Surviving the Forgotten Genocide by John Minassian

Author:John Minassian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2020-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

Prisoners of War

I was instructed to socialize with no one, not even at work, and especially not outside the office. The next day the workers put up a white canvas tent for me between the office and a bakery next door. I was proud of my new assignment in the bakery. This shop produced the daily bread for workers, prisoners of war, laborers on the railroad, and officials. There were prisoners from Russia, England, and many from India. It seemed that most of them still wore the clothes they were captured in. Some were Kurd refugees from the Russian border.1

My job was to give each worker his weekly ration and a daily loaf of bread. Sometimes we would supply the German officials with steak; the leftover meat went to the workers and prisoners of war. The Hindus got a live goat for each group. The Hindus insisted on baking their own bread with flour that we supplied them.

At noon, I would take a horse-drawn wagon loaded with sacks of bread to the workers on the railroad line, call their names from my list, mark their daily work, and hand them their loaf of bread. A young man in his midtwenties helped me pass around the bread to these hungry people. He looked like either a Kurd or an army escapee. His red beard made him look older and uglier, which is why they called him Sakally (bearded). Without him, I would have been mobbed by these people, which is why I never left the wagon. He was very nice and friendly and wanted to talk with me, but Mr. Dedeian and his right-hand man had warned me never to engage in a conversation with strangers.

A few days after my arrival, Dr. Hoffman, the chief engineer, came to see me. He spoke in hesitant Turkish, although he knew that I spoke English, too. He wanted to put me in charge of about twenty English prisoners of war who would supply wood for the train crews day and night. Mr. Dedeian told me that I had impressed the chief engineer.

The most unusual person I ever met was Haji. He was forty-five years old when he took the job with the German railroad company. Born in Diarbakir, he had always lived in Aleppo. They called him Haji,* as they did all who had visited Jerusalem. He had the tender heart of a child, but could be mean and tricky. He would warn me against all contacts. In this desert haven were secret army agents who spied all over the territory.

“You’re lucky that you are not an Armenian,” he said, winking at me. “I am also a Syrian from Aleppo!” But at night, when we were alone in the storeroom and the doors were locked, we would speak Armenian, very soft and low. And when we heard the steps of the night watchman, we would start giving orders in Turkish. Mr. Dedeian spoke Armenian well, although his mother tongue was Turkish, because Turkish is spoken all over his state of Marash, just northwest of Aleppo.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.