NEW EXHIBIT ‘THE FIRST DEPORTATION: THE GERMAN RAILROAD, THE AMERICAN
HOSPITAL, AND THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE’ RELEASED BY ANI, AGMA & ASSEMBLY
Armenian National Institute
1334 G Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005
ARMENIAN NATIONAL INSTITUTE
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: January 30, 2015
Contact: Press Office
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (202) 383-9009
A Digital Exhibit Based on United States National Archives Photographs
Teaching Staff of the Apostolic Institute in Konya
Washington, DC – A third digital exhibit on the Armenian Genocide
consisting of 128 images on 24 panels entitled “The First Deportation:
The German Railroad, the American Hospital, and the Armenian Genocide”
was released today by the Armenian National Institute (ANI), Armenian
Genocide Museum of America (AGMA) and Armenian Assembly of
America(Assembly). Available on the ANI, AGMA, and Assembly websites,
the exhibit focuses on two localities, Zeytun, an Armenian city in the
Taurus Mountains, and Konya, a Turkish city in the central Anatolian
plain, both linked by the Armenian Genocide.
The remote and self-sustaining city of Zeytun was the first Armenian
community in Ottoman Turkey deported en masse in April 1915. To
deprive the Zeytun Armenians of any capacity to defy the deportation
edicts, the Young Turk government divided its population sending one
part east toward the Syrian Desert and another part west to the barren
flats of the Konya Plain.
By this fate, the Zeytun deportees were routed down from their
mountain homes through the nearby city of Marash and the Cilician
Plain and back up through the high passes of the Cilician Gates of the
Taurus Range, the only accessible road from Cilicia to Anatolia. This
route also placed them along the Berlin-Bagdad rail line then under
construction through those very same passes.
By intersecting that rail line, Zeytun Armenians soon found themselves
among the rest of the Armenian population of western Anatolia being
deported east by train to the main terminus at Konya and substations
beyond, where they were offloaded from cattle cars to walk down the
mountain passes, while work crews led by German and Swiss engineers
were cutting open new roads and tunnels to complete the construction
of the rail system.
There also happened to be an American hospital in Konya manned by
three outstanding figures who soon found themselves in the midst of
hundreds of thousands of Armenian deportees and as such became
witnesses to the unfolding of the Armenian Genocide. The station at
Konya was supposed to serve only as a transit camp, but with all of
the Armenians of western and central Anatolia routed through the city,
the open spaces beyond the station transformed into a vast
concentration camp. Because Konya was never intended to exist as a
destination camp and was evacuated within a short time, it has been
forgotten as a major site in the trail of deportation and the central
object of what transpired there overlooked. It was evident to all
observers in the city how rapidly the Ottoman Turkish government
reduced an industrious and prosperous people to misery. In Konya it
was already visible that all it took was a matter of days, not even
weeks.
The testimony provided by Dr. Wilfred Post and Dr. William Dodd, and
the efforts of Miss Emma Cushman, all three American medical
missionaries, provide compelling information about the rapidly
deteriorating conditions along the rail line and the start of the
process of extinguishing Armenian life across the region. Their
information is paralleled by the protests of German civilians in the
same area who sharply criticized the Ottoman authorities and raised
questions with their own government about the morality of German
wartime policies.
More compelling still were the photographs taken by Dr. Wilfred Post
and the German railroad engineers that documented the wartime reality
on this particular swath of Ottoman territory. While as wartime allies
of the Turks, Germans enjoyed a certain amount of liberty in their
actions, Dr. Post took a serious risk in defying the ban on
photographing the Armenians.
Retrieved from the United States National Archives, the entire set of
photographs taken by Dr. Wilfred Post are being issued for the first
time in this exhibit. They constitute the central evidence around
which the entire exhibit is constructed.
Dr. Post captioned the photographs, and succeeded in delivering them
to the American Embassy in Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, from
where they were sent by diplomatic pouch to Washington, DC. They might
have been the very first images of the Armenian Genocide to arrive
into the hands of U.S. officials. In this regard, the historic value
of Dr. Post’s photographs are matched only by those taken by U.S.
consul Leslie Davis who documented the Armenian Genocide in the region
of Harput/Kharpert.
Ottoman Minister of War Enver at Rail Station in Taurus Mountains
Because of the numbers of Armenians being deported and the pace at
which the western Anatolian cities were emptied of their Armenian
inhabitants, the Konya train station became a choke point in the
deportation process. Vast concentration camps of homeless Armenian
families soon formed along the tracks. The brutality of the process,
the complete lack of sanitation, and the absence of sources of food
very rapidly created an explosive situation threatening the spread of
epidemics. Thousands of Armenians never made it beyond the stations of
the Konya line and conditions in the refugee camps were so foul and
violent that a train conductor is quoted by Dr. Dodd describing the
Bozanti station as “hell on earth.”
Consisting of 121 images, 7 maps, and containing a rich variety of
eyewitness testimony, the exhibit reconstructs Armenian life in
Zeytun, reproduces the two rare photographs showing the arrest of the
Zeytun men, outlines the deportation route to the degree that
contemporary photographs allow, depicts the city of Konya, showing the
contrast between the rugged mountains in which Zeytun Armenians were
accustomed to living and the flat, arid, and sparsely populated plain
of Konya.
The exhibit includes previously unpublished photographs of Zeytun,
reproduces newly released images from German sources, and, in addition
to the United States National Archives material, presents images from
the Australian War Memorial; University of Newcastle upon Tyne,
England, Gertrude Bell Archives; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
Kelsey Museum; Mennonite Church USA Archives; the Armenian Missionary
Association of America and the Haigazian University Archives of
Beirut, Lebanon; Library of Congress; Republic of Armenia National
Archives; as well as online resources and private individuals.
ANI especially recognizes the historian Aram Arkun whose close study
of documentary sources addressed the complex situation surrounding the
denouement in Zeytun and who served as project consultant for the
exhibit. ANI also thanks Gunter Hartnagel, a professional
photographer, who provided valuable guidance on German historical
images, and whose researches in historical geography helped understand
the terrain that was covered by the Zeytun deportees and appreciate
the hardships endured by those who trudged through the mountains of
Cilicia at the point of a bayonet.
The location of Konya on the train line also helped to document the
post-war situation in the city. Accompanying a U.S. aid mission and
relief workers, the American photographer George Robert Swain recorded
the efforts of Miss Cushman to create a safe haven for surviving
Armenian orphans. In so doing Swain added another layer of
documentation about the fate of the Armenian population and helped
create, in sum with Dr. Post’s pictures, one of the more comprehensive
photographic records of a single location so directly impacted by the
Armenian Genocide.
The final demise of the Armenians of Konya was sealed with the fate of
Dr. Armenag Haigazian who, as a highly-regarded educator, embodied the
Armenian Protestant community’s hope of recovery. He had survived the
war years and the violence of the Young Turk regime, but his
restoration of the Apostolic Institute made him the target of the
Turkish Nationalist movement, which saw to the shuttering of the
school and the second exile and persecution of Dr. Haigazian. World
War I may have ended and the Young Turk government overthrown, but the
Armenian Genocide in Turkey continued, making the death of Dr.
Haigazian a most poignant tragedy, especially as he famously held a
doctorate from Yale University.
This third digital exhibit continues and builds upon the themes
developed in the exhibits released earlier, including the role and
fate of Armenian clergy, churches and schools, the role of American
missionaries and relief workers, and the role of Germans in Ottoman
Turkey, while distinguishing between the attitudes of civilian,
military, and diplomatic representatives.
The exhibit highlights the unsolvable dilemma faced by the Armenian
Catholicos of Cilicia Sahag II Khabayan, who, unaware of the broader
scheme about to be implemented by the Young Turk regime, advised the
Zeytun population to cooperate with the authorities in the hope of
avoiding a repetition of the Cilician massacres that spread terror
across the region a mere six years earlier. The acts and observations
of other clergymen, including Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople
Zaven Der Yeghiayan, his successor Archbishop Mesrob Naroyan,
Archbishop Stepannos Hovagimian of Ismit, Grigoris Balakian, and
Reverend William Peet, are also explained as part of the testimony on
this specific aspect of the Armenian Genocide.
The exhibit also highlights the role of an exceptional Ottoman
official, who, as governor of Aleppo and of Konya, opposed the
measures of the Young Turk radicals. Jelal Bey was the highest
ranking administrator in the Ottoman Empire who disapproved of the
policies of the triumvirate ruling from Constantinople. A number of
lower ranking officials who disagreed with the regime were killed by
Young Turk party henchmen. Opposing the Young Turk regime required
courage, and Jelal placed his life in jeopardy. He may have been
spared only because of his stature and lifelong service to the state.
American Hospital in Konya
The exhibit also reveals the involvement of a German diplomat, who as
an embassy councilor in Constantinople played a role in maintaining
German-Turkish relations, and as such became among the recipients of
the flow of information being reported about the implementation of the
Armenian Genocide. A lesser official at the time, Konstantin von
Neurath rose through the ranks eventually to serve as Minister of
Foreign Affairs in Nazi Germany and as governor of occupied
Czechoslovakia, where Reinhard Heydrich, one of the architects of the
Holocaust, served as his deputy.
The exhibit concludes with testimony from Dr. Charles Mahjoubian, a
native of Konya who resettled in Philadelphia and entered the
profession of dentistry. As a survivor, he committed himself to
testifying to the events he witnessed in his hometown. He pointed
with pride to his birthplace as one of the earliest centers of
Christianity, dating to St. Paul preaching in Iconium (ancient name of
Konya), and as a center of Turkish Islam where religious piety
restrained the hand of the local population, in sharp relief to the
political fanaticism of the Young Turk regime and the brutality of its
associates. According to Mahjoubian, by a strict reading of the
banishment legislation, Jelal Bey succeeded for a brief while in
delaying the deportation of Catholic and Protestant Armenians.
“The First Deportation: the German Railway, the American Hospital, and
the Armenian Genocide” strengthens and clarifies the photographic
documentation of the Armenian Genocide in a manner consistent and
supportive of third party records, eyewitness accounts and survivor
testimony. It expands the scope of the evidence and attests to the
horrors that unfolded in 1915.
“It did not escape contemporaries that there were immediate lessons to
be drawn from the example of Zeytun,” observed Van Z. Krikorian, ANI
chairman. “Other communities grasped the methods by which the Young
Turk regime pressurized local politics and aggravated relations among
religious and ethnic groups in order to create conditions to justify
the wholesale depopulation of Armenian towns and cities. Reverend
Ephraim Jernazian drew a direct connection between the failure of the
Zeytun Armenians to stand their ground and the heroic defense of their
neighborhood by Urfa Armenians. Hopeless as their actions might have
been at the time, the Armenians of Urfa made the point that they would
not be submitting to tyranny willingly, nor give up their lives easily
to help fulfill the violent designs of the Young Turks.”
“The clarity of that lesson from the past resonates today with the
necessary defense of Nagorno Karabakh where Armenians yet again a
century later face another enemy whose objective remains their
expulsion from their homeland. The commitment of the Armenians of
Artsakh to avoid the fate of the Western Armenian population was
inspired by the tragedies of the Armenian Genocide and the pledge of
survivors to avoid a repeat of such a calamity,” concluded Krikorian.
“I want to thank Rouben Adalian for uncovering these valuable records
on the Armenian Genocide, and Joe Piatt and Aline Maksoudian for
working with Dr. Adalian in creating this impressive exhibit,”
Krikorian added.
“Relief workers, educators, missionaries, orphanage administrators,
and other volunteers from the United States played a massive role in
relieving the plight of the survivors,” stated ANI Director, Dr.
Rouben Adalian. “Many of the longtime American residents of Turkey
also witnessed and reported the deportations and massacres of 1915.
Because of the remoteness of Konya from the other major centers of the
Armenian Genocide, Dr. Wilfred Post, Dr. William Dodd, and Miss Emma
Cushman may not have been extended the recognition they deserve. The
compelling evidence of this exhibit now ranks them among the heroic
Americans who helped save lives during the Armenian Genocide.”
As with the exhibits previously released jointly by ANI, AGMA, and the
Assembly, titledWitness to the Armenian Genocide: Photographs by the
Perpetrators’ German and Austro-Hungarian Allies, and The First Refuge
and the Last Defense: The Armenian Church, Etchmiadzin, and The
Armenian Genocide, “The First Deportation: The German Railroad, the
American Hospital, and the Armenian Genocide,” is also being issued in
digital format for worldwide distribution free of charge on the
occasion of the centennial of the Armenian Genocide.
Founded in 1997, the Armenian National Institute (ANI) is a 501(c)(3)
educational charity based in Washington, DC, and is dedicated to the
study, research, and affirmation of the Armenian Genocide.
###
NR#: 2015-03
Photo Caption 1: Teaching Staff of the Apostolic Institute in Konya.
Photo Caption 2: Ottoman Minister of War Enver at rail station in
Taurus Mountains.
Photo Caption 3: American Hospital in Konya.