The Coat That Was Too Beautiful To Burn

                                   Above:  The German Hospital in Marash - Photo from Facebook

Seeing the photo above on Facebook brings to mind 

the following true tale 

of an atrocity which occurred in 1915.

There was a day when Marta Bilezikjian, the mother-in-law of Yepros, the mother of Moses Bilezikjian, went to the marketplace in Marash, never to return.  For months the family knew nothing . . . until one day, young Yepros,  Peter's mother, was caring for patients in the German Hospital when she spied her mother-in-law's coat on the bed a wounded Turkish soldier.  "What a beautiful coat," she commented in perfect Turkish, her native tongue; "Where did you get it?"  Laughing, he answered,  (in Turkish, of course, not realizing Yepros was Armenian), "I took it off of an old giavour (infidel) woman who came to the ovens to bake bread. We threw her into the ovens, but before we threw her into the ovens, we took her coat -- it was too beautiful to burn."

Above: Workers at the German Hospital in Marash, circa 1915

Below, "View from the rear of the German Hospital ..." in Marash, circa 1915