‘Aleppo Protocols’ Depict What Children of Genocide Saw
COMMUNITY | JUNE 12, 2014 9:35 PM
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By Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
Special to the Mirror-Spectator
GENEVA — Today when the name Aleppo appears in the press, the story
will be about human suffering in the once-beautiful Syrian city, now a
battleground between terrorist-linked forces and the Syrian government
military. The war has been raging for more than three years and those
most victimized by the killing are the civilian population, increasing
turned into a mass of refugees.
Almost a century ago Aleppo served as a safe haven for refugees,
survivors of the Armenian Genocide who had made their way out of
Anatolia. Newly published material from the archives of the League of
Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, offers rare documentation of the
Genocide, through the short personal histories that survivors provided
on arrival at a reception house of the League and the Danish Friends
of Armenians (Danske Armeniervenner, DA). These were Armenians, many
of them young orphans, who had been released from Muslim households
(Turkish, Kurdish or Arab) in the period between 1922 and 1930.
The records, known as “The Aleppo Protocols: Histories of the Armenian
Genocide,” have been compiled, annotated and edited by Taner Akçam,
Dicle Akar Bilgin and Matthias Bjørnlund. They are being published on
, an online publication launched by German Genocide
historians Wolfgang and Sigrid Gust, who first made available the
relevant material from the archives of the German Foreign Ministry
during World War I. Joining them on the editorial staff are Akçam,
Vagharshak Lalayan and Matthias Bjørnlund.
ALEPPO, from page 1
The records, known as “The Aleppo Protocols: Histories of the Armenian
Genocide,” have been compiled, annotated and edited by Taner Akçam,
Dicle Akar Bilgin and Matthias Bjørnlund. They are being published on
, an online publication launched by German Genocide
historians Wolfgang and Sigrid Gust, who first made available the
relevant material from the archives of the German Foreign Ministry
during World War I. Joining them on the editorial staff are Akçam,
Vagharshak Lalayan and Matthias Bjørnlund.
It was Karen Jeppe, a Danish field worker for the relief organization,
DA and her staff who, as the League’s Commissioner for the Protection
of Women and Children in the Middle East, helped free Armenian
survivors who had been kept in Muslim households, often as slaves or
servants. Between 1921, when she was assigned to the League’s position
and 1927, Jeppe’s organization worked through a networks of “agents,”
including priests and businessmen, to locate and save Armenians in
Anatolia/Asia Minor. As the editors write in their introduction, this
was “an enormous task: some 100,000 Armenians, mainly female and very
often poor, diseased, unemployed, orphaned, malnourished and
traumatized, were scattered around Syria, many eking out an existence
in refugee camps. Although Armenian and American organizations in
particular had been working to release Armenians since the end of the
war, approximately 20,000-30,000 of the women and children were still
living in Muslim captivity, victims of kidnapping, forced marriage,
rape and sexual slavery that had become de facto instruments of
genocide from 1915 onward, as testified by numerous eyewitness
accounts and diplomatic reports.”
To locate these Armenians, the operation set up search stations in
various locations including Rakka, Der Zor, Ras ul Ain and Hassitsche.
Working out of these bases, the agents scoured the countryside looking
for Armenians in Muslim homes. Those released found shelter first in
tents in a refugee camp in Aleppo, until more permanent housing could
be provided. The projects jointly run by the DA and League of Nations
included agricultural colonies, schools and orphanages. In Aleppo, the
DA refugee camp, known as “the city of the 20,000,” survivors found
material assistance, food, medical aid and training for future
employment.
The documents now being published are the handwritten admission forms
that each refugee filled out on arrival, with basic information, i.e.
names, date of birth and origin. Some examples, taken at random:
Siranoush Koresian, aged 16, came from Zara and her father’s name was
Vosgehan. Admitted to the Karen Jeppe orphanage in Aleppo on July 20,
1922, “She came with her elder sister to Urfa. Her father was killed
in a village around Urfa. She ignores what became of her sister. She
lived in a Turkish house for six years as a servant. She desired to
escape many times but she was afraid because they treated her very
cruelly. Later an Armenian woman helped her and she went to the
Armenian church from where she was sent to Aleppo. Her uncle is in
America. Siranoush came into connection with her relatives, who sent
her money and are preparing to take her to America. Siranoush entered
our camp and is living on her own account. Left our care: February 28,
1923. Relatives.”
Or take the case of Krikor Turkmonoghli, son of Kevork from Mosheg
(Andreos), aged 12, admitted to the same orphanage on August 2, 1922:
“Deported with his family until Malatia, where he lost them. He went
on to Room Kale where he lived 7 years as a farmer with a Turk. His
work was too painful for him, he could not endure it any longer and he
fled to Biredjik. There he met an Armenian priest and so he met after
7 years a man of his nation and people. He was supported several days
and afterwards brought him to Jirablous where he met our organization.
Krikor was sent by our man to Aleppo. His elder brother is supposed to
be in some environing village of Urfa. Krikor was received in the
Armenian orphanage March 31, 1923. Left our care: March 31, 1923.
Orphanage N.E.R. (Near East Relief)”
Or there was Khachadur Baroian from Harpoot, aged 20, whose father was
killed and his mother deported. He lost contact with his mother, then
was deported with a caravan of children to Mesopotamia and on the way
was taken in by a Turk for whom he then worked seven years. “One day
some merchants were passing his town. He heard from them, that
Armenians and foreigners have opened orphanages for Armenian boys and
girls. He decided to go back to his nation. He fled, joined the
leaving merchants and came to Aleppo….”
These are samples of the short biographies of those who arrived in
Aleppo. In the protocols there are also several longer entries (not
quoted here for space reasons), which provide a fuller picture of the
experiences of the refugees. Taken all together, the testimonies paint
a vivid chronicle of the genocide.
Another young Armenian, Avak Garabedian from Dersim, also lived seven
years with a Kurd. “Avak was told that all Armenians were killed, he
believed it and then never wanted to return to his nation. Once he
heard some Kourds talking about Armenians in Aleppo, he felt a will of
fleeing. He fled the same night joined some muleteers and he came with
them to Aleppo.”
As the editors note in their introduction, although “all the
testimonies are unique … and atypical … many are also typical” because
of the pattern that emerges of how the genocide took place. One theme
that recurs is the desire to be reunited with Armenians and the
project directors concentrated very much on reinforcing or in some
cases reviving a sense of Armenian identity, that some had lost in the
years living with a Turkish or Kurdish family.
They write: “After having been admitted into the reception home, the
survivors received housing in dormitories, education and vocational
training, not only to acquire skills necessary to survive and to
provide for themselves, but also to become what was regarded as truly
Armenian, i.e., Armenian-speaking Christians. In the Ottoman Empire,
Apostolic Christianity, not language, was the principal ethnic marker
for Armenians. Depending on where in the empire they lived, Armenians
could be multilingual, have Turkish or Kurdish as their mother tongue,
or speak Armenian dialects that were incomprehensible to an
Armenian-speaking Armenian from another part of the empire. But after
WWI and the genocide, when national as well as individual salvation
and regeneration was of the highest priority in the diaspora, the
(Western) Armenian language was regarded and taught as ‘the
of identity,’ at the expense of other languages. As one of the
Armenian orphans at the Aleppo reception home, Harutiun Tchakerian,
expressed it, the home was a Babylon where Arabic, Kurdish, Turkish
and Laz was spoken alongside Armenian, a language many had to learn or
relearn after years in captivity. Many Western missionaries and aid
workers consciously and actively participated in this project of
national recovery.”
Publication of these rare documents represents a valuable contribution
to reconstructing the drama of the Genocide, as told by almost 2000
individual survivors. The English may be stilted — because those
recording the accounts of the new arrivals were themselves not native
speakers of English, but Danes or others — but the brief biographical
sketches are powerful vignettes that communicate a dramatic human
experience in abbreviated form.
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