Permanent Exhibit

Answering the Call:
How America Mobilized

In 1915, as World War I engulfed Europe, the Ottoman Empire launched a campaign of extermination against its Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian populations. When the first reports of genocide reached Washington, the U.S. government was neutral and constrained from intervening. In its place, a group of citizens formed a committee that grew into Near East Relief. This exhibit traces how a modest fundraising campaign became a nationwide movement that united presidents, celebrities, and schoolchildren in a common cause.

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The Digital Archive

The archive holds more than 40,000 digitized items from more than 20 institutions: photographs of orphanages in Armenia, Greece, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey; the posters that raised money in American towns; reports from the field; and letters like Stanley Kerr’s day-by-day account of the siege of Marash in 1920. New material is added regularly. Anyone can browse a selection, and a free account opens the full archive.

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Documentary

They Shall Not Perish

They Shall Not Perish tells the story of genocide, survival, and the unprecedented American response through archival footage, first-person accounts, and the voices of people who lived it. Feature-length. Free to stream.

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Relief Worker Memorial

Honoring Those Who Served

They were a diverse coalition: missionaries and mechanics, World War I veterans and conscientious objectors, nurses and teachers. From 1915 to 1930, more than 1,000 Americans, along with international relief workers, served in Near East Relief orphanages and relief stations across Anatolia, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. This Memorial honors their service with individual profiles. New profiles are added, and existing ones expanded, as research and family contributions continue.

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Dispatches

Dispatches are in-depth stories drawn from the Near East Relief archive. They explore the orphanages, relief workers, survivors, and campaigns that defined one of America’s first mass humanitarian movements.

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Constantinople: Queen of Cities

At the start of the twentieth century, Constantinople sat at the meeting point of Europe and Asia, capital of an empire that had governed parts of three continents for six centuries. Armenians, Greeks, Sephardic Jews, and Levantine Christians lived in...

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Near East Relief in Aleppo

In 1915, the Ottoman government deported hundreds of thousands of Armenians from Anatolia toward the Syrian desert. Aleppo, an ancient trading city on the route, became a way station and, for tens of thousands, a destination. Three waves of refugees...

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Alexandropol: Making the “Orphan City”

By the summer of 1919, the Armenian Genocide and the collapse of the Russian Caucasus had driven tens of thousands of orphaned children toward a handful of overstretched relief stations. Famine was spreading across the region. Near East Relief consolidated...

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Tools for the Classroom

Teach the Legacy

Stream the documentary. Download the curriculum guide. Request the panel exhibit for your school or library. Primary sources and teaching tools for the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Genocides and America’s humanitarian response.

Educator Resources

Thousands of Records Still Wait to Be Seen

We are digitizing fragile records, building new exhibits, and expanding the archive. Thousands of photographs and documents are still awaiting cataloging and indexing. Your support makes that work possible.

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