Candlelight Vigils Across Europe on 110th Sayfo Remembrance Day

EUROPE — On the 110th anniversary of the Sayfo Genocide, a series of solemn commemorations was held this weekend across Europe, underscoring both the depth of their loss and their enduring call for recognition of the 1915 genocide. 

In Hengelo, Netherlands, more than 50 members of the Syriac community gathered Saturday evening at the Syriac Cultural Center. Under flickering candles, priests, and lay leaders of the Bethnahrin National Council (Mawtbo Umthoyo D’Bethnahrin, MUB) held a “Tashmeshto” prayer service, invoking peace for the estimated 300,000 men, women, and children killed by Ottoman and Kurdish forces. “They sought not just to kill us, but to erase our language, our faith and our history,” said one organizer, reading from the Council’s statement. Attendees then processed through neighboring streets, carrying placards that read “We Remember” in Syriac, Dutch, and English. 

Across the border in Germany, events unfolded in two cities: Gütersloh and Giessen. In Gütersloh’s multicultural center, representatives of the European Syriac Union (ESU) joined members of the Beth Nahrin Women’s Union (Huyodo d’Neshe d’Bethnahrin, HNB) to observe a minute of silence before screening a 20-minute documentary on Sayfo. Ibtisam Gaurieh, co-chair of the HNB in Germany, then recited the Bethnahrin National Council’s appeal for official acknowledgement of the genocide. “Turkey’s denial wounds us anew each year,” Gaurieh said. 

Later that afternoon in Giessen, MUB member Gabro Tuma delivered a keynote address on the Ottoman Empire’s systematic targeting of Syriac villages. “Decades of scholarship confirm: this was a cold-blooded plan to destroy a people,” he said, urging participants to carry the message “to every parliament and university in Europe.” 

Meanwhile in Polheim (Giessen), congregants assembled around the town’s permanent Sayfo memorial. Flames from tiny glass lanterns were set at its base as youth recited victims’ names in Syriac. A local priest, Fr Simaan Issa, reminded the crowd that the monument itself—erected in 2015—was born out of a grassroots campaign by survivors’ families. “We light these candles not only for the past,” he said, “but to keep hope alive that justice will one day follow remembrance.”

The series of observances will conclude Sunday evening with a candlelight march at Parco della Pace in Locarno, Switzerland, beginning at 9 p.m. Organizers expect several hundred participants—many of whom have journeyed from as far as Sweden and Italy. 

For Europe’s Syriac (Aramean-Chaldean-Assyrian) communities, the commemoration of Sayfo is both a sacred duty and a political statement. Though more than a dozen countries have now recognized the 1915 genocide, Turkey continues to reject the term. By holding vigils from the Low Countries to the Alps, the Syriac diaspora aims to keep the memory alive and visible—and to press European governments to lend their moral weight to official recognition and education initiatives.  

“With each candle we light,” Ibtisam Gaurieh told the crowd in Gütersloh, “we declare that the truth cannot be extinguished.”