"Witnessed Armenian Genocide" Leslie Davis Hand Signed TLS Dated 1940 For Sale

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"Witnessed Armenian Genocide" Leslie Davis Hand Signed TLS Dated 1940:
$699.99

Up for sale a RARE American Diplomat who "Witnessed Armenian Genocide" Leslie Davis Hand Signed TLS Dated 1940. 

ES-4020

Leslie A. Davis (April

29, 1876–1960) was an American diplomat and wartime US consul to Harput, Ottoman Empire from 1914 to 1917, who witnessed the Armenian Genocide. Leslie Davis was born on April 29th, 1876

in Port Jefferson, NY. In

1909-1911 Davis worked in New York City as a lawyer. He started his diplomatic

career in Batumi, then traveled through Uzbekistan and Caucasus. From 1914 to 1917 he was the US consul to Harput, Ottoman Turkey. In May, 1918 he was appointed as the United States representative in Arkhangelsk, Russia, then moved to Helsinki. While working as US consul to Harput, Leslie Davis

personally witnessed how huge clusters of Armenian populations, who were being deported from

provinces outside Harput to the Der Zor desert in Syria,

were rerouted in Harput “only to be butchered in this province”. Some of his

observations concerned the condition of Armenian deportees arriving from

further north. He noted that there were no men in these convoys, and the

remaining surviving members were much abused, starved and exhausted. Leslie

Davis was among the mixed party of Americans who examined the mass graves of

Armenians killed near Harput. Davis subsequently wrote a vivid account to

the Department of State where

he described the tens of thousands of Armenian corpses in and around Lake

Geoljuk (present-day Lake Hazar), during his

trips to the lake.

The

mass deportations ordered by the Turks, in which hundreds of thousands of Armenians were

crammed into freight cars and shipped hundreds of miles to die in the desert or

at the hands of killing squads, were far worse than a straightforward massacre, he wrote. “In a massacre many escape, but a

wholesale deportation of this kind in this country means a longer and perhaps

even more dreadful death for nearly everyone.”

Leslie

Davis aided some Armenians by allowing some 80 of them to live in his consulate

and organizing an underground railroad to

get other Armenians to cross the Euphrates River and into Russia. He acted even though there were warnings by the Turkish government to

not aid any Armenians. While

carrying out his rescue work, Davis kept up with his diplomatic work and

periodically met with Harput governor Sabit Bey, who

was one of the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide. 

"Witnessed Armenian Genocide" Leslie Davis Hand Signed TLS Dated 1940

$699.99

"Witnessed Armenian Genocide" Leslie Davis Hand Signed Album Page Dated 1940

$909.99