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1. Page. 163 of the book
In Adyaman, a small city, there was almost no
trace of Christians left. All of them had been massacred
with axes and thrown into the river
that crosses that land
(Page
163: ‘J. NAAYEM, op. cit., pp. 143-151.)
2. Page. 163 of the book
They put to
death Chief Burro, a local Christian notable, his son-in-law Youssef
Saadohana, who belonged to our faith [Syrian Catholic], was with him.
They put him to death with all the other
Christians who were there. The murderers were soldiers
who had ordered them to leave the city to go to Diyarbakir under their
escort. Once they had left the city,
the soldiers gunned them down on the road
(Page 166, H. SIMON, op. cit., Chapter 3, pp. 17-18)
3. Page. 167 of the book
Then
Memduh Bey made a first split. Of the 405 in the convoy, he took 100,
whom he brought to the place called “the Sheikhan caves”. The deep caves
that have still not given up their victims did not allow their last
screams to be heard either. Barely had the executioners returned when
Memduh Bey chose another hundred martyrs who were brought about an hour
away from there to the place called “Zerzewan Kalaat”.
There they were all
massacred, in groups of four, with stones, knives, daggers, scimitars,
and bludgeons, and then they were thrown down the wells
(Page 167 H. SIMON, op. cit., Chapter 3, p. 29.)
4. Page. 173 of the book
Several
thousand Christians,
Armenians, Syrians and
others, were deported to Aleppo with priests and even Bishops.
They were left in the open outside the city under the burning
sun without any shelter […]
Many of them
died this way. Later on, they were
allowed to enter the city. Since other inhabitants of Mesopotamia had
also sought refuge in Aleppo, the number of these wretches reached
60,000, crammed together, with no other place to live but the Christian
neighbourhoods’ streets and the churches. In tatters, without any way to
maintain hygiene they soon fell victim to typhus which struck and killed
a quarter of the population (Page 173 2 RAFIMANI report, op. cit., folio
44.)
5. Page. 173 of the book-
Der Es Zor
.......Thousands
of Christians from Mesopotamia and Armenia were deported to that city,
and they were made to suffer the cruellest tortures. One of my priests
wrote me that he could not depict what he
had seen with his own eyes as he had helped the victims
with religious aide. To he even more certain that they would die, they
brought them to the desert where they died from starvation (Page 173,
Rahmani)
6. Page. 173 of the book-
Diyarbekir
New searches
through all the homes to arrest other Christians who were deported in
twenty successive caravans to a certain distance from the city,
where they were stoned to death.
[… ] Other
priests of all
denominations were massacred,
some with caravans, others in their churches or presbyteries.
[…] The woman and children were deported, and on the road, the
women were raped and sold.
Only a small number of the deportees actually reached their
destination; most of them died of exhaustion. All Christians who lived
in this region’s many
villages were also massacred;
among them there was a large number of non-Catholic Armenians and
monophysite Syrians (Page 174, Rahmani, Diyarbekir).
7. Page. 175/176 of the book-
Diyarbekir
Finally, out of the 1,600 individuals thrown into prison in Diyarbakir,
about 680 of the wealthiest notables paid for their military exoneration
and were thrown in handcuffs into the Mosul desert, and no one knows how
or where their exodus ended. As for the others, they were only paroled
so that they could be made to work with those between 18 and 35 years of
age compelled into military service in forced labour [….],
and so that one or two could be shot dead each
day, which was noted by American missionaries coming from Bitlis,
Harput and Mezre to go to Aleppo. Apparently the
young men were the policemen’s favourite
targets, for the missionaries had seen the corpses of young men lying in
the dirt all along the road. (Page 175/175, J. Naayem)
8. Page. 177 of the book
As for the
monasteries, churches and Christians’ property, the same thing happened
to them there as had happened in Mardin:
the men from the government confiscated them (Page 177,
I. Armalet))
9. Page. 177 of the book
Father
Armalet’s and Patriarch Rahmani’s accounts concur in affirming that all
Syrian villages in Diyarbekir region were attacked, and they name
several of them: first of all the large village of Viranshehir where,,
all the Christians
gradually disappeared in accordance with the system of extermination and
deportation (Gregorian Armenians, 1000; Catholic
Armenians, 650; Syrian Catholics, 250; Chaldeans, 450; Jacobites, 750).
Led off in convoys of 200 or 300 each, they were sent in different
directions (177, Rhetore))
10. Page. 178 of the book
In this whole
northern region of the vilayet, there were fifteen Jacobite (= Syrisch
Orthodox) villages that were very prosperous, and which thus brought
quite a bit of income to the State: it was a
population of about 20,000 individuals.
A spirit of insanity must have come over
Turkey for
it to send to their deaths hardworking and faithful subjects who did not
have the fatal name of Armenians and who were even called “the orphans
of Mohamed”. This important fact shows
that Turkey was not just after Armenians, but after all Christians.
(Page 178, J. Rhetore)
11. Page. 182 of the book
As for the
Christian villages in the Mardin vicinity, which are many and inhabited
by Syrians, the Turkish government ordered the army rabble to attack
those villages, and they did not refrain
from raiding and killing the inhabitants;
the inhabitants of Teil Armen were brought to the
church and burned with gasoline (Page 182)
12. Page. 183 of the book
The villages
of Ma’sarte, 800 inhabitants, Bafaw, 600 habitants, and A1-Ibrahimiya,
400, all of them populated exclusively by Orthodox Syrians,
were entirely decimated by the end of June.
The same for the village of Kelek, eight hours away by
foot from Mardin, where all 2,000
Christian inhabitants were killed.
13. Page. 183 of the book
Barsaum als
mentions several men of the Church who were martyred under the same
conditions, the hermit monk Adam from Kafro, for example,
whose skin was ripped off and his eyes put out
with a red-hot iron while he was still alive, or
Father Sham’un, priest from the
church of Dafne who
was also skinned alive (Page 186, R.
Mouawad).
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1. (50. The bloodshed of Nusaybin page 125/125/126)
On
Tuesday 15th of June the armed forces came back and collected
all the Christians: men and youths, threw them in jail and at midnight
they brought them to a place called Kharab Kurt, a stone quarry: there
they killed all of them.
After
that, the same Qaddur, commander-in-chief, collected all the women and
children and locked them up in the church of Mor Ja’qub. Subsequently he
brought the women to a place called Kharabe Kurt and killed them,
afterwards he picked out of them the very beautiful girls; he chained
the children with ropes and brought them to a field outside the village,
where they were trampled under the feet
of horses. And in this way they were killed by
horseshoe.....
2. (46. The bloodshed in the city of Se’ert)
Mid-1915 the
reckless Kurds rampaged there: they attacked the houses of the
Christians and started to torture and kill them.
They threw
them in jail and starved them; after that, they collected the priests
and the eldest people and interrogated them about hiden weapons; while
at the same time they tortured them severely; the tyrant Ahmed Kegge
cut the head off a Syrian priest
with his sword and threw it in alleys in the city
before the feet of the Muslim mob, who played
with his head like a football.
After this
the Christian houses were attacked, all the women and children, boys and
girls were rounded up, divided into three groups and
carried away to be slaughtered:
one after the other, barefoot, naked, hungry and thirsty. To persecute
them further they had to walk on a very rough road after they had been
undressed. They raped the women and dishonored the girls
prior to killing them all.
Many of those
criminals selected out the young, immature, good-looking girls they
wished to have and took with them to their homes
in order to satisfy their
perverse (sexual) desires
3. (39. The village of Qelet
(Page 106))
Qelet was a big village,
all the inhabitants were Syrians, with the exceptions of few Catholics
and Protestants…….On 3rd of June the Kurds organized themselves and
surrounded the village………All the inhabitants came together in the house
of Benjamin. When the Kurds stabbed them to death, there were so many
people in the house, that their blood began
to flow from the upper floor to downstairs of the house.
I shall not talk about the humiliation
and shamelessness by which the women inside and outside
the village were treated (by the Kurds). In order to ensure that all the
victims were dead, they came with glowing
spears and stabbed in the bodies so that when somebody was not dead yet,
he then would stand up and finally be killed; the remaining
part (of the Christians) were brought to the city of Schuro.
And many women they took with them to their harem…………………….
One hour later we heard the fluting of the
bullets. After that, the mourning voices of the old women, who stayed
there, were heard, when they saw the seven children killed near the
garden. At three o’clock the soldiers came, and because there were only
old people left in the village, they
arrested three old women, raped them, undressed them and crucified them
naked on three trees; the three
priests were tortured and brought to Schuro, where they were put in
jail. …………………
4. (48. The Mor Gabriel of
‘Umro Klooster (Page 122)
This old
monastery was built in 397 and midway 6th century renovated.
In the autumn of 1917 the tyrant Schendi organised a gang around him and
attacked the monastery, he demanded that the sentries would had to leave
and invaded the monastery: with his gang
he killed the monks and deacons. The 70 men from Kafarbe
who were there, were brought outside and
killed. Only two children could survive the
blood-shed; one of them fled to Sbirino and other to ‘Ainwardo’.
Schendi took the possession of monastery with all
its books and treasures. After fighting for their life
for months, the Kurds attacked them and all of them were killed in the
Mor Estiphanos Church. The Kurds took all their resources and objects
from the village with them. The few, who survived the blood-shed, spread
as refugees in the surrounding villages.
5. (G. The village Sa’diye Brafe
(page 93))
The story of the village of Sa’diye Brafe is
told us by a Turkish soldier of the 50th Army (Division). He
said:
“ I was a soldier in the 50th
army in Sa’diye Brafe. When the persecutions of Christians started, the
leader of the county of the city Almadina came with approximately 70
Christian men from Baschrije to Sa’diye Brafe. When they arrived at the
village of Tafa (or Tafo), they found near the village, at the side of
the riverbank a deep ravine where he put the men in it. After this he
gave the soldiers and the Kurds the order to kill them,
not with a gun,
but with axes, swords, daggers, sharp pointed hooks and other tools.
And those who told me about this said that the head of someone who was
cut off spoke for 10 minutes and prayed to Jesus.
6. (M. A group from Amid
(Page 138))
This
group came from Amid and consisted out 2500 persons. When the soldiers
brought them to a place called Schkafta, that means gulfs and caves, in
the place Beth Ramma, they were led in a deep valley and (the soldiers)
aimed their rifles on them and fired on them till they had no bullets
anymore. They fired on them at such a high extent that
the bodies catch fire and the dark smoke of the
fire rose up for tree days.
A
Kurd past by and said to the soldiers:
’Among those who you have killed there are still some of them alive.
Yesterday we saw a priest with light red clothes and also four well
dressed gentlemen. ‘When the soldiers went to the place to check, they
found nothing but a very deep silent and sadness oppressing the heart –
a terrible sight!
Archpriest Sleman Henno
1. Page. 32 of the book
Read what is
written by the poet Schabo Gallo about the cruelties:
Woe!
A terrible bloodbath! Whereby the unborn
were snatched away from the wombs! The mothers had to
watch that. Woe! How the unborn were pressed as the grapes;
so that one could not distinguish between the
brains and bones.
Thousands, ten thousands martyrs were exposed to suffering and
distress, there bodies were torn up in pieces. But they did not renounce
the name of Jesus, they let them enlighten by His lamp and earned in
that way the palm of victory of the eternal life.
Bishops, priests, monks, ascetics were as lambs
led to the slaughter, tortured and after that killed.
Monasteries were for always robed of their inhabitants and for always
destroyed.
2. Page. 33 of the book
The height of barbarism
formed the crime; to rape the women
before the eyes of their chained men. Read, what the poet
(Schabo Galo) wrote about this which torn up the hearts:
The men are chained,
the beautiful women raped.
The men are completely upset, down with their heads, on the chest, on
the knees; so that they don’t have to see
their gentle women; how they are dishonoured before their eyes. A
heartbreaking grief!
3. Page. 33
of the book
Come
to see, dear reader, how they divided the Christian prisoners in groups
and delivered them to the merciless
Turkish and Kurdish soldiers, who day and night, without
taking rest, without food and drink, in the blistering son transported
through the country. They felt death down in the valleys and desert. And
the survivors were killed and pilled up. Witnesses notice,
that the river Chabur, from Rish ‘Aino to
Hasseke (in present-day
Syria),
became red coloured because of the blood of martyrs.
There were also some who were transported to Iraq and killed there.
4. Page. 33 of the book- Siverek
The
metropolitan Athanasios Denho, from the family Rumi from Anhel in Tur
Abdin, was working here. He was for 33 year in the office and achieved
high age of 79. He was a highly-praised greybeard, virtuous and modest
in life. When the unlucky Siverek had to bear the dead by her Kurds,
the metropolitan were set in jail in the
night and thrown in dungeon. The next day he died in the
early morning the martyrs dead after many tortures;
they shattered his head by a stone.
His both priests, Jacob (jaqub) and Josef who went to Syria and were
living there were also martyred. No Syro- Aramean survived in the city.
5. Page. 43/44 of the book- Nusaybin
…………..The monk priest
left the city with soldiers, to go to the Syro- Arameans in the
mountains by usual road. However the soldiers ordered him to go by other
road than the usual one until they achieved a place which is called Gemawas. There they started to torture him horribly;
they demanded him to renounce God and to
convert to the Islam. For the monk priest refused that,
they cut off first his hands, then his
foots and finally they beheaded him................. |
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…….... A day after the
murder on Stephanos, thus on Tuesday June 15, 1915, the government
rounded up the Syro- Arameans – men, women and children – and brought
them to a place called Phullutin. There they were told, that they had to
go to Mardin. When they were led out of the city, the understood that they
would be killed, and one started to sing spiritual songs; and the
women's
shouted with joy and encouraged each other with the words,,
We will be very soon united with the Lord Jesus!”
The soldiers brought them to a place called “Nirba Farfosche” and they
started one after another as lambs to slaughter, behind a well. Each of
them, before stabbing them to death, was told: ’Convert
yourselves to the Islam; and we will not kill you!” But
nobody did what was asked, nobody renounced the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thus they slaughtered everybody threw their
bodies in the well. And in this way, this native, Christian city
Nusaybin was robed of her Christians.
After that, the Turkish
government established a regiment to
exterminate the Christians in the vicinity of Mardin;
this regiment was led by Rafiq Nizam Ad- Din, Qedur Bey and Suleyman
Magar.
6. Page. 44 of the book- Helwa
After the mass killing
on the Syro- Arameans of Nusaybin the scoundrel Qedur Bey marched with
his enormous number of Kurdish bandits to the city. They first
surrounded the city, so that nobody could escape, subsequently they took
all the men’s in the village prison, chained them and brought them
to the river, to the place called ‘Qiro’.
There he killed all of them and throw them in
the river. After that he
put all the women’s in a house and killed them, where after he set the
corpses in fire. He did not kill the children, but
converted them to the Islam. In this way the name ‘Syro- Aramean’
disappeared from the village until to day.
Sleman Henno treats in this way village by
village how they were disposed of their Aramean inhabitants. A horrible
form of ethnic cleansing committed by the Turks and the Kurds. The
following villages/cities are passing in review:
Duger,
Mharkan,
Khwetla, Gerkeschamo, Schalhumijye, Tel Chatun, Gerdahul, Tel
Arjawon-Gerschiran, Bayaza, Laylan, Chazna, Sarugh, Gerfasche, Gribya,
Qanaq, Qowal, Bazar, Tel Hassan, Tel Dgihan, Grimierah, Tel Menar, Tel
Jakob (Jaqub),
Ito-Dorp (Dorp van de kerk), Tel Schar’ir, M‘are / Marin, De dorpen van
Beth Rische, of van de Izlo gebergte, Arbo (Taşköy),
Arkah / Harabale,
Kafro Tahtayto (Elbeğendi),
Hbob (Ehwo),
Beth Debe (Daskan), Saydari, Harabemischka (Harabemişka),
Het
Klooster van Mor Malke Qluzmojo,
Midyat, Salah en Anhel (Yemişli),
Anhel (Yemişli),
Habsnas (Mercimekli), Urdnas (Bağlarbaşi,
Arnas), tMzizah (Doğuçay), Kfarze (Altintaş), Ayinwardo, Bothe (Bardakci),
Kafro Elayto (Arica), Jardo, Benkelbe, Kfarbe (Keferbe), Het Qartmin
Klooster (the Mor Gabriel Monastery), Hah (Anitili), Qustan, Eschtrako,
Dair Qube, Schahirkan, Beth Sbirino (Basprine) en Sare (Sariky), Midun,
Tamars, Zinawrah, Beth Ischok, Hedel, Kafschenne, Garissa, Zaz (Izbirak),
Het Kruis Klooster (Deyro du Slibo), Arbaye (Alayurt), Kfarburan (Dargecit),
Meschte, Elik, Zangan, Kfargusson, Hesno d-Kifo, Dufne,
Armun,
Marwanijye, Barlat, Balane, Derhab, Baglet, Schufiranassa, and other
villages.
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