III-- [February 10, 1903] 

TURKISH ATROCITIES

NARRATIVES OF FUGITIVES

MURDER, OUTRAGE, AND TORTURE

CALLING AT A TURKISH OUTPOST

[Sofia, Feb. 4]

Between the Macedonian fugitives in Dubnitza and its neighborhood, and those in the monastery of Rilo and the town of the same name, there is a distinction worth marking. Among the former the women and children are nearly as numerous as the men. The latter are nearly all men. Almost the entire mass of fugitives in South-Western Bulgaria in South-Western Bulgaria have come from the districts of Djumaia and Rasluck, which adjoin one another, and a coterminous with the Bulgarian frontier. The snow-covered passes in the Rasluck direction are so much more arduous in comparison with those on the Djumaian side that, as a rule, men only have ventured to face them. Ten men from Rasluck, more dead than alive, reached the monastery the night of my arrival there. Like hundreds in whose footsteps they followed, they had, during several nights, slept in the snows, and had eaten their last crust of black bread long before the end of their flight. In ordinary times they could have travelled the distance between their two villages (Godlevo and Gornodraglisht) in eight hours.

Three refugee priests, also from the Rasluck district, were present during the interrogation of the ten in one of the rooms of the monastery. "I knew them; I buried them in the same grave," said Costadin Savoff, one of the priests, in reference to five Macedonians, alleged, by one of the newly arrived, to have been robbed and killed by Turkish soldiers. The five were returning home with money earned in Roumania. Stoian Ivanoff, another priest, declared that in his own village of Batchevo, in the Rasluck district, he knew six women who had been criminally assaulted.

To come to a more recent date: On the 17th of January, said Ivan Nikoloff, one of the new arrivals, "eight men were massacred in my village; I saw their bodies." The same man charged a Turkish officer, Mehemet Effendi, and his soldiers, with having assaulted a number of women, of whom he mentioned the following by name--Elena Ivanova, Maria Giorgeva, Susanna Stoianoff. I can make no more than a general allusion to a species of insult--parading women in a state of semi-nudity--to which many refugees from other villages besides the other above-named two have testified.

AN ILL-FATED VILLAGE

At two small villages between the monastery and the town of Rilo there are over a hundred and forty refugees from the Djumaian village, Bistritza--one of the most ill-fated villages, if fugitives' reports are true, in all Macedonia. Constantin Petreff, a refugees from one of the two villages, said that his father had been killed. Two men standing beside him declared they had been beaten for not surrendering arms and provisions which they did not possess.

Between the town of Rilo and the village of Sapareva Banya, where my tour of the refugees ended last Wednesday, I took down the depositions of fugitives from sixteen Macedonian villages, most of which are situated in the administrative sub-divisions of Rasluck and Djumaia. Sapareva Banya, a two-hours' rapid drive from Dubnitza, is supplied with provisions and clothing for the fugitives by their representatives of the Relief Committee at that depot. Sapareva Banya is famed throughout Bulgaria for its hot springs, from which it derives the second part of its name. There are several Banyas in the country; a source of natural wealth which, I am told, a Bavarian commercial company has undertaken to exploit. But to return to the town of Rilo. The first refugee to tell us his story was Teodor Ivanoff, from a village named Gradivo. The soldiers, he said, "killed my father, and threw his body into the river. They went to his house to search for arms, and found none." He also said that the soldiers burns some houses in the village, and subjected two women known to him personally--Maria Stoichova and Stoianka Peshova--to the fate of which I have already mentioned a few instances only out of many. All this happened, he stated, in the middle of November. The next witness, Jonantchoff Giorgiov, from Bistritza, gave a much longer list of instances of the last-named crime, as having been perpetrated in his village. He knew the victims, and gave us their names, which we took down, but which I need not here repeat. As he named these victims his fellow refugees, who were standing about, affirmed that what he said was true. They also alleged that in the same large village Petre Yanoff, Christo Pavloff, Kitanz Passeff, Christo Ivanchoff, Giorgio Ivanoff had been killed on the spot, that Petre Ivanoff, a boy of seven, and Ilya Christoo, a boy of nine, had been bayoneted; and that when they themselves took to flight, in the middle of November, nearly three months ago, their village was all but deserted.

A PITIABLE STORY

The most pitiable story told us by fugitives in this little group was that of two women, one from Bistritza, the other from Strumkichiflik village. The former had only just arrived at Rilo. She had been three days and nights in the mountains. This had not been her first attempt to escape into Bulgaria. Two months earlier she had fled with her husband and two children. They were separated. The father and the children succeeded in crossing the border. She now rejoined them. To the statement of the latter, who carried her sick child in her arms, I care to make no more than a general allusion. Separated from her husband she had fallen victim to a number of Turkish ruffians. She is one of the more recent arrivals, having reached Rilo three weeks ago. I may here add that the particulars of the abominable kind of crime to which I have alluded, and the commission of which is affirmed in most of the allegations I have taken down, are recorded in the reports drawn up for the Relief Committee by its Secretary, Mr. Scharprachikov, who accompanied the President of the Committee, Madame Bakhmeteff, during her journeys to Dubnitza, Rilo, and other places.

Among the hundreds of refugees in the town of Rilo there was a band of fifteen who had reached this place two days before my arrival. They had come from the village of Serbinovo. "A large company of soldiers," said they, "quartered themselves in our village; they ordered us to deliver up our wheat and our other stores; when we had no more to give, they beat us." One of the fifteen, Ivan Lazareff, said that he had seen many children kicked in the village by the soldiers. There were but few in Serbinovo, he added, who had not been ill-used in one way or another, for no just cause, by the troops in possession. His wife, being physically incapable of a journey over the mountains, remained in Serbinovo. So far Ivan Lazareff. Others, standing beside him, named three young villagers--Dimitri Sokoulof, Athanas Manchoff, and Petko Petreff--the soles of whose feet had been seared with red-hot iron. Whereupon another man in the group mentioned a fourth. Finally, they said that on one occasion two men of the village were paraded, each with a Turkish soldier on his back, for the amusement of the riders and the humiliation of the Christians. There is much more to the same general effect. But the foregoing instances will give the reader some idea of the causes which, according to their own account, have compelled all these hundreds of fugitives to seek refuge in Bulgaria.

OUR HOST POPE ALEXANDER

For interrogation, as also to be photographed by my friend's "snapshot" camera, the refugees in the town of Rilo were mustered in a large enclosure attached to the residence of my good host, "Pope" Alexander. His reverence, as good a man as a certain Pope of the same name (in the Latin Church) was the reverse, is a monk of the great Monastery of Rilo. He is entrusted with a general supervision over the fugitives in this place. (By the way, I hope all the photographs I have already posted to you may have reached you. I have reason to suspect that to some officials of artistic temperament on the postal route between London and the Near East a packet of photographs presents an irresistible temptation. I respect the taste. But to appropriate one's photographs is a Bulgarian atrocity which no Correspondent can overlook.) With his flowing brown beard and moustaches, his thick, brown locks falling halfway down his back (many a fashionable Western lady would cheerfully sign a long cheque for those monastic tresses), his tall black hat, sweeping black gown, baggy trousers, gay sash, and corded sandals, Pope Alexander was a picture of the better, or at all events the tidier, sort of Orthodox monk. His domicile is exceptionally neat and tidy; a tasteful achievement it is, entirely in wood, with a small, projecting arcade on its first floor.

At early breakfast--chota hazri, "little breakfast," as they call it in Indiana--the glass of water and teaspoonful of jam are followed by Turkish coffee. Just now, however, being fresh from the mountains, we are doing marvelous justice to the good Pope's roast and boiled, to his cunning preparations of eggs, honey, and so forth. We are giving our waiter a good amount of exercise. Our waiter is Pope Alexander himself. He whips off our emptied plates, fetches fresh ones, hauls in his numerous courses, from saddle of mutton to butter in a lordly dish. He does it with the deftness of a woman and the grace of a courtier. And all the time Pope Alexander is smoking--smoking genuine Bulgarian tobacco. Let it be said that much of the "Turkish" tobacco smoked in London is not Turkish, but Bulgarian, grown in the districts of Rilo, Katcherinovo, and Dubnitza.

A BRIDGE LIKE THE TURKISH EMPIRE

Our next halting place on this return journey was Katcherinovo, where only a small body of fugitives are sheltered. Katcherinovo is situated on the edge of a fertile, beautiful plain, and at the foot of the hills that form an offshoot from the great range of Mount Rilo. Right opposite Katcherinovo is the village of Barokomo. This village is in Turkey. A distance of only two-thirds of a mile separates it from its Bulgarian neighbour. Between the two flows the river of Rilo, onwards to the Struma, into which it falls, at a point two or three miles further down. A wooden bridge across the Rilo is the connecting link between Bulgaria and Macedonia. It is not enough to say that the river or that the bridge is the boundary. One must be more precise than that. Lack of exactitude on this point might easily bring upon one dire consequences. The boundary line between Bulgaria and Macedonia--between Europe and Turkey; between barbarism and civilization--in this south-western region is drawn in the middle of this rather rickety wooden bridge--transversely, of course. I must apologise to the Lion of Bulgaria for the word rickety. The Lion's half is as strong, is kept in as good repair, as it is possible to be. A battery could trout without risk on the Bulgarian half.

But Brother Turk's half? The less said about it the better. Or the more said about it the better--if only Brother Turk could be jogged up to do something. Brother Turk's half is, like the Turkish empire itself, sick. For repairing the Turkish half, what is the use of "nine shillings and threepence" (the English equivalent of the sum mentioned to me by the Young Bulgarian lieutenant in charge of the detachment at his own end of the bridge)? "Nine and threepence," the latest amount granted by the responsible Turkish authority! But how did the Bulgarian lieutenant know that? Perhaps it was the Bulgarian outpost's little joke. The Bulgarian sentry on the bridge could not have been told it by the Turkish sentry. For the military regulation, kept with a religious scrupulosity, is that the sentries must not exchange a syllable. It is curious to watch the two sentries at their monotonous task, as they rub shoulders in passing each other, or trudge mechanically one nearly behind the other. They do not interchange a glance even. They are, I suppose, so used to it that they have become unconscious of each other's presence. Across and across again, over the frozen boards, the two watchmen, with shouldered arms, trudge all day long and all the night as if in a half-dream. But Brother Turk would wake up sharp enough, and bring down his bayonet in the twinkling of an eye, if you placed your rash foot on his side of the sacred chalk-mark, as I may be allowed to designate it.

THE TYPICAL TURKISH OFFICER

So we, the visitors, communicate to the Turkish sentry our desire to pass into his territory (half a yard would do it), and to pay our respects, in person, to his commanding officer. That is to say, the Bulgarian lieutenant did it, in his own name and ours. The message was passed on to the Turkish officers' quarters, sixty yards off, or so. The commanding officer was absent inspecting an outpost. While he was galloped for we took stock of this interesting bridge, wondering what would happen if its sick half should subside one of these days. Brother Turk, going down with his half, would find the Rilo the reverse of inviting in icy weather such as this. Brother Bulgar would find his occupation gone, for where would be the use in guarding a bridge which nobody could cross? That would be labor wasted, and the Bulgarian Government hates extravagance. Then "the Powers"--Les Puissances--would have to call in the Delimitation Commissioners, who are supposed to have finished their labours a great many years ago. But while we are musing on the perplexities of human affairs comes a clattering of horse hoofs, and in an instant the Turkish commanding officer, dismounting at his end of the bridge, comes striding along, stops at the sacred chalk-mark, shakes the Bulgarian officer cordially by the hand, honours the Correspondent of "The Daily News" in the same hearty manner, does the same with my friend from the F. O. in Sofia, and invites us into Turkish territory and to coffee and cigarettes. And we so sojourn, for a short space, in the Turkish Empire, and the C. O.'s hospitable quarters. To say that nothing can exceed the courtesy and the hospitality of the typical Ottoman officer would be to repeat a common-place, with the general truthfulness of which every traveller in the Turkish Empire is familiar. Of course, it is no less true that under provocation, under orders, the typical Ottoman is capable of anything.

The Turkish post at Barakovo is one of twenty-one detachments distributed over eighteen or nineteen miles of the frontier facing Rilo and Katcherinovo. The Bulgarians have only seven posts within the same limits. Traffic between Macedonia and Katcherinovo has all but ceased since the beginning of October. But in spite of all the vigilance of the Turkish outposts, agents of the Revolutionary Societies in Macedonia succeed in crossing, at night, from Bulgaria with may things more tangible than news for the leaders of the "insurrection."