Eyewitness to genocide

These are excerpts from:

Morganthau, Henry. Ambassador Morganthau's Story. Garden City, NY: Doublday, Page, 1919 (re-issue, Plandome, NY: New Age Publishers, 1975).

http://www.cilicia.com/morgenthau/MorgenTC.htm

The Central Government (of Turkey) now announced its intention of gathering the two million or more Armenians living in the several sections of the empire and transporting them to this desolate and inhospitable region [the Syrian desert].... The real purpose of the deportation was robbery and destruction; it really represented a new method of massacre. When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.

All through the spring and summer of 1915 the deportations took place. Scarely a single Armenian, whatever his education or wealth, or whatever the social class to which he belonged, was exempted from the order.

The police fell upon them just as the eruption of Vesuvius fell upon Pompeii; women were taken from the wash-tubs, children were snatched out of bed, the bread was left half baked in the oven, the family meal was abandoned partly eaten, the children were taken from the schoolroom, leaving their books open at the daily task, and the men were forced to abandon their plough in the fileds and their cattle on the mountain side.

Turks and their Armenian victims.
(Photo courtesy of www.cilicia.com)

Before the caravans were started, it became the regular practice to separate the young men from the families, tie them together in groups of four, lead them to the outskirts, and shoot them. Public hangings without trial - the only offense being that the victims were Armenians - were taking place constantly. The gendarmes showed a particular desire to annihilate the educated and the influential.

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At Angora [Ankara] all Armenian men from fifteen to seventy were arrested, bound together in groups of four, and sent on the road in the direction of Caesarea. When they had traveled five or six hours and had reached a secluded valley, a mob of Turkish peasants fell upon them with clubs, hammers, axes, scythes, spades, and saws. Such instruments not only caused more agonizing death than guns and pistols, but, as the Turks themselves boasted, they were more economical, since they did not involve the waste of powder and shell. In this way they exterminated the whole male population of Angora.

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