HOLOCAUST

Memories of the eyewitnesses and historical essays on the

tragedy of the Assyrian people

Dedicated to 80 year-old catastrophe in Urmia

Yakub Bar Malik Ismail (Tehran, 1964). After the massive Assyrian exodus from Urmia around 2,000 decided to remain in their villages. Some obviously were in poor health, some were not ready to flee so fast, and others found shelter with neighboring Muslims. Some of them were murdered by Turks and Kurds. In this massacre local Muslims were involved as well. The rest of Assyrians were escorted to Salmas. Yet it is not clear why Turks did it. 300 Assyrians soon returned to Urmia. Around 600 found refuge in the French Catholic mission. Some of them furthermore were cut while others were shot down in the name of the mayor of Urmia, Ishrat Khomayun, along with the head of the Mission, Monsignor Sonntag, metropolitan and the envoy of Pope.

3 months after, Assyrian exodus from Urrnia Mrs. Judit, the wife of Yaku David, priest from, Siri, along -With the wife of Rabbi Yukhanna Mushi (John Mushi), both school , inspectors went. '.to collect around 500 Assyrians and bring them to the U.S. mission where they could find and join their friends or relatives who had been there. They all were supplied with food from Tabriz where U.S. charity organizations were stationed at the moment. Besides these actions were encouraged by some top officials in Iran who were friends to kasha Yaku David. It is noteworthy that kasha Yaku David had been a school principal for many years before he was elected major of the city as well.

On 24 March 1919 Turkish army was withdrawn from Iranian Azerbaijan upon the end of the world war. Simultaneously a cruel war conflict began between Kurds and Iranians.

Ben S. Benjamin (Chicago, 1997). Word came from the war zone admonishing the ,civilian population to leave their towns and villages and head toward Ramadan and Kermanshah, which was a long distance. The mass evacuation began immediately. My Uncle Paul was one of the soldiers who brought the warning. Later he was caught and executed by the Turks. My youngest uncle, Peter, was taken prisoner by the Turks. My grandmother, Hanna, discovered the location where Peter was held. She proceeded to go and see him. As she approached the small Turkish contingent, she was stopped by the guards. When she forced herself against them, she was knocked down to the ground and bayoneted to death by one of the guards. Not much later my mother and aunt found that their brother, Uncle Peter, had been choked to death by his captors.

The Assyrian's front line forces, despite the Turkish Army' s alarming superiority in manpower, ammunition and logistics, succeeded in keeping the Turks at the border, allowing the Assyrian civilian population time to flee from the city of Urmia and the surrounding towns and villages. At the same time, my parents began their preparation to escape from what ultimately resulted in the great Turkish massacre of the Assyrians. My father, mother, older sister, younger brother, younger sister and I took whatever possessions our parents were able to load on a wagon, plus two horses, two mules and one water buffalo, leaving all other worldly possessions and home behind. I was ten years old.

As we proceeded south. and could no longer see the site of our village of Ardeshai, we began to see thousands of other Assyrians who had left their homes and towns. In addition to my father, mother, older sister Martha, younger brother William and younger sister Julia; my .older married sister Soraya, her husband and infant son, Jonathan, were also alongside with us. Apparently there must have been someone many miles ahead directing or mapping the way, because there were no visible roads to follow. Not too many days after our departure, my married sister Soraya's infant son died. Due to the advancing Turks, some miles to the rear of the civilians, there was no time for burial, so my sister and her husband tied the corpse of their infant son on horseback, with the hope that there would be a rest period during our escape, in order for them to bury him underground.

The expected peaceful period never materialized. I shall never forget how the entire family, including some friends, after hearing the sounds of Turkish cannon fire in the distance, pleaded with Soraya and her husband and finally persuaded them to leave the young boy's corpse on the side of the road. He was finally wrapped in a blanket and placed under a rock.

Some soldiers came from the rear, where the Turks had been advancing, and recruited more able-bodied men to go back and try to hold back the advancing Turks. A few days later, I word came that the Turks were held in check and many prisoners had been taken by the Assyrians. After eight or ten days of constant journey by wagons, horses and foot, the people were told that they could now rest for the night. In the meanwhile, something had happened to the wheel of our wagon and my father had abandoned it behind us. The thousands of men, women and children rested all night in the open spaces near the Iranian town of Shahin Dezh (Sain Qtil'eh).

Surma d'Bait Mar Shimun (London, 1920). It is a sorrow to me to write what follows, but the tale must be tol4. Before the force was able to return from Sain Kala, the Turks made another attack upon us, and with a great host, from the north and the direction of Salmas and Baradost. The fighting lasted for some days, but the supply of ammunition was very scanty , and it was seen that it was impossible to resist the enemy longer, until the return of our friends from the south. Thus, in the last days of August 1918,- all the Christians of Urmia set forth thence, and determined to make their way to the English in Sain Kala. Then upon the road, Mejides-Sultaneh came behind us with his Turkish friends and he killed many women and children, and took many captives.

When our people set out from Urmai, there were some 70,000 of them on the road. Of these, some 20,000 perished under the hands of our foes. There was, no doubt, much disorder on the road, and for this we have been blamed by some of the officers. Undoubtedly, we are very sorry for it, but we did not know that a small nation would have to be judged so very strictly. We had admittedly no discipline in our march. We were being driven through a land of enemies and the Turks and Kurds were on our track, and the Persians before us. Most of us were nearly starving, and were carrying arms. Hundreds of men had lost their all, including their families, on the road, under the hands of their enemy; and they did not know whether they would ever reach safety and the British army, or whether they would perish on the way.

Our nation has been almost destroyed. We have lost our ancient homes, our books, written on parchment more than one thousand years ago and treasured ever since. Our houses, our lands, our vineyards are waste in the hand of the enemy.

W .A. Wigram (London, 1929). The Kurd Simko decoyed the Assyrian Patriarch to a friendly conference, and murdered him with every aggravation of treachery .The nation suddenly found themselves at once deprived of their chief and of their allies, and left helpless and isolated in the midst of their enemies. ..Attacks made by Persian, Turk and Kurd were beaten off one after the other, and it was only when the supply of ammunition -which they had no means of renewing -began to fail them, that the mountaineers felt any cause for anxiety .When their cartridges were nearly spent the prospect looked black indeed.

The defenses of Urmia were carried, and the whole people, instead of maintaining their position as an allied outpost in the North, suddenly poured southwards, resolved to throw themselves on British protection: It was a "trek" of from seventy to eighty thousand people, without any form of discipline or organization, over some five hundred miles of hostile country. Their enemies, tribal and military, were on their track, prepared to show no mercy either to man or woman. .

What the losses were is not known, for the reason that only an approximate estimate of the number that started is available, but it is believed that half of those who started either perished on the way or fell into the hands of their enemies -and the lot of those who died was the lighter of the two.

Brigadier-General H.H.Austin (London, 1920). From this time on until the end of July the Christians were hard put to it defending themselves against the combined forces of Turks, Kurds, and Persians. Surrounded by overwhelming numbers, and their stock of ammunition running dangerously low, the Christians were finally forced to abandon their homes in the Unnieh plains, and to start off on their long southerly march through hostile country .to seek shelter behind the British, whom they had long been expecting to come to their succor. The evacuation of Urmia was not completed before the Persian population were up in arms, killing women and children, old men and sick, in the streets of the town; and then followed along the road to cut the throats of stragglers without respect to age or sex.

Some 10,000 Christians were cut off and never able to join the exodus, their fate being unknown, though it is conjectured most were massacred. This massacre continued for the greater part of the long trek of 320 miles to Ramadan. .

R. S. Stafford (London, 1935). And so began the dreadful retreat, and the Assyrians and Armenians in Urmia fled south and the retreat soon became a panic-stricken rout. They moved with all their families, all their livestock, and all their belongings. The searing heat of the late summer was in itself a disadvantage, and the melancholy procession had scarcely started when they were attacked from all sides by Turks, Kurds, and Persians alike. As the territory through which they were making their painful way was largely Kurdish, the Kurdish attacks were the most numerous; the fact that any got through at all is proof that the Kurds, as usual, were anxious to loot rather than face bullets. There have been many dire retreats in military history, but this katabasis of the Assyrians must take its place as one of the most tragic. Their sufferings were intense, and before they made their way through to British territory they had lost one-third of their numbers. Not only were they the object of continual attacks by night and ambushes by day, but the struggling and starving mass were stricken by all manner of disease -typhus, dysentery , smallpox, cholera, and fevers. Many of those who did not succumb to disease dropped out and died by the wayside of sheer exhaustion. The line of the retreat was marked by an endless trail of dead: men, women, and children who had dropped in their tracks while on the march or were left dying when the camp was struck each tragic dawn. They had little food and little water, and Colonel McCarthy, who had by now come .up, has described how whenever they camped for the night the site next morning was littered with dead and dying. Families were too dispirited to mourn those left behind, and no sooner had the camp moved off than the ghoulish tribesmen swooped down, killed off those who were not dead, and .stripped the bodies of whatever might be on them.

David Warda (Kiev, 1933). I clearly remember how troops and refugees gathered in Urmia. Part of the town was captured by Turks already. Then massacre started. It is very hard to describe what was happening there. The whole family of Shimmun Pirzalan was murdered. Dr. Sakhab also was slain in the fight. Turks also suffered many losses. Assyrians had to join the Russian troops, which were on the way to Sain Kale. Turks chased us making fast raids onto our rear. They used cannons. Assyrians had guns, too, but some laid guns down and ran away as they heard Turkish roaring cannons. Around 3,000 Assyrians were captured by Turks. They all then were shot in the mountains. Some of them were beheaded. Turks were cruel and merciless. In the war Assyrians never were cruel or merciless.

Jebrail Be Chiu (narrated by his grand daughter Liudmila Tuma, , Dneprodzerzhinsk). In the heavy fight with Turks we lost 5 or 6 soldiers. I and a group of Assyrians were on our way back to the camp. We climbed down the valley not to be seen by Turks, as we did not have food and ammunition and besides we were exhausted as well. We had sent out a scout. So we were climbing down the mountainside trying to find safe way to the place: Suddenly the scout returned and said there was a rapid stream down the side and a bridge across, and a squad of well dressed up men moving towards it. But he could not say who they were for he was too high from that place. I led my squad down quietly to see what was going there. After we were in a safe place, we could see 25 to 30 Assyrian girls escorted by Turkish soldiers towards the bridge. The girls saw us too. One of them started to sing

without looking at us. She sang, "Men, come and save us. They will take us to Turkey. We shall be sold. If you don't come to save us, we'll be taken by other men. We then shall be traded like cattle. So we'll never be loving wives or caring mothers, nor shall we bear and raise our sons who would stand up for our fallen motherland. Come and save us". But what we" could do with guns without shells. The enemies were many and we would be overcome ~y way. So we stood looking down and cried holding our guns tight. We felt ashamed. I remember one guy cried very bitterly closing his face with his hands. Seeing that we were unable to help, the girls obviously realized help would never arrive. The girl, who was singing, probably the eldest, said something to the others. The girls nodded in reply. When they came on the bridge, they lifted their arms like in a prayer and looked towards us. At this moment Turks saw us there. They halted by the bridge, and the girls bunched up. Turks were afraid we would shoot them, so they whipped our girls forward in order to hide themselves behind.

Upon entering the bridge the girls started to sing. The same girl took the lead again. We could not hear the words as we heard the rapid stream below. When the girls reached halfway of the bridge, they started to move in two groups along the sides and leant over the rails to disappear in the cold water. The stream took up their beautiful young bodies and carried them far away. Turks were concentrated on our position so did not realize this, but when they did they rushed to the rails. It was late for them to see the beautiful Assyrian girls, who chose death rather than humiliation and rape.

We still stood on the rocks crying for our beloved sisters, and yet we were delighted by the courage they had exhibited. We watched how the beauty of proud girls went into eternity . And as long as there is someone who remembers this event, the girls will not be forgotten. Amen.

Every time I had to fight Turks I said one and the same prayer, and words "For beautiful girls". This way I tried to take vengeance on the enemy.

Rabbi Benjamin Arsanis (narrated by his son, Marona Arsanis, Moscow). As a matter of fact we supposed that ;we might lose the fight over Urmia for lack of discipline in our battalions. Despite all our efforts it did happen. Time passed but there was turmoil in the town. On 17 July colonel Burakovsky who had gathered Armenian and Assyrian squads in the Urmia district, and Ismail Agha was put at the helm of the Northern Urmia frontline. We hurried to help him. On the following day fighting started at 5 AM all along the frontline. Turkish cannons were trying to suppress our infantry in the line. Heavy guns from both sides roared like hell. Assyrian squads fought tooth and nail. They demanded they should be given a chance to bypass the enemy in a night raid around the Urrnian Lake and take all his heavy guns. But somewhere around 1 PM the Assyrian soldier from Targavar reported that the Russian officer had been killed, the bridge was out of control, and Assyrians were holding the upper Nazlu River. The, citizens of Urmia had gone out of the town, Assyrian squads were surrounded, so they had to go back and now they were dispersed somewhere around.

I took the Russian Consul escort and had a difficult time in getting to Charbash. But we were ousted from there too, so we found stronghold in the village of Dize. There we found a lot of Assyrian corpses. We heard shooting everywhere. We took down the path and soon came near the bridge over the river, but the bridge was already in the hands of the enemy.

The place Gugtapa had been taken by Kurds. Some Assyrians were trying to fight back Kurds getting away by gardens and fields and further out. We managed to hold back the enemy in the place Khandzhar Kishlagi, then we set prisoners free and proceeded furthermore. The Assyrian battalion came in time to join us.

The situation for us became worse. Fighting was everywhere. We reached Kara Eirak with difficulty, from where we were chased under fire as far as Sain Kale. Assyrian women penetrated the enemy's line in some places without any hope for help or life. They were beaten and humiliated.

In Mahmudchuk the priest and poet Mushi Duman held service for the dead. He cried bitterly over them. Doctor Jukhannan of Alkai was in grief, and women's eyes were wet with tears. All the roads were filled with dead Assyrians. Children cried for their mothers. No one replied because many were killed. Turmoil was found everywhere. Bullets were flying, and people fell in many. Some youths were on a muddy ground making bandages, many were in agony. Everything was a bloody mess, wounded ~ horses, and squeaky wheels heavy with load, flying bullets, anguished cries everywhere.

Then we reached Khamadan and then came into the camps near Bakuba. Here we started dispersion in the world. We only had behind us the "road wet with blood and tears".

These words taken from Shlimun d'Salamas book of poems entitled "Journey along the road wet with blood and tears" became a famous quotation concerning the tragic events of

1918.

Asmar Bar Warda Be Shain Moushulova (quoted by her grandson, S.G.Osipov, Tbilisi). I do not remember how we re;ached the Araks River. I had my 4-year old brother tied around my back, while mother carried our staff on her shoulders. I was 14 then. Our father had been having odd jobs in Tiflis for many years already. So we were heading down for Tiflis. We left ' Urmia, then we got to Salmas and started for Julfa. We were constantly in crossfire on the road, and eventually we lost our mother somewhere out there. I tried to keep tracks of my relatives for I did not know where Tiflis was and how to get there.

My brother, Gewargis, kept crying all the way for he was starving and besides he had lost his mother. So I felt responsible for him and .1 could not let things get me down.

We thought that our mother was dead. We had to stop by the Araks River to find some boat or something to cross it. On the other side there were Russian Cossacks who were watching us with sympathy gesticulating and shouting something in Russian. Among us we had somebody who knew Russian and started to shout back to Cossacks. They understood that we were being chased by Kurds and we needed to cross the river there. At this moment we heard some shooting behind us and we turned to see some horsemen galloping towards us. Assyrians were seized with panic and fear, because basically they were children and women. Everybody started to jump into the water. So did we, me and my brother on my back. Actually I could not swim at all, but I could not. be thinking at the mon'1ent. I just prayed looking to Cossacks like the last straw for us.

Cossacks were rushing about the bank of the river, but the officers did not allow them to cross the border with Persia. I came so deep that water was up to my mouth so I could not go further. I heard somebody crying for help in the water near me. But I kept watching Cossacks across the river. There I still hoped for my rescue so I did not look back because the death was behind us. Suddenly I clearly saw the face of a young Cossack. I will still remember this face. I seemed to hear him crying and shouting something terrible. He pulled off his cap, saber and jacket and jumped on his horse and led it into the water. He was coming for us. His action was a signal for other Cossacks. They all rushed after him. One of them came and picked up my brother. He sat him before him on the horse and showed me to take a grip on him behind as well. Then it was like a dream. Finally we were safe on the Russian side.

I do not know how many people drowned there. Maybe only few. Most of us were rescued, then we arrived in Tiflis safely. And I still remember people came to give us food and clothes all down way from the border to Tiflis. I saw tears in their eyes. We felt love and comfort with them. And I loved this myself, as I knew it was Our Savior who brought this love to us. Only then I realized what Christianity was like in the world. He also had saved our dear mother us. She came to Tiflis and we all gathered in the house where our father had been.

Mary L. Shedd (New York, 1922). The long dreaded disaster was precipitated July )n the afternoon of the previous day word came that the movement had begun en masse. As we still hoped to hold on, Dr. Shedd and Mar Shimon went out to try to stop it, knowing just as soon as the news of the flight spread, the Christians would be at the mercy of their enemies. Their efforts were in vain; the Armenians and mountain Syrians, who were refugees ~ay, were on the move, and it was impossible for the Urumia Christians to remain alone.

In leaving Urumia we hoped in three or four days to meet the army returning with the Ish and planned that the crowd would camp somewhere until Urumia was retaken, but we ~ bitterly disappointed; there was no sign of them.

The force pursuing us was a band of a few hundred Persians and Turks under Majd-es-Saltanah, formerly of Urumia.

When the firing at the front ceased, that desperate jumble of humanity began frantically love forward; it was pandemonium. Many carts and wagons were discarded with little children and old women left sitting in them too stupefied to stir .Many completely lost their is and/did not know what they were doing. Hundreds left their food and went hungry for.

One of my schoolgirls told me afterwards that when she reached the river at this place, pursued by those demons and unable to carry both her children, she held one child over head and waded through the river. Looking back she saw that it was too late to return for the other one and he was left sitting there on the opposite Dank. The memory of her deserted baby haunted her day and night.

The road was steep, our horses were done out, bullets were flying all about us, one almost grazed Dr. Shedd's face. It looked as if we should have to leave everything and run for our loves while our pursuers stopped to loot. There was little six-year-old May whom we had picked up when her father's carts had given out. She had unconcernedly curled up on the seat for a nap. I wrapped some bread in a cloth and took the bag of money from the satchel in order to be ready at a moment's notice from my husband, if they should swoop down upon us. This kind of cowardly fighting was kept up by the Persians until late in the afternoon, when Azariah, one of the Urumia leaders, who had come back to -help us, arrived with a few men and got possession of the ridge of hills and so protected the exhausted fugitives as they crept along their dolorous way. .

Fifty thousand terror-stricken fugitives had passed on, a baby wailed all night nearby, the desolate, rocky mountain loomed above us, darkness was all about us, and it seemed that no prayer could pierce that terrible gloom. .

After our flight on July 31, 1918, several thousand Christians who did not make their escape from Urumia, were killed by Persians, Turks, and Kurds. Monseigneur Sonntag, of the French Catholic Mission, was murdered by those whom for months he had protected and sheltered, and of the six hundred who had taken refuge with him, only a few women escaped to tell the awful story .Of some two thousand deported to Salmas by the Turks, but three or four hundred lived to return to Urumia. Mr. Herman Pflaumer, who with his wife and Miss Bridges stayed at the Orphanage with the children, was killed that first day and most of the orphans were killed or scattered. The missionaries were interned at the Hospital Compound by the Turks, who filled the hospital and school buildings with their own sick, with the result that nearly all the missionaries sickened of the fever brought in. Miss Lenore R. Schoebellaid down her life there, September 28, dying of pernicious malaria, the sixth war victim from our missionary group in Urumia. Scores of native Christians who had taken refuge with the missionaries also died there.

In Urumia the missions, churches, schools, and homes of the Christians, are a' desolation, and for the first time in six or seven centuries, Christianity has apparently been exterminated. " And Urmi knows the Christ no more."

Professor A.M.Menteshashvili (Tbilisi, 1969). The Assyrian question was not decided'" in Iraq. The British government had a plan to make Assyrians leave their homes. So they became refugees without home and land but with the only solution to work for the British - interests in the region. The British emissaries had planned to create Assyrian opposition to , Kurds and Arabs in religious and nationalistic ways and use either of them as scarecrow in .

order to prevent unification of all nations and tribes in Iraq as part of its colonial policy in the region. The British politicians had a similar experience in India, Burma and other lands. This , policy was to secure it for them in Iraq as well.

England and found in France "a friend in need" in its colonial pursuit. France at the time was trying to take over in mandated Syria.

Neither England nor France was interested in ratification of a joint November 1918 declaration to grant independence to occupied territories. This declaration never meant to show good care of the nations in the Middle East, but only uncertainty in the face of the increasing power of freedom ideas that were proclaimed by the fIrst in the world socialist state.

Anyway the stance of these two great powers determined the ill fate of the Assyrian nation.

Also, Turkey and Iran wanted to have their fingers in the pie as they tried to help settlement of the Assyrian issue. They simply did not allow Assyrians to enter their native lands. The Iraqi government also held firm against granting Assyrians a certain territory for living a dense isolated community. The Iraqi top leaders were even more afraid of Assyrians than rebellious Kurds. Therefore they just waited for a chance to get rid of them.

The Nations League did not prove to worthwhile for Assyrians either. They petitioned assistance many times, but no one seemed to them. Besides all attempts to win themselves autonomy were unfortunately futile. Being cut from the rest of the world, Assyrians failed or , overpowered by many an enemy.