İhsan Latif Paşa, commander of a Turkish
division at Sarıkamış, went to Siberia as a
prisoner but escaped in May 1915 and fled
via China, Japan, America and Greece,
arriving back in Istanbul in September
1915.
6.
The report of Şerif Bey, who was captured on 22
December
1914 at Sarıkamış:
Money was taken from the captured
Army Corps staff officers,
without a reciept being given in return, by a
senior-ranking
administrative staff officer
of either the Russian 1st Caucasus
Army Corps or by one at the Sarıkamış
station. In 1915 and
1916 our officers
made many appeals to the Krasnoyarsk
prisoner command in Siberia and these
appeals got as far at
the İrkutsk Army Corp Command but the money was not
returned. Plaston soldiers under the
command of Perjovalski
at Sarıkamış and Cossack horsemen of the Russian 1st
Caucasus Army Corps seized the personal horses, saddles
and riding gear of our
commanders and officers, along with
their overcoats, capes and other personal
clothing. Our
officers were left nearly
naked and suffered greatly on the
road.
The total loss was at least 2,000 liras.
Captain Kazlof, who was assigned to transport and guard the
captured
Army Corps Commander (İhsan Pasha) and his
entourage, did not provide them with
food for 3 days. As
our captured
soldiers were transported from Kars to Siberia,
packed like sardines in train
cars, they were not even allowed
to get out to relieve themselves. All along the way, our
prisoners were not
given food nor bread and many of them
died from weakness during the trip. They suffocated in the
filth. With İhsan Pasha’s permission, I filed a
complaint at
the city of Rostov with General
Prince Oldenberg, who was
the health inspector for all of Russia but the Prince
did not
take any action with regard to this calamity. There were
three separate theaters
for captivity in Russia: the Caucasus,
European Russia and Siberia. Besides
the Moslems living
in the Caucasus, there were Christians, comprised of
Armenians, Georgians and Russian migrants, and they were
all virulent enemies
of Turks. For this reason, our captive
officers and soldiers on Nargin
Island suffered horrible
treatment and their illness were not cared for. Our prisoners
who were transported to
European Russia and Siberia
experienced great suffering along the way.
* * *
7. The report of captured Dr. Captain Hakkı Mehmet
Efendi
of the 86th Regiment, 3rd Battalion:
When I was taken prisoner the
Russian Armenian soldiers were
about to kill me but some Russian soldiers intervened
in time to
prevent this. While I was
being transported to Kars and in the
hospital at Kars there were many injured
Ottoman soldiers and
I was assigned to care for them. There was nothing even close
to cleanliness
in the hospital. The Russians gave our
soldiers
black bread as their diet and this caused many to die. The sick
soldiers lived in lice-ridden
places. My appeals for cleaning
were
ignored. Many soldiers died from
typhus. Those who
were convalescing were
sent to Nargin Island, a barren, snake-
filled place with foul air and no
water. They sent me to Nargin
Island,
too, and I was ordered to live in a tent between the two
shacks where the
Russian murderers stayed. The food was
horrible. The prisoners live in filthy
places and many died from
cholera on the island. Afterwards, I was transported to Siberia
in a
filthy train car. In Siberia the Russian
officers and soldiers
would insult our officers and soldiers at every
opportunity.
Because of the filth and
lack of food in Siberia two-thirds of
our soldiers died.
* * *
8. The report of Captain Faik Efendi, who was
captured in
December 1914:
I was taken prisoner at
Sarıkamış. At night, the Russians
transported us 3 at a time in two-wheeled garbage carts to the
station at Selim
village, where 150 of us officers were stuffed
into this station’s small
waiting room for two days. Then, they
shipped us, officers and soldiers alike, in animal train wagons.
At Tbilisi, the officers were put into other
wagons – 13
officers in a 4-person compartment. For a month we traveled
like this to Kamishlov
station on the Siberian border (near
Yekaterinburg). Fever was rampant among us officers because
of the filth and crowding. And although
the Russians were
supposed to give officers
1.5 rubles a day, they only gve 75
kopeks up to Kamishlov. Just for a show for the local Russian
populace, once every 3 days they permitted us to have a hot
meal. Our soldiers’ plight became evermore sad and
regrettable.
Our soldiers were stuffed
50-60 into locked train wagons with
a 30-person capacity, with no chance for
the prisoners to relieve
themselves. In
the course of the month-long train trip, our
soldiers only had a hot meal 3
times. Diarreha was rampant
amid the
filth and cold of the train wagons and it was impossible
to even approach the
wagons because of the stench. Each day
2 or 3 of our soldiers died in each wagon.
Complaints lodged
with the Russian commander in charge of the transport
by our
senior officers were answered with the promise that the situation
would
be examined after a few more stations were passed but
the calamity nevertheless
continued.
At İrkutsk In the middle of
April 1918, I went to talk with Graf
Lundrof, who was the representative of the
Swedish Red Cross
about our prisoners. Londrof showed me a report he had written
in German about the tragic
condition of Turkish soldiers
transported from Sarıkamış to Siberia in January
1915:
“In the middle of January 1915, a long train with its wagons
filled with
Ottoman prisoners, stuffed on top of each other in
locked wagons that were
unapproachable because of the
crowds and the filth, arrived at the İrkutsk
station. The
prisoners inside looked
un-human, weak and yellow from
hunger, with sunken cheeks and their cheek bones
sticking
through. They were almost
lifeless, nearly without any
clothes, in bare feet and appearing to be very
ill. Such a
scene was a stain on
humanity and heartbreaking to see.”
When we arrived in Kamishlov, it was decided
that the soldiers
would be sent to Nermi and the officers to İrbit. An Austrian
doctor later told me that most of
the soldiers sent to Nermi
died of typhus. After us officers were displayed for a week in
İrbit in front of Moslems who came from
Kazan, Orenburg,
Samara, Ufa and Sibirsk, we were sent to Krasnoyarsk. I was
ill so they put me in the hospital,
which was a wine factory.
Prisoners were
dying from sickness that they could have
withstood if only a modicum of care
and treatment had been
given. In March
1915, I was sent to Omsk, where the
headquarters, named “Kerapus”, was a
mold-ridden barracks
with a stone floor and murderous inmates. The prisoners
were bare-footed, left hungry
or made to eat pork, which is
forbidden by our religion. The Russians answered complaints
about with
the response that the prisoners must eat the pork.
They subsequently sent us to the town of İstronski
in Siberia.
Aleksandr Kerensky, headed the Russian provisional
government from July to October 1917.
The trip from Omsk to here
took 15 days and we stayed there
for 4 months.
The German POWs were on upper floor of the
barracks and we were
below. There was no concern for the
soldiers’ meals. When we complained to
the Russian officers
their response was “it’s our duty to look after the
soldiers.
You have no right nor any authority to complain.” In
July we
were transported from here to İrkutsk and we stayed there for
3
years. Although there was no proper
clothing for the soldiers,
at least their meals were pretty good. When the Kerensky
regime came to power (July
1917) everything went to hell. No
one
paid any attention to the prisoners.
Because of the
Bolsheviks, any
kind of amenity was taken away. Anymore,
we didn’t get any regular salary from the Russians. Food
scarcity made it impossible for us to
fill our stomachs. The
Slovaks resumed
their torture of prisoners.
* * *
//END of PART III//
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