In my memory, relations between the town’s Jews and some of their Armenian neighbours were tense and at times violent. Armed groups raided Jewish homes, looted property, and particularly sought out the houses of prosperous families.
One day such a group tried to rob the home of Aksel Harun1. The guard opened fire in an attempt to repel them; they returned fire, and Harun’s son Avraham was killed.
One of the community’s leading men was Sheikh David2. His handsome young son, Rabbi, set out for Dilman with two companions to obtain a passport. On the road they encountered an Armenian gang. Rabbi tried to escape but was shot; his companions’ horses panicked and bolted, and the attackers also fled.
I can still see the scene when news of the shooting reached the town. The men rushed into the street barefoot, and the women ran out without covering their heads. I went with the crowd to the site. Rabbi was still alive. One of his brothers laid his head across his knees and searched for the bullet wound, crying out in grief. Rabbi died before my eyes.
Our proximity to the Ottoman frontier and the Russian theatre of operations made the district a constantly shifting battlefield. At times the Russians drove Ottoman troops westward; at others they themselves withdrew towards Dilman. The regular armies generally tried to preserve civilian order. In our experience, the greater danger came from irregular forces moving ahead of them — Armenian units aligned with the Russians and Kurdish groups aligned with the Ottomans.3
Whenever a regular army entered the town, the leaders of the Jewish community went out to meet it carrying a Torah scroll, hoping to protect the quarter. When the Russians arrived, many Kurdish families fled; when the Ottomans returned, Armenians and other Christians left. The homes of those who fled were plundered by their opponents. Control changed so often that all we could do was bow our heads and wait to see what the next day would bring.
- Original editor’s note: The name or epithet ‘Aksel Harun’ means ‘Harun of the white beard.’
- Original editor’s note: It was customary to add the title ‘Sheikh’ to Jews who had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
- North-western Iran was a Russo-Ottoman theatre during the First World War, and local and irregular forces also operated there. The passage should be read as a community member’s testimony, not as a complete account of all forces involved. See Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Brest-Litovsk Treaty” and “Urmia Orthodokseta” (accessed 2 September 2026).