Days of Tragedy in Armenia: Personal Experiences in Harpoot

March 2, 2015

Filed under: Writings

Riggs, Henry H. Days of Tragedy in Armenia: Personal
Experiences in Harpoot, 1915-1917, Ed. Ara Sarafian.
Ann Arbor, Michigan: Gomidas Institute. 1997.

NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR: The Protestant Reverend Henry H. Riggs a third generation American missionary and his wife, the missionary Mary W. Riggs, served in Harpoot, (Kharpert) of the Ottoman Empire. In Chapters XIII and XV the word “deportations” takes on new meanings, as Rev. Riggs describes why the so called “deportations” were far worse than massacres. Photographs do not describe unbearable thirst and hunger. Photographs do not describe feelings of unfathomable desperation and deprivation—regardless of whether or not they were Armenians—Assyrians or Greeks—the Reverend Henry H. Riggs does! (SKK)

Chapter XIII Suspense and Delay

Resistance overcome, the brigands turned to work their will upon the defenseless women and children. All were stripped of their clothing. Then some of the brigands seized the most beautiful of the young women, threw them on their horses, and galloped away; while the rest stopped to gather up the booty. At last, the women, naked and terror-stricken, were left alone with their children, and when the attacking party were well out of the way, the guards returned from their hiding places, and succeeded in requisitioning from a nearby village enough clothing of some sort to make it possible for the women to continue their journey. One of those sufferers, a wealthy lady of the highest type of refinement and education, the daughter of a Christian minister and the wife of a prominent businessman, told us this story of her own experiences, with hesitation and confusion of face, [as] it may well be imagined. Yet, we soon learned that her experience was one of the less horrid of the stories that were brought to me day by day by women of just that type, whose experiences they could tell only to the women of our missionary circle—stories which showed all too plainly what it meant for beautiful and refined Christian women to be left absolutely defenseless in the hands of heartless and lustful Moslem guards, who made their days a horror and their nights unspeakably worse by their obscene and insatiable demands. Many of the women had committed suicide rather than continue to live such a nightmare. (120-1)

This period of delay gave opportunity for correspondence with the authorities in Constantinople and, as has been mentioned, the appeals of Mr. Ehmann resulted in the liberation of the inmates of German institutions. Beyond this protection of German interests, however, the cold-blooded German ambassador refused to “interfere in the private affairs of Germany’s ally”! There are reasons to believe that orders for the same exemption for American institutions had been sent out by the authorities in Constantinople, for Mr. Morgenthau, the American ambassador, was tireless in his efforts along every line, and personally much more highly esteemed and respected than the crafty and domineering von Wangenheim. But these orders, if they were actually sent out, were ignored and suppressed by the local authorities in Harpoot. In answer to every appeal they told us that our pupils and teachers would have to go, though they made halfhearted promises that our people should be allowed to go with later caravans. (121)

Chapter XV The Turkish Idea of Deportation

But for most of the women and children was reserved the long and lingering suffering that made massacre seem to them a merciful fate—suffering such as was foreseen and planned by the perpetrators of this horror. I speak guardedly and state as a fact this horrid indictment of the Young Turks by whom the crime was committed. One of their leaders, the member of Parliament of whom I have already spoken, Hadji Mehmet Effendi of Harpoot, angered by a protest that I had made, spoke more frankly than he otherwise would have done when, before the beginning of the deportation from Harpoot, he said to me, “The Armenians know what massacre is, and think they can bear that. But let them wait and see what deportation is. They never dreamed of being deported. They will soon learn how much worse it is than massacre!” This man professed to believe that the Armenians had brought this on to themselves by their disloyalty to the benevolent and forbearing Turkish government! ( 140)

Many chapters could be filled with the stories of suffering brought by the people who came to us after passing through the ordeal by which the Turkish government designed to exterminate them. But the mere telling of horrible stories is no part of my purpose in writing this book. My object in dwelling as fully as I do on these heartbreaking scenes is to try, though I realize that I shall not succeed in the effort, to perform my duty as a witness in putting before the world a true picture of the human suffering involved in the Turkish application of the plan of deportation to the Armenians. I must therefore still further continue this painful chapter to give a few more isolated instances of such suffering.
Even where actual violence was not used, the guards were frequently active in tormenting their charges. Hunger and thirst are terrible tortures, and many well-authenticated cases were known where the guards deliberately subjected the people to gratuitous privation. Instead of allowing the people to camp near to some abundant supply of water, the guards sometimes forced them to stop at a great distance from water, so that only by walking a long way each time could the people get water. In other cases, where the water supply was not sufficient for the multitude, the guards were said to have taken possession of the spring and allowed only those to drink who would pay for it. For anyone who has had experience of the agony of real thirst, there is no need of enlarging on the cruelty of such treatment, or on the fatal results of such suffering on those forced beyond the limits of their strength. (141-2)

Driven to death, threatened, outraged {raped}, starved and perishing with thirst, it is not to be wondered at that the vast majority of the weary host lay down by the roadside to die. And of those who escaped and found their way to us, many were emaciated and weakened beyond description, and many more heartbroken at the loss of those who had not survived the ordeal. On several occasions, mothers who succeeded in coming to us for help told how with their own hands they had thrown their little ones into the river, rather than endure the prolonged agony of seeing them slowly starve to death at their empty breasts, as they themselves were starving. If any of my readers are inclined to condemn these mothers for [having] having committed child murder, and cannot put yourselves in their places enough to imagine the possibility, then consider the agony of the mother who did not, when she had the opportunity, send her child to the more merciful death; and then, [imagine] as both she and the child grew weaker and weaker, [and] calmly faced the prospect of death. When, one morning, the little one was too ill to walk, and the mother too weak to carry it, she sat down by the child’s side to wait for the end to come. But no! The gendarme came along and ordered her to start and brutally forced the mother to her feet and drove her on, leaving the helpless little sufferer lying there by the roadside. As the frantic mother was relentlessly driven away from her little one, she heard the last despairing wail, “Oh Mamma! Mamma! Don’t leave me!” and thought, as she dragged herself through the endless hours, of that pinched little face staring up at the pitiless sun, and the parched little voice crying out in vain for water, with no one to listen but the vultures and the scavenger dogs that always watch so patiently for their feast to be ready. What would you do if that was your baby, and you knew that that end was coming some day? (143)

Another woman found her way to my study one day. She had told Mrs. Riggs the story of her sufferings on that journey from which she had at last escaped and returned. But of these she told with a hard, indifferent apathy, so accustomed had she become to them. Her real heartbreak was revealed when she told of her two daughters, eleven and thirteen years old, sweet young things, who had helped her as they dragged themselves along the weary road, but who, both in one day, had been snatched from her and dragged off to no one knows what slavery, and her poor distraught mind was ever busy wondering
where they were, and what they were suffering in their captivity. So that, when she had told the story she uttered a great cry, “Oh! I should be so happy—so happy if I could only know that those two dear girls are dead!” Another woman, who had been sitting there during this recital suddenly sprang up, threw herself down on her face, and passionately kissed the floor again and again, and spreading out her hands she cried out, “Oh! God, I thank Thee that I have no daughters!”
But Jesus, turning to them, said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold the days are coming in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the breasts that never gave suck!” (143-4)

Note about the author. (Sofia Kontogeorge Kostos)
Text excerpted from Chapters XIII and XV by (SKK)
The photographs were added from other sources. (SKK)