Note- According to the Constantinople’s Armenian Patriarchate’s Information Bureau, in the Vilayet of Erzerum, before the Armenian Genocide, the Armenians lived in 425 localities, had 406 churches and 76 monasteries, 322 schools with 21.348 schoolboys and schoolgirls. The total Armenian population was 202.391.
In February 1916, when the Russian army took control of the better part of the vilayet of Erzerum, there remained only a few dozen Armenian craftsmen and doctors, together with 200 or 300 survivors, most of whom had found refuge in the mountains of Dersim. As we have said, 33,000 people from the vilayet, almost all of them from the sancak of Bayazid, had fled to the Caucasus, and somewhat over 5,000 women and children had survived in the places to which they were deported: Mosul (1,600), Urfa (300) and Aleppo (1,000), with another 2,200 scattered through Syria and Mesopotamia. Virtually the whole of the surviving male population consisted of 120 men.
To be continued
Note- this chapter is from Raymond Kévorkian’s book ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: A Complete History, p. 317.
