ABSTRACT
During the night of April 24, 1915, the intellectual and religious leaders of the Armenian community in Constantinople were seized from their beds, imprisoned, tortured, and ultimately put to death on charges of sedition. Simultaneously, all Armenians serving in the Turkish army-these had been gathered into separate "labor battalions"—were taken aside and killed. The Armenian women and children, as well as any remaining men, were ordered to prepare themselves for deportation. Many were turned out on the road immediately, but in some towns they were given a week of grace which they spent in a frenzied attempt to sell their personal possessions for whatever was offered. Government orders forbade them from selling real property or stocks, as their banishment was supposed to be temporary. By the story bears a chillingly familiar quality, the more intensified when one remembers that the victims of this last, most hideous phase were almost exclusively women and children.
