Leslie Davis (diplomat)

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.

He noted that there were no men in these convoys, and the remaining surviving members were much abused, starved and exhausted.

[1] Leslie Davis was among the mixed party of Americans who examined the mass graves of Armenians killed near Harput.

“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.”[3] 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.

[6] It was written by Louis Nowra, a playwright who has researched Davis's life and work and the history of Harput.