Oscar S. Heizer

Oscar S. Heizer (February 2, 1869 – August 1, 1956) was an American diplomat who served in various posts as Consul General in the Ottoman Empire. Heizer, who was the Consul General in Trebizond during World War I, witnessed the Armenian Genocide and often risked his own life to save the lives of Armenians.

Oscar S. Heizer was one of the first individuals to report the mass murder of Armenians. During the Armenian Genocide, Heizer was the Consul General of Trabzon, a city on the coast of the Black Sea. During the Genocide, Heizer's initial reporting to the American consulate stationed in Constantinople states that it was authorized "whenever the parents so desire" to leave children – girls up to the age of 15 and boys up to the age of ten – in the "orphanages by the Turks." Heizer also describes how some children were assimilated into Muslim Turks in a matter of weeks.

Heizer also uncovered the direct link between the central government in Constantinople and a local Committee of Union and Progress functionary Nail Bey. In a letter to the American ambassador in Constantinople, Heizer writes: "The real authority here seems to be in the hands of a committee of which Nail Bey is the head and apparently receives his orders from Constantinople and not from the vali (governor)." Heizer also reveals that Nail Bey insisted that Armenian children be deported rather than being cared for.

Heizer reported how Armenians were being thrown overboard in boats: "This plan did not suit Nail Bey...Many of the children were loaded into boats and taken out to sea and thrown overboard. I myself saw where 16 bodies were washed ashore and buried by a Greek woman near the Italian monastery." Heizer also states that a group of members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation were placed on a boat and drowned.

According to the report of Oscar Heizer written to ambassador Henry Morgenthau, the first convoy of deportees was put on the road on July 1, 1915. On that day, troops surrounded certain Armenian neighborhoods of Trabzon and proceed to expel 2,000 inhabitants of the city, who then were taken in small groups to a place known as Deyirmen Dere, located ten minutes outside the city, and from there led off in the direction of Gumushane. A total of 6,000 people left the city between July 1 and July 3; approximately 4,000 more left the surrounding villages. Initially, the authorities had declared that Catholics and Protestants, as well as incapacitated old people, children, and pregnant women, would be "maintained". However, no exceptions were made, and the exempted individuals were dispatched with the last convoy that set out on July 5.

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