AUGUST 2023

FEATURE
On Martyrs Day
Remembering Seyfo
BY CHRIS SALEM
Imagine attending a wedding a century
ago with hundreds of friends
and family at a community banquet
hall like Shenandoah. Everyone
was enjoying themselves and then
suddenly, invaders showed up. They
were not coming to rob or steal; they
were coming to eradicate you and your
people with a darkness that knew no
bounds. They started by disarming
any potentially armed men, rounding
them all up, and murdering them in
front of their wives, mothers, children,
and the entire extended family. In this
horror story, once every adult male was
sprayed with dozens of bullets,
no one remained to protect the
hundreds of horrified widows
and daughters from the invaders
who committed unspeakable,
gender-specific crimes
against them.
This story is not fictional —
it is your history. It began with
the Seyfo Genocide between
1914 – 1925 and peaked with
the Semele [Simele] Massacre
in 1933, exactly 90 years ago.
If you ever wondered what our
community was doing during
World War I and the Great Depression,
this was it.
Age was not a factor in these
crimes. Little girls and elderly women
were not immune from assaults on
their dignity. After the invaders attacked,
they disposed of the women in
the same way they did the men. Some
committed suicide rather than being
held captive. Some were given the
option to be promoted to the second,
third, or fourth wife of their assailant,
but under strict conditions requiring
conversion. Other women were kidnapped,
transported, and sold to the
highest bidder.
After watching their mothers and
sisters get violated, and their fathers
and brothers get shot, any children
who were old enough to remember
what they witnessed also got shot.
The invaders could not risk vengeful
8-year-olds growing up with fire in
their hearts, plotting their demise. The
loose ends were tied up.
The youngest, too young to remember
such horrors, were torn from
their roots and raised to become like
the very monsters who deleted their
family’s existence and reshaped their
lives. Not every child shared this fate.
Many of them were turned into targets
for sport.
This is what happened during the
Semele Massacre in 1933. Many of the
victims had fled what later became
Turkey after the Seyfo Genocide and
eventually settled in Semele, Iraq.
Semele is about 40 miles away from
Tel Keppe, and about 25 miles from
Alqosh. The genocide in Turkey was
perpetrated by the Ottoman government,
Turkish irregulars, Kurdish militants,
Circassians, Arabs, and Azeris,
Persians, while the atrocity in Semele
was a state sponsored massacre by the
Iraqi Government and Kurdish militants.
An estimated 6,000 Christians
were killed and over 100 villages
were destroyed over a period of several
days. in a single day. Those who
remained fled to Alqosh, where they
were protected by their heavily armed
brethren, according to a documentary
by Wilson Sarkis.
August 7 is the 90-year anniversary
of the Semele Massacre, which
is also known as Martyr’s Day. In a
groundbreaking move, the U.S. House
of Representatives has introduced a
resolution—H. RES. 472— to formally
recognize and remember the Semele
Massacre of 1933. This resolution seeks
to rectify the historical injustice faced
by our community, rejects any attempt
to deny the massacre, and emphasizes
the need for public education about
the incident.
When the invaders successfully exterminated
3/4 of our population during
WWI, it was because of division.
Division led to the fall of our ancient
empire and led to the Seyfo Genocide
Yousef VI Emmanuel II Thomas, patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church from 1900 until his
death in 1947. General Petros Elia, head negotiator for the Assyrian nation between 1919 and
1923. Madame Habiba, matron of the military hospital who was featured in Shall This Nation Die?
in World War I. Division also led to the
Semele Massacre. In a book detailing
an account of the massacre of Christians
by the Turks in Persia, author Yonan
Shahbaz wrote the following:
“The Mohammedans were, of
course, pleased to see the Christians
fighting one another. In the towns the
latter were always at variance; each
sect claimed that the others had no
right to be there, and they opposed
one another with great animosity.
Each despised the other, very often on
the mere ground that one had been the
longer in the country. These bitter and
outrageous feelings have been held
for years, many years. The complaints
were transmitted from one generation
to the next.”
Within the last few hundred years,
divisive church politics weakened a
nation one race of people into multiple
competing churches, and we lost
hundreds of thousands as a result.
They died in the cruelest ways for
their Christianity and their way of life,
culture, and heritage. Our Church is
known as the “Church of Martyrs” for
that reason.
Some, fortunately, lived to tell the
story. One of those people was Chaldean
Reverend Joseph Naayem, who
published a book in 1921 called “Shall
This Nation Die?”. Without people like
him, we wouldn’t even know the massacre
happened in the first place. All the
screams, horror, blood, and destruction
would have simply vanished into the
dark abyss of oblivion. In fact, the Turkish
government publicly denies this ever
happened, like they do with the Armenian
Genocide, which happened in the
same place at the same time.
Some estimates report losses of up
to 300,000 people, while others
are as high as 750,000.
Imagine all the relationships
that were lost, the wealth
that was burned, and the traditions
that are now stored deep
in the vastness of obscurity.
We’ll never fully know what we
lost. Millions of lives, possibilities,
and dreams vanished into
the void of the past, leaving
only shadows of what might
have been. This is our history,
and history repeats itself. ISIS
rose in 2014. Now, our people
are barely hanging on by a
thread in the homeland.
The Jews spare no detail when they
discuss the holocaust. Neither do the
Armenians when they talk about their
genocide, or African Americans when
they talk about slavery. If our ancestors
went through all of that, the least
we can do is read and know about it.
We were at a crossroads in 2014;
face extinction or do something about
it. Now that we have finally settled in
the West, transformed ourselves entirely,
and achieved financial success,
we can finally do something about it.
Several nonprofit organizations exist
for this exact purpose, like the Chaldean
Community Foundation, Assyrian
Aid Society, Help Iraq, Etuti Institute,
and Nineveh Rising. Find the one
you resonate with and make a difference
so that this history never again
repeats itself.
32 CHALDEAN NEWS AUGUST 2023