Map: Armenia, 500 B.C.-Present x
Introduction xiii
Map: The 1915 Armenian Genocide in the Turkish Empire xxx
Chronology xxxiii
Translator's Note xliii
Volume I The Life of an Exile July 1914-April 1916
Part I July-October 1914
1 In Berlin Before the War 5
2 In Berlin 10
3 Return to Constantinople from Berlin 22
Part II The First Deportation, April 1915-February 1916
4 The General Condition of the Armenians at the Beginning of 1915 31
5 The First Bad News from Cilicia: The Secret Messenger 49
Map: Deportation and Escape Routes 54
6 The Night of Gethsemane 56
7 Red Sunday 58
8 Toward a Place of Exile: The Names of the Exiles in Ayash 61
9 Life in Chankiri Armory: The Names of the Deportees in Chankiri 68
10 Life of the Deportees in the City 74
11 Plan for the Extinction of the Armenians in Turkey 77
12 The Armenian Carnage in Ankara 82
13 The Tragic End of Deportee Friends in Ayash 90
14 The Tragic End of the Chankiri Deportees 95
15 The Deportation and Killing of Zohrab and Vartkes 103
16 The Armenians of Chankiri in the Days of Horror 106
17 The General Condition of the Armenians at the Beginning of 1916 117
18 Second Arrest and Imprisonment 122
19 Departure from Chankiri to Choroum 125
20 From Choroum to Yozgat 131
21 From Yozgat to Boghazliyan: The Skulls 134
Part III The Second Deportation: The Caravan of Death to Der Zor, February-April 1916
22 The Confessions of a Slayer Captain 139
23 Encountering Another Caravan of the Condemned 150
24 From Boghazliyan to Kayseri: The Halys River Bridge and the Bandits of the Ittihad 162
25 Kayseri to Tomarza 170
26 Tomarza to Gazbel 179
27 Gazbel to Hajin 184
28 Hajin to Sis 195
29 Sis to Garzbazar 204
30 Garzbazar to Osmaniye 216
31 Osmaniye to Hasanbeyli and Kanle-gechid 220
32 Hasanbeyli to Islahiye: The Sweet Smell of Bread 230
33 Islahiye: A Field of Mounds for Graves 240
34 Bad News from Der Zor 247
35 Escape from Islahiye to Ayran 252
Volume II The Life of a Fugitive April 1916-January 1919
Part 1 In the Tunnels of Amanos
1 Escape on the Way to Ayran-Baghche (Vineyard) 263
2 The Remnants of the Armenians in the Amanos Mountains 268
3 Signs of Imminent New Storms 272
4 The Treatment of the Armenians by the German Soldiers 279
5 The Ghosts of Ten Thousand Armenian Women in the Deserts of Ras-ul-Ain 282
6 The Deportation and Murder of the Armenian Workers of Amanos 283
7 Bloodshed on the Way from Baghche to Marash: A German Nurse Goes Insane 291
8 The Suffering of British Prisoners of War at Kut-al-Amara 294
9 The Program of Forced Islamization: Escape from Baghche to Injirli 298
10 In the Forests of Injirli: Escape from Amanos to Taurus 302
Part II In the Tunnels of the Taurus Mountains
Map: Constantinople-to-Baghdad Railway 308
11 The Self-Sacrifice of the Armenian Workers of the Baghdad Railway 311
12 Fragments of Armenians in the Taurus Mountains 316
13 In the Deep Valley of Tashdurmaz 319
14 Life in Belemedik 322
15 The Deportation of Patriarch Zaven Der Yeghiayan from Constantinople to Baghdad 326
16 Legions of Armenian Exiles in Konya and Bozanti 331
17 Meeting Armenian Intellectuals on the Road to Belemedik 335
18 Escape from Belemedik to Adana 339
Part III In Adana, January 1917-September 1918
19 The General Condition of the War at the Beginning of 1917 347
20 A Mysterious Patient in Adana's German Hospital 348
21 The Condition of the Remaining Armenians in Adana 352
22 The Curse of Murdered Armenian Mothers 356
23 The Natural Beauty of Cilicia: The Disguised Vine Grower 357
24 The Clerk of the Office: Disappearance 368
25 The General Condition of the Armenians at the Beginning of 1918 370
26 The Turkish Army Invades the Caucasus, and the Victory of the Armenians at Sardarabad 374
27 The Declaration of the Armenian Republic 378
28 The Hospital-Slaughterhouse of Turkish Soldiers 380
29 The Victorious British Army Occupies Damascus: The Battle of Arara 389
30 The National Vow of the Turks to Exterminate the Surviving Armenians: The General Massacre in Der Zor 392
31 Escape from the Land of Blood 398
32 The Disguised German Soldier Toward Constantinople: The Longing of a Mother 404
33 Armistice: The Allied Fleet Victoriously Enters the Turkish Capital 411
34 Did the Victors Come to Punish, or to Loot? 416
35 The General Condition of Constantinople on the Eve of the Armistice 421
36 Irrevocable Departure from Turkey: From Constantinople to Paris 430
Acknowledgments 435
Glossary 437
Biographical Glossary 441
Appendix: Author's Preface 453
Map: Treaty of Sèvres 458
Notes 461
Bibliography 469
Index 483
The Night of Gethsemane
On the night of Saturday, April 11/24, 1915, the Armenians of the capital city, exhausted from the Easter celebrations that had come to an end a few days earlier, were snoring in a calm sleep. Meanwhile on the heights of Stambul, near Ayesofia, a highly secret activity was taking place in the palatial central police station.
Groups of Armenians had just been arrested in the suburbs and neighborhoods of the capital; blood-colored military buses were now transporting them to the central prison. Weeks earlier Bedri,* chief of police in Constantinople, had sent official sealed orders to all the guardhouses, with the instruction that they not be opened until the designated day and that they then be carried out with precision and in secrecy. The orders were warrants to arrest the Armenians whose names were on the blacklist, a list compiled with the help of Armenian traitors, particularly Artin Megerdichian, who worked with the neighborhood Ittihad clubs.† Condemned to death were Armenians who were prominent and active in either revolutionary or nonpartisan Armenian organizations and who were deemed liable to incite revolution or resistance.‡
On this Saturday night I, along with eight friends from Scutari, was transported by a small steamboat from the quay of the huge armory of Selimiye to Sirkedji. The night smelled of death; the sea was rough, and our hearts were full of terror. We prisoners were under strict police guard, not allowed to speak to one another. We had no idea where we were going.
We arrived at the central prison, and here behind gigantic walls and large bolted gates, they put us in a wooden pavilion in the courtyard, which was said by some to have once served as a school. We sat there, quiet and somber, on the bare wooden floor under the faint light of a flickering lantern, too stunned and confused to make sense of what was happening.
We had barely begun to sink into fear and despair when the giant iron gates of the prison creaked open again and a multitude of new faces were pushed inside. They were all familiar faces—revolutionary and political leaders, public figures, and nonpartisan and even antipartisan intellectuals.
From the deep silence of the night until morning, every few hours Armenians were brought to the prison. And so behind these high walls, the jostling and commotion increased as the crowd of prisoners became denser. It was as if all the prominent Armenian public figures—assemblymen, representatives, revolutionaries, editors, teachers, doctors, pharmacists, dentists, merchants, bankers, and others in the capital city—had made an appointment to meet in these dim prison cells. Some even appeared in their nightclothes and slippers. The more those familiar faces kept appearing, the more the chatter abated and our anxiety grew.
Before long everyone looked solemn, our hearts heavy and full of worry about an impending storm. Not one of us understood why we had been arrested, and no one could assess the consequences. As the night’s hours slipped by, our distress mounted. Except for a few rare stoics, we were in a state of spiritual anguish, terrified of the unknown and longing for comfort.
Right through till morning new Armenian prisoners arrived, and each time we heard the roar of the military cars, we hurried to the windows to see who they were. The new arrivals had contemptuous smiles on their faces, but when they saw hundreds of other well-known Armenians old and young around them, they too sank into fear. We were all searching for answers, asking what all of this meant, and pondering our fate.
*See Biographical Glossary.
†Meeting places for members of the local Ittihad Party committees throughout the empire.—trans.
‡Revolutionary here refers to reform-oriented political workers.—trans.
From the Hardcover edition.
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