German Missionary Aids -nyt19150925
GERMAN MISSIONARY AIDS
Cares for Armenian Exiles and Describes Their Sufferings
SEPTEMBER 25, 1915
The Sonnenaufgang, (Sunrise,) a German missionary paper, organ of the Deutscher Hulfsbund fur christliches Liebeswerk im Orient, in its issue of July14 published a letter from a German woman--evidently a missionary--who told of having met numerous convoys of deported Armenians in Asia Minor. Extracts from the letter follow.
For these mountaineers the climate of the desert is terrible. I arrived yesterday at a great Armenian camp with goatskin tents of the Kurdish type. The greater part [of the exiles] were stanched out under the blazing sun allowed them a day of rest on account of the great number of cases of illness. One could see from their dress that these unfortunates had been people of means. They were from Geben, another village near Zeitoun and had been exiled with their pastor. Five or six died everyday children or adults. They had just buried a young woman, mother of a nine-years-old girl, whom they begged me to take away with me.
"The next day I visited another camp of exiles from Zeitoun, and heard the same stories of unspeakable sufferings.
Why don't they kill us at once? By day we have no water; our children cry with thirst. At night the Arabs come, steal our beds and clothing, carry off our young girls, and outrage our women. If we cannot walk, the soldiers beat us. Some women have drowned themselves, with their children, to escape outrage."
Writing from Van, the same traveler says:
In the neighboring villages the churches and schools have been destroyed, as well as some houses and everything has been absolutely pillages."
And from Marash:
"We have jus received fifteen babies. Three are already dead. They were frightfully thin and diseased when we found them. Ah! if we could only write all that we see."
A hard copy of this article or hundreds of others from the time of the Armenian Genocide can be found in The Armenian Genocide: News Accounts From The American Press: 1915-1922