Fled Kurd Massacres

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Apr 15, 1915

Fled Kurd Massacres

[The following article, published in the Washington Post of April 4, will be read with interest in connection with the letter from Brother Oster.—Ed.]

Fled Kurd Massacres

Mrs. F. W. Oster Tells of Escape in Letter to Rutland, Vt.

Village of Miandoab Sacked

Missionary Family of Seventh-Day Adventists Reaches Tabriz, After Witnessing Horrors — Children Thrown Into Icy Rivers and Women Barbarously Treated — Refugees Barefooted in Snow.

RUTLAND, VT., APRIL 3.—The flight of a missionary family from attacks of the Kurds in the district of Azerbaijan, Persia, and some of the fighting between Russians and the native tribes in that country are described in a letter just received here from Mrs. Florence White Oster, wife of a Seventh-day Adventist missionary.

How Miandoab Was Sacked

Mrs. Oster, writing from Tabriz, tells of the sacking and burning of the village of Miandoab by the Kurds, and of her subsequent flight with her husband and their child from Maragha when the tribesmen threatened that place.

“Children were thrown into icy rivers and women were treated dreadfully during the sacking of Miandoab,” according to the letter, which continues:—

“We left Maragha by night with the Russian army of 8,000 men retreating from Miandoab. I rode the horse with our four-weeks-old baby while Mr. Oster led him. That first night and day I kept the saddle for fourteen hours without a rest.”

Fear Vengeance of Kurds

“We fell off the horse once right in a small stream,” says Mrs. Oster. “A soldier helped us a bit. He thought baby was a bundle of something we did not wish, so he threw her over to one side of the road. She was not injured. Baby seemed to enjoy the ride, and did not care how much she was jolted.

“Just six miles from here, 800 Kurds were killed, 500 taken prisoners, and about 500 escaped. The ground was strewn with their bodies. Because of their defeat we fear they will take vengeance on Maragha. As yet the Russians are not strongly enough reenforced to go down to that place.

“We have seen much real suffering. Hundreds of refugees are fleeing through the snow, barefooted. Many are dying from starvation. We are kindly cared for here by the Presbyterian missionaries from America. We are not yet out of danger, for the Turks are stronger near

the boundary, and with the Kurds to help, we surely have something to fear. ‘About 10,000 Russians are here, but we do not know when they will be called away.’”