At Sivas an instance was related of a teacher in the Sivas Teachers College. a gentle. refined Armenian girl. speaking English. knowing music. attractive by the standards of any land. who was given in enforced marriage to the beg of a neighboring Kurdish village. a filthy. ragged ruffian. three times her age. with whoa she still has to live and by whom she has borne a child. In the orphanage there maintained under American relief auspices there were 150 " brides." being girls. many of them of tender age. who had been living as wives In Moslem homes and had been rescued. Of the female refugees among some 75.000 repatriated from Syria and Mesopotamia. we were informed at Aleppo that 40 per cent are infected with venereal disease from the lives to which they have been forced. The women of this race were free from such diseases before the deportation. Mutilation. violation. torture. and death have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys. and the traveler in that region Is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages. Yet immunity from it all might have been purchased for any Armenian girl or comely woman by abjuring her religion and turning Moslem.
Keywords matched
deportation refugees