Grace H. Knapp (21 November 1870 – 14 March 1953) was an American Christian missionary and teacher who served in the Ottoman Empire. During her time as a missionary, Knapp was a witness to the Armenian genocide. During the Armenian genocide, Knapp was stationed in Van and eventually described the events in the region in two published books describing her experiences. The first book, The Mission at Van in Turkey in War Time, describes in detail the massacres of Armenians by Turkish soldiers during the Van Resistance. Her second book, The Tragedy of Bitlis, relates the narratives of two nurses who witnessed massacres of Armenians in Bitlis. Her recounts of Bitlis are one of the few written accounts of massacres in that area.
Early life
Grace Highley Knapp was born on 21 November 1870 to missionary parents in Bitlis, Ottoman Empire. Her father, Reverend George Cushing Knapp, was a dedicated missionary and her mother, Alzina Churchill Knapp, was a teacher. In April 1883, at the age of twelve, Knapp moved to the United States to receive an education in Massachusetts, Vermont and Illinois. In 1889, she began studying at the Mount Holyoke College and graduated in 1893. She then returned to the Ottoman Empire in October of that year where she taught at the Mount Holyoke Seminary of Kurdistan, located in Bitlis. She later taught at Erzurum and Van, where she was assigned to teach at different points in time.
Witness of the Armenian genocide
Background
In the First Balkan War of 1912–13, the Ottoman Empire had lost its Balkan possessions to Christian uprisings, intensifying fears in the Turkish homeland that the Empire's increasingly restive Armenian Christian minority—with the assistance or encouragement of Western governments—might also attempt to establish an independent state, resulting in the breakup of Turkey itself. As a result of the wars, at least half a million Muslim Ottomans from the former Balkan possessions of the Empire sought refuge in Turkey, sparking a desire for revenge among many Turks. Distrust and suspicion of Armenians reached a peak following the outbreak of World War I, when a successful advance of Russian troops across the Turkish border into the heavily Armenian-populated vilayet of Van in early 1915 was blamed on Armenian disloyalty, leading the Turkish government to adopt a set of extreme measures which would culminate in the Armenian genocide.
Massacres in Van
Grace Knapp relates in her memoirs The mission at Van in Turkey in war time that she was in Van at the outbreak of World War I. She notes that during mobilization of the Ottoman army in the fall of 1914, many Armenians were ransacked and their wealth stolen. Armenian soldiers conscripted in the Ottoman army were subjugated to maltreatment and were forced to do manual labor under harsh conditions. Prior to the conscription, the arms of the Armenians were confiscated and the population was left in a vulnerable state at a time of war. Knapp states that despite the confiscations of the weapons, the Armenians held their restraint and forbade any further escalation of tensions. They prevented fights from occurring and forbade Armenian villagers from conducting any sort of insurrection.
In February 1915, missionary Clarence Ussher, who was stationed in the American hospital in Van, relates in his memoir An American Physician in Turkey: A Narrative of Adventures in Peace and War, that the "strong and liberal-minded" governor or vali of the province was replaced with Cevdet Bey, brother-in-law of the Turkish Commander-in-Chief, Enver Pasha. The new vali was unable to travel to Van until late March, when he arrived "accompanied by several thousand soldiers and Kurdish and Circassian irregulars".