in the presence of over 1,000 orphans, when the Turkish flag was lowered, 'Long Live General Pasha!' was recited. That was the first part of the ceremony. Then it was time for punishment for the wrongdoers of the day. They beat us with the falakha [a rod used to beat the soles of the feet], and the top-rank punishment was for speaking Armenian. Emile Joppin, the head priest at the Saint Joseph College in Antoura, wrote in a 1947 school magazine: The Armenian orphans were Islamicised, circumcised and given new Arab or Turkish names. Their new names always kept the initials of the names in which they were baptised. Thus Haroutioun Nadjarian was given the name Hamed Nazih, Boghos Merdanian became Bekir Mohamed, to Sarkis Safarian was given the name Safouad Sulieman. In a 1918 report, American Red Cross officer Major Stephen Trowbridge, met with surviving orphans and reported: Every vestige, and as far as possible every memory, of the children's Armenian or Kurdish origin was to be done away with. Turkish names were assigned and the children were compelled to undergo the rites prescribed by Islamic law and tradition ... Not a word of Armenian or Kurdish was allowed. The teachers and overseers were carefully trained to impress Turkish ideas and customs upon the lives of the children and to catechize [sic] them regularly on ... the prestige of the Turkish race. Professor of Human Rights Studies Keith David Watenpaugh compared the treatment of non-Turkish orphans by Halide Edip and Djemal Pasha to the American and Canadian schools for Native American children that were forcibly assimilated and often abused. He wrote that Edip showed a strong hatred of Armenians in her writings, portraying them as "a mythical and existential enemy of the Ottomans" and even made claims of blood libel and child cannibalism similar to those in anti-Semitism. She also claimed a conspiracy to turn Turkish children into Armenians, "thus also turning the accusations leveled against her for her work at Antoura back toward the Armenians themselves". Watenpaugh writes of her: Modernizing Turkey and defending its Muslim elite against Western criticism are key elements of Halide Edip's life's work, but her reluctance to protect Armenian children or even voice empathy for them as victims of genocide shows a basic lack of human compassion. For Halide Edip questions of social distinction and religion placed limits upon the asserted universal nature