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  • ANI, AGMA & ASSEMBLY Exhibit 'The First Deportation: The German Rail

    NEW EXHIBIT 'THE FIRST DEPORTATION: THE GERMAN RAILROAD, THE AMERICAN
    HOSPITAL, AND THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE' RELEASED BY ANI, AGMA & ASSEMBLY

    Armenian National Institute
    1334 G Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005
    www.Armenian-Genocide.org

    ARMENIAN NATIONAL INSTITUTE
    PRESS RELEASE
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    Date: January 30, 2015
    Contact: Press Office
    Email: [email protected]
    Phone: (202) 383-9009


    A Digital Exhibit Based on United States National Archives Photographs


    Teaching Staff of the Apostolic Institute in Konya

    Washington, DC - A third digital exhibit on the Armenian Genocide
    consisting of 128 images on 24 panels entitled "The First Deportation:
    The German Railroad, the American Hospital, and the Armenian Genocide"
    was released today by the Armenian National Institute (ANI), Armenian
    Genocide Museum of America (AGMA) and Armenian Assembly of
    America(Assembly). Available on the ANI, AGMA, and Assembly websites,
    the exhibit focuses on two localities, Zeytun, an Armenian city in the
    Taurus Mountains, and Konya, a Turkish city in the central Anatolian
    plain, both linked by the Armenian Genocide.

    The remote and self-sustaining city of Zeytun was the first Armenian
    community in Ottoman Turkey deported en masse in April 1915. To
    deprive the Zeytun Armenians of any capacity to defy the deportation
    edicts, the Young Turk government divided its population sending one
    part east toward the Syrian Desert and another part west to the barren
    flats of the Konya Plain.

    By this fate, the Zeytun deportees were routed down from their
    mountain homes through the nearby city of Marash and the Cilician
    Plain and back up through the high passes of the Cilician Gates of the
    Taurus Range, the only accessible road from Cilicia to Anatolia. This
    route also placed them along the Berlin-Bagdad rail line then under
    construction through those very same passes.

    By intersecting that rail line, Zeytun Armenians soon found themselves
    among the rest of the Armenian population of western Anatolia being
    deported east by train to the main terminus at Konya and substations
    beyond, where they were offloaded from cattle cars to walk down the
    mountain passes, while work crews led by German and Swiss engineers
    were cutting open new roads and tunnels to complete the construction
    of the rail system.

    There also happened to be an American hospital in Konya manned by
    three outstanding figures who soon found themselves in the midst of
    hundreds of thousands of Armenian deportees and as such became
    witnesses to the unfolding of the Armenian Genocide. The station at
    Konya was supposed to serve only as a transit camp, but with all of
    the Armenians of western and central Anatolia routed through the city,
    the open spaces beyond the station transformed into a vast
    concentration camp. Because Konya was never intended to exist as a
    destination camp and was evacuated within a short time, it has been
    forgotten as a major site in the trail of deportation and the central
    object of what transpired there overlooked. It was evident to all
    observers in the city how rapidly the Ottoman Turkish government
    reduced an industrious and prosperous people to misery. In Konya it
    was already visible that all it took was a matter of days, not even
    weeks.

    The testimony provided by Dr. Wilfred Post and Dr. William Dodd, and
    the efforts of Miss Emma Cushman, all three American medical
    missionaries, provide compelling information about the rapidly
    deteriorating conditions along the rail line and the start of the
    process of extinguishing Armenian life across the region. Their
    information is paralleled by the protests of German civilians in the
    same area who sharply criticized the Ottoman authorities and raised
    questions with their own government about the morality of German
    wartime policies.

    More compelling still were the photographs taken by Dr. Wilfred Post
    and the German railroad engineers that documented the wartime reality
    on this particular swath of Ottoman territory. While as wartime allies
    of the Turks, Germans enjoyed a certain amount of liberty in their
    actions, Dr. Post took a serious risk in defying the ban on
    photographing the Armenians.

    Retrieved from the United States National Archives, the entire set of
    photographs taken by Dr. Wilfred Post are being issued for the first
    time in this exhibit. They constitute the central evidence around
    which the entire exhibit is constructed.

    Dr. Post captioned the photographs, and succeeded in delivering them
    to the American Embassy in Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, from
    where they were sent by diplomatic pouch to Washington, DC. They might
    have been the very first images of the Armenian Genocide to arrive
    into the hands of U.S. officials. In this regard, the historic value
    of Dr. Post's photographs are matched only by those taken by U.S.
    consul Leslie Davis who documented the Armenian Genocide in the region
    of Harput/Kharpert.
    Ottoman Minister of War Enver at Rail Station in Taurus Mountains
    Because of the numbers of Armenians being deported and the pace at
    which the western Anatolian cities were emptied of their Armenian
    inhabitants, the Konya train station became a choke point in the
    deportation process. Vast concentration camps of homeless Armenian
    families soon formed along the tracks. The brutality of the process,
    the complete lack of sanitation, and the absence of sources of food
    very rapidly created an explosive situation threatening the spread of
    epidemics. Thousands of Armenians never made it beyond the stations of
    the Konya line and conditions in the refugee camps were so foul and
    violent that a train conductor is quoted by Dr. Dodd describing the
    Bozanti station as "hell on earth."

    Consisting of 121 images, 7 maps, and containing a rich variety of
    eyewitness testimony, the exhibit reconstructs Armenian life in
    Zeytun, reproduces the two rare photographs showing the arrest of the
    Zeytun men, outlines the deportation route to the degree that
    contemporary photographs allow, depicts the city of Konya, showing the
    contrast between the rugged mountains in which Zeytun Armenians were
    accustomed to living and the flat, arid, and sparsely populated plain
    of Konya.

    The exhibit includes previously unpublished photographs of Zeytun,
    reproduces newly released images from German sources, and, in addition
    to the United States National Archives material, presents images from
    the Australian War Memorial; University of Newcastle upon Tyne,
    England, Gertrude Bell Archives; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
    Kelsey Museum; Mennonite Church USA Archives; the Armenian Missionary
    Association of America and the Haigazian University Archives of
    Beirut, Lebanon; Library of Congress; Republic of Armenia National
    Archives; as well as online resources and private individuals.

    ANI especially recognizes the historian Aram Arkun whose close study
    of documentary sources addressed the complex situation surrounding the
    denouement in Zeytun and who served as project consultant for the
    exhibit. ANI also thanks Gunter Hartnagel, a professional
    photographer, who provided valuable guidance on German historical
    images, and whose researches in historical geography helped understand
    the terrain that was covered by the Zeytun deportees and appreciate
    the hardships endured by those who trudged through the mountains of
    Cilicia at the point of a bayonet.

    The location of Konya on the train line also helped to document the
    post-war situation in the city. Accompanying a U.S. aid mission and
    relief workers, the American photographer George Robert Swain recorded
    the efforts of Miss Cushman to create a safe haven for surviving
    Armenian orphans. In so doing Swain added another layer of
    documentation about the fate of the Armenian population and helped
    create, in sum with Dr. Post's pictures, one of the more comprehensive
    photographic records of a single location so directly impacted by the
    Armenian Genocide.

    The final demise of the Armenians of Konya was sealed with the fate of
    Dr. Armenag Haigazian who, as a highly-regarded educator, embodied the
    Armenian Protestant community's hope of recovery. He had survived the
    war years and the violence of the Young Turk regime, but his
    restoration of the Apostolic Institute made him the target of the
    Turkish Nationalist movement, which saw to the shuttering of the
    school and the second exile and persecution of Dr. Haigazian. World
    War I may have ended and the Young Turk government overthrown, but the
    Armenian Genocide in Turkey continued, making the death of Dr.
    Haigazian a most poignant tragedy, especially as he famously held a
    doctorate from Yale University.

    This third digital exhibit continues and builds upon the themes
    developed in the exhibits released earlier, including the role and
    fate of Armenian clergy, churches and schools, the role of American
    missionaries and relief workers, and the role of Germans in Ottoman
    Turkey, while distinguishing between the attitudes of civilian,
    military, and diplomatic representatives.

    The exhibit highlights the unsolvable dilemma faced by the Armenian
    Catholicos of Cilicia Sahag II Khabayan, who, unaware of the broader
    scheme about to be implemented by the Young Turk regime, advised the
    Zeytun population to cooperate with the authorities in the hope of
    avoiding a repetition of the Cilician massacres that spread terror
    across the region a mere six years earlier. The acts and observations
    of other clergymen, including Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople
    Zaven Der Yeghiayan, his successor Archbishop Mesrob Naroyan,
    Archbishop Stepannos Hovagimian of Ismit, Grigoris Balakian, and
    Reverend William Peet, are also explained as part of the testimony on
    this specific aspect of the Armenian Genocide.

    The exhibit also highlights the role of an exceptional Ottoman
    official, who, as governor of Aleppo and of Konya, opposed the
    measures of the Young Turk radicals. Jelal Bey was the highest
    ranking administrator in the Ottoman Empire who disapproved of the
    policies of the triumvirate ruling from Constantinople. A number of
    lower ranking officials who disagreed with the regime were killed by
    Young Turk party henchmen. Opposing the Young Turk regime required
    courage, and Jelal placed his life in jeopardy. He may have been
    spared only because of his stature and lifelong service to the state.
    American Hospital in Konya
    The exhibit also reveals the involvement of a German diplomat, who as
    an embassy councilor in Constantinople played a role in maintaining
    German-Turkish relations, and as such became among the recipients of
    the flow of information being reported about the implementation of the
    Armenian Genocide. A lesser official at the time, Konstantin von
    Neurath rose through the ranks eventually to serve as Minister of
    Foreign Affairs in Nazi Germany and as governor of occupied
    Czechoslovakia, where Reinhard Heydrich, one of the architects of the
    Holocaust, served as his deputy.

    The exhibit concludes with testimony from Dr. Charles Mahjoubian, a
    native of Konya who resettled in Philadelphia and entered the
    profession of dentistry. As a survivor, he committed himself to
    testifying to the events he witnessed in his hometown. He pointed
    with pride to his birthplace as one of the earliest centers of
    Christianity, dating to St. Paul preaching in Iconium (ancient name of
    Konya), and as a center of Turkish Islam where religious piety
    restrained the hand of the local population, in sharp relief to the
    political fanaticism of the Young Turk regime and the brutality of its
    associates. According to Mahjoubian, by a strict reading of the
    banishment legislation, Jelal Bey succeeded for a brief while in
    delaying the deportation of Catholic and Protestant Armenians.

    "The First Deportation: the German Railway, the American Hospital, and
    the Armenian Genocide" strengthens and clarifies the photographic
    documentation of the Armenian Genocide in a manner consistent and
    supportive of third party records, eyewitness accounts and survivor
    testimony. It expands the scope of the evidence and attests to the
    horrors that unfolded in 1915.

    "It did not escape contemporaries that there were immediate lessons to
    be drawn from the example of Zeytun," observed Van Z. Krikorian, ANI
    chairman. "Other communities grasped the methods by which the Young
    Turk regime pressurized local politics and aggravated relations among
    religious and ethnic groups in order to create conditions to justify
    the wholesale depopulation of Armenian towns and cities. Reverend
    Ephraim Jernazian drew a direct connection between the failure of the
    Zeytun Armenians to stand their ground and the heroic defense of their
    neighborhood by Urfa Armenians. Hopeless as their actions might have
    been at the time, the Armenians of Urfa made the point that they would
    not be submitting to tyranny willingly, nor give up their lives easily
    to help fulfill the violent designs of the Young Turks."

    "The clarity of that lesson from the past resonates today with the
    necessary defense of Nagorno Karabakh where Armenians yet again a
    century later face another enemy whose objective remains their
    expulsion from their homeland. The commitment of the Armenians of
    Artsakh to avoid the fate of the Western Armenian population was
    inspired by the tragedies of the Armenian Genocide and the pledge of
    survivors to avoid a repeat of such a calamity," concluded Krikorian.
    "I want to thank Rouben Adalian for uncovering these valuable records
    on the Armenian Genocide, and Joe Piatt and Aline Maksoudian for
    working with Dr. Adalian in creating this impressive exhibit,"
    Krikorian added.

    "Relief workers, educators, missionaries, orphanage administrators,
    and other volunteers from the United States played a massive role in
    relieving the plight of the survivors," stated ANI Director, Dr.
    Rouben Adalian. "Many of the longtime American residents of Turkey
    also witnessed and reported the deportations and massacres of 1915.
    Because of the remoteness of Konya from the other major centers of the
    Armenian Genocide, Dr. Wilfred Post, Dr. William Dodd, and Miss Emma
    Cushman may not have been extended the recognition they deserve. The
    compelling evidence of this exhibit now ranks them among the heroic
    Americans who helped save lives during the Armenian Genocide."

    As with the exhibits previously released jointly by ANI, AGMA, and the
    Assembly, titledWitness to the Armenian Genocide: Photographs by the
    Perpetrators' German and Austro-Hungarian Allies, and The First Refuge
    and the Last Defense: The Armenian Church, Etchmiadzin, and The
    Armenian Genocide, "The First Deportation: The German Railroad, the
    American Hospital, and the Armenian Genocide," is also being issued in
    digital format for worldwide distribution free of charge on the
    occasion of the centennial of the Armenian Genocide.

    Founded in 1997, the Armenian National Institute (ANI) is a 501(c)(3)
    educational charity based in Washington, DC, and is dedicated to the
    study, research, and affirmation of the Armenian Genocide.

    ###

    NR#: 2015-03

    Photo Caption 1: Teaching Staff of the Apostolic Institute in Konya.

    Photo Caption 2: Ottoman Minister of War Enver at rail station in
    Taurus Mountains.

    Photo Caption 3: American Hospital in Konya.

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