Fred P. Margerum, of Elizabethville, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, returned home from his humanitarian work in Armenia in 1922 and wrote a brief history of the Armenian Genocide, its aftermath, and his role in the great effort of Near East Relief to help the tens of thousands of children who were left orphaned and homeless. His article was published in the Elizabethville Echo on July 20, 1922.
The above photo was published in newspapers throughout the United States in order to encourage donations from Americans to the effort to feed, clothe, house, and educate tens of thousands of Armenian orphans. The old Russian army barracks at Alexandropol, Armenia, were converted to a group home and the children lined up to form the word “saved,” to thank Americans for their donations.
Future posts on this blog will focus on Margerum’s arrival in Armenia, the reports he sent back while there, and the fund raising efforts in the United States – including those conducted in the Lykens Valley.
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CONDITIONS IN ARMENIA AS SEEN BY OUR TOWNSMAN
Mr. Margerum Welcomed Home Last Saturday and Kindly Furnishes an Interesting Article About That Christian Country and Its People
To those interested in the greatest tragedy in history, the year 1915 will ever be remembered as the year when the Turks decided to settle the “Armenian Question” by a complete extermination of the race by massacre under the guise of deportation.
The part of the Turkish army in charge of the deportation program met with no resistance except in the northeastern provinces of that part of Turkey known as Turkish Armenia. At Van, a Turkish Armenian province close to the Russian frontier, in which there were more Armenians than Turks, three hundred Armenian men made a successful stand for three weeks against the attacking Turkish regiments until relieved by a part of the Russian army. The invasion of Turkish Armenia by the Russians made it possible for about five hundred thousand Armenians to escape to that eastern section of the Russian Caucasus known as Russian Armenia. At present, the survivors of that great company of refugees look to the people of the United States for food and clothing and to the soldiers of the Bolshevik army of Russia for their protection. Should the food supplies stop of the government in the Caucasus collapse, it is likely that soon thereafter the curtain will drop after the last short act of the Cross, by one of the Crescent.
The fleeing hosts of Armenians sought refuge in the cities of Alexandropol, Erivan, Karaklis, Dilijan, Djalai-Ogli and in the villages of the mountains and plains. Alexandropol and its surrounding planes are eight thousand feet above sea level. There the summers are short and the winters long and cold. There one sees no trees or shrubbery. Erivan lies at the foot of Mt. Ararat. Dilijan is known as the “Switzerland of Russia.”
When the refugees arrived in the Caucasus, an organization of Russian Armenians, called “The Friendly Society,” and another representing the then Imperial Government of Russia, expended all possible relief. A Mr. Smith was then the United States counsel and was stationed at Tiflis, Georgia, another part of the Caucasus and adjacent to Russian Armenia. Dr. McCallum, Canadian, Dr. Wilson and Mr. Hill of the United States, and a Captain Gracie, of Ireland, were engaged in educational or missionary work in Russian Armenia when the great wave of Armenians poured into that section.
Reports sent to the United States aroused an active and helpful interest and by December 1915 the five men named were acting together as the first field representatives of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, now the Near East relief. Dr. Wilson died while in the service. Dr. McCallum is still interested in the Caucasus organization.
Messrs. Reynolds, Maynard and Yarrow, pioneer missionaries or educators in Turkish Armenia, in the provinces from which the refugees fled, joined the group of workers and established headquarters at Erivan. That was in September, 1916. During the winter the organization undertook and extensive industrial program, which gave employment to the adult refugees. Factories were started at Erivan and Alexxandropol. Woolen cloth was woven and used to clothe the fifteen thousand children then on the relief lists. A school was opened at Erivan where a group of orphans were trained t become leaders and efficient workers in the organization.
In the Spring of 1917 the Russian Revolution emptied the Caucasus of Russian armies. That calamity brought new terrors to the refugees and increased demands upon the relief workers. In the Fall of 1917, six additional workers arrived from the States. The Turks had not yet come across but soon there were rumors that the Turks and Germans were to invade the Caucasus together. Counsel Smith ordered all relief workers out and by March1, 1918 the relief organization ceased to function as such.
The work of the committee was taken over by two independent and lucky American Y. M. C. A. workers, Elder and Arroll. They carried on against great odds until April 1919. By that time the Armistice was in effect and the British in possession of the Caucasus area. The future seemed promising of good. Thirty American works were returned and they functioned until August 1919 when Col. Haskel, of the U. S. Army, took over all relief activities, acting as high commissioner for the allied nations. He effected a military organization and with the combined funds subscribed by the several nations, including fifty million dollars, advanced to Armenia by the U. S. government, succeeded in salvaging what was then left of the much spent population. The thousands of orphaned children were place in abandoned Russian Army barracks at Alexandropol, Kars, and Erivan and general relief was extended on a big scale. Col. Haskel’s mission was primarily an emergency feeding proposition and ended with the distribution of money and supplied in hand. Col. Haskel probably completed his mission to his satisfaction by July 1, 1920 when he ordered all American women and all military men out of the Caucasus. He likely felt that Russian territory was not the best place in the world for army officers of any capitalistic country just at that time. The Bolsheviks were coming. Although there were no capitalists among the refugees the coming of the Red army did not offer any encouragement.
The male civilian workers formerly of the Haskel organization remained and reorganized as Near East relief representatives. There was one woman of the United States who declined to obey the evacuation order, Miss Myrtle Shane. It was my good fortune to work with her for nine months at Alexandropol. There is no element like fare of men included in the nature of Miss Shane, be he Turk, Russian or American. The newly organized group took over the orphanages but stopped general relief. Alexandropol was made headquarters and the center of activities.
When the English Army evacuated the Caucasus in the summer of 1920 much army equipment and ammunition was left in the hands of the Armenians who immediately organized for defense against the Turks. The rash of arms began without delay at Kars, a strongly fortified town on the Turkish side of the river Arpachy, a small stream which marks the boundary between Turkish and Russian Armenia. The Near East Relief had an orphanage containing 6,000 children at Kars. The Americans who were stationed at Kars during the battle saw things happen fast, ugly and threatening. The Armenian employees saw their army defeated. Some employees fled. The doctors, nurses, female attendants and most of the more important employees in the executive department remained with the children. They were taking desperate chances.
On November 6, 1920 the Turks advanced to Alexandropol, the great masses of refugees going on before like hunted rabbits. There were 3,000 children at the Alexandropol orphanage at that time. The N. E. R. activities were not interfered with by the Turks, except that they demanded the surrender of all Turkish Armenian men in the employ of the American committee. Many fled toward Karaklis and Tiflis by way of the the mountains. It was unfortunate however, that the good will of the Turks had to be bought with American blankets and other supplies intended for the Armenian orphans and representing vast sums of money contributed by the people of the United States. One of the most worrisome facts has always been that the Near East Relief must continually submit to all sorts of systems of graft, hold-up and extortion, a condition I have often imagined the people of the United States would not tolerate if properly known. American money and supplies being sent to the Near East Relief will never do such maximum good as the contributors rightfully expect until our government makes it plain to other governments concerned that the people of the United States will not stand having money intended for the oppressed go to the oppressors.
From Alexandropol a part of the invading army went into pursuit of the Armenian army toward Tiflis. Ahead of the armies went the thousands of civilian refugees. 8,000 entered Karaklis. There, both the Armenian army and the refugees were surrounded, 5,900 of those Armenian refugees and all that was left of the Armenian army was massacred at Karaklis. For three months I lived in a house in Karaklis facing the favorite field of slaughter.
By December 1920 Russian Soviet organizers had created local governing bodies throughout the Caucasus following a brief and successful campaign. The only armed resistance was undertaken by the Georgians. Russian Armenia and Azabajan were powerless. Thus ended the short life of the three trans-Caucasian republics, so recently recognized as such by the Allies. There was no clash between the Red army of Russia and the Turks, and for a while the Near East Relief workers had both Turk and Bolshevik to deal with at Alexandropol.
The youthful special commissars sent from Moscow to direct the Soviet activities in Armenia evidently failed to appreciate the value of the humanitarian efforts of the Americans, and overestimated their own ability to take over the work. They proceeded to arrest the Americans and to confiscate the supplies of two large orphanages called Kazachi Post and Polygon, one lying to the North and the other to the south of Alexandropol, each about two miles outside the city limits.
The entire headquarters staff and all of the Near East Relief workers connected with the Polygon orphanage, together with most of the workers of Kazachi Post, left in the night for, where do you suppose; for no other place than Kars, with Turkish soldiers to guard them on their way. Polygon was taken over by the Bolsheviks. On the morning after the hasty flight of the director general and his official family to Kars, the Bolsheviks proceeded to Kazachi Post to arrest the three members of the N. E. R. personnel who refused to leave their station. Before the Bolsheviks got their prisoners from the living room of the American personnel house, Turkish officers appeared and evicted the Bolshevik soldiers from the premises, By bribing the leading Turks and the leading Bolsheviks the N. E. R. workers managed to exist throughout the remaining winter months.
On February 1, 1921 the Turks decided they need the buildings being used as N. E. R. orphanages and ordered the Americans to get out, taking with them the 6,000 orphans, being careful to leave behind the orphanage equipment and supplies. Headquarters moved to Tiflis. By that time the bolsheviks realized their utter inability to feed and clothe the thousands of children at Polygon and reluctantly agreed that the N. E. R. should have the rights and privileges demanded if the orphanage work was to be continued. Thousands of innocent children died at Polygon during that awful winter while out of American hands. Thousands more could not stand the 24 hour trip in unheated box cars from Kars to Alexandropol in the zero weather of that February.
By April 1921, the Turkish army had “Mopped Up” Russian Armenia of all Turkish Armenians, emptying village after village between Alexandropol and Karaklis and all around the base of the great snow capped mountain Alleghus, meaning “The Eye of God.” Could that eye have been closed I wonder? On April 9 the Turks crossed the Arpachai and established themselves in the barracks at Kars. On April 10, thousands of oxen, cows, goats and sheep began to crawl out of the earth where they had been hidden for five months, the oxen to take their places in the plows that had been buried. The people who were left took new leases on life, altho it was too late now to sow any grain that could possibly yield a normal crop at harvest time.
About 500 yards from the Polygon orphanage there was a great underground powder magazine. On the day the Turks left, they, or somebody caused the contents of that magazine to explode. Stones rained upon Polygon. All windows and doors of the large buildings were blown in, absolutely destroyed. God only knows how it happened that no one was killed at Polygon that day.
At this time there were about 5,000 boys at Polygon, 6,000 girls at Kazachi Post, 1,600 boys and girls at Karaklis, 4,000 at Erivan and approximately 30,000 seeking admission throughout Armenia.
Dilijan in the mountains, 25 miles from Karaklis and the railroad between Karaklis and Erivan by pike, has long been famous as a Russian health resort, especially for tubercular patients. Early in this year the N. E. R. acquired a group of hospital buildings there, containing 350 beds and tubercular children from all the stations were transferred to that sanitarium. At the same time a large group of buildings two miles west of Alexandropol known as Servesky Barracks was given over to the N. E. R. by the Soviet government. After fitting the standing walls with roofs, windows and doors, those large buildings were used to house orphans infected with the dreaded eye disease known as trachoma, gathered in from all of the several orphanages.
Later in the year it was discovered so many trachoma cases had developed that it became necessary to make Alexandropol the trachoma center. Now the three great posts house 15,000 children all of whom either have trachoma or that form of conjunctivitis which makes the child a trachoma suspect to be treated accordingly.
in the fall of 1921 the Soviet government assigned to the N. E. R. a large group of Russian army barracks at Djalal Ogli. to reach Djalal Ogli from Alexandropol one must travel over road from Kerakji for twenty five miles in the direction opposite to that of Dilijan. A mountain pass 8,000 feet above sea level at the highest point must be traversed. The pass is closed by snow all winter. That presents an interesting problem in transportation. Karkalis is the transfer point for all children and supplies going to Djalal Ogli. About 4500 children can be taken care of at Djalal Ogli which is being filled with comparatively well children as rapidly as the buildings can be equipped. Djalal Ogli will likely take place over 1,500 children now in orphanages at Karaklis, and Karaklis will be discontinued as a orphanage in favor of the larger institution where the facilities for the care and education of the children are naturally better.
Ships bearing supplies for these great charity enterprises in Russian Armenia are unloaded at Batam, on the est coast of the Black Sea. From Batam the supplies are sent by rail to a central ware house at Kazachi Post, Alexandropol and distributed from there on requisitions from the district commanders of the several posts.
I have said the Turks left Armenia in April 9, 1921. They left the country stripped. There was little seed wheat or barley and the season for sowing well nigh past. At harvest time I saw no wheat or barley anywhere on those vast plains surrounding Alexandropol higher than eight inches and few heads containing more than six or eight gains. There was practically no rainfall throughout the entire growing season. Hence it became necessary to carry on a general relief program throughout the summer and the following winter, or, until the time for this season’s harvest. 30,000 people have been fed at Alexandropol, 21,000 at Karaklis, 12,000 at Erivan and 1,000 at Djalal Ogli. In April four car loads of corn grits were also shipped into the Caravansarai and Shanshideen districts, back in the mountains between Dilijan and in the direction of Baku.
I arrived at Polygon April 30, 1921, twenty on days after the Turks departed, where it was my glorious privilege to serve as district commander for nine months, assisted by four other Americans and 900 Armenian employees and with 5,000 children who regarded me as their father. The last three months of my service in the field were spent as district commander of Karaklis and Dilijan. I spent the week ends at the tuberculosis sanitarium at Dilijan, the most picturesque spot in the Caucasus.
I left Armenia with impressions concerning the Armeians quite the opposite of those gotten by some of the Americans who work among them. Had I touched only the commercial side of their nature I would probably feel different toward them. I lived with them. I left many real friends in Armenia.
It is true that most adult Armenians regard the N. E. R. much as our average citizen regards most any pubic utility company. Others think of the money and supplies sent over as being theirs, that they are justified in getting as much as they can while the getting is good. There is no earthly existence so uncertain as theirs and they feel there is no telling when the American relief work will end for one reason or another. Life to them has been one disappointment after another. And yet, with all, they are so unselfish, kindhearted, patient, brave and enduring. Their speech is clean. The women still regard chastity as a virtue. Family life measures up to the highest Christian ideals as we understand them. The Turkish Armenian girl is never kissed before her betrothal and then only by the man she weds.
Their spirit of hospitality among them is marvelous. The comfort of the guest is the first consideration of the host or hostess. They are all Christians with but one denomination and with but one interpretation of the scriptures, they have stood by their faith steadfastly from the beginning of the Christian era, truly a remarkable, wonderful, lovable people.
I received a box of clothes from Elizabethville while I was in the field. Until I got home, July 15, I was not aware that anything more had been done for the Armenians by the folks of my own home town. Now that I know the extent of your liberality, I extend my sincere congratulations to all who gave and beg them all to believe me when I write that your beneficiaries are truly appreciative and the cause for which you gave, most worthy.
FRED P. MARGERUM
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Story from Newspapers.com.
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