Collections
A starving child among the ruins. Alexandropol, c. 1920–1921.
Location
Alexandropol (Gyumri), Armenia
Year
c. 1920–1921
Item Detail
The album describes this child as hungry, homeless and almost naked, one of thousands whom the Near East Relief orphanages could not take in. Near East Relief's three major orphanage posts at Alexandropol (Gyumri), Polygon, Kazachi and Seversky, held some 170 buildings, among them about forty converted barracks. When Dr. Mabel E. Elliott arrived in 1921, she called Alexandropol the largest orphanage in the world.
Context
The American Relief Administration (ARA), Herbert Hoover's relief agency in postwar Europe, was re-formed in July 1919 as a volunteer, non-profit body. From August 1919 to July 1920 it worked jointly with Near East Relief in the Caucasus under Colonel William N. Haskell, joint relief administrator and high commissioner for Armenia. Near East Relief agreed to pay the administrative, orphanage and transportation costs, and its workers took their assignments from Haskell and ran the orphanages. The people they served included Armenian refugees who had fled Turkey during the Armenian Genocide. When Haskell withdrew to Constantinople in 1920, Ernest A. Yarrow took charge of the workers who stayed.
This photograph is one of 67 prints from the ARA European operational records at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives. Seven show child feeding and institutions in Tiflis (Tbilisi). Nineteen filed as ARA operations in Armenia are mostly marked "Near East Relief" on the back, and one is an American Red Cross photograph. Four more, filed as starving children, are marked as Armenian refugees and an Armenian child. Thirty-seven come from an album that Hoover describes as work of Near East Relief in Erevan. Its captions also name places in Georgia and Turkey.
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Holding Institution
Hoover Institution Library and Archives
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External Link
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Attribution
Photograph of a starving child among ruins, Alexandropol, c. 1920–1921, American Relief Administration European operational records, Box 855, Folder 11, Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
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Rights
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Notes
Album caption (typed on the album page, page shot asset 11065): "Alexandropol - Among the ruins, dying of starvation, Hungry, homeless, almost naked, this child's plight was only typical of the condition of thousands of other children who could not be accommodated in the Near East Relief orphanages."
Hoover title: "Album containing 37 prints depicting work of Near East Relief in Erevan." Box 855, Folder 11 (Armenia). Hoover record: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf9779p02m_aspace_d508570211510b5474ee72ab3afb4b0f
Sources for the Item Detail:
• Barton, p. 213, note quoting an article by Frank C. Bray ("The physical dimensions of the three major orphanage posts of Polygon, Kazachi, and Seversky, all in the city of Alexandropol, are enormous. To say that there are 170 buildings in the three posts may help one to comprehend the size of the job; among them are half a dozen warehouses somewhere near 1,000 feet long, about 40 two-story converted barracks"). James L. Barton, Story of Near East Relief (1930), HathiTrust: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b744679
• Elliott, p. 170 ("When we came into Alexandropol in 1921, Erivan was the capital of Soviet Armenia, and Alexandropol was the largest orphanage in the world."). Mabel Evelyn Elliott, Beginning Again at Ararat (Fleming H. Revell, 1924), Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/beginningagainat001962mbp
About this group: American Relief Administration European operational records, Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
• Hoover Institution Library & Archives, American Relief Administration European operational records, collection guide, biographical note quoting Herbert Hoover, An American Epic, vol. III ("to set up a volunteer successor under the same name" ... "On July 12, they formed the new American Relief Administration, which was registered as a non-profit corporation"): https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf9779p02m
• Barton, p. 124 ("the appointment of Col. William N. Haskell as joint relief administrator and high commissioner for Armenia ... The Near East Relief agreed to pay all administrative, orphanage and transportation charges, which were estimated at $500,000 per month."). James L. Barton, Story of Near East Relief (1930), HathiTrust: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b744679
• Barton, p. 124 ("Col. Haskell and his mission took charge of the relief activities in August, 1919, and remained in the Caucasus until July, 1920. The Near East Relief workers were given assignments by Col. Haskell and were made responsible for the care of the children and the orphanages."). James L. Barton, Story of Near East Relief (1930), HathiTrust: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b744679
• Barton, p. 10 ("It was learned that Armenians from the eastern part of Turkey, alarmed by the hostile attitude of the Constantinople government, were in exodus by the tens of thousands into Russia" ... "there was an assemblage of more than two hundred thousand Armenians, Assyrians and Nestorians in abject destitution in the Russian Caucasus"), from the State Department dispatches the committee read when it was formed in 1915. James L. Barton, Story of Near East Relief (1930), HathiTrust: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b744679
• Barton, p. 127 ("Col. Haskell and his military aids withdrew to Constantinople and Ernest A. Yarrow was placed in charge of the civilian workers, who remained to carry on the relief activities."). James L. Barton, Story of Near East Relief (1930), HathiTrust: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b744679