“MY PERSONAL REFLECTION DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR”

What is presented in the story, is a true story, I myself was an eyewitness

Persian known writer, father of the Iranian novel Seyed Mohammad Ali Dzhamalzadeh in 1915 by coincidence, was moving from Berlin to Baghdad through Turkey and became an eyewitness to the massacre of the Armenians. Impressed by these infernal scenes, he wrote his famous story “My personal reflection during the First World War.”

“At this time, the Turkish government was in the hands of the Young Turks. I went to a village. And from that moment I witnessed a series of brutal torment and torture, committed against the Armenians by Turkish soldiers, and the consequences of which, as you know, was the massacre of millions of Armenians. I met numerous groups of Armenians, led by Turkish armed gendarmes, who led them on foot to perdition. Those who lagged behind the group, were immediately killed. Armenian girls and women, so as not to fall into the hands of the Turks, shorn their hair.

We stayed in one place, where a large Armenian caravan under the supervision of Turkish officers also had stopped. One woman, as a walking skeleton, came to me and asked in French for food, instead offering two diamonds. I did not take them, but gave her some food, though we also had it very little. Another old man came up and said in French: “God, when all this bloodshed will end? This is not war, this is “exterminasion” “, ie complete destruction. It turned out, this was a professor at a university in Istanbul.

These were horrible days. Later, when I moved permanently to Geneva, I learned that in those days with the help of the Red Cross, some Swiss families brought orphaned Armenian children in Switzerland, and many of them even adopted these children. And today only in Geneva there are many Armenians, who had survived from the cruel fate, that are now known doctors, engineers, architects.

Yes, that’s true humanism! God bless that a man had a conscience and a healthy mind, and constantly moves this way. ”

Geneva, 1972, May
Seyed Mohammad ALI DZHAMALZADEH