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DAYS OF TRAGEDY IN ARMENIA:
Personal Experiences in Harpoot 1915-1917.
By Henry Riggs
Gomidas Institute. 240 pp. $25
ISBN 1-884630-01-4
MISSIONARY'S 1918 MEMOIR
DEPICTS GENOCIDE IN KHARPERT
Ann Arbor, Mich.-The American missionary Henry Riggs wrote
a vivid account of the Armenian Genocide in Kharpert
(Harpoot). Completed in 1918, Rev. Riggs's memoir, DAYS
OF TRAGEDY IN ARMENIA: PERSONAL EXPERIENCES IN
HARPOOT, 1915-1917, has now been published by the
Gomidas Institute.
"DAYS OF TRAGEDY IN ARMENIA is probably the most
detailed local history of the Armenian Genocide written in
the English language," said the historian Ara Sarafian, who
wrote the introduction to the volume. Rev. Riggs's narrative
is the first in the Gomidas Institute's Armenian Genocide
Documentation Series, of which Sarafian is general editor.
"This is the story of an engaged observer," Sarafian added.
"Rev. Riggs was born in the Ottoman Empire. He spoke
Turkish, Armenian, and English. His narrative is based on
his personal observations and his conversations with
Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkish friends and neighbors, Ottoman
officials, other Americans, and foreign nationals. It really
is an amazing account."
Rev. Riggs prepared the manuscript in 1918 and it was
submitted to a U.S. government commission investigating
various aspects of the First World War, including the
destruction of Armenian communities in the Ottoman Empire.
It has never before been published as a book.
A STATE OF WAR
Rev. Riggs's story begins with the Ottoman Empire's
preparations for entering World War I. According to Riggs,
the Ottoman government was hardly ready to fight a war in
1914, at least in the Harpoot region.
The Ottoman army confiscated some of the buildings of
Euphrates College, the American missionary compound in
Harpoot, to house conscripts. The army also took over the
Annie Tracy Riggs hospital to care for wounded soldiers.
Thus, Riggs had a close-up view of army life in Harpoot
and its surroundings.
Through sad and sometimes amusing vignettes, Riggs shows
that the army was simply unable to process the enlistment of
thousands of Ottoman subjects who heeded the general call to
arms. Nor was the army able to adequately feed the soldiers,
meet their other basic needs, and care for the wounded.
Meanwhile, a language barrier existed between Turkish
officers and Kurdish conscripts. Under these circumstances,
draft-dodging, desertion, and various forms of corruption
were pervasive.
RACE EXTERMINATION
Rev. Riggs describes how ordinary Armenians were rounded up
and destroyed by the Ottoman government after June 1915.
Riggs observes that these killings were not expected and came
as a surprise.
The first convoy of so-called deportees consisted of men.
After the men were destroyed, women, children, and the
elderly were gathered in convoys and marched out of the city.
Riggs describes the systematic way in which individuals were
sought out by gendarmes. He also describes the state of
innumerable caravans of Armenian exiles from other regions
that passed through Harpoot.
Riggs heard the firsthand reports of several reliable
eyewitnesses who observed mass graves of Armenians outside
Harpoot. These included the local American consul Leslie A.
Davis and his colleague Dr. Henry Atkinson. He concluded
that the abuses and murder of Armenians were too persistent
to be dismissed as simple aberrations of a purportedly benign
policy of population transfer.
Rev. Riggs's account is particularly valuable as a historical
document because the author provides a great deal of detail
and distinguishes what he personally saw, what he was told,
and what he thought. Moreover, Riggs's account can be
corroborated with several other contemporary sources from
Harpoot.
DEFIANT KURDS
Rev. Riggs pays close attention to the Kurdish population of
the Dersim region, adjacent to Harpoot. Noting that the
relationship of Kurdish tribes in this region with the
Ottoman government had long been tenuous, he reports that in
the spring of 1916 a Kurdish uprising took place. After
suppressing the rebellion, the government began an abortive
effort to deport Kurds from the region.
Riggs credits the Dersim Kurds with saving tens of thousands
of Armenians by providing them with safe passage to Russia.
He writes:
"It was during this period that the hunted Armenians began to
flee into the Dersim. To those who knew of the depredations
of the Dersim Kurds in the massacres of 1895,
this sounds like a strange situation, for then the Kurds
were the persecutors of the Armenians. That was, however,
as it were, strictly a matter of business, as the Kurds in
1895 were invited to come and plunder the Armenians, and the
killing at that time was merely incidental to getting the
loot, which forms so large a part of a well-regulated Kurd's
income. In 1915, however, there was no loot to be had, for
the government took care of that. And when it came to dealing
with a defenseless Armenian fugitive, the instinct of the
noble savage is to save rather than wantonly to destroy this
neighbor against whom he has no grudge" (p. 111).
CLANDESTINE RELIEF
Rev. Riggs and his fellow missionaries did what they could to
help the Armenians during the various stages of the genocide.
Riggs reports his meetings with the governor, the police
chief, and other officials--including the visiting minister
of war Enver Pasha, one of the masterminds of the Genocide.
He found the officials indifferent to his pleas. At best,
they were willing to make promises they had no intention of
keeping. Riggs discusses the various ways he worked around
the official restrictions on helping Armenians.
He describes his own efforts to get messages to and from
relatives and to transmit money on behalf of Armenians,
contrary to the strict instructions of the governor.
After the bulk of the Armenians had been eliminated, Riggs
was closely involved in helping the few destitute survivors.
Much of the relief work took the form of helping people help
themselves. The missionaries were involved in setting up
bakeries, textile mills, and the like.
THE AUTHOR
Rev. Riggs was born in Sivas in 1875 to a family of
missionaries stationed in the Ottoman Empire. He grew up in
the area, traveling to the United States to attend Carleton
College in Minnesota and Auburn Seminary. He was president
of Euphrates College in Harpoot from 1903 to 1910. After a
break, he resumed missionary work in Harpoot in 1912, where
he stayed until 1917. He worked as a teacher and evangelist
among Armenian refugees in Beirut from 1923 to 1940. Rev.
Riggs died in Jerusalem in 1943.
THE GOMIDAS INSTITUTE
The Gomidas Institute, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a
nonprofit academic organization dedicated to modern and
contemporary Armenian studies. It provides a forum for
active scholars to pursue research and publication.
The paperback volume of 240 pages includes an introduction
and an index. DAYS OF TRAGEDY IN ARMENIA: PERSONAL
EXPERIENCES IN HARPOOT, 1915-1917 (ISBN 1-884630-01-4
$25.00) is available in bookstores.
To order by telephone using your credit card, call toll free
1-800-879-4214. For other orders and inquiries, contact the
publisher, Gomidas Institute, by mail at 2525 Fernbank Rd,
Charlotte NC 28226-0726, by fax or telephone at
1-704-365-1691, or by e-mail at gomidas@telf.com. To order
by mail please enclose a check or money order for $25 per
copy plus $3 shipping. Shipping for additional copies to the
same address is $1.25 per copy. Michigan and North Carolina
residents add applicable sales tax.
--Vincent Lima
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