Testimony: Lazaros G. Macrides

Those of us who were between the ages of 16 and 60 were drafted into the Turkish army. Our women and children and the older men were placed temporarily in homes and orphanages until the opportunity offered to dispose of them in the approved Turco-Teuton fashion, which in this instance turned out to be by wholesale drowning. The unfortunate survivors of deportation were towed out for several miles into the Black Sea and then calmly dumped overboard just like so much garbage. None of them survived. German efficiency has simply organized the natural brutality of the Turk and made it many times more effective than ever before. I should think that at the most conservative estimate at least 1,000,000 of my fellow countrymen have perished miserably through the organized cruelty of this Turco Teutonic alliance. The only hope of the future lies in America.

Deportation in Asia Minor is a euphemism for the most heartless and relentless cruelty. It means the loss of home, business property and every personal possession. It means being driven into the desert places, forced to march at the point of the bayonet until strength is exhausted; being refused shelter, food, and drink; subject to outrage and calculated cruelty; facing always, death by violence or from the cumulative effect of exposure, sickness and starvation. The people are herded and goaded like animals. The desperate refugees subsist chiefly on offal; graze like cattle on the roots of scanty grass tufts that push their dry and dusty stems above the sandy soil. It is impossible for words to give an adequate idea of the tragedy of bare existence under such awful conditions. Many dropped by the roadside, to die where they fell. Others that I know of went insane. And that was only at the beginning. They are still marching on!

Note: Lazaros George Macrides of Trebizond escaped from Turkey on a Russian ship. He went to America where he joined the Relief Committee for Greeks in Asia Minor.