Raqqa, 1915 – Bashir El Saadi’s Testimony About Deported Armenians

Bashir El Saadi was an Arab from Bedouin. Once in 1915, at the age of 14, he was grazing the cattle of his family on the banks of the Euphrates River near Raqqa when he saw a group of tired and exhausted people in tatters going in his direction.

He didn’t know who they were. But he would soon find out that those people had been deported from their homeland by the Turkish government and were being driven to the Syrian desert.

The deported Armenians under the escort of Turkish gendarmes for a long time were led to God knows where. On the way, many Armenians lost their relatives: they could not walk anymore and were killed by the Turks.

Bashir El Saadi along with his uncle and his sons was on his way to the desert. Seeing the plight of the Armenians, they helped them as best as they could. They milked their camels and gave the milk to the Armenians to quench their thirst. The Armenians were so exhausted that they weren’t able to stand on their feet and fell down, dying like rams.

“The Armenian Genocide. Testimonies of surviving eyewitnesses”, second edition, Verzhine Svazlyan, “Gituitun”, Yerevan, 2011, p. 517.

by genocide-museum.am

Read also: Testimony of Hakob Khorozyants About the Robberies Committed by the Turks and Kurds – December 1914