The current massacre of Iraqi Christians by adherents of Radical Islam has caused a great deal of speculation about what kind of religious believer could commit such acts. Whenever I have been asked this question, I am forced to remind people that it has happened before — almost a century ago and in the same part of the world.

During the First World War, the Ottoman Empire, though officially a constitutional monarchy, was actually governed by a political party known as the Ittihad-ve Terriki, or Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). The CUP’s platform was a mixture of Turkish racial supremacy, Classical Liberalism, and Radical Islam. Christians and Non-Turkish Muslims were to have no place in the Greater Turkey which the CUP dreamed of building. When the Ottoman Empire entered the Great War as an ally of Imperial Germany, the Christian Armenians of Constantinople made no secret of their sympathy for the Allied Powers.

On the night of April 24, 1915, the CUP arrested 250 Armenian cultural leaders and ordered their deportation to Der Zor, a region of the Syrian Desert which was to be the killing fields of what is still called the Armenian Genocide. The deportees included writers and statesmen, poets and composers, Marxists and priests. Among their number was Father (later Bishop) Grigoris Balakian, a “Vartaped,”or celibate priest of the Armenian Apostolic Church. But the deportation of the intellectuals was only the prelude to the planned extermination of every Armenian in the Ottoman Empire and the lands it planned to annex. By the end of the Great War, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians had been murdered. For this reason, Armenians throughout the world still commemorate April 24 as a day of mourning.

In 2009, when Bishop Balakian’s memoir of the Genocide finally appeared in English, His Grace was instantly compared with Holocaust survivors Eli Wiesel and Primo Levi and GULAG survivors Nadezhda Mandelstam and Evgenia Ginzburg. As I continue to pace my way through the Bishop’s searing account, I can also attest that it is truly a masterpiece.

For this reason, I have chosen to share a part of his memoir which, I believe, sheds the most light upon the mindset of the perpetrators of both the Armenian Genocide and of the current massacres in Iraq. Be forewarned that if you continued to read, you will be deeply disturbed. What follows has much in common with a Hannibal Lecter movie. Should you decide to stop reading, I will not be in the least offended.

Lest you be inclined to blame all Muslims for the behavior of those described, be aware that other parts of the Bishop’s memoir describes encounters with Muslims — both Turks and Kurds — who fought to save Armenian lives. He also describes encounters with “Christian” Armenians who willingly collaborated with the executioners of their own people. By doing so, they not only survived, but profited considerably.

Well, without further ado, here is the account in the Bishop’s own words. May Our Lord and Our Lady grant Eternal Memory to those who have Fallen Asleep!

From, “Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918,” By Grigoris Balakian. Translated by Peter Balakian and Aris Sevag. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2009.

Pages 134-135.

“From Yozgat to Boghazlian: The Skulls.”

There is a Turkish village on the road to Boghazlian, two hours from Yozgat. There Shukri, the Captain of the Yozgat police soldiers, a sixty-five year old man, had been waiting for us since morning with eleven mounted police soldiers. Our carriage drivers, who assumed that we were going to be killed under this bridge, ordered those of us to get out and remove our goods. Having collected double their fees in advance, they then lashed their horses and galloped off in the opposite direction. All of us were stupefied by this inexplicable action. We then gathered up our goods, which had been dumped from the carriages, and after much hardship, we arrived, covered in mud, at the village, where the Captain and his police soldiers were waiting for us. Captain Shukri took command of our caravan from the police soldiers who had accompanied us from Choroum, and received the blacklist of our names and other official documents.

After checking to make sure that no one on the list was missing, Captain Shukri made us set out without giving us the least respite. Instead of escorting us to Boghazlian, as we had hoped, he and his men took us to a Turkish village where no one would sell us any milk, yoghurt, eggs, or bread, not even at a premium. Anxious about the hostility of the villagers, we spent a sleepless night…

Page 136.

On our second day along the Yozgat-Boghazlian route, we saw, in the fields on both sides of the road, the first decomposed human skeletons and even more skulls; long hair was still attached to them, leaving no doubt that they belonged to females.

Among our companions were young Armenian intellectuals of Constantinople. They often bent down to pick up these skulls and kiss them tearfully. After all, these were the sacred remains of our mothers and sisters who had been martyred. Captain Shukri of the Yozgat police soldiers , who personally escorted us along these most dangerous and bloody roads, road beside me for a few hours, during which I time I became rather friendly with him (to the extent that the wolf and the lamb can be friendly). He exhorted me, “Murahhasa effendi, tell your people not to give way to emotion — picking up skulls they come accross and kissing them. They don’t know that that same fate awaits them a little further on.”

Naturally, I warned my companions to refrain from such imprudent acts. Although our days were numbered, we endeavored as much as possible, with trust in God, to drive away thoughts of death. We were proceeding along roads where the slightest ill-advised or careless step could become the cause of our instant death. Shukri was so cruel that he wouldn’t deign to speak to any other member of our caravan. It was just by good fortune that I was able in a few hours to win his favor, and so we kept riding together, conversing about various topics…

“The Confessions of the Slayer Captain.”

Pages 139-146.

I wished to take advantage of the rare goodwill that was shown to me by Captain Shukri, to learn more about the major uncertainties facing us. Trying to be discreet, I asked him, “Bey, where have all these human bones along this road come from?”

The Captain pointed to the deep valley before us and answered, “These are the bones of Armenians who were killed in August and September. The order had come from Constantinople. Even though the Minister of the Interior had huge ditches dug for the corpses, the winter floods washed the dirt away, and now the bones are everywhere, as you see.”

“Are these the bones of the Armenian deportees who came from far-off places,” I asked, “or are these the bones of Armenians from this area?”

“Do you see this road? Aside from the first caravan of Armenians in July, no other caravans have traversed this road and survived.”

“Shukri Bey, in your opinion, how many Armenians were massacred upon these roads that we have traveled? As Captain of the Yozgat police soldiers, you must know.”

He replied, “Now its not a secret anymore; about 86,000 Armenians were massacred. We, too, were surprised, because the Government didn’t know there was such a great Armenian population in the province of Ankara. However, this includes a few thousand other Armenians from surrounding provinces who were deported on these roads. They were put on this road so we could cleanse them.”

“Paklayalum” was the word for “cleanse”; the Turks always used this term, especially the Government officials, when referring to the massacres of Armenians.

“Upon whose orders were the massacres of Armenians committed?”

“The orders came from the Ittihad [Party] Central Committe and the Interior Ministry in Constantinople. This order was carried out most severely by Kemal [District Governor] of Boghazlian and Vixe-Governor of Yozgat. When Kemal, a native of Van, heard that the Armenians had massacred all his family members at the time of the Van revolt, he sought revenge and massacred the women and children, together with the men.”

“So where were the women in these areas of Yozgat massacres? I ask this because we had heard that while the men were massacred, the women were spared. We had heard that the beautiful virgins and young brides were taken by those who desired them for their harems, while the elderly women were driven to Der Zor. Did it happen this way in your [Province], too?”

“It didn’t, because, as I said, the [District Governor] of Boghazlian was so enraged over the murder of his family during the Van rebellion in April 1915, that he had no concern for appearances and had the women and children, even the suckling infants massacred. He was said to have said; ‘I have made a vow on the honor of the Prophet: I shall not leave a single Armenian alive in the [Province] of Yozgat.'”

I asked Shukri Bey how the women and girls of Yozgat were massacred, but just then, one of the police soldiers, a corporal, having noticed something down the road, came over to ask the Captain for instructions, and our conversation was interrupted.

 

…He was candid with me, as he himself stated, because he was convinced that none of us would survive… In order to win his favor, I told him that I had always been a Turcophile and that I had been exiled from Constantinople because I had been mistaken for a revolutionary with the same name. I even told him that I had been decorated by Sultan Hamid himself. I criticized the extremist acts of the Armenian Revolutionary Committees and told him that the Armenian Revolutionaries were the sole cause of our misfortunes.

I seem to have succeeded in winning Captain Shukri over, because he said to me… “Murahhasa effendi, even if I am not able to rescue your companions from the murderous mob, I’ll save you, as long as you convert to Islam. I want this to be understood.” Whatever proposal I made, I responded affirmatively: I even demonstrated my knowledge of the Koran, which delighted him.

…A half hour later, when we started riding together again, I resumed our conversation, “Bey, why did you commit massacres on the main roads? Wouldn’t it have been easier to have done it in the hidden valleys?”

He replied, “The massacres weren’t committed on these roads. As I mentioned, it was the winter floods that scattered these bones and skulls all over the roads. Do you see the mill in this valley facing us?” He pointed to it. “There’s a story I’ll tell you about it.” In a half hour our caravan reached the mill and I spurred my horse to catch up to the Captain and asked him to tell his story.

“It was precisely here,” the Captain continued, “that the search of the women of Yozgat took place.”

“Bey, tell me about it so we might pass the time.”

He did so: “There’s no reason to hide it… It was eight months ago, after all, and these stories were getting around… The news has even reached Europe. The German Embassy was so upset that they rebuked our Government, and orders came from Constantinople telling us to cease the massacres. Nevertheless, after we had massacred all the males of the city of Yozgat– about eight thousand to nine thousand of them in the valleys near these sites, it was the women’s turn. So two months later Governor Mehmet Kemal summoned the town criers and had them make the following announcement: ‘Inasmuch as your husbands have arrived safely in Aleppo and presented a petition to the local Governor General requesting that their families be brought to Aleppo, too, the mutasarrif is giving you a three day period to make the necessary preparations for a long journey and then wait for the signal to depart…’

“Upon this official announcement, made by Turkish town criers throughout the city, the Armenian women rejoiced and briskly made preparations for the road. Many of them, as though going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, even made sweets … and arranged them in tin boxes to take to their husbands in Aleppo. Then after the three days had passed, we had them all depart, some by carriage, some by cart, and the poor ones on foot.”

“Do you remember what the number of carriages and carts was?”

“I would say that there were 280 horse drawn carriages, 550 ox drawn carts; so all together we had about 830 carriages and carts.”

…”To whom was the caravan assigned for transport to Aleppo?”

“The caravans were always assigned to me because I was the police soldiers commander and familiar with this region. When this large caravan with about eighty police soldiers reached the three mills, in this valley four to five hours from town, I gave the order to the police soldier officers to rest at this spot. I then ordered all the carriage and cart drivers to leave the families there and return to their villages. Then I had thirty to fifty midwives come in from town to begin a rigorous inspection. Every woman, girl, and boy was searched down to their underwear. We collected all the gold, silver, diamond jewelry, and over valuables, as well as the gold pieces sewn into the hems of their clothes. All these women, duped into thinking that they were going to join their husbands in Aleppo, had taken with them all their valuable and movable possessions, including their valuable rugs and carpets. The Government’s pretext had worked beautifully.

“Before long, we had made piles of hundreds if not thousands of gold chains, gold watches, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and rings with diamonds and other precious stones. We found thousands of gold pieces sewn into the women’s clothes. For this reason, too, the search took so long and created such difficulty that we had to bring in new women from town to continue the effort. They found even more pieces of jewelry and gold hidden or sewn into the folds of clothes and linens.”

“Shukri Bey, how many pounds of gold do you think you collected from these women and children?”

“It’s difficult to say because we didn’t keep a record. Whoever got hold of something kept it. If I say thirty thousand gold pounds, understand it to be sixty thousand gold pounds.”

“I understand that the wealth remained in the hands of those who snatched it, but who took the largest amounts?”

“It ran the gamut, from the common police soldier to the highest Government official.”

“Shukri Bey, as long as we are talking so candidly and confidentially, forgive me for asking another question. But how much wealth were you able to obtain as a result of these massacres? After all, as a police soldier Captain, you had the greatest opportunities.”

“If all of it had been left to me, that would have been nice, but I sent the leather bags, filled and sealed, to the Mutasarrif in town, and there was a lot of stealing; barely half the goods reached the Government. We collected thousands of rugs and carpets and piled them up near these mills, but the police soldiers stole some of them. To be accurate, I barely got ten thousand pieces of gold or jewelry from the booty of the Armenians.

“I have been staying in Yozgat for thirty years, and although I’ve been offered higher positions, I didn’t want to leave my birthplace and home. I’m a landowner in Yozgat and have a big family here. I’m over sixty-five now, and where am I going to go after this? I have houses, shops, and two mills in Yozgat and I’m a Muslim, [Praise Allah]. I won’t lie — I amassed great wealth from the massacres of the Armenians. But I’m old–what can I do with the wealth? My only son will enjoy it. Presently he’s in Germany pursuing a military education. Let him do so.”

“Bey,” I said, “we wandered from your story. Can you tell me what happened to these sixty four hundred women, girls, and children?”

“Yes, you’re right, I was talking about one thing and got on to something else. We continued to search the women’s bodies and clothes for four days and four nights. After stripping them all of their possessions and leaving them only what they were wearing, we made them all turn back on foot to the broad promontory located near the city of Yozgat. We told them that a new Government order had come to have them return to town, and they following willingly. When we reached the promontory I pointed out yesterday, ten to twelve thousand Muslims were waiting there. They had been waiting for a day.”

“Bey, may I ask–how did these common people come to know about the Government’s plan for the Armenians?”

“During the time that we were searching the women, the Government officials of Yozgat sent police soldiers to all the surrounding Turkish villages and in the name of holy Jihad invited the Muslim population to participate in this sacred religious obligation…

“Thus, when we arrived at the designated site, this mass of people was waiting. The Government order was clear: all were to be massacred and nobody was to be spared. Therefore, in order to prevent any escape attempt and to thwart any secret attempts of sympathizers intent on freeing them, I had the eighty police soldiers encircle the hill, and stationed guards at every probable site for of escape or hiding.

“Then I had the police soldiers announce to the people that whoever wished to select a virgin girl or young bride could do so immediately, on the condition of taking them as wives and not with the intention of rescuing them. Making a selection during the massacre was forbidden. Thus about two hundred fifty girls and young brides were selected by the people and the police soldiers.”

Then the Captain did something striking. Before continuing to tell his story of the actual massacre, he closed his eyes; in the special manner of performing ablutions, he raised his hands to his face and ran them down to his white beard as if washing up. After muttering a few prayers, he turned and said to me, “May [Allah] not show such death as this to anybody.”

“Did you shoot them, or bayonet them to death?” I asked.

“It’s wartime and bullets are expensive. So people grabbed whatever they could from their villages–axes, hatchets, scythes, sickles, clubs, hoes, pickaxes, shovels–and they did the killing accordingly.”

It is impossible for me to convey what happened to those 6.400 defenseless women, virgins, and brides, as well as children and suckling infants. Their heartrending cries and doleful pleas brought down the deaf canopies of heaven. The police soldiers in Yozgat and Boghazlian who accompanied us would even boast to some of us about how they had committed tortures and decapitations, cut off… body parts with axes, and how they had [killed] suckling infants and children by… dashing them on rocks.

…As we rode our horses side to side, our conversation about the deportations and massacres finally reached a point where I was not longer able to restrain myself. Stiffened by this unfathomable and crushing story, I turned to Shukri, who was relating all this as if it were a children’s fairy tale, and said: “But, Bey, you are an elderly Muslim. How did you have this many thousands of innocent women, girls, and children massacred without feeling any remorse or guilt, when they were neither conspirators or rebels? Won’t you remain accountable for this innocent blood spilled, before Allah, the Prophet, and your conscience?”

– “Not at all,” he replied. “On the contrary, I carried out my sacred and holy obligation before Allah, my Prophet, and my Caliph.. A Jihadwas proclaimed… The Sheik-ul-Islam had issued a fatwa to annihilate the Armenians as traitors to our State, and the Caliph, in turn, ratifying this fatwa, had ordered its execution… And I, as a military officers, carried out the order of my King. Killing people in war is not considered a crime now, is it?”

Following this shameless and abhorrent statement, I fell silent, because there was nothing I could say in reply to this executioner who had likened the merciless massacre of unarmed, defenseless women and infants to killing people in war. In total, he was responsible for the murder of 42,000 innocent people.

…I did not want to anger our Captain and tried to mask my contempt with humor. So I asked, “Bey, you know that we clergymen frighten people with punishments in the other world… How are you going to atone for these sins of yours in the other world?”

“Oh, very easily. I already atoned for them and didn’t leave anything unsettled for the next world. As I’ve always done, after this massacre as well, I spread out my prayer rug and said my prayers, giving glory to Allah and to the Prophet who made me worthy of participating in the holy Jihad in these days of my old age. Many, many times a few years ago, they wanted me to retire on account of my age; it’s a good thing that I didn’t.”

Page 148.

After we had talked for two or three hours, almost without interruption, Shukri and the police soldiers moved ahead. The lawyer Boghos Tanielian, one of the Constantinople intellectuals who was on foot, had been listening closely to our conversation, along with a few of his companions. After I was left alone, he said, “If you were an official of great authority from Constantinople, you couldn’t have gotten such a confession from this criminal. I hope someday the world will hear of this– this man who massacred forty thousand Armenians.”

Pages 149-150.

On all the roads were traversed between Yozgat and Kayseri, about 80 percent of the Muslims we encountered (there were no Christians left in these parts) were wearing European clothes, bearing on their persons proof of the crimes they had committed. Indeed, it was an absurd sight: overcoats, frock coats, jackets–various men’s and women’s garments of the finest materials–on villagers who were also wearing sandals and traditional baggy pants. Barefoot Turkish peasant boys wore formal clothes; men sported gold chains and watches. It was reported that the women had confiscated many pieces of diamond jewelry, but as they were sequestered, we had no way of encountering them.

Although Captain Shukri carried out the criminal orders of the Ittihad Committee with gusto, as national policy, he generally spoke disparagingly of the Ittihad Leaders, especially Talaat [Pasha] and Enver [Pasha]. He often said, “These are adventurers descended from Gypsies or [converted Jews]; they do whatever crosses their minds; they don’t consider the long run.” In referring to the Armenian massacres, he said, “Let’s see how we are going to escape the consequences of what we have done.” However, these final apprehensive words he said out of fear of punishment, not contrition.