I enclose the record of a reliable gentleman for your collection and request the return of the letter left with you on Saturday.
With best wishes I remain, respectfully yours,
While leaving Eski-Shehir, I saw that the number of Armenians on the train had grown. Some of the deportees had been loaded onto the two stories of wagons meant for small animals (so-called “H wagons”); the roofs of the wagons were also covered with people. They stayed there during the entire journey, even during the night, which was bitterly cold.
Influential people, whom I asked if such occurrences happened often and whether nothing was done about the people who remained on the roofs during the cold nights, explained that they could do nothing to remedy the situation and that this had been a daily phenomenon for weeks.
In Alajund, I saw an Armenian camp covering a huge area, which certainly accommodated several thousand people.
There was a camp across from the train station in Afion Karahissar that, according to credible statements, held approx. 12,000 Armenians when my train passed by, and at times was populated by 50 to 60 thousand people. Accommodation was of the most primitive sort, in tents that the people made from their bedding or any other material; a very large number lay completely without shelter of any sort.
Some of the deportees are taken from Konia on foot across the Taurus Mountains, others by rail to Bozanti. I could not find out which factors were taken into consideration in selecting one way or the other. On the day I travelled through, about 10 to 12 thousand Armenians were supposedly moved on on foot.
Watching from the train, I was now able to follow the almost unbroken procession as far as Bozanti. Some of the people were still leading a few donkeys, and occasionally wagons were to be seen, loaded with luggage or women and children. The people stayed on the road over night.
It must be very difficult to provide rations of bread and water. Thus, I was told in Tschumra that there was only one oven for baking the bread to feed the many thousands of people travelling through every day. Despite this, it is strictly forbidden to give the people bread or even water. Two men who attempted to do so in two different places were threatened with court-martial in official letters. This explains why women sell their children for a few piastres or leave them lying on the road.
The largest part of the Armenians has already been removed from Adana; a large number of businesses in town have been closed. I saw with my own eyes how various houses belonging to Armenians were torn down completely or in part, because they stood in the way of “a future road expansion”.
The most incredible stories are told there concerning the transfer of ownership from Armenians to Turks, and I would like to mention just one which comes from a highly reliable source. A rich Armenian made the following statement in court: because he felt that his life and his possessions were being threatened, he conferred the protection of his life on an influential Turk, in exchange for which he committed himself to paying him ¾ of the yearly gross income from his estates for 3 years.
The many Armenian villages between Adana and Mamure are deserted. Along the entire 140 kilometres between Dorak and Mamure I did not see a single farmer tilling his field on my outward journey. On my return journey I counted three.
Again, in Mamure, there is an Armenian camp of exceptional size, but it is too far away from the railway for me to give further details.
If you sit in the house in Entilli that is situated somewhat above the road, you will see a procession of men, women and children passing by day and night who, after their long march, are in a desolate condition. The number of animals that they are leading has been considerably reduced. Only some wagons are visible which, frequently half broken, will certainly not be of service much longer on the bad roads.
In those places where they are under less observance, the people knock on the door at night, begging for a little piece of bread, and only bread: often they do not want to accept money.
I rode on the train from Entilli to Islahie past the endless procession. All of their possessions were reduced to a little bundle that the people carried on their backs; small children were carried by the women while the older ones walked alongside, each with a small household or necessary object in their hand.
Everything which was of any value whatsoever, particularly the livestock, was bought or taken by the gendarmes, the officers and the Mohammedan population for a ridiculously low price. A higher officer said to a gentleman I know that he would never have another such opportunity to become rich and that anyone who did not make use of this moment was a fool.
The people continue from Islahie to Katma and from there either east or south. Lately, the deportees are no longer being taken to Aleppo. Despite this, the town of Aleppo is crowded with Armenians from the interior, particularly from Sivas, Diyarbekir, Urfa and so on. I was assured that these people reached Aleppo in a pitiable state, assuming they did not die along the way, and there they were accommodated either in any kind of buildings whatsoever or in the open. The consequences were that epidemics of the worst kind broke out in Aleppo: dysentery, all kinds of typhus and typhus fever. The illnesses were no longer limited to the immigrating Armenians; rather, according to a doctor, they have spread in the most appalling manner and the better and highest circles have also been infected.
The accommodations and care of the sick Armenians is beyond any description; the living and the dead are left lying on the naked floor in their own filth. A visit to these so-called hospitals, which I myself have not seen, is supposedly so shocking, even for people who have gone through the most terrible forms of the war in the West and the East, that even the strongest nerves fail.
The dead are taken outside the town in box carts; formerly, there was one of these, while now there are 10. Accommodation of the dead in these carts is obviously not very reliable, because recently one of the carts emptied its contents on a very busy road in front of two women. The population often call out to the coachmen and ask how many loads they have transported on that day; the higher the number, the more delighted they are.
3,900 Armenians died in this manner in Aleppo in the month of September; in the meantime, the figure has supposedly increased to about 200 per day.
The deportees have been given a property not far from town on which to bury the dead. The corpses brought in the cart were thrown in a heap, and when people wanted to start digging graves it became clear that the entire property was made up of nothing but rocks, and that without special tools, which were not available, it would be impossible to make graves. Thus, the dead lay for days in the burning heat. I have seen a great many photographs of this graveyard, and I can say that it is the most gruesome thing imaginable.
In Urfa, the Armenians are supposed to have violently resisted their expulsion. Artillery troops were sent there, and before I left the Turks were saying that the troops had returned, because everything was settled in Urfa. I found out that the entire Armenian quarter and everything in it was destroyed.
The government has now decided to remove the deportees in Aleppo as quickly as possible to put a stop to the epidemic. A short while ago, the Armenian emigrants coming from the interior were led through the town, and the inhabitants were strictly forbidden to refresh those dying in the heat of thirst with a drop of water. Eyewitnesses confirm that an old woman, who collapsed from exhaustion, was forced to move along by a gendarme who kicked and whipped her. When a woman came out of a neighbouring house with a glass of water, the gendarme knocked the glass out of her hand and attempted to mistreat the old woman again. She dragged herself past another few houses and died there. A woman in the same procession of Armenians gave birth to a child on the road; several steps further on, a dead woman was found with a living child at her breast.
Armenian women coming from the interior put on record that they were divided into different groups after being driven out of their home town. The men were led off to the side and killed; young women and girls were well treated and divided among the Turks; anyone who was then left over continued to march. Before they emigrated, the Armenians were often forced to carry out the valid sale of their property to Turks, naturally with no reimbursement of the value or only very little.
The further one travels to the east, the greater the number of dead. Recently, over 200 corpses were buried alongside the railway line to Ras-ul-Ain. Dozens of women arrive completely naked at one of the railway stations. A passing train recently took on a three-year-old child who was all alone in this desert, and brought him to Aleppo.
I could not find out where the Armenians are actually being sent; I was always told that they should travel further east and settle down there. No one was able to inform me as to how these people, assuming they reach their destination alive, are meant to earn their living without livestock, without money, without tents and food in an unknown climate on previously untilled ground.