On the occasion of the holiday, the local authorities ordered that shops in the city not be excessively adorned. On the other hand, in an unexpected move for Armenians, the authorities invited them to the government house and jailed them there, depriving them of communication with the external world. In the same day, all the Armenians they needed were arrested. Without cross-examination, they arrested the other Armenians within 8 to 10 days in houses, roads and villages. Then they announced through town criers that all the Armenians and Turks should hand over their arms to the government. They collected Turks' arms during the day and returned them to their owners during the night, whereas to collect the arms belonging to Armenians, the authorities made them believe, with all sorts of deceptions, threats and by swearing on the name of the Sultan that according to an order stemming from the governor, honor, life and possessions would be secure, but arms should be delivered. The Armenians believed and handed over their guns.
Meanwhile they had imprisoned all the men aged from 15 to 70, as well as some women. And every day, these savage people were holding meetings in the house of Roundouk Zade Mouhammed and there, they were deciding on and changing the tortures to which Armenians were going to be subjected to.
Life in Prisons and Tortures: They had filled 100 persons in a room, where there was barely enough space to stand up, like they would fill animals in a cowshed. After keeping them hungry for 2-3 days, they took the imprisoned persons one by one to an isolated room in which the above mentioned officials were present as well as three of the big gendarmes who were especially trained and suddenly they started questioning prisoners by insulting and then beating them. The way the gendarmes were beating them was as follows: they were wrapping the head of the prisoner with his overcoat and it was allowed to these three gendarmes to hit the prisoners in the way they wanted and to knock them down. When the nose and the mouth of the prisoner was buried in dust, a gendarme sat on his head, while the two other gendarmes, grabbing two heavy and strong batons and standing on each side of the lying poor Armenians, hit them 50 to 100 times until the prisoner lost consciousness. After that they would stop. Later they made the prisoners regain consciousness and the gendarmes started beating them again by pouring water on their body below and above their waist and that treatment continued until the prisoners had lost consciousness twice or three times and awakened again and were unable to make any movement, like invalids. Then the gendarmes consoled cynically the prisoners, saying "Your Jesus too was tortured and recommended that you be tortured, to be admitted to the kingdom of the Lord. This is the instruction of your Gospels." All the prisoners, on their turn, were subjected to this torture every day. This lasted about a month. Let's not forget to mention that sometimes the gendarmes entered houses and beat the suspects with the same savagery, in the presence of their wives, mothers and children. It happened that a 5 year old young boy -Haroutyoun, son of Terdjan Tchouldjian- seeing the baton blows inflicted to his uncle and being unable to bear his screams, pulled out a big piece of burning firewood from the fire and went to hit the gendarme saying, "Why are you beating him?" Many died because of beatings. The color of people's bodies had changed to pitch black. The flesh of many people were rotten and big wounds appeared and even in that state, the beatings continued. To make these tortures perfect, they started to cauterize the bodies of the prisoners with metal sticks, to shoe them with horseshoes, to nail both of their hands to the floor, and to try to pull off their nails. One shouldn't forget that women too had their share of this savagery. In the presence of their husbands, they suspended the women upside down from their feet, beat and subjected them to other unimaginable treatments, after which their husbands, unable to bear those terrifying savageries, attempted to commit suicide.
It was during that period that a man named Alay Bey came from Sivas and they said that after consultations on the organization of the massacres, he had gone to Darende and from there to the region of Malattia.
They paused a few days, so that those of the prisoners who were invalidated under the impact of the beatings, recover and be able to walk again. Then splitting the prisoners up into groups of 90-100 people, they summoned them one by one and interrogated them and got their signatures saying that they were going to send those testimonies to Sivas and the prisoners themselves were going there and would be interrogated again and if found innocent, they would be released. Whereas all these were lies. They later tore these documents. In this way, they reassured them that they were really going for a cross-examination. Then the first group was slaughtered, like they slaughter sheep, with bayonets, after they were forced to wander in the mountains for 3 to 4 days, hungry and thirsty. They saved their bullets, saying "you are not worth the use of a bullet, you are unfaithful people that we need to slaughter." And every day a new group was sent and was exterminated by order. But the others were not taken as far as the first group and the prisoners were massacred in closer and closer places. The last group comprised 13 to 15 year old teenagers. They measured their height with a one meter long rope and those of the teenagers who were higher than that, were tied and taken to the outskirts of the town and slaughtered and the bloody ties were brought back. As for the Prelate, Archbishop Khoren Dimaqsian and the Protestant Reverend Petros Moughalian and the priests, they were sent with a carriage with the same refrain, that is, they were being sent to Sivas and an hour later the carriage returned and they claimed it was broken. Eye witnesses told that the clergymen were slaughtered while their heads were hanging out of the carriage, and they brought the head of the Archbishop back to the town, because an official who particularly hated him, had wanted absolutely to see it to be sure of his death. Henceforth there was no teenager over the age of 13 in town, with the exception of those who had succeeded in escaping to avoid being arrested. The government and the above mentioned committee summoned all teenagers aged between10 and 13, and also the women and proposed them to convert to Islam. Those of the boys who resisted were beheaded on the spot in the presence of everybody. The rest of them having seen that, went mad and became muslims by wrapping their heads with a white cloth(Sarek). There was no man left any more, their special massacre was terminated. Now it was the turn of the women.
The Kaymakam with his entourage started wandering in the city, entering houses and seizing what he liked. It was also allowed to the villagers to start robbing the women left in that state of misery by visiting the quarters. The government sent the gangs formed to massacre Armenians and they also started torturing as it was ordered to them. The Armenians contacted the Kaymakam to alleviate these tortures, and he told them, "You will not stay here, you will migrate. If you want me to send you to Ayntab in a comfortable way, you have to pay." He required 2000 Ottoman golden coins from the first group and besides that, the golden coins of women used as finery. They split up this amount among the members of the committee. Besides that, they did not let people sell the remaining possessions, acting in a friendly manner and misleading the Armenians by promising to send them the equivalent value of these possessions one day, to wherever they go and they recommended that nobody bought them. The women, however, guessing what was being prepared, tried to resist, but the gangs arrived in the quarters, entered every house and removed the first group comprising 1500 to 2000 people and put them on the road. Thus, they successively removed other groups and in this way, women, teenagers, and girls were thrown into the mountains in 4-5 groups. Among these women were a few runaway males, who were separated from the group the very first day. Those males were slaughtered by an animal named Bahri in person, whereas he was meant to be sent by the Kaymakam and the government to guarantee the protection of the people. They kidnapped a few women and girls in the same night and raped them. The promise of a safe transfer to Ayntab in exchange of a huge sum was a lie. They accompanied the deportees for only one day and that day they returned to Gurin after unofficially robbing the Armenians. That caravan reached Albistan in a miserable state. Then it was the turn of the savages to act.
The Turkish Kaymakam of Albistan, disguised himself and went to preach Islam by night among Armenian women. He returned home and went back with his official title. He bought by force all the valuable objects that he had earlier noticed there for a very low price. And in order to take the deportees safely to Ayntab he required 1000 golden coins and received that sum. So far those deportees were not officially robbed. Then the Kaymakam and his entourage received the money, and taking the belongings and finery with them, took to the road with the Armenians to accompany them up to Ayntab. The Kaymakam and other official figures traveled for 3 days. During these 3 days, they moved away teenagers and women who handed over all their belongings to the Turks to avoid being slaughtered. Three days later, they reached their destination place and they saw on the mountains, villagers, kurds who were firing time to time. They arrived in a rocky valley with a dense group of willows, from where it was impossible to escape. Then, two people from among the Kurds came to discuss with the Kaymakam. A few moments later, the Kaymakam whistled, upon which hundreds of Kurds started to rain down bullets onto the people. The muleteers from Gurin who had taken the caravan up to there, turned their horses in the reverse direction and took away all the transported merchandises with them, thus seizing them, for which the transportation fare was already paid ten times the normal. All the women abandoned then all their belongings and ran away. The Kaymakam and the other officials who had come to ensure the protection of the deportees, enjoyed, seeing the terror of the Armenian women, standing and watching shamelessly the horrible scene from a distance. And so many other things happened. The villagers coming from every direction attacked more and more the women without protection, by waving their axes and drawn swords in every direction, which were leaving inanimated the persons hit by them. That valley was located at a distance of 15 hours when going from Albistan to Ayntab. Under the shower of the bullets many already fell...the kids saw their mother lying on the ground, her head split in two parts by a blow from an axe...the mother saw her kid hit by a bayonet, who said "mom" and died.
Many of the women ran away by abandonning their kids. The kids were shouting "mom" but the mother couldn't have turned back. These terrifying screams resounded in the mountains and valleys, while the mob went ahead with its savagery. Tieing teenagers and elderly people to trees, they burned them, they got mothers to slaughter their own children, and after having chopped off the members of some people, they left them there so that they do not die quickly. A human being cannot imagine and describe how they kidnapped girls and women and treated them. After having robbed people in that barbarian way and undressed women and girls, they took the loot away along with the girls and the women they liked. The Kaymakam and the other officials were still there to watch cynically the events. After the departure of that mob, the remaining deportees were accompained again by that same Kaymakam and the officials and after a journey lasting 4 to 5 hours, they spent the night on a river bank. Barely half of the deportees reached that place, where instead of beds there were stones and instead of bread, grass. The next day they made the deportees walk hungry and thirsty. Some of them who had survived the massacre, died from hunger. The Kaymakam already returned on the second day with his aids, to share the loot seized by the Kurds. While the journey from Gurin to Ayntab normally lasts 8 days, these women walked exactly for one month under tortures. Only a quarter of them arrived in Ayntab. Thus, Armenian women and teenagers died on the roads, on mountains and under rocks, because of tortures, malnutrition, and by the sword. Very few of them reached Ayntab and then Haleb.
Yeghia Khretian
A manuscript of the library "Noubarian"