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AFTER THE GENOCIDE, A MARKET FOR ARMENIAN BONES?
Worldcrunch
March 27 2014
A Turkish writer tries to piece together a particular episode that
offers a grisly European postscript to the slaugther of the Armenians
last century.
Baskin Oran (2014-03-27)
Manuel Kirkyasaryan, an Armenian from the southern Turkish city of
Adana, had recorded his memories to tape before dying in Sydney in
1997. His son Stepan recently found the last tape he recorded before
his death. We are adding it to the 5th edition of my book M.K. Adlı
Cocugun Tehcir Anilari ("The Deportation Memories of the Child named
M.K."). One particular episode required further research, which I
first present from the original recording:
"And we said: this is the desert of Deir ez-Zor; there is more to it.
We are going on for now. It was the year 1925. The time is summer. I
was at the workshop of the garage of the Topcuyans in Aleppo where
I worked.
One day a large automobile came to the garage; loaded. There were
some things loaded on the top of it with sacks [stacked] high. I said,
'That is a big load. Is it not heavy?' And they told me: 'No, it is not
heavy; it is light. It looks like a lot, but it is light.' I asked:
'What is inside the sacks?' They told me: 'There was a time when the
Armenian migrants went to the deserts of Deir ez-Zor; I mean they took
them and killed them [there]. Their bones are what is inside.' I said:
'What will they do with this?' They told me: 'A company came from
Europe. They will gather these bones and take them to the port of
Iskenderun and send to Europe by ship.'
I asked: 'What will they do?' They said: 'We do not know that part.'
They would probably use them for something. I came across scenes
like this twice. There, the Europeans used the Armenians as tools;
they were even taking their lives and bones for their interest."
Looking further
This is such a horrifying event that I could not believe it. I thought
maybe they made a joke to the young Kirkyasaryan. However, he says
he saw this twice. And we do know that bare bones are actually large
in mass but light in weight.
Then I was shocked by a message by the devrimcikaradeniz.com website,
where details of the same event were written. It was a summary of the
book written by historian Vlassis Agtzidis that used Greek, American
and French sources and newspapers.
It tells of a ship that sailed December 13, 1924 from the Turkish
port of Mudanya to Marseille, France via Thessaloniki, Greece. There
are no documents onboard about the cargo, but the porters discover
this mysterious load is human bones.
This can be considered normal; things are chaotic in Greece which
just experienced the "Asia Minor Catastrophe" and accepted migrants
as large as a fraction of its population in addition. The people who
ordered the load from Marseille must have intervened.
A story is published in the December 23, 1924 edition of the New York
Times with a Paris dateline that tells of a British registered ship
named Zan that arrived in the port of Marseille, carrying 400 tons
of human bones, suspected of being the remains of those "killed in
the Asia Minor massacres." There were reports that an investigation
would be opened.
The same details are described in the Midi daily's December 24, 1924
edition, this time with a Marseille dateline: "These bones are coming
from the Armenian killing fields in Turkey and Asia Minor."
Neither article was printed on the front page of the newspapers -
though we must remember that Europeans then may have been inured to
massacres in the aftermath of World War I. But the facts reported
fit in with the recording of Kirkyasaryan's testimony in the 1970's:
the same years and tons of human bones that must have come from
mass graves.
Who sold and bought the bones? And why?
What would the British and French industrialists who imported this
"product" do with it? I consulted a medical professor who said bones
were used to produce glue, gelatin glass frames and, excuse me,
animal feed (using bones for animal feed is banned by the European
Union after the spread of mad cow disease). The bones would be a
pretty cheap "raw material."
So, who is the exporter? The title of the devrimcikaradeniz.com is very
problematic: "How the Kemalists Sold 50,000 Human Bones to the French?"
It is not possible that the Kemalists (the Committee of Union and
Progress members) took part in this. It is possible that they would
want the bones out of their sight because it would relieve their
consciences, but exporting Greek bones would mean announcing the
massacres of 1913-16 to the West more clearly than before. Moreover,
who could find a Muslim exporter in 1924?
The story cites French and British soap firms as the buyers. However,
according to my friend, the production of soap is made by fresh bones
and its supplements (meat, fat, intestines, etc) from slaughterhouses;
not from dry bones dug from the ground.
Excuse this focus on such a filthy matter. The "producers" of these
bones are the members of the Committee of Union and Progress of
course. But what's new in this story is the "merchants," and they are
the same ones cited in Manuel Kirkyasaryan's first-hand testimony:
"There, the Europeans used the Armenians as tools; they were even
taking their lives and bones for their interest."
http://www.worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/after-the-genocide-a-market-for-armenian-bones-/deportation-massacre-remains-history-kemal/c1s15372/#.UzSkFsaKDIU
Worldcrunch
March 27 2014
A Turkish writer tries to piece together a particular episode that
offers a grisly European postscript to the slaugther of the Armenians
last century.
Baskin Oran (2014-03-27)
Manuel Kirkyasaryan, an Armenian from the southern Turkish city of
Adana, had recorded his memories to tape before dying in Sydney in
1997. His son Stepan recently found the last tape he recorded before
his death. We are adding it to the 5th edition of my book M.K. Adlı
Cocugun Tehcir Anilari ("The Deportation Memories of the Child named
M.K."). One particular episode required further research, which I
first present from the original recording:
"And we said: this is the desert of Deir ez-Zor; there is more to it.
We are going on for now. It was the year 1925. The time is summer. I
was at the workshop of the garage of the Topcuyans in Aleppo where
I worked.
One day a large automobile came to the garage; loaded. There were
some things loaded on the top of it with sacks [stacked] high. I said,
'That is a big load. Is it not heavy?' And they told me: 'No, it is not
heavy; it is light. It looks like a lot, but it is light.' I asked:
'What is inside the sacks?' They told me: 'There was a time when the
Armenian migrants went to the deserts of Deir ez-Zor; I mean they took
them and killed them [there]. Their bones are what is inside.' I said:
'What will they do with this?' They told me: 'A company came from
Europe. They will gather these bones and take them to the port of
Iskenderun and send to Europe by ship.'
I asked: 'What will they do?' They said: 'We do not know that part.'
They would probably use them for something. I came across scenes
like this twice. There, the Europeans used the Armenians as tools;
they were even taking their lives and bones for their interest."
Looking further
This is such a horrifying event that I could not believe it. I thought
maybe they made a joke to the young Kirkyasaryan. However, he says
he saw this twice. And we do know that bare bones are actually large
in mass but light in weight.
Then I was shocked by a message by the devrimcikaradeniz.com website,
where details of the same event were written. It was a summary of the
book written by historian Vlassis Agtzidis that used Greek, American
and French sources and newspapers.
It tells of a ship that sailed December 13, 1924 from the Turkish
port of Mudanya to Marseille, France via Thessaloniki, Greece. There
are no documents onboard about the cargo, but the porters discover
this mysterious load is human bones.
This can be considered normal; things are chaotic in Greece which
just experienced the "Asia Minor Catastrophe" and accepted migrants
as large as a fraction of its population in addition. The people who
ordered the load from Marseille must have intervened.
A story is published in the December 23, 1924 edition of the New York
Times with a Paris dateline that tells of a British registered ship
named Zan that arrived in the port of Marseille, carrying 400 tons
of human bones, suspected of being the remains of those "killed in
the Asia Minor massacres." There were reports that an investigation
would be opened.
The same details are described in the Midi daily's December 24, 1924
edition, this time with a Marseille dateline: "These bones are coming
from the Armenian killing fields in Turkey and Asia Minor."
Neither article was printed on the front page of the newspapers -
though we must remember that Europeans then may have been inured to
massacres in the aftermath of World War I. But the facts reported
fit in with the recording of Kirkyasaryan's testimony in the 1970's:
the same years and tons of human bones that must have come from
mass graves.
Who sold and bought the bones? And why?
What would the British and French industrialists who imported this
"product" do with it? I consulted a medical professor who said bones
were used to produce glue, gelatin glass frames and, excuse me,
animal feed (using bones for animal feed is banned by the European
Union after the spread of mad cow disease). The bones would be a
pretty cheap "raw material."
So, who is the exporter? The title of the devrimcikaradeniz.com is very
problematic: "How the Kemalists Sold 50,000 Human Bones to the French?"
It is not possible that the Kemalists (the Committee of Union and
Progress members) took part in this. It is possible that they would
want the bones out of their sight because it would relieve their
consciences, but exporting Greek bones would mean announcing the
massacres of 1913-16 to the West more clearly than before. Moreover,
who could find a Muslim exporter in 1924?
The story cites French and British soap firms as the buyers. However,
according to my friend, the production of soap is made by fresh bones
and its supplements (meat, fat, intestines, etc) from slaughterhouses;
not from dry bones dug from the ground.
Excuse this focus on such a filthy matter. The "producers" of these
bones are the members of the Committee of Union and Progress of
course. But what's new in this story is the "merchants," and they are
the same ones cited in Manuel Kirkyasaryan's first-hand testimony:
"There, the Europeans used the Armenians as tools; they were even
taking their lives and bones for their interest."
http://www.worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/after-the-genocide-a-market-for-armenian-bones-/deportation-massacre-remains-history-kemal/c1s15372/#.UzSkFsaKDIU