Twenty-five girls collected near Bab
View Full Document

Location

Aleppo, Syria

Year

1919

Item Detail

Letter to family, Jul 18, 1919
Letter to father, Jul 31, 1919

Context

Stanley Elphinstone Kerr (1894–1976) served as a volunteer with Near East Relief from 1919 to 1922, initially assigned to Aleppo as a clinical biochemist and sanitary officer, where he also worked as a photographer and assisted in recovering Armenian children from Kurdish and Turkoman households.

In the autumn of 1919 he transferred to Marash (present-day Kahramanmaraş), where he headed American relief operations during the Franco-Turkish conflict and the siege of January–February 1920, in which an estimated 9,000 of the city's 20,000 Armenians perished. After the French evacuation, Kerr remained with the surviving Armenian population before departing with the last group of orphans in 1922. He later published The Lions of Marash (1973), a detailed account of these events.

View in the Digital Archive

  • Holding Institution

    Zoryan Institute

  • Attribution

    Courtesy of the Kerr Family. Stanley Kerr Archives, Zoryan Institute.

  • Rights

    Some materials may be protected by U.S. copyright law. Materials are presented for non-commercial research and educational use under fair use. Uses beyond fair use may require permission from the copyright owner. Responsibility for rights determination and compliance rests with the user. If you believe you hold rights in this material or have information about rights holders not currently reflected, please contact [email protected].

  • Document Contents

    Kerr and Dunaway collect 25 Armenian girls from villages near Bab; girls brought to Aleppo rescue home; survivor stories recounted; five Turks hanged in Aleppo by British for atrocities; names American personnel at mission

    Working three simultaneous roles: laboratory, barracks lab, and rescue missions; describes Bab as one of the most notorious villages for Mohammedan fanaticism; details of rescue trip with Dunaway; Dr. Lambert teaches malaria treatment

Twenty-five girls collected near Bab