Following the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Hamid's reign and the declaration of the 1908 Constitution, the party of the Young Turks, "Ittihat ve Terakki" (Unity and Progress), which formed the government, adopted Sultan Hamid's massacre (1894-1896) policy and, professing the Pan-Turkish and Pan-Islamic ideologies, endeavored not only to preserve the Ottoman Empire, but also to brutally annihilate or to amalgamate and forcefully Turkify the Armenians and the other subject Christian peoples and to create a universal Pan-Turanic, Pan-Islamic state extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Altai territory.

The eyewitness survivors of the Armenian Genocide (1915-1922), who, for the most part are no longer alive presently, remembered in every detail, during my recordings, the historico-political circumstances of the first genocide perpetrated in the twentieth century. The representatives of the senior generation even remembered the establishment of the Turkish Constitution in 1908, which had the motto: "Freedom, justice, equality, irrespective of nationality and religion." A nationwide exultation prevailed in the country, since equal rights were to be secured by law to all the nations living in Turkey.

A survivor from Harpoot, Sarkis Khachatrian (born in 1903), has told us about this unprecedented event: "I remember in 1908 when the Sultan's reign was overthrown, people were singing in the streets:" [Sv. 2000: T. 110, p. 222]

While a survivor from Bitlis, Hmayak Boyadjian (born in 1902), has testified in his memoir: "...When Hurriyet (Liberty) was declared in 1908, everybody, in the beginning, was of the opinion that Armenians and Turks would live like brothers. There were even festivities in our village and fusillades were performed." [Sv. 2000: T. 17, p. 77]

An eyewitness survivor born in Sassoun as far back as in the 19^th century, Yeghiazar Karapetian (born in 1886), remembering the historical happenings of the past, has noted: "...The Hurriyet (Liberty) offered freedom to all the political prisoners, after which the Armenians, Turks and Kurds would have equal rights. Everywhere cries of joy were heard. The law of Hurriyet put an end to the humiliation, beating, blasphemy, robbery, plunder and contempt of the Armenians. Anyone involved in a similar behavior would be subject to the severest punishment; he would even be liable to be sent to the gallows. The two nations were put in a state of complete reliance. The Armenians would have the right of free voting, were allowed to elect and propose their delegate. This was a new renaissance in the life of the Western Armenians..." [Sv. 2000: T. 1, p. 42]

Nevertheless, a year had not elapsed since the declaration of the Turkish Constitution, when the town of Adana and the neighboring Armenian-inhabited villages, which had been saved from Abdul Hamid's massacres (1804-1896), became the target of the hatred of the Ittihad officials.

During the Holy Week of 1909, from the 1^st to the 3^rd of April, Adana and its environs were on 2fire. The blood-thirsty crowd attacked the Armenian-inhabitant quarters of Adana and the neighboring villages, plundered all the shops, slaughtered the unarmed and unprotected Armenians, not sparing even the women and the children.

The massacre of Adana was premeditated. This fact is testified by the telegram sent by the councillor of Internal Affairs of Turkey, Adil Bey, to all the Turkish officials of the region of Cilicia, where it was written: "Great care should be taken that no damage is caused to the foreign religious institutions and consulates." [Jizmejian 1930: p. 174]

The Turkish government commissioned the Ottoman Armenian deputy of Edirné, Hakob Papikian, to go to Adana, to investigate the situation on the spot and to prepare an official Turkish-language report for the Legislative Assembly. H. Papikian left for Adana, scrupulously investigated the events and noted in his detailed "Report" that "...not only did the number of victims exceed 30,000 Armenians, but it was an evident fact that the massacres had been organized with the knowledge and by order of the local authorities." [Papikian 1919: p. 28]

The historian-novelist, Smbat Byurat, has, under the immediate impressions of those sad happenings, created the following poem of great popularity as a truthful reproduction of the event, which has been communicated to me by the above-cited survivor from Zeytoun, Karapet Tozlian (born in 1903):

The following popular Turkish-language song saturated with expressive depth and descriptiveness has been created under the immediate impressions of those historico-political events:

An eyewitness survivor from Adana, Mikael Keshishian (born in 1904), has told us with emotion: "In 1909, at the time of the massacre of Adana, I was five years old. That horrible night was named in Turkish 'Camuz dellendi' (The buffalo went mad). And indeed, the Sultan had gone mad. According to his order, people were slain, about thirty thousand Armenians were killed, their houses were demolished and burnt to ashes. ...They gathered all the remaining people and took them to the bank of the Adana River, they sent a message to Sultan Hamid, saying that they had gathered all the Armenians and had brought them to the riverbank and were waiting for his orders. There was water on one side and fire on the other. My father was clasping me in his arms. I remember, I was looking over his shoulder. My mother was also with us. We were all gathered on the riverbank. Then an order of pardon came from the Sultan. They compelled us to shout 'Padişahim çok yaşa!' (Long live the King!). We returned home, but those who were killed were no longer alive." [Sv. 2000: T. 182, p. 318]

During the massacres of Adana, dozens of Armenian towns and villages were ravaged and burnt down, while Moussa Dagh, Deurtyol, Hadjn, Sis, Zeytoun, Sheikh Mourad, Fendedjak and a number of other localities stopped the attack of tens of thousands of Turks with their heroic self-defense and were saved from the slaughter.

In actual fact, that was the beginning of the Great Genocide, when the Young Turks feverishly prepared the total extermination of the Armenian nation, waiting for a propitious occasion. That occasion presented itself when the First World War broke out. Turkey entered into the war, having expansionistic objectives and a monstrous scheme of realizing the annihilation of Armenians.

That invasive war has also been reflected in the following popular song:

The bitter frost of the snow-covered winter is compared with the horror of death (war), while the ruler of the country is indifferent to the people's fate, even at a time when "the whole world is weeping blood."

On the 6^th of August 1914, the German-Turkish alliance treaty was signed in Constantinople. Referring to the note sent by the Turkish government, the German ambassador Wangenheim declared: "If the Ottoman government, remaining faithful to its obligations, enters into the war against the Triple Entente, Germany will guarantee its advantages." One of the six clauses of the concluded agreement stipulated: "Germany will use pressure to adjust the eastern frontiers of the Ottoman Empire so as to secure the immediate contact of Turkey with the Mohammedan population living in Russia." [Lazian 1942: p. 78]

In February 1915, the party of "Unity and Progress" created a special commission entitled "Three-membered Executive Committee" (Bahaittin Shakir, Doctor Nazim, Midhat Shukri) to organize the exile and massacre of the Armenians of Turkey. The Committee elaborated plans concerning the dates and routes of the forcible deportations of the Armenians, the places of extermination, the mode of action of the slaughterers, the release of criminals from the prisons, the formation of gangs of robbers (under the name of "teşkilatı mahsuse" – special organization) operating under the command of Young Turk chieftains, which should realize the genocide of the Armenians.

On the 15^th of April 1915 a secret order signed by the minister of Internal Affairs of the Turkish government, Talaat pasha, the war minister, Enver pasha and the general secretary of Ittihad and minister of education, Doctor Nazim, was sent to the authorities concerning the deportation and the extermination of the Armenians. And Talaat pasha warned with violent hatred: "We have to square accounts with the Armenians," and promised to spare nothing for that purpose. [Antonian 1921: p. 232]

During one of the sessions of the executive committee of Ittihad, Bahaittin Shakir had declared that it was necessary to immediately begin and finish the deportation of the Armenians and, in the meantime, massacre the people. "We are at war," he had added, "there is no fear of interference from Europe and the great States, the world press also cannot raise any protest and, even if it does, it will be without much result and, in the future, it will be considered as a fait accompli." [Mesrob 1955: p. 258]

The minister of Internal Affairs of the government of Young Turks, Talaat pasha, had issued a special order: "The right of living and working of the Armenians on Turkish soil has been completely removed. In accordance with this, the government orders not to spare even the infants in the cradle..." [Nersissian 1991: pp. 564-565]

The executive committee of Ittihad had foreseen to carry out the deportation and the massacre of the Armenians without the help of the army or the police, entrusting the job to the criminals and murderers released from the prisons, as well as to the Kurds, the Circassians and the Chechens.

In these historico-political circumstances, the general mobilization (Seferberlik) had become the greatest evil for the Christian nations living in Turkey, including the Armenians. Under the pretense of recruitment to military service, Armenian males aged 18-45 were drafted to serve in labor battalions (Amele tabur) and according to the special order of the war minister, Enver pasha, were taken to secluded places and were killed out of sight of viewers.

"...In 1914 Turkey declared a general mobilization," a survivor from Harpoot, Sarkis Khachatrian (born in 1903), has narrated, "and drafted the Armenian young men into the Turkish army. They took them and made them work in the 'Amele tabur' (Work battalions) and then they killed them all." [Sv. 2000: T. 110, p. 223]

Sarkis Martirossian (born in 1903), from Harpoot, in turn, has referred to that fact in more detail: "They drafted the Armenian youth to the army during the First World War, about three hundred thousand Armenian young men were sent to serve in the Turkish army. At first, they were given arms, but later Enver pasha had declared 'We need working hands to construct roads.' But in reality, they had made them dig pits and buried them in those pits after killing them." [Sv. 2000: T. 111, p. 224]

The song transmitted by a survivor from Tokhat, Annik Marikian (born in 1892), composed under these historical circumstances, substantiates the testimonies communicated by the eyewitness survivors:

[Sv. 2000: T. 295, p. 404]

And the fate of those working in the labor battalion was decided in advance – it was death!

[Sv. 2000: T. 296, p. 405]

This is what Hazarkhan Torossian (born in 1902), from Balou, has recalled tearfully.

Harutyun Grigorian, born in Erzroom (in 1898), a participant of the deportation from Harpoot, has testified: "At the time of the deportation from Harpoot, I was seventeen years old. I remember it well. They beat the drum in the streets and the town-crier proclaimed 'Seferberlikdır' (General mobilization) because of the war. Later, it was announced that the Armenians would be exiled. Perquisitions started in the town on the pretext of searching for arms, but they were plundering everything; if they found any money, it was theirs, they took away even the knife for cleaning onions. Those who did not return arms had their fingernails pulled out, were beaten or were forced to give money for buying arms... In the town and villages, they imprisoned the wealthy Armenians and the people remained as shepherdless sheep. They nailed horse-shoes to the feet of some influential people, some others had their teeth forcibly extracted, those who were in prisons burned themselves to put an end to their tortures. ...The Armenian soldiers in the Turkish army were disarmed and killed. At first they were drafted into the army to be sent to the front; instead, they formed the 'Amele tabour' (Working battalions), where the Armenian soldiers were condemned to penal servitude as convicts. The ruthless commanders employed the Armenians in road construction without distinction between those who had paid their 'bedel' (ransom – sum paid to assure freedom from military service) and those who had not. They were forced to march for hours, hungry and thirsty, surrounded by policemen on horseback. The insults and the offenses of the policemen were soon transformed into blows. On the roads to Parchandj and Kessirik, when they approached a spring, they did not give permission to two thousand people to drink water and those who dared to do so received a heavy blow with the rifle-butt on the head. Nearly all of them perished and their corpses were thrown into a common pit. The same was done with the two thousand workmen sent to Diarbekir. Young schoolchildren and disarmed soldiers of Harpoot were sent to Karmir Ghonagh (Red House) to be tortured and their tormented corpses were shed one over the other and were in the process of decaying. In every corner there was blood, vomit and excrement. Those lying on the ground looked like corpses fallen on a battlefield. Thus, one after the other, the adult or aged people, on the one hand, were brought from villages and boroughs to Karmir Ghonagh and, on the other hand, the arrested people were sent to Yedessia as though to work on the railways. After the 14^th of July, 1915, all the young men were sent to the slaughter-house..." [Sv. 2000: T. 89, pp. 187-188]

A survivor from Yozghat, Veronica Berberian (born in 1907), has also referred to the Turkish mobilization: "...On Saturday, toward the evening, they came to mobilize all the males to serve in the Turkish army, but they detached the Armenians from the Turks. My grandfather, a priest, Rev. Fr. Hakob Berberian, who was authorized to protect the Armenians' rights, asked why the Armenians had been separated from the Turk recruits. The Turkish major answered: 'Papaz (priest) efendi, the Armenians will go to construct roads and the Turks will go to the Russian front.'

The following day was Sunday. My grandfather had finished celebrating Mass and had just come home, when the sad news arrived. Artin agha's son, who was a miller, had gone to work in the early morning and had seen numerous human heads, feet and hands near the mill. Tongue-tied of horror, he had run home panting and told what he had seen. Artin agha came to us with his son and told my grandfather: 'Those who were taken to the army were slaughtered at night.' My grandfather advised them to go and complain to the kaymakam (prefect). Artin agha went to present his protest to the kaymakam, but he did not come home at night....

The next day, Monday, two Turkish gendarmes came to our house armed with clubs. At other times, when the gendarmes came to us, they always asked my grandfather politely to get dressed and to go with them. When they came this time, they shouted rudely: 'Haydi, kalkın!' ('Get up, quick!'). They took my grandfather to the kaymakam. Along with my grandfather, they had taken also other local notables, tradesmen and intellectuals. A Turk said to my grandfather: 'Papaz efendi, your last hour has come, what have you got to say?' My grandfather knelt and started to pray. A Turkish soldier struck him with an axe and my grandfather's head tumbled to the ground. They began to play football with my wise grandfather's head..." [Sv. 2000: T. 214, pp. 353-354]

The mobilization in Turkey was followed by the arms collection. That was accompanied by ubiquitous round-ups, during which, on the pretext of collecting "arms," the Turkish policemen ravaged the houses of the Armenians, plundered their properties, arrested and killed many of them.

The same survivor, Veronica Berberian, has added: "Before the Genocide the Turkish policemen came to collect the arms. The son of the rich Karapet agha had said: 'We have no arms.' The policemen had searched and found a weapon. They had pulled out his fingernails and they had placed hot boiled eggs in his armpits and tied him. After that, they had not left behind even a simple kitchen knife." [Sv. 2000: T. 214, pp. 353-354]

Hakob Holobikian, from Harpoot (born in 1902), recalling how the Turkish policemen demanded arms from his father, has narrated: "Getting a negative answer from my father, they beat him with a whip and, finally, they dragged him out and took him to prison. Seeing these cruelties, my mother exclaimed: 'Butchers.' For that word, they incarcerated my mother in a vacant house. I, my sister and my brother were left alone. I ran behind my mother and looked through the door slit; my mother said: 'My son, go to your uncle Grigor's house.' ...In those days my uncle Grigor was still in office as a mayor. They had spared him. He interceded, something which wasn't done without bribery, and we brought my father home; he was set free. One of my father's friends, a blacksmith named Levon Khochikian, took him home on his shoulder since he was unable to walk. My mother also returned home from her prison. Father, after his torture, lay on his belly; he couldn't lie on his back. My father told us how many misfortunes he had suffered in one night. Corporal Ahmed, a fierce-looking officer, had brought my father from the prison cell to his room to torture him and had made him lie on his belly; other policemen, armed with oak truncheons, waited, on both sides, for his orders. Once more, he had demanded from my father mauser and mossin rifles, revolvers: 'You either hand them over or lie down! Start beating him!' had ordered the Corporal. After forty blows, they had put him in a sitting position. Corporal Ahmed had continued: 'I say, don't you want to bring your arms?' According to my father, Corporal Ahmed had summoned also to his room the Armenian song teacher of the church and the school, Armenak Petrossian, and had made him sit by his side, which meant that the next turn would be his. 'Efendi (sir), I have no arms.' Again they had delivered forty blows and again the same question and the same answer. Before making him lie down for the third time, Ahmed had asked: 'Then tell me who has got arms.' My father could not be a traitor. Even if he knew, he would not tell. After one hundred and twenty blows, they had dragged him, half-dead, to the gaol. This is my father's narrative..." [Sv. 2000: T. 109, p. 220]

In the following Armenian-mixed Turkish song, which is widely known among the Western Armenians, the Turkish officer asks the young Armenian:

The Armenian youth denies the accusation, considering it a slander:

But then he adds secretly in Armenian:

It’s hanging on the wall, I won’t tell.
I won’t betray the Armenian nation.

The Armenian youth who had received the call-up papers and was forcibly drafted to the Turkish army had the presentiment that "that was the road to death" and in fact "lots and lots of Armenians were there."

If, in this song, the Armenian youngster was ready to serve in the Turkish army and to perform his civil duties in regard to the native land (vatan) he was living on, he subsequently became aware that the "mobilization" was a pretext to isolate him from his kinsfolk.

And the mobilized Armenian young man implored the cruel Circassian to show mercy to him, otherwise "his new fiancée would become a widow."

In fact, his fiancée was shedding salty tears like the salty roasted hazelnuts of Istanbul and mourning for his absence.

There were at that time special instructions in Turkey to isolate the Christians serving in the army from their regiments without any offense and to shoot them in secluded places, away from the public eye, or to make them starve to death in prisons.

Meanwhile his faithful Armenian friends

The Armenian soldier himself was imprisoned:

And his kinsfolk:

Besides the prison and the dungeon, death awaited the Armenian soldier every moment:

And the mother of the Armenian soldier cursed the mobilization, which was more like a massacre, since the young Armenians went away with the spring roses and nightingales, only forever:

The people's hatred was gradually transformed into a mockery and Talaat pasha's exterior was outlined in a few concise words, which denoted also his internal character:

The arrest of the Armenian intellectuals followed the mobilization and the arms collection; it pursued the purpose of depriving the Armenian nation not only of its fighting force, but also of its leading minds. On Saturday, April 24, at midnight, 273 Armenian notables of Constantinople were forcibly taken to police quarters and subsequently were sent to the deserts of Mesopotamia and exterminated. Among those who were deported to the deserts of Changhere and Ayash and exterminated were the well-known lawyer, member of the Ottoman Parliament and writer, Grigor Zohrap, the poets, writers and physicians Daniel Varouzhan, Siamanto, Ruben Zartarian, Ruben Sevak, Hovhannes Telkatintsi, Melkon Kyurdjian, Yerookhan, Smbat Byurat, Tigran Chyokurian, Nazaret Taghavarian and numerous celebrated people from Istanbul, Svaz, Diarbekir, Marzvan, Erzroom, Kayseri, Izmir and other Armenian-inhabited localities.

A survivor from Adabazar, Marie Yergat (born in 1910), has told us about them: "...They took us to Eskishehir and we were housed in an overcrowded inn. The neighboring inn, which was dark and dirty as ours, was sheltering all the intellectuals exiled from Istanbul. All of them wore suits, starched collars and ties, but in tatters. We heard every night their lamentations and sighs, because the Turkish officers and policemen were beating them ruthlessly. After a few days they took them all away. We heard that they had killed them after severe tortures." [Sv. 2000: T. 226, p. 366]

Everywhere the Armenian schools and colleges were being closed.

Besides the Armenian educational institutions, the Armenian churches were also ravaged. The Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople was incorporated into the Catholicosate of Sis, and Catholicos Sahak II Khabayan was recognized as the spiritual leader of the Armenians of Turkey.

On March 15 and April 3, 1915, the Russian Intelligence informed about Turkey that Armenians were arrested throughout the country, systematic massacres were committed in Erzroom, Deurtyol and Zeytoun; bloody clashes took place in Bitlis, Van and Moosh; atrocities, plunder and murders occurred in Akn; economic collapse and a general massacre of the population were noted all over Asia Minor.

A survivor born in 1905 at the village of Kem of the Armenian valley of Van, Sirak Manassian, has testified about the horrible state of the Western Armenians: "On the 4^th of March 1915, we heard that they had killed the public servant-educator, Mr. Ishkhan in the neighboring village of Hirj. That was at the time when the Turks were summoning, through Djevdet pasha, all our eminent leaders and were slaughtering them. In those dreadful days they unexpectedly killed Mr. Iskhan and threw him in the well. Not satisfied with this crime, they also threw his two children alive into the well. When we heard that, we and all our compatriots got much alarmed and started to get ready for the attack of the Turks.

On the 6^th of May the Armenian flag waved over the citadel of Van. The Vaspourakanis welcomed with great love the Russian soldiers and the Armenian volunteers under the leadership of General Andranik Ozanian." [Sv. 2000: T. 30, pp. 101-102]

In the villages surrounding Van, the Turks had time to exterminate on the spot thousands of Armenians and, when the Russian army entered Van, accompanied by the Armenian writers Hovhannes Toumanian and Alexander Shirvanzadé, they became witnesses of bewildering scenes. "...Wherever they had the opportunity, they had massacred the Armenians," wrote H. Toumanian in his memoirs, "and mainly the males, and had taken away the beautiful women. And if they had had sufficient time and when the terror of the Russian army and the Armenian volunteers had not been close, they had invented barbaric amusements: they had crucified people, various body parts of live people had been cut and arranged in different patterns; games had been invented: people had been put below the waist in cauldrons and boiled so that the live half could see and feel...; they had cut with red-hot iron bars the various parts of the body and roasted them on fire; they had roasted live people; they had massacred children before the eyes of parents and parents before the eyes of children." [Toumanian 1959: pp. 212-213]

Naturally, if the Armenians had not had recourse to self-defense in Van, they would have been martyred in the same manner. It is appropriate to mention here the following words of a survivor from Van, Ardsroun Harutyunian (born in 1907): "Self-defense is born when there is violence against the people..." [Sv. 2000: T. 35, p. 109]

And therefore, the heroic self-defensive battles fought in Van, Shatakh and other localities constituted the noble outbreak of the Western Armenians revolting against the acts of violence committed by the Ittihad government, their voice of protest addressed to the great states of the world. This is also attested to by the following fragment of a popular song:

Van, a little town with its districts,
Full of corpses in hundreds and thousands,
The field was colored red with blood,
The clouds, the sky and the stars raised their voice
And roared and ordered loud enough
To be heard in Europe and America.

However, neither Europe nor America interfered and only the national heroes succored the helpless people.

From the beginning of the First World War all the Western Armenians, including also the Sassounis, were subjected to new and brutal pursuits, plunders and murders.

In March 1915, the Turkish hordes also invaded Sassoun. In April-May, the first combats of the Sassounis took place. Exhibiting a heroic resistance to the Turkish army, but suffering great losses, the Armenian fighters retreated to the slopes of the Andok Mountain and continued the self-defense. In June, unyielding fights took place in the region of Assank. The combatants of the Monastery of Gomuts and of Talvorik provoked confusion among the Kurdish hordes and seized the Satan Bridge; the inhabitants of Ksak came to their rescue. On the 30^th of July, the Sassounis liberated Shenik, but the enemy occupied the stables situated on the slopes of Andok with a new assault. The Sassounis heroically defended themselves from the attacking Turks and Kurds in the mountains of Andok, Tsovassar and Gerin. The survivors rescued from the massacres of Moosh and its environs, about thirty thousand in number, who had taken refuge in the mountains of Kana and Havatorik, displayed a heroic resistance. However, that heroic self-resistance was cruelly suppressed.

"The Turks attacked and began to massacre," a survivor from Sassoun, Arakel Davtian (born in 1904), related. "They took away the beautiful girls and women. There was a freedom-fighter in our village, named Missak, who had a gun. He went into the monastery and started to fight. We had no arms. Sassoun resisted for two months. The Turkish soldiers came and besieged us. We had no help whatsoever and they slaughtered many of us." [Sv. 2000: T. 4, p. 55]

An eyewitness from the Shenik village of Sassoun, Khachik Khachatrian (born in 1900), has also narrated: "The Turkish army came, about sixty thousand in number. They came and surrounded the village. Our fighters resisted bravely. Twice the Turkish army invaded the village and twice our freedom-fighters and those who had arms drove them out. Our combatants were gathered in the center of the village. Three days before our people had left the village and gone to Andok, the children, with the women, and I had gone with them. It was the beginning of July. There was no bread, no water, no salt; we had only unsalted meat. We stayed there for about forty-five days and the battle went on. After that, our provisions ran out. We were fed only with roasted flour. The Turkish soldiers came and invaded Andok. The valleys were filled with the corpses of children. Their mothers were not able to save them. The Turks and the Kurds were firing. People fell by the dozen. The young brides were taken away. At the end, they were dropping the people from the mountain top into the river to spare the bullets. The river carried away innumerable bodies..." [Sv. 2000: T. 2, p. 53]

Another eyewitness survivor from Sassoun, Yeghiazar Karapetian (born in 1886), has related these historic events in more detail: "The attacks of the Kurds on the Armenians were, seemingly, of an unofficial character, but there was a general belief that they were all performed according to the instructions of the government, something which was proved by the fact that the Armenians' protests were not heard and their appeals remained unanswered. Servet pasha, a Young Turk, was the pasha (governor) of the district and a man faithful to Islam. Consequently, he had to perform his duties like the other pashas of the other districts. Beginning from June 10, the Kurdish ashirat-leaders, surrounded with numerous horsemen, entered Moosh, received instructions and returned to their homes. Every night, weapons and bullets were carried with carts out of the town to arm the Kurds. A special program had been designed by the government with a view to successfully bring to an end the massacre of the Armenians; a division of the villages had been planned, the day and the hour of the attack had been determined with such accuracy that the extermination of the Armenians of one hundred and five villages of the Moosh plain would be completed in a single day, not sparing a single child. The distribution had been planned as follows: the massacre of the thirty-five villages situated on the right of Moosh till the source of Meghraget River had been entrusted to Hadji Moussabek, who had at his disposal three thousand five hundred Kurd horse- and infantry-men. The slaughter of the fifteen villages situated on the northwestern side of the town had been consigned to Sleman agha from Fatkan, who had under his command one thousand armed Kurds. The carnage of the Armenians of the twenty villages of the region of Soorp Karapet had been committed to the assistant chieftain, the Young Turk Rashid efendi (sir), who had a force of five hundred brigand-horsemen, which was reinforced by the garrison stationed at the Soorp Karapet Monastery and the superintendent at the village of Ziaret with his gendarmes. On the northeastern flank of the field, the massacre of the fifteen villages had been assigned to Derboyi Djendi from Djebran, to Kolotoyi Zuber and to the superintendent of Aghchan, who had at their disposal more than a thousand Kurds and gendarmes. On the right flank of the field, the extermination of the twenty villages of Chekhour had been consigned to Sheikh Hazret, who had under his command one thousand two hundred horsemen composed of Kurds from Zilan and Kossour. Besides these regular forces, a sacred task had been assigned to all Mohammedans: to kill and exterminate without mercy any Armenian they met. The existing state of things suddenly changed. The Armenians could no longer go from the villages to the town and come back; the Turks violently beat and tortured the Armenians they met; cases of murder also occurred. Aged women, who were obliged to go on an errand to town, were always subjected on their way to pursuit and disgraceful blasphemies. People were filled with anxiety; they had no sleep and no rest.

On the 22^nd of June, one hundred Kurdish horsemen from Bakran settled on the slopes of the Krenkan Gyol Mountain. On the following day, ten horsemen came to our village and claimed from the village notables ten sheep, ten measures of flour and ten felt-gowns. They received all this free of charge and without any objection and, being well-acquainted for a long time with the denizens of Havatorik or being conscience-stricken, Ali of Tamo said: 'Armenians, I have often eaten your bread and salt, now I have to tell you a truth. An order has come from the Sultan that we have to mercilessly massacre all the Armenians living on the Ottoman soil. Now if you stand up and have a look at the Slivan field, you will see that the wheat fields have ripened and the spikes have fallen one upon the other, but there is not a single sparrow there. It is deserted. We have completely exterminated the Armenians of that locality and the government has called us here with the purpose of slaughtering the Armenians of the Moosh plain and of Sassoun. In a few days, massacres will begin here also and it should be so that men giving the name of Jesus Christ will not remain alive on this land.' The Kurds took away what they demanded, while we remained pensive. ...Thus, this Armenian-populated province, which was bound to the land and the plough for centuries, became, in the course of one day and one night, deserted and uninhabited, while its real owners were slaughtered with swords, burned in fire, drowned in water by the hands of the ruthless Turks and Kurds in a monstrous operation; its victims were the Armenian dwellers, of both sexes, of one hundred and five villages, totaling seventy to eighty thousand souls in number. Their wealth, worth millions, was pillaged. ...The 28^th of June was the Sunday of Vardavar (the Transfiguration of Christ), the merry holiday of the Armenian nation, which, alas, was converted into the Sunday of Martavar (burning of people) for the Armenians of the Taron plain." [Sv. 2000: T. 1, pp. 44-45]

Shogher Tonoyan (born in 1901), from Moosh, has also given an account about the above-cited Vardavar holiday: "...On the day of Vardavar (the Transfiguration of Christ), 1915, the Turkish askyars (policemen) brought Chechen brigands from Daghestan to massacre us. They came to our village and robbed everything. They took away our sheep, oxen and properties. Those who were good-looking were taken away. My aunt's young son, who was staying with me, was also taken away, together with all the males in the town. They gathered the young and the elderly in the stables of the Avzut village, set fire and burned them alive. They shut people in the stables of Malkhas Mardo, they piled up stacks of hay round them, poured kerosene and set on fire. Sixty members of our great family were burned in those stables. I do not wish my enemy to see the days I have seen, lao! Only my brother and I were saved. From the beginning, they took away the young pretty brides and girls to Turkify them and also they pulled away the male infants from their mothers' arms to make them policemen in the future. The stable was filled with smoke and fire, people started to cough and to choke. Mothers forgot about their children, lao! It was a real Sodom and Gomorrah. People ran, on fire, to and fro, struck against the walls, trod upon the infants and children who had fallen on the ground. ...What I have seen with my eyes, lao! I don't wish the wolves of the mountain to see! They say that the Turkish mullah hung himself at the sight of these distressing scenes. During that turmoil, the majority of the people choked and perished. The roof of the stable collapsed and fell upon the dead. I wish my little brother and I had been burned in that stable and had not seen how sixty souls were burned alive. I wish I had not seen the cruel and ungodly acts of those irreligious people. The Armenians of the neighboring villages of Vardenis, Meshakhshen, Aghbenis, Avzut, Khevner and others were burned in the same manner in their stables. I do not wish my enemy to see what I have seen.... When the roof of the stable collapsed, the flames and the smoke escaped from the opening and air penetrated in the stable. My uncle's daughter, Areg, and I took my unconscious brother by the arms and legs and, treading on burnt logs and corpses, we came out through the breach. There we saw the Turkish soldiers dancing in a circle, swinging and striking their sabres and singing merrily 'Yürü, yavrum, yürü!' ('Walk, my child, walk!'). Up to this day that song resounds in my ears..." [Sv. 2000: T. 8, p. 61]

Another eyewitness from Moosh, Sedrak Harutyunian (born in 1904), has testified, similar to many, many others: "I have seen not only the slaughter of my village, but also the panic-stricken flight from the villages of our region. Corpses were stretched out on our ground like a straw-mat..." [Sv. 2000: T. 9, p. 63]

Referring to the unspeakable sufferings of the inhabitants of Moosh, the well-known historian, Professor Vahakn Dadrian, who has elucidated the shadowy aspects of the Armenian Genocide, has noted: "...Indeed, the massacre of the Armenian population of Moosh and of nearly 100 villages of the Moosh plain, numbering about 90,000 souls, was one of the most bewildering and horrifying episodes of the Armenian Genocide. Three facts are most characteristic of the Moosh massacre: in the first place, the Turkish army, the Kurdish gangs of robbers and the Ottoman governmental authorities have, hand in hand, contributed to the realization of the monstrous scheme of the Ittihad party; secondly, the role of that army was unusual in the sense that 10-20 battalions were specially brought there from Harpoot and, after encircling the Armenian quarters of Moosh with a net of cannon, they devastated and razed them to the ground by rumbling bombardments, exterminating the whole Armenian population under the ruins of their own houses, in spite of the fact that only a few houses were fortified and offered an armed resistance; thirdly, they packed the great majority of the population of the Moosh plain, amounting to 70,000-80,000 souls and composed of women, children and elderly people, in barns and stables, set fire to them and burned them all alive..." [Dadrian 1995: p. 14]

Hrant Gasparian (born in 1908), from Khnous, has testified: "I told you what I have seen. What I have seen is in front of my eyes. We have not brought anything from Khnous. We have only saved our souls. Our large family, as a whole, was composed of one hundred and forty-three souls. Only one sister, one brother, my mother and I were saved..." [Sv. 2000: T. 12, p. 71]

If only four people were saved out of a large patriarchal family of 143 souls, then it is possible to imagine how many thousands of Armenians were sacrificed in the prototypes of Nazi gas-chambers, the stables and barns set on fire, long before the Jewish Holocaust.

The following popular song has been woven with reference to these historic events:

…The province of Sassoun with its forests,
With its high mountains as ramparts
Always withstood the Turkish army,
Sassoun smells now of hot blood.

The smell of "hot blood" was spread also in the heroic towns of Shapin-Garahissar, Shatakh, Karin, Pontos, Moosh, Svaz, Harpoot, Malatia, Diarbekir and in the Armenian-inhabited localities of Western and Central Anatolia, Izmit, Bursa, Ankara, Konia and elsewhere. They exterminated, with unspeakable cruelty, all the Armenians, not sparing even the infants.

And when the Russian troops retreated, a great number of Armenians, who had heroically fought in the self-defensive battles of Van, Sassoun, Shatakh, Shapin-Garahissar, Moosh, Bitlis, Alashkert, Bayazet, Babert, Erzroom and other localities, were obliged to migrate after them to Eastern Armenia. They left, in despair and in tears, their homeland, their thousand-year historical cradle and started, whimpering, on their exile journey. That indescribable, great national grief has been expressed, in a condensed form, in the following dirge composed by the talented survivor from Sassoun, Shogher Tonoyan (born in 1901):

[Sv. 2000: T. 557, p. 453]

The road of exile was a real tragedy.

Vardouhi Potikian (born in 1912), from Van, has painfully recalled that horrible turmoil. "...May my enemy not see that day. Woe! Let it be a black day! We had come and reached the bridge over Berkri River. Suddenly the people began to yell: 'Flee.' We saw in the dark: the Berkri valley was narrow and the Armenians hadn't reached the river yet, when the Turks and the Kurds attacked. As the Armenians tried to escape, their feet slipped and they fell into the river and got drowned. Some tried to cross the river on animals, some entered the water all by themselves and the current carried them down the river. They were yelling, screaming and crying. The Kurds were firing on us. Mothers denied their children." [Sv. 2000: T. 49, p. 128]

The following popular vivid song has been created under the immediate effect of those distressing scenes of exile:

[Sv. 2000: T. 344, p. 414]

Suffering countless victims, the exhausted and agonizing human flood moved forward, sad and wistful, through clouds of dust. Shogher Tonoyan (born in 1901), a survivor from Sassoun, has woven this lament:

[Sv. 2000: T. 344, p. 414]

When I asked an eyewitness-survivor from Van, Aghassi Kankanian (born in 1904), who had become a well-known chemist, to tell me about his deportation, he said, reliving with great emotion and tearful eyes, his sorrowful past: "...Till we got to Igdir we marched under the rain and the sun, in the mud, half-starving and thirsty, for ten days. On the roads, the Kurds often attacked us, killed people and plundered. The most terrible attack took place near the Bandimahu Bridge over the Berkri River, where there was an accumulation of deportees. Numerous mothers, clasping their infants in their arms, threw themselves into the river, so as not to fall into the hands of the Turks. Those who were killed or died during our march were left on the roadside, mostly unburied. Seeing so many unburied corpses, I was so much affected that I became melancholic and that state continues up to the present day. I cannot feel completely glad." [Sv. 2000: T. 28, p. 98]

Destitute, exhausted and leaving their dead kinsfolk unburied on the roadside, the remaining Western Armenians arrived, after great difficulties, in Igdir (Surmalu), which would suffer the same fate. The words of the following popular song about Surmalu have been communicated to me by the well-known and beloved singer, Hayrik Mouradian, a survivor from Shatakh (born in 1905):

[Sv. 2000: T. 559, p. 453]

The life of the Armenians in Cilicia had also become a nightmare.

The Baghdad railway, which had a particular economic importance, passed through Armenian-populated Cilicia. This circumstance troubled the Turkish government, since the laborious and active Armenians living in Cilicia could, by their prosperous state, become predominant in Turkey's economy. The Armenian villages and settlements were scattered in mountainous Cilicia from Hadjn, Zeytoun to Deurtyol; and their populations, although engaged in silk-production, carpet-making and other national handicrafts, had a sufficiently enlightened new generation, owing to the presence of Armenian and foreign schools and colleges, which had played an important role in the formation of their mental-conscious outlook. Besides, the outrages and the massacres, which had started in many provinces of Turkey, coupled with the promised, but not realized, "Reforms" following the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878, had not completely exterminated the naturally freedom-loving Cilicians. Zeytoun, the eagle-nest of Cilicia, had, for a long time, become the flash point of Turkish tyranny and it was high time to square accounts with the bold inhabitants of Zeytoun as well.

The details of these events were divulged in the narratives of the eyewitness survivors from Zeytoun, Gyurdji Keshishian (born in 1900), Karapet Tozlian (born in 1903), Hovsep Bshtikian (born in 1903), Eva Chulian (born in 1903), Sedrak Gaybakian (born in 1903), Samvel Ardjikian (born in 1907) and Gayané Atoorian (born in 1909). [Sv. 2000: TT. 137-143, pp. 254-269]

The Cilicians, who were the worthy inheritors of the last Armenian kingdom (11^th-14^th centuries) and had glorious traditions of the national-liberation struggle of the past, could once again fight in self-sacrifice, but this plan was hindered by the Catholicos of Cilicia, Sahak Khabayan, and many other Armenian notables, who, deceived by the false promises of the Turkish government, called the Armenians to obedience, arguing that "a little movement could endanger all the Armenian population of the provinces of Turkey."

The Turkish government had already, as in the other localities, collected the Armenians' weapons and drafted the young men into the Turkish army, although many of them had been able to escape from the army and hide themselves in Zeytoun. Khurshid pasha came with an army of three thousand soldiers to claim the deserters who had taken refuge in the ancient St. Astvadsadsin (Holy Virgin) Monastery, built on the top of the Berzenka Mountain. On the 25^th of March, the enemy started to shell the monastery. The self-defensive fighters of Zeytoun, under the leadership of Panos Chakerian, responded to the enemy's attack, sparing their scanty bullets.

Karapet Tozlian (born in 1903), from Zeytoun, has told me: "...The monastery was just opposite the town of Zeytoun and we, the Zeytounis, were standing and watching. Suddenly we saw a few policemen who were carrying gazyagh (kerosene) in tin containers to burn the monastery, but the eshkhies (gunmen) fired at them from inside the monastery and killed them." [Sv. 2000: T. 139, p. 262]

On the 9^th of April, 300 notables of Zeytoun were taken to the military barracks, followed also by their families, who were all deported to unknown places. These were the first exiles. The forcible deportation from Zeytoun started. First, the district of the monastery was deprived of its inhabitants and subsequently all the villages surrounding Zeytoun were deserted. Then the eagle-nest Zeytoun was ravaged.

The deportation and massacre of the Armenian population of Cilicia started in the spring of 1915. One after the other, Marash, Ayntap, Hadjn, Antiok, Iskenderun, Kessab and other Armenian-inhabited localities were deserted.

The chairman of the missionaries in the Middle East, Johannes Lepsius, has noted, referring to the deportation of Zeytoun, in his secret report: "...The deportation of the whole Armenian population of Zeytoun took place within a short time. They were about twenty thousand in number and were divided into numerous caravans following one another. The town had four districts. The inhabitants were carried one after the other, the women and children being often separated from the male adults; since one male from each profession was allowed, only six men were permitted to remain. The deportation process lasted for several weeks. In the second half of May, the town of Zeytoun was completely evacuated. Of the denizens of Zeytoun six to eight thousand people were sent to the marshy regions of Karapunar and Suleimanieh situated between Konia and Ereyli, while the fifteen-sixteen thousand people were deported to Deyr-el-Zor, to the treeless plain of Mesopotamia near the Euphrates River. The endless caravans passed through Marash, Adana and Aleppo. Food was scarce, and nothing was being done to establish the deportees in some definite place or to bring the deportation to an end..." [Galoustian 1934: p. 178]

"The forcible deportation of the Armenians was only a fraudulently veiled death sentence," the French publicist René Pinon has written in his published work entitled "The Extermination of the Armenians: German Method – Turkish Work." [Pinon 1916: p. 27]

On the roads of exile, the ruthless policemen and the criminals and murderers, set free from the prisons and wearing military uniforms, plundered and robbed everybody, ravished and dishonored the women and the girls.

The disarmed, leaderless and helpless Armenian people were driven, with tearful eyes, from their native flourishing homes under the strokes of whips and bayonets. The genocidal policy initiated by the Turkish government had embraced almost all the Armenian-inhabited localities.

A survivor from Bassen (Erzroom), Ishkhan Haykazian (born in 1909), shared his meditations with me: "...Sometimes I think of my past life: how could the Turks massacre the unarmed Armenian people so brutally. It's true that we also fought during World War II, we also killed people, but that was war and both sides had weapons. While, at that time, the Armenian people were completely defenseless and had no weapons..." [Sv. 2000: T. 93, p. 199]

The extermination of the Armenians was realized both on the spot and in the places of exile, in the vast deserts of Mesopotamia, especially in Rakka, Havran, Ras-ul-Ayn, Meskene, Suruj and Deyr-el-Zor.

Martiros Gyozalian (born in 1898), from Beylan, who, after enduring the hardships of deportation and exile, had found refuge among the desert Arabs and thus survived thereafter, remembered his past with deep indignation: "...The Turk's yataghan scattered the Armenians' homes. They plundered our properties, they turned our houses and fields upside-down and they drove us to the deserts of Arabia, hungry, thirsty and reduced to mendacity, we did not know where we were going..." [Sv. 2000: T. 175, p. 314]

Mushegh Hakobian (born in 1890), from Nicomedia, also remembered, with bitter regret, the sufferings of the roads of exile: "...They demolished our house, plundered what was inside and took away all the animals. On the road of exile, there came on order to collect a gold coin from every one of us. They were so pitiless that they made us return and walk the same road through hills and valleys anew so as to exhaust us completely. We had already no bread and no water..." [Sv. 2000: T. 228, pp. 368-369]

Davit Davtian (born in 1908), a survivor from Bursa, has told me: "...Our large family consisted of sixty-two people, only four survived. Some were drafted into the Turkish army and were massacred there, others died or were slain on the roads of exile. My uncle, who had escaped with great difficulty from the Turkish army, was pursued and killed. My father had also escaped from the Turkish army and hid himself in a farm in Konia until the armistice. My mother, my sister and my grandfather fell ill with typhus, because they were infested with lice. We were walking on the arid steppes of Konia, thirsty and hungry..." [Sv. 2000: T. 235, p. 372]

A survivor from the town of Bursa, Avetis Norikian (born in 1909), has also narrated: "...We stayed there for four years. We gathered grass and the last grains of wheat in the fields and ate them. My grandmother died on the road. My three uncles and their families were exiled to Deir-el-Zor and all of them were massacred..." [Sv. 2000: T. 236, p. 374]

Smbyul Berberian (born in 1909), from the town of Afion-Garahissar, was a diligent and active woman of eighty. When we requested her to narrate her past, she refused at first, she was moved to tears and started to hum all by herself. We found out later that that was the sad dirge she has composed. That sorrowful song, which was the story of her miserable life, interrupted, at times, her narrative. That was a whole tragedy. This is a passage from her memoir: "...I do not remember my father. The Turks had killed my father and had tortured and slaughtered my mother's brother. They drafted my elder brother into the Turkish army. Later they drafted also my younger brother. We heard afterwards that, together with seventeen other Armenian young men, they had massacred them by night and had thrown them under the bridge. Thus, when we were deported, there were no males left in our family. They took away my five aunts in Deyr-el-Zor, later they cut their heads, impaled the heads with their bayonets to show them to us and then they threw their corpses into the Euphrates. We found only half of the body of my mother's aunt. My mother buried her in the earth. They massacred everybody. My mother wept so much that she lost her eyesight..." [Sv. 2000: T. 200, pp. 335-336]

Arshakouhi Petrossian (born in 1903), another survivor from Yozghat, did not want to speak at first, arguing that her heart would not bear the tragic experience afresh. Later on, she gathered her forces and began to tell me her unending memoir, of which only a passage is presented: "...For six days we climbed the Yozghat mountains. There was no water, no bread. Our mouths had dried up. ...They led us like sheep. We suddenly saw behind us a group of robbed, tortured, beaten and bloody Armenians who approached us and started to cry, saying: 'We wish we had joined you.' The gendarmes came over, started to yell and wanted to separate us from that group, saying: 'Don't mix with each other.' The latter were in a worse condition than we were, thirsty, hungry and wounded. During that commotion, a dark cloud unexpectedly came and covered us. The gendarmes lost sight of us. We started to help those Armenians with the little we had, a few crumbs of bread or a little grass, or else we tore our garments and bound up their wounds. We did not know that those ruthless, ungodly Turks would leave us soon in a similar state. The dark clouds dissipated and the gendarmes started again to strike us with whips and chains and ordered us to get going. They took us to houses supposedly to rest. At night they broke the doors and they attacked us with arms and plundered us. My mother had a few gold coins sewn under her garments. They took them also and left us completely naked.... A crier came on the following day and began to shout: 'Haydi, gâvur kesmeye gidelim, balta-kürek alalım, gâvur kesmeye gidelim' ('Come on, let us go and slaughter the gâvurs, take up your axes and spades, let us go and slaughter the gâvurs'). When I recall all these miseries, my heart stops beating. There was a Turkish village nearby. Turkish women came and started crying over us as if we were dead. Before butchering those wounded Armenians they removed all their clothes to search for hidden gold coins. Their tin cans were full of gold coins. They took the wounded Armenians and slaughtered them not far from us, on the border of the valley. Other Turks approached the massacred people to search for any gold coins left. ...We were crying our hearts out in despair and shivering. We were all women, girls and children, there were no adult males among us. There were only two seventeen-year-old boys, whom we had hidden under the bales. Tears and wails. Allah yardım olsun, hey, Türk, Allah’dan bulasin, alçak Türk! (God, save us, hey, Turk, may God Himself punish you, wicked Turk!). Then, several high-ranking officers came and began to talk with us gently: 'Sisters, mothers, we ask you to think well. Are you willing to become Turks or not? You have seen the slaughtered people. Would you like to be similarly treated? Isn't it better for you to become Turks, otherwise you shall also be butchered.' ...Alas, my child, what should I tell you, which one should I disclose to you? I suffered so many misfortunes..." [Sv. 2000: T. 212, pp. 345-346] And the sobs choked the poor old woman's throat.

Samvel Patrian (born in 1900), from Eskishehir, recalled the localities they had passed through during the deportation and the distress they had suffered: "...When the Turks exiled us in 1915, I remember how they led us, on foot, from Eskishehir to Sivrihissar, then to Haymana, Ghershehir and ultimately to Kayseri. What we have seen and suffered on the roads is unspeakable." [Sv. 2000: T. 204, p. 339]

"...Only I remained alive in our village," informed the 80-year-old Eva Chulian (born in 1903), a survivor from the region of Zeytoun: "The Turks came and drove us all out of the village. They were forcing us to march with whip strokes. They tied our hands behind and gathered us in a high place resembling military barracks. They disrobed us totally and we stood completely naked as the day we were born. Then they broke one's hand, another's arm, still another's leg with axes and daggers. Behind us a little boy, whose arm was broken, was crying and calling for his mother, but the mother had already died by an axe. That place was Deyr-el-Zor. It was very cold; we lay on each other to get warm. ...They came in the morning, assembled us and started once more to kill and drop the bodies in water. Below the cave, the River Khabur was flowing. They cut someone's head, another's leg, still another's hand and all these human parts were piled one upon another on the ground. Some were not yet dead, but had their bones shattered or their hand severed. Some were crying, others squeaking. There was the odor of blood on the one hand and hunger on the other. People who were alive started to eat the flesh of the dead..." [Sv. 2000: T. 140, p. 266]

Aram Keusseyan (born in 1908), from Harpoot, has also testified: "I was seven years old in 1915 when the order of deportation from Harpoot came. We set out duly dressed as if we were going to a wedding ceremony. The plunder started on the road, not once, but repeatedly; they robbed us in every possible manner. At the end, we were left with our underclothes, which were torn to pieces. I was in the cart. My mother used to close my eyes so that I would not see the dead people lying on the ground. Eventually, my mother and my brother were unable to walk and remained on the road. I do not know whether they died the nor... The Turks were coming behind us and were collecting the children. We did not know if they would kill us or take us as their children. ...We had walked so much that we were exhausted. At last they ordered us to come to a halt. We stopped in a valley. They began to ask the adults: 'Are you Turkish or Armenian?' Those who replied, 'I am an Armenian,' were set apart and those who said, 'I am a Turk,' were put on another side. The ones that did not deny their Armenian origin were taken to a remote place and slaughtered. The others who agreed to become Turks were saved. At night, they gathered us, the children, on top of a small hill. We were so tired, that we lay down and fell asleep. At daybreak, we found out with horror that we were surrounded by innumerable cut human heads, which formed a hill; we had ignorantly slept all night on that hill of cut heads, but we didn't know..." [Sv. 2000: T. 115, pp. 228-229]

The below-cited heart-rending dirge of the afflicted people has been woven under these ghastly impressions:

And since it was prohibited to speak Armenian, they had to express their sorrow and affliction mostly in the Turkish language.

I have written down these popular songs, which have a great historico-factual value, in different periods, from survivors of different localities and in different variants, a fact which testifies that the said songs, being the immediate reflection of those historical events, were of a nationwide character. Meanwhile, those quatrains of epic character entitled "In the Desert of Deir-el-Zor" (more than 70 in number) are linked to each other by their thematic similarity and their refrains, objectively depicting the inexpressible sufferings endured by the Armenians.

The Genocide survivor, Yeghissabet Kalashian (born in 1888), from Moussa Dagh, who is my first Turkish-language song performer, has narrated her mournful past: "At the time we were in the Arabian desert; we were living like animals – no clothes, no manner of life, no washing, no drinking. Even during the fulfillment of our natural needs the gendarmes stood by, showing an indecent behavior to women and girls. Food? What food? We gathered grass, we grazed on grass like animals. If we found salt, we ate grass with salt. Sometimes Arabs were seen in the distance. The Arab Bedevis (Bedouins) had a lot of sheep but they had no houses and lived in tents. These Christian Arabs took pity on us and occasionally gave us some pilaf, which we ate voraciously, since life is sweet.... My three little children died on the roads of exile. That is why I am all alone at this age..." [Sv. 2000: T. 367, pp. 418-419]

This woman, aged seventy in 1956, who lived in the district of Vardashen, in Yerevan, was the first to communicate us quatrains of the Turkish-language Derzorian series of songs created by the Armenians. She sang these, recalling her miserable past, the children she had lost, while the tears ran down incessantly from her eyes, her voice coarsened and she could not sing; she took a breath, started to sing anew and cry again.

According to the information provided by my narrators, the massacre began in April, on Easter Sunday, the day of the crucifixion of Christ, so that the Armenians, too, would be worthy of the Passion of Christ. "The Armenians will dye their Easter eggs with their own blood," said the Turks, while the affliction of the Armenians, turned into a song, resounded in a heart-breaking manner:

And the indescribable tortures of the Armenians began:

Since the desert of Deyr-el-Zor had become the living cemetery of the Armenian Genocide, where there was no hope of salvation:

The mass media was silent, while a laborious, creative and most ancient people were martyred and exterminated before the very eyes of the civilized mankind for the only sin of being Armenian:

because the condition of the Armenian people was horrible:

The deported Armenians passed this death road barefoot and bloodstained, with thirsty lips under the scorching sun:

And everything was stained with the blood of the shot people:

The Armenian people were exterminated ruthlessly:

Whereas the condition of the living was more disconsolate:

Lonely and helpless were the Armenian people in their distress, and the mournful song of the Armenian people was changed into a prayer to the "Almighty God":

The tragic condition of the people was contrasted with the radiant beauty of nature, in which the indifferent "Ottoman soldier was oiling his gun" to kill the Armenians:

While the desert air was saturated with the stench of corpses:

Not only was the desert air polluted, but also the water was poisoned:

The social evil was complicated also with a natural calamity: the typhoid epidemic:

And in another variant:

There was no salvation from that widespread evil, since the condition of the living was more inconsolable. Then the bewildering scenes followed one another:

And their dull sighs of agony were heard:

The countless corpses of the "Armenians dying for the sake of faith" were scattered everywhere, since the Ottoman soldiers had become "butchers":

The Armenian people were passing their death road in an indescribable suffering:

Or something more horrible had happened: the deportees were compelled to leave on the road their aged parents, who were unable to walk, and to continue on their way to death with tearful eyes and under the shower of whip strokes of the Turkish policemen. These details have been narrated and sung in different variants by Gayané Atoorian (born in 1909), from Zeytoun, and Sirena Alajajian (born in 1910), from Adabazar, whose faces had been tattooed with blue ink by the Arabs, as well as by many others:

It is sufficient to cite here a quotation from the narrative of the well-known specialist in literature, Garnik Stepanian (born in 1909), a native of Yerznka: "...We came out of Yerznka. There was a bitter frost. My grandmother Vardanush was walking on the road of exile with great difficulty. Suddenly she stopped and said: 'Shoot me! Kill me! I can walk no longer.' She sat on the ground. The gendarmes tried to drag her and finally left her on the road. They drove us forward.... We were marching and looking behind every now and then. It was snowing heavily and the snow was covering her entire body. Soon my grandmother became a statue of snow. ...We reached Malatia. It was already spring. They had massacred all the Armenians. There were mounds everywhere, under which fifty to a hundred people were buried. Some of them were still alive, since the earth over them was moving..." [Sv. 2000: T. 95, p. 200]

An eyewitness survivor from Sebastia, Andranik Gavoukjian (born in 1905), has also referred to similar miseries of the deportation: "...Thus, our misery started. The gendarmes were driving us forward with whips for we had to go a certain distance. Those who could not walk fell down and remained on the roadside. When the whip didn't help, they shot or killed them with bayonets, so they might not escape back. ...Thus, about one and a half million Armenians were massacred. Only very few survivors were collected, after the war, from the Syrian deserts..." [Sv. 2000: T. 82, p. 178]

Trvanda Mouradian (born in 1905), a survivor from Harpoot, has also told me about the unspeakable atrocities perpetrated by Turkish gendarmes on the roads of exile: "They took us out of our village, they confined all the young people in a cave-like place, poured kerosene from an opening in the roof and set fire to them. Then they gathered all the women and smashed their heads with stones. They killed my mother and grandmother with stones, too. They separated the children like lambs from their mother-sheep. I had a three-year-old sister; they took her also, together with the other children near the Balou Mourad (Euphrates) River bridge, cut their throats and threw them into the river.... Two gendarmes drove 500 people to exile..." [Sv. 2000: T. 112, p. 226]

Another survivor from Meds Nor Gyugh of Bursa, Ashot Ohanian (born in 1905), remembered with emotion his mournful past: "...In 1914, the Turkish government collected all our adult males and drafted them in the Turkish army, after which they announced to all families: 'Hire carts, we are going a short distance.' Those who had money hired carts. Those who didn't came on foot. We were small children then; we held onto our mother's skirt and went on foot a great distance. Our first stop was Konia. Instead of entering the town, they kept us in the nearby mountains under the surveillance of gendarmes, hungry and thirsty. The following morning, they took us to Bozgur and still farther. We were walking on foot for days and weeks. Our feet were bleeding. The policemen were beating us with whips. Many could not endure the sufferings and died on the road. The corpses remained on the ground and were eaten by the wolves at night. We were still marching on foot. Our number had already diminished, since many had died. We reached a village called Idé. There they attacked us and the plunderers started shouting: 'Paranız yok? Çıkarınız!' ('Don't you have any money? Take them out!')." [Sv. 2000: T. 221, p. 361]

A 96-year-old survivor from Nicomedia, Geghetsik Yessayan (born in 1901), also recollected the inconceivable sufferings of the roads of deportation and exile: "At the time of the Armenian Genocide, in 1915, I was fourteen years old. The exile started. Our family was composed of twelve people when we set out. Only two survived. They beat us on the roads with whips, they tormented us, they did not give us water. We traversed, on foot, through the towns of Devlet, Eskishehir, Konia, Ereyli, Bozanti, Kanli Gechit (Bloody Pass), Bab, Meskene, Abu Arar, Tigranakert, Deyr-el-Zor." [Sv. 2000: T. 231, p. 370]

An 80-year-old eyewitness survivor from Sebastia, Suren Sarksian (born in 1902), recalled, in detail, his past days: "...After two days we arrived in the village of Ferendjelar, which was a small negligible village but which became notable in the history of the Armenian nation. According to the governmental plan, the people had to climb, on foot, up the Tavros Mountains and surmount a height of 3900 meters on their road of exile. Hundreds and thousands of caravans came here to their crucifixion, whence they went to their death. Women, children, newly born babies were being abandoned, forsaken and helpless. My sister Knarik remained there with her newborn infant. She was ill and was unable to walk. Ferendjelar (name of a locality – place of concentration of deportees)! Ferendjelar! Abandoned children, old, lonely women, diseased people lying here and there in agony, putrefied corpses under rags or in the streams."

Then, the same eyewitness Suren Sarksian reported about the horrible condition of the boys and girls: "...The next day the Kurds came, bringing with them the notorious Zeynal bey and his brothers, the wicked executioners. They collected among the caravan all the little boys, bound their arms and took them farther on the mountain top, where the bonfires were burning. There they cut their heads with axes and threw them into the valley. They had done the same to the children of the previous caravans. That is why that valley was called 'Kanlı dere' ('Stream of blood'). ...Our caravan, which was reduced to half, settled down in the south of Samosat, on the bank of the Euphrates River. Everywhere corpses, corpses, dead women and children on the sands, in the fields, everywhere the moans of half-dead, diseased people, the suppliant, help-seeking gazes, and beside them swollen, putrefied and stinking corpses mainly of women. Dante's hell was on2 the bank of Euphrates. ...Then they brought girls in white clothes. In the darkness of the night, they impaled them all with sharp stakes. Our ears became deaf to their and their mothers' screams, cries and heart-rending clamors. They took us to Urfa and from there they drove us to a desert, where no people lived and there were only a few trees. It rained that night and a cold wind blew. At night hundreds of people died. They brought some Kurds and had a large pit dug. The Kurds fell on the people, trod on those who were lying, whether sick or dead, tied a rope around their necks, dragged them to the pit and threw them in. Then they returned to drag the next one. They even dragged away those who were alive, without paying attention to the screams and cries of their kinsfolk. From there they drove us south, to another deserted place. Women, sick with typhoid, were begging for water..." [Sv. 2000: T. 80, pp. 167-170]

Among the songs of Deyr-el-Zor, the tragic pictures of despoiled, child-deprived mothers and virgin girls form a separate series:

The Turkish policemen and commanders treated the Armenian girls and women with unspeakable cruelty:

Karapet Mkrtchian, from Tigranakert (born in 1910), narrated to me, with emotion and with a trembling voice, the images impressed on his childhood memory, murmuring at the same time the following lines:

Subsequently, the same survivor, Karapet Mkrtchian, continued: "...Finally we came and reached the northern part of the desert of Deyr-el-Zor, the town of Merdin, where the train passed on its way to Aleppo. They made us stop there in a green field. There was a valley below. They separated us, the children, and took the adults towards the valley and made them stand in a line. There were about three to four hundred adults and we, the children, were nearly as many. They made us sit on the green grass and we didn't know what was going to happen. Breaking from the line, my mother came several times to us, she kissed and kissed us and went back. We, my elder brother, I and my one-year-old brother, saw from afar a line of women moving forward; our mother was among them. On coming out of our house, mother was dressed in her national costume – a velvet dress, embroidered in gold thread; her head was adorned with gold coins; on her neck was a gold chain; twenty-five gold coins were secretly sewn inside her dress on both sides. When our mother came for the last time and kissed us madly, I remember she was clad only in her white underwear; there were no ornaments, no gold and no velvet clothes. We, the children, were unaware of the events happening there. In reality, they had taken off their clothes, one after the other, had arranged the garments on one side, had stripped the women completely, had cut their heads with axes and had thrown them into the valley..." [Sv. 2000: T. 128, pp. 242-243]

The following folk song has also been composed on the basis of these historical events:

That is why the Armenian mothers, who were deprived of the elementary conditions of survival, after giving away their properties to the Turkish government and the armed brigands and feeling their imminent death, preferred to leave their beloved children to the kind Arabs, in order to preserve the children's life in case they themselves would be martyred.

Barouhi Chorekian (born in 1900), from Nicomedia, told us: "...When they exiled us, we remained in the desert for twelve months. I and my three sisters fled to the forests. Swimming across the River Khabur (river flowing near Deyr-el-Zor), we arrived near the Arab Bedouins. They sheared our lice-infested hair; they tattooed our face with ink in order to hide our Armenian origin. They gave us their sheep to graze." [Sv. 2000: T. 229, p. 369]

A 90-year-old survivor, Grigor Gyozalian (born in 1903), remembered with a feeling of infinite gratitude the kind old Christian-Arab woman from the village of Muhardi on the road to Homs-Hama, who distributed in secret every evening the rice she had cooked and the pieces of bread thrust in her belt to the Armenian orphans lying exhausted at the base of the walls and then disappeared secretly in the darkness. [Sv. 2000: T. 163, p. 294]

The same fact has also taken a poetical form in the following song, where the child-deprived mother hurried to cross the river and find her child sheltered "in the Arab village":

Karapet Farashian (born in 1906), from Balou, also related to me what he had seen: "...A little later, a Turk by the name of Mehmet hoja (teacher), came and they told me to go with him. I remember he grabbed my hand and took me to the government house. He had me registered there as his foster-son under the name of "Hussein Islam" and took me to his village. When we were crossing over the bridge on the Aratsani River, built by Tigran the Great, I saw that the river was bloody. They took the Armenians there and, after cutting their throat, they threw them down the bridge, into the river; thus this place was named "Kanlı Geçit" (Bloody Pass). Mehmet hoja took me to his house in the country, in a locality called Gohanam. He introduced me to his wife and said: 'I brought you a boy, his name is Hussein'..." [Sv. 2000: T. 121, p. 234]

Mariam Baghdishian (born in 1909) has also narrated that she was five or six years old when, on the roads of exile, together with her sister, they played with the curls of their mother lying on the sands of the desert, unaware that she was already dead; then a certain Arab woman took her home, where the little Mariam carried water from the well with a jug over a four-year period. Once, when they wanted to tattoo her face with blue ink, she ran secretly away and took refuge in the Armenian orphanage with the help of a priest. [Sv. 2000: T. 168, p. 305]

A heart-rending account was related to me by an eyewitness of these tragic events, Arshakouhi Petrossian (born in 1903), from Yozghat: "...And then they started to take away the girls, they slaughtered the women, they decapitated the children and kicked their heads to and fro like balls. They also took away Filor's mother and slew her. They beheaded another woman breastfeeding her child. The child was still sucking his dead mother's nipple, but they cut the child's head, too, and used it as a football..." [Sv. 2000: T. 212, p. 347]

Evelina Kanayan (born in 1909) from Igdir also testified to similar atrocities: "...The Turks came. They cut open the bellies of pregnant Armenian women with their knives, took the babies out and impaled their heads on stakes. Igdir was flooded with corpses..." [Sv. 2000: T. 54, pp. 136-137]

The same fact has also been confirmed by Loris Papikian (born in 1903), from Erzroom: "...On the way I saw how the Turks were laughing at Armenian girls and women. I came upon such a horrible, beastly scene that not a single barbaric people, in the entire world history – from prehistoric times to our days – had done to women. Four officers, the dregs of humanity, who had acquired the fierceness of wild hyenas and had lost their human form, were seated at a table, had gathered near them, standing, a group of pregnant women who would probably give birth in a few days, and they were betting whether the child in the woman's womb was a male or female, and then they ordered the soldiers to open the woman's womb with a dagger and bring the child out. What terrible atrocities have those human-like beasts perpetrated! If I hadn't seen that spectacle with my own eyes and if anyone had told me about it today or if I had read it in books, I wouldn't believe that such beastly actions could take place..." [Sv. 2000: T. 90, pp. 193-194]

Hambartsoum Sahakian (born in 1898), from Sebastia, also testified to what he had seen with his own eyes: "I remember, my step-mother was pregnant, they killed her, they thrust a sword into her belly, took out the baby, they began to laugh that it was a boy and then threw him on the ground. I can never forget that scene..." [Sv. 2000: T. 79, p. 162]

Testimonies on analogous facts have also been given by the eyewitness survivor Samvel Patrian (born in 1900), from Eskishehir: "…I recall the girls and the women who crossed themselves and jumped into the river in order not to fall into the hands of the gendarmes. In those times, people put much value on honor and loyalty. I remember one day two Turkish officers who made a bet on an Armenian pregnant woman:

- Şu karının karnında nesi var? (- What is in this woman’s belly?)
- Gâvurdır: kız olur. (- She is a gâvur: it’s a girl.)
- Yok, oğlan olur. (- No, it’s a boy.)

They made a bet and, before my very eyes, they cut open the woman's belly with a dagger. I have seen that with my own eyes. ...When we reached Kayseri, they gathered us all in a large hall. The governor of Kayseri came in and asked: 'Armenian sisters, has anybody annoyed you on the road?' Our Armenian women took courage and started telling him how the Turkish watchmen-gendarmes had beaten us at night, had taken away the Armenian girls and brides and had brought them back in the morning, exhausted. The governor got angry and said: 'Shame on them. And these are the sons of our nation...'." [Sv. 2000: T. 204, p. 339]

And in fact, the Turkish police had become butchers:

It happened also that the Turks kidnapped the children, raped the young brides and the girls and then, tying them up, threw them into the valley or into dried wells and, setting fire to them, burned them all alive:

While the survivors wailed over their losses:

In this infernal turmoil, mothers lost their children; children lost their parents:

It should be supposed that during this indescribable tumult, the parentless, helpless orphan children themselves have composed songs of this sort:

Although the partly estranged Armenian orphan was compelled to express the grief of his soul in Turkish, however, he had not yet forgotten the sacred Armenian word "mayrik":

Although the Armenian orphans, deprived of their fathers and/or mothers, who had taken refuge with foreign families, had forgotten their mother tongue, they had not, however, forgotten to cross themselves as Christians.

A survivor from Adabazar, Sirena Alajajian (born in 1910), whose beautiful face had been tattooed with blue ink by the desert Arabs, described to me how the orphan-collectors had, after the armistice, ascertained her Armenian origin by making her cross herself and had taken her to the Armenian orphanage. [Sv. 2000: T. 227, p. 367]

Another eyewitness survivor from Nicomedia, Barouhi Silian (born in 1900), whose face was also tattooed, communicated to me: "...We remained for twelve months in the desert. We had no bread, no water, no dwelling, nothing at all. From among our family of nine, only I remained alive; they killed my mother in front of my eyes, they took away my sister, my other younger sister, who was very young, fell ill and died, another sister got lost, we could not find each other. The gendarmes caught my sister-in-law, who was pregnant, and made a bet – 'What is inside this gâvur's belly?' said one of them. The other cut open her belly with a sword before our eyes and replied: 'Gâvurs do not bear boys, see!' I fled, with four other girls, to the forest and then swam across a river. An Arab took me to his home and told me: "My daughter, I know you have no similar custom, but let me tattoo your face with blue ink, so that they will not take you for an Armenian. I cried. I had neither bed, nor clothes. They tattooed my face, they sheared my thick braids. I did the housework there..." [Sv. 2000: T. 230, p. 369]

There are also a great number of testimonies in the memoirs I have written down from the survivors concerning the murder or the forcible apostasy of Armenian children, since that was the ideological scheme outlined by the government. As Talaat pasha had said: "We have to square accounts with the Armenians." [Antonian 1921: p. 232] This official ideology was being put into practice by the Young Turk military officer-corps and the policemen, the gendarmes and the bandit gangs. That has been confirmed also by the narrative of Satenik Doghramadjian (born in 1903), from Sebastia: "...They had sent an order to the village saying: 'You must convert all the Armenians of the village to the Islamic religion, if not, you must set them on fire and burn them.'" [Sv. 2000: T. 81, p. 117]

The sermons of the Mohammedan sheikh were also in harmony with the governmental order. Garegin Touroudjikian (born in 1903), from Harpoot, has noted in his memoir: "'Whoever kills seven gâvurs,' sheikh (Muslims' spiritual leader) Aref said, 'will go to paradise...'" [Sv. 2000: T. 119, p. 232]

Marie Vardanian (born in 1905), from Malatia, has also testified to the same fact: "...The Mohammedan Turks said: 'Who kills a gâvur, his soul goes to paradise...'" [Sv. 2000: T. 124, p. 238]

Besides that, it happened also that the boys were abducted, circumcised, forced to speak only Turkish, while the girls were raped or killed by crucifixion.

The following popular song testifies also to that fact:

[Sv. 2000: TT. 350-351, p. 415]

Yeghsa Khayadjanian (born in 1900), from Harpoot, who was having frequent convulsions and was bitterly crying while relating her memories to me, also remembered: "...The Turks asked us: 'Now, will you become Turks or not?' The priest said: 'Pardon us, God.' They killed all the priests, old and young. They cut Mr. Gevorg's tongue: he was an Armenian Protestant teacher, who taught Armenian, and then they cut also his head..." [Sv. 2000: T. 108, p. 218]

Rober Galenian (born in 1912), from Harpoot, also alluded to the policy of Turkification and forcible apostasy conducted by the Young Turks: "...The Turks apostatized the small children. They made them say: 'Mohamed Rassul Allah (Mohammad is God's Apostle),' they circumcised them, they changed their names and forced them to speak Turkish..." [Sv. 2000: T. 118, p. 231]

In his testimony, Hakob Terzian (born in 1910), from Shapin-Garahissar, mentioned the joint cooperation of Turkish military men and spiritual leaders, the mullahs, in the realization of the same policy: "...I am already 79 years old. I am from Shapin-Garahissar. When we resisted the Turks, they killed some of us and they took the children of my age to the Turkish orphanages. They stripped us. The officer drew out his sword, put it at our throat and the mullah said: