Seyfo is the name Assyrians use for the Assyrian genocide. It is an Assyrian (Aramaic) word meaning sword, as the year 1915 was "the year of the sword" for the Assyrians. In this article, Svante analyzes how the Assyrian genocide - Seyfo - started being noticed among Assyrians in Sweden and how it came to be connected to the date of April 24. Since Seyfo, there has been an awareness among Assyrians of the tragic fate that afflicted their ancestors, but it took a long time before people talked about what had happened in terms of a genocide. It was also much later that the documentation of the events began and that people began to commemorate the memory of the events on the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (April 24).
When the Assyrian Tragedy Became Seyfo
CMES scholar Svante Lundgren has authored the article "När den assyriska tragedin blev Seyfo: En undersökning av svens-assyrisk minnespolitik" [In English: "When the Assyrian Tragedy Became Seyfo: A Study of Swedish-Assyrian Memory Politics"] published in Historisk Tidskrift för Finland.
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