Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story

Auteur :

Éditeur : New Age Publishers	Date & Lieu : 1919, New York
Préface :	Pages : 408
Traduction :	ISBN :
Langue : Anglais	Format : 130x195 mm
Code FIKP : Liv. Eng. Mor. Amb. 103	Thème : Général

Présentation	Table des Matières	Introduction	Identité	PDF
Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story Henry Morgenthau New Age Publishers Excerpts... And thus, as the exiles moved, they left behind them another caravan—that of dead and unburied bodies, of old men and of women dying in the last stages of typhus, dysentery, and cholera, of little children lying on their backs and setting up their last piteous wails for food and water. There were women who held up their babies to strangers, begging them to take them and save them from their tormentors, and failing this, they would throw them into wells or leave them behind bushes, that at least they might die undisturbed. Behind was left a small army of girls who had been sold as slaves-frequently for a medjidie, or about eighty cents—and who, after serving the brutal purposes of their purchasers, were forced to lead lives of prostitution. Frequently anyone who dropped on the road was bayoneted on the spot. The Armenians began to die by hundreds from hunger and thirst. Even when they came to rivers, the gendarmes, merely to torment them, would sometimes not let them drink. The hot sun of the desert burned their scantily clothed bodies, and their bare feet, trending the hot sand of the desert, became so sore that thousands fell and died or were killed, where they lay. My only reason for relating such dreadful things as this is that, without the details, the English-speaking public cannot understand precisely what this nation is which we call Turkey.. I have by no means told the most terrible details, for a complete narration of the sadistic orgies of which these Armenian men and women were the victims can never be printed in an American publication. Whatever crimes the most perverted instincts of the human mind can devise, and whatever refinements of persecution and injustice the-most debased imagination can conceive, became the daily misfortunes of this devoted people. I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared with the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915... she shuddered to recall how hundreds of children were bayoneted by the Turks and thrown into the Euphrates, and how men and women were stripped naked, tied together in hundreds, shot, and then hurled into the river. In a loop of the river near Erzinghan, she said, the thousands of dead bodies created such a barrage that the Euphrates changed its course for about a hundred yards.

PREFACE

By this time the American people have probably become convinced that the Germans deliberately planned the conquest of the world. Yet they hesitate to convict on circumstantial evidence and for this reason all eye witnesses to this, the greatest crime in modern history, should volunteer their testimony.

I have therefore laid aside any scruples I had as to the propriety of disclosing to my fellow countrymen the facts which I learned while representing them in Turkey. I acquired this knowledge as the servant of the American people, and it is their property as much as it is mine.

I greatly regret that I have been obliged to omit an account of the splendid activities of the American Missionary and Educational Institutions in Turkey, but to do justice to this subject would require a book by itself. I have had to omit the story of the Jews in Turkey for the same reasons.

My thanks are due to my friend, Mr. Burton J. Hendrick, for the invaluable assistance he has rendered in the preparation of the book.

Henry Morgenthau
October, 1918

Hon. Henry Morgenthau
Friend And Benefactor

Sixty years ago a nation of more than two million people whose forbears had lived on the land continuously for some 2,500 years was not only uprooted en masse but almost totally decimated in the manner of European Jewry 25 years later. The two genocides were remarkably similar in method and inspiration. These pages show conclusively how Talaat and Enver, the Turkish hangmen, served as teacher and inspiration to Hitler and Himmler.

New York Post-war Germany took pains to cleanse itself; it made public penance; it made restitution to victims; it brought war criminals to trial. Not so with the Turks who committed the first genocide of the century. None were brought to trial; to this day Turks will not admit their hideous guilt; not a penny has been paid in restitution for the billions looted in homes, churches, jewels, moneys, lands, the priceless remains of an incredibly rich cultural heritage, the extermination of some 1,600,000 Armenian lives through famine, disease, massacre, torture and deportation. By conservative estimate three fourths of the Armenian nation perished, as against one third of Jewry.

Hitler died a fitting death in the ruins of Berlin. Talaat was finally assassinated in Germany, but his remains were brought to Turkey and respectfully laid to rest in Istanbul’s military cemetery. Thus Turkey exposed itself as a nation which to this day honors its Hitlers. Everything in Germany has now changed for the better. Basically the Turkish character has changed but little.
Contrast Germany which honorably renounced barbarism, with Turkey - which procreated barbarism in the invasion of Cyprus.

In the holocaust of 1915-20 the Allies protested vigorously but to no avail. One man above others, through his writings and speeches waged a heroic crusade for the Armenians. He defied the Talaats and the Kaiser’s emissaries in Turkey. He pierced the conscience of America and the world. If ever a people needed a friend and benefactor during the blood-letting of an historic nation it was Henry Morgenthau. This book is not only the story of an ambassador’s official performance, but that of a man with deep humanitarian instincts, compassion for the underdog and supreme qualities of courage and moral integrity. These traits made him unique among the men of his time and everlastingly blessed in the eyes of the Armenians.