Hacı Halil • Urfa Businessman

Hacı Hali’s Armenian business partner was hanged in 1915. Hacı Halil kept his promise to his friend, and hid his seven-member family in his home for a year. Making no distinction between other family members and servant, he risked his own life and saved their lives.

Karen Jeppe • Teacher in Urfa

Children resuced from the Hamidiye Regiments’ 1894 and 1896 massacres had been gathered into orphanages in Urfa. Karen Jeppe, from Denmark, went to Urfa in 1903 as a teacher. At the beginning of the deportations, she hid Armenians, saved some of them by dressing them as Kurds and Arabs, and tried to provide water for those on the forced marches. In order to help refugees newly arriving in Aleppo, she issued search and rescue newspapers, through which nearly two thousand women and children were saved.

Ali Mazhar Bey • Governor of Ankara

Ali Mazhar Bey, appointed Governor of Ankara in 1914, ignored the deportation order. Despite warnings from Committee of Union and Progress headquarters, he did not carry out the order, at which point he was reapointed to Aleppo. Talat Paşa informed him of his new post by telegram. Ali Mazhar Bey predicted that at his new post as well, he would be forced to carry out the deportation order. As this conflicted with his conscience, he resigned.

Bodil Biørn • Nurse in Muş

Bodil Catharina Biørn, from Norway, was in to Muş in 1905 by the Women Missionary Workers. The photographs Biørn took from 1915-1916 would serve as visual evidence of events there. In 1917, Biørn became head of an orphanage in Armenia, where she took care of the children until 1934.

Nesimi Bey • District Governor of Lice

Seeing that the business underway went beyond deportation, Nesimi Bey delayed the convoys of Armenians. Personally accompanying the first group to depart, he protected them from attacks. Diyarbakır Governor Reşit Bey, one of the major criminals in the genocide, called him to his side, and on the way, had Çerkes Harun and his men killed. They recorded the incident as “Killed by highwaymen,” but even today, the people of Lice remember the help he gave the Armenians.

Henry Morgenthau • Ambassador in Istanbul

Henry Morganthau was a United States ambassador in Istanbul in 1913. He informed the United States daily about the enormous disaster underway. Making use of his ties to Talat Paşa in particular, he tried to save the women and children, but the architect of the genocide refused him, saying, “the innocents of today will be the criminals of tomorrow.” Morganthau is remembered today for his work in facilitating humanitarian aid.

Celal Bey • Governer of Aleppo

In 1914, Governor of Aleppo Celal Bey received orders to deport the Armenians to Der Zor, but he did not obey the order. He was removed from his post and appointed to Konya. Despite threats from Committee of Union and Progress authorities, he delayed the deportation convoys. He worked to obstruct the deportation of the Armenians, and helped those sent from other cities. He was removed from his post in 1918. 

8. Armin Wegner • Military Doctor in Syria

Serving in Syria during World War I, Wegner witnessed the tragedy experienced by Armenians on the way to Der Zor. He made the European public aware of the savagery, and in 1919, published his letters, backed up by his photographs, with the title “The Road of No Return.” He later published another work, “The Cry from Ararat,” and continued defending the rights of surviving Armenians.

İzzet Bey • Gendarme Commandant of Kastamonu

When the deportation order came, İzzet Bey helped Armenian intellectuals by advising them to leave Çankırı, and turned back a group of 850 who had been taken without his knowledge, four hours into their journey. He also secured the return to their homes of a 400-member convoy being sent to Der Zor via Ankara. This angered the Committee of Union and Progress and he was forced to retire in 1917.

Johannes Lepsius • Witness to the Massacres

A German minister, Lepsius witnessed the first massacres in 1985, and established the German Eastern Mission in order to open an orphanage for the surviving children. From 1912-1914, he took part in conferences on the Armenian problem, and in 1915, had a historic conference with Enver Paşa to prevent the deportation, but with no results. He illustrated his own country’s responsibility in the Armenian Genocide in a book, “Germany and Armenia, 1914-1918.”

Hafız Osman Çamurdan • Mufti of Sis

In the early 1920s, Hafız Osman Çamurdan, Mufti of Sis (present-day Kozan), became aware that looting and massacres were imminent. He sent a messenger to warn his neighbors the Faracyans, and called the six-member family to his home, and refused to turn them over to a lynch mob outside his door. The grandchildren of the family, which he protected in his house for two and a half or three years, located the Mufti’s grandchildren in Sis.