“In Hoftewan and Solast 850 corpses, without heads, have been recovered from the wells and cisterns alone. Why? Because the commanding officer had put a price on every Christian head. In Hoftewan alone more than 500 women and girls were delivered to the Kurds at Sandjbulak. One can imagine the fate of these unfortunate creatures. In Diliman crowds of Christians were thrown into prison and compelled to accept Islam. The men were circumcised. Gulpardjin, the richest village in the Ourmia province, has been razed to the ground. The men were slain, the good-looking women and girls carried away. The same in Babaru. Hundreds of women jumped into the deep river, when they saw how many of their sisters were violated by the bands of brigands, in broad daylight, in the middle of the road. So also at Miandoab in the Suldus district.”[162]
Dr. Sargis, an Armenian by nationality, a Persian by birth, and an American citizen by choice, was doing medical missionary work in Persia. He has recently returned by way of Russia. He stated, that in the city of Urumia alone, ten thousand copies of the proclamation of the “holy war” were received and distributed among the Mohammedans. Dr. Sargis further stated in an interview[163] as follows:
“Followers of Mohammed have been expecting a ‘holy war’ for ages. They have been taught to expect the coming of Mehdi, their Messiah, and the spread of Mohammed rule over the earth. Now they are preaching in their mosques that Emperor William of Germany is Mehdi.” He further stated that German soldiers foster this fanaticism, until the Mohammedan has the idea that the kaiser and all Germany have been converted to Islam. Officers of German army wear bands on their arms with the creed of Islam—‘There is only one God and Mohammed is His prophet.’ At Ispahan the German officers enter the mosque and say Mohammedan prayers. The massacres in Urumia began a year ago, after the withdrawal of the Russian troops. The Russians had been gone only five hours when the murder and plunder began. Of the 113 Christian villages in Persia, not one escaped.
“In Ada was an Armenian merchant, Havil by name.... Havil was shot down in the street, both legs broken and he lay helpless until he died. Death didn’t come soon enough, however, to prevent him seeing his eight-year-old daughter captured by the fanatic Kurds and outraged before his eyes. That happened on January 3, 1915.
“In the town of Kousi was a very old Christian church. The fanatics entered it, took the Bible from the pulpit, tore out its pages and carpeted the floor with them. Here they led hundreds of girls and women—many of whom never left the building.
“At Gulpashan, seventy-nine men were tied hand to hand and killed. Not one girl in the village escaped. The Turkish officers entered one home and carried off several girls, who were weeping around the body of their brother, a victim of the massacre.
“At a house in Urumia, where I was called to treat an army officer, I found a girl. She told me she had been brought there from a nearby Armenian village, which had been raided. Then days before the massacre she had been married, and she saw her husband killed before her eyes. She was taken to the city and held there by three officers. I got them to release her, but she died—she had suffered too much.
“A Turkish soldier killed a young Armenian at Garojaln and carried off his wife and two small children, a boy and a girl. In leaving the city, the soldiers had to cross a bridge spanning the river. The soldiers dropped the two children into the river, one on either side of the bridge, and led the mother away captive.
“There was a Catholic priest, Yahmaruvi, who had endeared himself to the people of the village. He acted as peacemaker in the quarrels between the Armenians and the Mohammedans. All Christians in the village were slaughtered but this priest. The soldiers came and told him if he became a priest of Islam they would let him live, because even the Mohammedans in the village loved him. They tried to get the old priest to repeat their creed. He started with them: ‘There is only one God—and Jesus Christ, His son, is my Saviour,’ the priest uttered at the end. They cut off his head....”
A doctor by name Shimmon was educated in this country and naturally became a citizen. Of him Dr. Sargis said: “They tried to get him to renounce Christianity. When he refused, they poured oil on his body and set fire to him.”