The Cordova daily times., 1916-02-25
BURN TO DEATH AN
 AMERICAN

:: trograd after narrowly escaping death !: in Urumiah Persian Armenia, asserts that among the outrages committed
 against the Christian refugees was the . burning to death of an American doc
 tor named Simon or Shimmun, as he ! was known there. His identity was not further established, but the story of the outrage as told by Dr. Sargs was as follows:
 Or Shimmun was in the village of Supurghan when the Turks attacked that place. He was among those who took refuge on a mountain near the lakes He was captured, and told that since he had been a good doctor ] and had helped the wounded, they would not kill him, but that he must accept the Mohammedan faith. He re fused, as almost all Christians did
 They poured oil on him, and, before Iapplyng the torch. they gave him an
 other chance to forsake his religion
 Again he refused, and they set his clothes afire. While running in agony
 from the flames, the Turks shot him
 several times. After he fell to the ground unconscious they hacked his head off. Mir. Allen, an American mis- sionary. who went from village to village burying the victims of this | butchery, found the body of Shimmun half eaten by dogs.
 "The Catholic mission here took 150
 Christians of all sects and kept them
 in small room and tried to save them but at least forty-nine of them, among them one Bishop Dinkha, of the Epis- copal mission. were bound together one night, taken to Gagin mountain and there shot down."
 Dr. Sargis was born in Persia. but went to America in 1893, and was edu- cated there by assistance of pr. W. r. Oldham, former bishop of India. He
 is graduate of Ohio Wesleyan and
 Ohio Medical University, and was for time resident physician of the Pro testant Hospital at Columbus, Ohio.
 Dr. Sargis was doing relief work in Urumiah on January 1 last year, when
 the Russian army retired from that
 city, followed by 14,O0O refugees from
 Urumiah and a hundred surrounding
 villages. The hardships and suffer iues endured by those refugees were
 described in Associated Press dis patches. There were still left in Uru- miah and the villages 45, 900 persons. chiefly Armenian refugees, when the
 Turks and Kurds entered. The latter
 at once began the work of eXtermina- tion of the Christian population. In
 one town alone. Gulfarchin, in one night, according to Dr. Sargis, Fl men and boys were tied hand to hand, taken to a hill outside the village and shot Their wives and daughters were distributed among the Turks, Kurds and Persian MOhammedans. Dr. Sar- gis' story continues:
 "On the second day after the Turk ish officers came they had a good many wounded and sick. As soon as they heard that I was an able physi- elan they took me, gave men body guard and put me in charge of Uru- miah hospital. That was how I came | to learn most of their secrets: I helped their wounded and sick One Iday there were sixty men brought from Bashkal, all well to do citizens. some of them noted men of that place They were used as beasts of burden, forced to carry rolls of barbed wire into Urumiah. The next day they were taken to the Castle of Ismayil and every one was shot or hacked to death
 "About that time Nuri, the goyer- | nor of Gavr. told me that he had re ceived word from the Turkish com manded to kill all the Armenian sol 1 diers in the Turkish army He said that for my sake he would not do it. l but that somebody else would. Twen- ty-nine were killed about fifteen miles !, from Urumiah at Karmad We had ! eight of them in the city. fine fel- | lows, some of them educated in Bel | rut They had been dlsarmed, and ,