Ernest Alfred Yarrow

Ernest Alfred Yarrow (21 February 1876 – 26 October 1939) was a British Christian missionary and a witness to the Armenian genocide. He is also known for his leadership of a relief effort carried out by the Near East Foundation that saved and cared for tens of thousands of Armenian refugees.

Yarrow was stationed in Van vilayet, Turkey, in 1915 when an estimated 55,000 Armenians were massacred there by Turkish troops in the earliest stages of the genocide, and he was also an eyewitness to the subsequent defense of Van. He later publicly declared that "the Turks and Kurds have declared a holy war on the Armenians and have vowed to exterminate them." He also described the Van massacres and those which followed across Turkey as an "organized, systematic attempt to wipe out the Armenians." He and his family moved to the United States when Yarrow was one year old. Once in the United States, Yarrow attended the Northfield Seminary founded by Evangelical preacher Dwight L. Moody. After graduating from there in 1897, he continued his education in Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, graduating in 1901. Yarrow then joined the world missionary movement and was sent to Van, Ottoman Empire by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, later succeeding Lieutenant General William N. Haskell as Director General of the Near East Relief for all of Russian Transcaucasia. Yarrow became very active in the Van college where he was in charge of the boys' school.

After returning to the United States for a brief visit in 1912, Yarrow and his wife returned to Van in 1913 to continue with missionary duties. He became president of the Van college right before World War I began and remained in Turkey throughout the war, sailing home to New York from Constantinople in 1922.

Armenian genocide witness

Background

Having lost its Christian-majority Balkan possessions in the First Balkan War of 1912-13, fears had intensified in the Ottoman government that a similar push for independence by the Armenians—Turkey's largest remaining Christian minority, situated in the heart of Anatolia—might lead to the breakup of Turkey itself. Aware of the Ottomans' growing hostility, some Armenians, particularly in the vilayet of Van, had begun stockpiling weapons and ammunition for self-defence, Cevdet quickly repeated an earlier demand that the Van Armenians supply 4,000 able-bodied men for work in labour battalions, but the Armenian leadership, fearful of the fate of such conscripts and concerned that full compliance would leave them defenceless, offered 500 men and payment of the standard exemption fee for the rest. Cevdet's response was to have four Armenian leaders killed and a fifth—an Armenian community leader in the town of Shadakh—arrested, but when the townsfolk surrounded the building where the latter was detained, demanding his release, Cevdet responded by ordering one of his regiments to "go to Shadakh and wipe out its people". The troops however, for reasons unknown, attacked and perpetrated massacres in several defenceless Armenian villages instead.

By this time, the alarmed Armenians were openly preparing for a defence of the city of Van.

An estimated 55,000 Armenians in the vilayet were subsequently slaughtered by Cevdet's troops; however, several localities were able to successfully resist the Turkish attacks, most notably the city of Van itself, which would hold out for almost a month.

Defense of Van in 1915

After the massacres ordered by Cevdet Bey on April 19 were largely concluded, the vali redeployed his troops for an attack on the city of Van itself. On the Turkish side were about 4,000 well-armed troops supported by artillery, while the city was defended by about 1,500 Armenian militia, who according to Yarrow were obliged to resort to "all kinds of weapons including blunderbusses, Colt pistols, old-fashioned rifles and even ... a couple of small cannon [made] out of old metal".

Toward the end of the siege, Turkish forces bombarded the American missionary compound, a violation of diplomatic immunity that Ussher suggests was made because of Turkish suspicion that the Americans had aided the city's defence. Of the bombardment, Yarrow states:

quote|We had flying over the building where the missionaries were staying five American flags. One day the Turks turned their fire on the building and for two days they kept up an incessant firing of rifle bullets and shrapnel. Why they did this we do not know. The Turks knew, however, that we had helped the Armenians with their sick and had bettered sanitary conditions etc. We did nothing to assist them in a military way. After making this discovery, some Armenians began killing some of the city's surviving Turks in revenge. Later however, after order had been restored, Yarrow expressed surprise "at the self-control of the Armenians, for though the Turks did not spare a single wounded Armenian, the Armenians are helping us to save the Turks – a thing that I do not believe even Europeans would do."

With the lifting of the siege, the Armenians were to enjoy a brief ten-week period of self-governance, before advancing Turkish forces brought the city under threat once again. Thousands of Armenians fled the city rather than fall once more into Turkish hands, fleeing across the border to the relative safety of the Russian Caucasus, and Yarrow, by now sick with typhus, and the other American missionaries also decided to leave.

Relief work

By 1916, some 300,000 refugees of the Armenian genocide and other areas had settled in Russian Armenia under impoverished conditions. In a response to the crisis, in 1916, a relief committee was set up which aimed at assisting at least 250,000 Armenian refugees by providing food and shelter. Yarrow believed a stronger and independent Armenia would alleviate the refugee problems. Yarrow began helping the refugees in Armenia and became a staff officer for Colonel Haskell's mission by 1919.

In 1920, Yarrow took charge as the director of the Near East Foundation. At one point as director, he had responsibility for 30,000 children who had sought refuge in the Caucasus. In Armenia, Yarrow started a street cleaning program and other irrigation projects which provided jobs to some 150,000 refugees; through the program, many of the refugees earned wages which helped them finance their daily activities independently. He later remarked that "in training 30,000 children for future citizenship I feel that I have a real part in the development of the new Armenia."

Awards and decorations Ernest A. Yarrow was awarded the Order of the Lion and the Sun by the Persian government, the highest decoration, for his relief efforts in the region. He also received four decorations from the Russian government and a medal from the Armenian government.