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A nose and throat clinic in a former Berlin–Baghdad railway boxcar. Derindje, c. 1920–1921.
Location
Derindje (Derince), Turkey
Year
c. 1920–1921
Item Detail
The album records that this nose and throat clinic had formerly been a boxcar of the Berlin–Baghdad railway. Derindje (Derince), at the head of the Gulf of Ismid east of Constantinople, was Near East Relief's port of debarkation in Turkey. Relief supplies were stored in the warehouses of the Baghdad railway there, and a hospital under American direction was established at Derindje.
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 boxcar clinic, Derindje, 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 11140): "Derindje - Nose and throat clinic at Derindje, formerly a Berlin-Bagdad boxcar."
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. 110 ("the wharves and warehouses in Constantinople and in Derindje, at the head of the Gulf of Izmit"). James L. Barton, Story of Near East Relief (1930), HathiTrust: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b744679
• Barton, pp. 190–191 ("In co-operation with local agencies and in connection with the rounded relief program, hospitals were established and maintained under American direction at Aleppo, Constantinople, Derindje, Izmit, Samsun and Trebizond. The warehouses of the Baghdad railroad at Derindje, just east of Constantinople, were used for the storage and distribution of shiploads of relief supplies." ... "from Derindje, the port of debarkation"). James L. Barton, Story of Near East Relief (1930), HathiTrust: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b744679
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