Neighbors Fail to Assimilate Diarbekir Jews

In a report published in the June issue of Paix et Droit, the official organ of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, Mr. Nassi, director of the Alliance school at Teheran, submits the following recollections of the Jews of Diarbekir, among whom he spent about fifteen months in 1912 and 1913:

“The town was surrounded by an impenetrable wall dating from the Greek, Roman or Arabian era, perpendicularly overhanging deep ravines. Four solid gates under police guard were closed at sunset to avoid nocturnal attacks, leaving everything beyond the enclosure to its own fate, and transforming the periphery into veritable dens of thieves. Within, some 200,000 inhabitants, most of them Kurds and Armenians, were constantly in conflict. These elements led a wild mountaineer life, bitterly opposed to new ideas.

ONLY 300 JEWS

“At that time the Jewish population was rather small; it was composed of about 100 households, approximately 300 souls in all, established practically on the outskirts of the town. Their condition was very wretched, as it is in all far-off Oriental lands that have been closed to the contact of foreigners and to the benefit of western civilization. They devoted themselves to hawking, petty commerce, the manufacture and sale of brandy, etc. They spoke Turkish, Kurdish, Hebrew and Chaldaic; they had neither a school, cemetery nor Talmud Torah. In a filthy little courtyard an aged rabbi taught Hebrew to small children. Despite their number and the lack of all means of instruction, he succeeded in teaching them the elements of the language, with the result that there were almost no ignorant people among them. I was able, during my stay there, to get them a Turkish teacher free of charge. I was interested in the state of these miserable beings, and had drawn the attention of the central authorities of the Commonalty of Constantinople toward them. The newspaper campaign opened then ceased after my removal.

BEAUTIFUL SYNAGOGUE

“In the midst of the huts and wretched houses built of dirt, composed of a little space of a few square metres sheltering five or six families, actual hovels cluttered with men, women, children and old people, arose a synagogue, elegant in its black stone columns and thin arches that were out of tune with the surrounding destitution. It was built by grace of a gift of 100 pounds sterling made by Sir Moses Montefiore to the Commonalty in 1881.

“In the courtyard next to the synagogue the dead reposed almost in contact with the living, contrary to all most elementary rules of hygiene. This precaution had its justifications, for they told me that, during the years of drought, the Kurds used to cut off the head of a dead Jew and throw it into the Tigris. It was therefore essential to protect the dead from this violation, and so it was that in the little courtyard behind the temple the tombs were piled one on top of the other. Another coarse procedure was used to get water from the heavens. Perched on the roof, a man was supposed to watch a funeral procession and spit upon the coffin that carried the dead Jew to his last abode. Profoundly shocked by this, I asked the Governor General of the country to abolish these barbarous and humiliating practices.

“The Jews, far from assimilating the characteristics of their Kurdish neighbors, had appeared to me to be extremely sensitive and not at all warlike. Nevertheless during the Rosh Hashonah holidays I had to go to the quarter and confiscate weapons, for the worshippers had escaped from the temple in the middle of the service, on some ridiculous provocation or other, and were perched on the roofs, threatening each other.

“The women went abroad veiled, and I was rather amazed to observe the wife of the rabbi on the eve of Passover crouched behind the door, listening to the story of the deliverance of our ancestors from slavery.

“The Alliance Israelite used to be interested in this community, and I have before me a letter in Hebrew which Isidore Loeb addressed to it on May 11, 1876, and another of the same year in which the late secretary promised that its ‘night would be changed to day.’ But a chain of unfortunate circumstances and the great war that upset and disorganized everything precluded the execution of the plan with the result that the ‘night’ still weighs heavily upon those poor people.”