the Gregorian Armenians. Thus, the Catholic Bishop of Harput was deported to Aleppo together with his people. There is no news of the Catholic Bishop of Mardin; according to a rumour, he and 700 Catholic Armenians were supposedly killed. Four days ago, the Catholic Bishop of Erzurum sent a telegram that he and his people must leave the town. The travellers who came three days ago from Angora report that deportations have also begun in that town. The Armenians in that town, mainly Catholics, always distanced themselves from national-Armenian life and do not even know their own native language. They always lived in peace with the Turks, so that the Turks themselves protested against the first deportation order and did not want the Armenians to leave. But the central government pensioned off the good Vali, and instated a new, malicious Vali who carries out the government's plan without mercy.
The danger of deportation is now approaching the capital city. It has reached the gates. The towns of Eski Sher and Adapazar [Note by Mordtmann: the information concerning Eski Sher has not been confirmed; on the other hand, Sabandja, Kurtbelen, Geive have been completely evacuated, churches converted into mosques and church towers into minarets.] have already been vacated. Everything has also been prepared for deportation in Nikomedia or Ismid. The purely Armenian village of Bardizag or Baghtchedjik, which has a population of about 12,000 inhabitants and is not far from Ismid, has received the order to prepare for deportation. With our own eyes we saw hundreds of women from this town, who worked in the capital city as servants and laundrywomen to support their families there, leave Constantinople the day before yesterday in tears in order to ease the cruel fate of their daughters and children and to die with them.
The inhabitants of this poor village were already sorely tested about 20 days ago. The central government had given Mr. Ibrahim Bey, the head of the jail in Constantinople and the former organiser of the massacres of Adana in 1908 [1909], the special order to pester the Armenians in the entire province of Ismid and the surrounding towns and villages. Ibrahim Bey first came to Baghtchedjik, had 42 respected people of the town brought before him and demanded their weapons, which were turned over to him in good faith. He demanded more than the people had. Then, under terrible threats, he beat some of these people, among them the village priest, with his own hands and, when he grew tired, had them cruelly bastinadoed by the gendarmes, so that some of them fainted and the blood spurted from the feet of the others. He had excavations made in the church to find ammunition, which of course he did not find, because such a thing had never existed in this village. The villages of Owadjik, Arslanbek and others were subjected to similar procedures by Ibrahim Bey.
Until today, there has been no news whatsoever from any deportees: no one reached their point of destination, even though the process of deportation began three months ago; thus, for example, the Catholic Bishop of Harput sent a telegram one-and-a-half months ago that he and his people were deported to Aleppo, and he has not yet reached Aleppo, for which journey he needed no more than 15 days. In all probability they are eliminated along the way by means of murder and exhaustion. This is not only confirmed by the evidence of the eyewitnesses, but also by the fact that the government leads the Armenians in small groups away from their towns and villages and, as is easily understood, it is an easy matter to kill a small group of unarmed children, women and men right outside the town. According to the testimony of an American missionary, the Turkish inhabitants themselves from the Eregli train station gathered together about 2,000 Armenian children from the fields and hills in their surroundings, who were close to dying from hunger and exhaustion. Even the rivers are used as a death machine against the Armenians: e.g., in the province of Bitlis, several thousand Armenian women and children were thrown into the Tigris River, and near Erzingan into the Euphrates River. And the fathers of these children and the husbands of these women died on the battlefield for the Ottoman fatherland!