Or something more horrible had happened: they were compelled to leave on the road their aged parents who were unable to walk and to continue their way to death with tearful eyes and under the shower of whip strokes of the Turkish policemen. These details have been narrated and sung by Gayane Atoorian (born in 1909), a woman from the town of Zeytoun with a tattoo on sher face and by many others:

That is why, in order not to deny their faith, not to become the wife of a Turk and not to bear Turkish children, the Armenian girls "threw themselves hand in hand into the river Euphrates," sang the memorable narrator Mariam Baghdishian and, remembering her sad childhood, wiped her tears:

That historical event has also been expressed in poetic language and converted into a verse:

The people in despair have expressed their fury with malediction:

Or

The Armenian people have cursed also the leaders of the Turkish government, Talaat and Enver, who had systematically organized this monstrous carnage for the Armenian people:

The deportation and the massacre had already embraced not only Western Armenia and Cilicia, but also the Armenian-inhabited localities of Eastern and Central Anatolia, in other words, the entire Ottoman Turkey.

The executioner of the Armenian people, Talaat pasha, was insolently boasting that he had solved the Armenian problem in a few months, something Sultan Hamid himself had been unable to do for decades.

During these tragic days, however, the bold spirit of heroism, coming from the depth of centuries and inherited with the blood, reawoke in the soul of the Armenian people, who preferred "cognizant death" to slavery and decided to withstand violence with force.

In July of the same year (1915) almost all the inhabitants of the seven villages of Moussa Dagh decided not to obey to the order of the disastrous deportation.

Movses Panossian (born in 1885), the 104-year-old participant of the heroic battle of Moussa Dagh has communicated us the oath of the inhabitants of Moussa Dagh: "I was born here, I will die here. I will not go to die as a slave; I will die here the gun in my hand, but I will not become an emigrant." This historical event has also been confirmed by Movses Balabanian (born in 1891) and Hovhannes Ipredjian (born in 1896), who had also taken part in the heroic battle of Moussa Dagh.

Everybody was filled with the feeling of protest and vengeance. Men and women, children and old people left their properties and ascended the unapproachable summit of Moussa Dagh to withstand the attack and to fight against the innumerable soldiers of the enemy. During fifty-three days violent battles were fought under the command of Yessayi Yaghoobian, Petros Demlakian and Tigran Andreassian. Four serious battles took place during this period: The enemy concentrated new forces to chastise the rebellious Armenians. The provisions and armaments of the Moussa Dagh people were exhausted. Being in despair and hoping to receive aid from the sea they joined white bed-sheets together, they wrote on one of them "The Christians are in danger, save us!" and on the other they drew the sign of salvation of the Red Cross and displayed them on the mountain slope overlooking the sea.

On the 5^th of September, the French battleship "Guichen" passing offshore in the Mediterranean Sea noticed them and slowed down its course. With a metallic box, containing a petition written in foreign language and hung from his neck, Movses Greguian jumped into the sea. He reached the ship swimming and, crossing himself, presented the letter to the captain. On the 14^th of September, the French steamship "Jeanne d'Arc," escorted by British battleships, approached Moussa Dagh and taking on more than four thousand inhabitants of Moussa Dagh, transported them to Port-Said, where they were sheltered under tarpaulin tents.

The Moussa Dagh people lived in Port-Said for four years and they earned their living by comb-making, spoon-making, rug-making, embroidery and other national handicrafts.

The survivors still remember the way they learned the Armenian alphabet by writing the letters on the hot sands of the desert up to the time when the Siswan school, established by the Armenian General Benevolent Union, began to operate in some tents, in addition to the hospital and the orphanage.

The heroic Moussa Dagh people who have fought for their freedom have poetically described their exploit as follows:

6. SVAZLIAN V., Moussa Dagh. Armenian Ethnography and Folklore. Vol. 16. Yerevan, 1984, p. 132 (in Armenian).

The heroic battle of Moussa Dagh shook the world; it demonstrated to the wor1d the immense capabilities of a handful of people who have heroic traditions, freedom-loving souls and unanimous will power.

In his book "The Forty Days of Moussa Dagh," Franz Werfel has artistically depicted in vivid colors the exploit of the Moussa Dagh people. However, the world did not pay attention in due time to the alarm raised by the famous Austrian writer and a greater evil, Fascism, was born.

Subsequent1y, the heroic self-defense of Urfa was organized in 0ctober, 1915, under the command of Mkrtitch Yotnekhpayrian and garutyun Rastke1enian. Thc whole Armenian population of Urfa rose; they fought like one man for twenty-five days and nights uninterruptedly.

Nevertheless, the Turkish government sent a regular army and cruelly suppressed the resistance of the devoted heroes of Urfa. These historical events have been narrated by two of the survivors of Urfa, Khoren (born in 1S93) and Nvart (born in 1903) Ablabutians.

In the days of the First World War, in 1916, two of the allied countries, England and France, had signed a secret agreement (Sikes-Picaud) that, in case of the defeat of Turkey, Cilicia, having two millions six hundred thousand hectares of arable and fertile lands, would pass under the supervision of France. The English and French authorities had agreed with the Armenian National delegation that, if the Armenian volunteers would fight against Turkey, the Armenians would enjoy ample political rights after the victory and the Armenian volunteers would constitute the garrison of the towns of the newly-formed Autonomous Armenian Cilicia.

Consequently, Armenian young men from the Turkish army, from the exile roads, from various places add even from. America (natives of Moussa Dagh, Zeytoun, Ayntap, Marash, Kesssb, Hadjn, Hoosenik, Chengoosh, Sebastia, Harpoot, Arabkir and other localities) were enlisted in the French Army, creating the Oriental (Armenian) Legion.

The Armenian volunteers, filled with a feeling of vengeance for their innocent martyred kinsfolk and defying death, defeated the German-Turkish armies and won the magnificent victory of Arara, near Palestine. The French command-in-chief praised the brave Armenian legionaries. On the 12^th of October, l918, Genera.l A11enby sent a telegram to the President of the Armenian delegation, Noubar Pasha, saying: "I am proud to have the Armenian regiment under my command. They fought courageously and had a great share in the victory."⁷

7. KELESHIAN M, Sis-Register. Beyrouth, 1949, p. 599 (in Armenian).

The treaty of Severs, signed after the war in 1920, provided that the Entente countries should establish supervision over Cilicia and that the Turkish troops should have been already evacuated from Cilicia.

Encouraged by these events, numerous Armenian exiles, miraculously rescued from Deyr-el-Zor, Ras-ul-Ayn and other living cemeteries, gradually returned and re-established in Cilicia. With hope and faith with regard to the future, they began to restore the ravage and to cultivate the abandoned orchards. The Turks, however, succeeded in coming to an agreement with the allied states and urged the French to evacuate their peace maintaining forces from Cilicia.

Ignoring the Treaty of Severs and taking advantage of the indecision and weakness of the French military administration, the Turkish forces and the local bandits directed their arms towards the Armenian population of Cilicia; starting from January 1920, they launched an attack on the Armenian localities of Cilicia.

During the violent battle which lasted for twenty-two days, the eleven thousand Armenians of the town of Marash were slaughtered and burned to ashes:

One of the eye-witnesses of these tragic events, Yevguine Mayikian (born in 1898), has narrated us how the thick grease of the burnt Armenians flowed down the threshold of the Forty Martyrs' Church built on a hilltop. Subsequently, the living eight thousand residents of Marash, together with six thousand Armenians from Urfa were forcibly deported to Aleppo, Damascus, Beyrouth, Jerusalem, Baghdad and to the regions of Anatolia found under Greek domination.

On the 1^st of April 1920, the Turks besieged Ayntap. The life of about ten thousand Armenian refugees from Ayntap and eight thousand from Sebastia, who had just re-established and found peace there after the end of war and the armistice, became once more turbulent. A self-defensive resistance centre was created on the spot under the leadership of Adoor Levonian. These historical events have been narrated by Gevork Hekimian (born in 1937), who communicated us the following song he had heard from his mother:

In the meantime, the commander-in-chief of the occupation of Cilicia, Gozan oghlu Doghan bey, besieged with his innumerable soldiers the town of Hadjn; the town had initially an Armenian population of 30-35 thousand, of which only six thousand had been rescued from the Genocide.

In the enemy's opinion, the destruction of the Armenian citadel of Cilicia, Hadjn, and the extermination of the Armenians presented no difficulty whatsoever. The inhabitants of Hadjn, however, were resolute. They formed the superior council of the self-defense of Hadjn under the leadership of Karapet Chalian and elected as the defense-commandant o8icer Sarkis Djebedjian, General Andranik's comrade-in-arms. Hadjn and its environs were divided into four defense regions. Trenches were dug. Everybody was in fighting trim. The 132 guns were distributed to the 1200 males aged 16-50, who were capable of taking up arms. Subsequently, 300 more guns were obtained, but these were also insufficient to fight against the Turkish army, which was armed with the inexhaustible Bolshevik ammunition. This fact was testified also in the memoir narrated by Hovsep Bshtikian (born in 1903) from Zeytoun.

That is why the Hadjn people, who were in great need of arms, waited impatiently for the help expected from abroad through the National Union of Adana; the help included not only arms and ammunition, but also new fighting forces. Nevertheless, no help was received and the condition of the population of Hadjn became desperate. The lack of ammunition distressed the heroic people of Hadjn and famine compelled them to eat dogs, cats and mice. This fact has been narrated by Aharon Mankrian (born in 1903), a survivor from Hadjn. Meanwhile, the enemy concentrated new forces. The French military representatives conducted an equivocal policy and, though they had promised to provide provisions and ammunition for the self-defense of Hadjn, they not only broke their promise, but informed also the Turks about the organization of the self-defensive plan of the Armenians. After prolonged and obstinate battles and a heroic resistance, which lasted for eight months, the Turkish forces were able to destroy and to burn down all the stone houses of Hadjn by artillery cannonade. Hundreds of valorous combatants fell on the fortifications, thousands of Hadjn denizens were cruelly massacred; only 380 persons succeeded to accomplish a breakthrough and escaped the terrible encirclement of fire.

The town of Ayntap, which had heroically resisted intermittently for 314 days, was captured by the enemy, as well as the ancient capital of Cilicia, Sis, the heroic town of Zeytoun, the town with a historic past, Tarson, the commercial centre Adana and various other localities of Cilicia inhabited with Armenians, since the French government, breaking its obligations as an ally, handed Cllicia over to Turkey by an agreement signed on the 20^th of October, 1921, in Ankara, condemning the Armenian population of Cilicia to the danger of massacre.

Although the Turkish government cruelly suppressed the heroic resistance and the self-defensive battles started in various localities, nevertheless, the devoted Armenian heroes, who struggled for their elementary human rights and for the physical survival of their nation, recorded brilliant pages in the history of the national-emancipatory struggle of the Armenian people.

After the forcible deportation of the Armenian population of Cilicia, it was the turn of the Armenians of Anatolia, whose majority had been ruthlessly massacred during the Genocide in 1915 and those who were miraculously saved continued their existence in the Armenian-inhabited localities under Greek domination and especially in Izmir.

In 1922, the Turks burnt down also the Armenian and Greek quarters of Izmir, driving the Christians to the seashore.

Smbyul Berberian (born in 1909) from the town of Afiongarahissar has sung with tearful eyes the following dirge relating about this mass tragedy;

That horrible event, which was accompanied by pitiless plunder and massacre, has been recorded in the memory of western Armenians as the "calamity of Izmir." An eyewitness of these events, Arpine Bartikian (born in 1909) born Afiongarahissar remembered with emotion that the Turks had burned the Armenian quarter of Izmir in the first place. And she continued: "There was fire behind and water in front of us. Only those who gave their last gold coins and ornaments to the Turks to save their lives were rescued from this hell-like turmoil, while those who had no means, threw themselves into the sea waves and, defying death, tried to swim to the ships anchored at a distance and bearing European flags, which would carry the homeless Armenians to unknown destinations."

Thus, the Armenian Diaspora was created as a historical reality; nevertheless, the dream of the lost Homeland still continues to fume in the memory of the Armenian people, inasmuch as it is the collective memory of the people constituting their history, and it is impossib1e to defile the people's history.

In this respect, the Armenian folk memoirs and the Turkish-language songs entrusted to the generations, become, owing to their historic-cognitive value, testimonies, artistic, yet reliable, objective and evidential documents illustrating, in a simple popular language, the historic events and the Armenian Genocide.