Location

Nabatiyeh, Lebanon

Year

1919

Item Detail

Near East Relief ran on subscriptions and later asked its field staff for photographs to raise them. Several of the boys stand bare from the waist up, their bellies swollen and their arms and legs thin, and most of them are barefoot. A photograph of children at Port Said ran the same month under the line "Will you be one of those to fill the basket?"

Context

Silas Hertzler (1888–1975) served in Syria from January 1919 to March 1920, first under the American Red Cross and, from 1 April 1919, under the American Committee for Relief in the Near East. He was one of seven young volunteers the Mennonite Relief Commission for War Sufferers sent on the relief ship Pensacola on 25 January 1919. After a few months in the Beirut transport department, he went to the Sidon district, where William Stoltzfus directed the work, and Hertzler was responsible for three hundred boys in the orphanage. Many of the children had been orphaned by the Armenian Genocide or by the wartime famine in Mount Lebanon. He taught at Goshen College from 1920 to 1958.

The collection draws on his loose prints and relief photograph album at Goshen College Archives. It records the Sidon orphanage and its trade shops, the Armenian refugee barracks at Aleppo, the Syrian Orphanage at Jerusalem, and the Antoura orphanage, where Ottoman authorities had tried to make Armenian children Turkish. Three portraits follow one girl, Miriam Moosa, from her arrival to six months later. Some prints show places he is not known to have worked, among them Konia and Smyrna.

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  • Holding Institution

    Goshen College Archives, Goshen College. Goshen, Indiana.

  • External Link
    https://archives.mhsc.ca/index.php/silas-and-anna-weaver-hertzler-papers-1904-1975

  • Attribution

    Silas and Anna Weaver Hertzler Papers. Middle East Photographs, 1919–20. HM1/197, Box 19–20. Goshen College Archives, Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana.

  • Rights

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  • Notes

    Original caption: "Do they need clothes? Taken at Nabatiyeh, March, 1919."

    HM1/197, Box 20.

    Near East Relief ran on subscriptions and asked its field staff for photographs to raise them. James L. Barton, Story of Near East Relief (1930) records that after the armistice the publicity drew on "a wealth of camera pictures by the members of the staff," alongside newsreels and posters. Charles V. Vickrey wrote to the field, "emphasizing the value of photographs of the work... We shall be very grateful for any good clear films showing the various forms of work we are carrying on, and we shall be glad to reimburse the personnel for the expense of taking the photographs. Photographs have just been sent in from the Beirut area for which the New York office was very grateful." (Near East Relief [newsletter], vol. III no. 24, 18 June 1921, p. 3.)

    A standing notice ran: "One small photograph, full of human interest... tells more to the people at home than pages of written matter... Won't you please send to the Publicity Department at Headquarters interesting photographs, and the films also if possible." (Near East Relief [newsletter], vol. III no. 52, 31 December 1921, p. 4.)

    The March 1919 News Bulletin printed a photograph of children at Port Said captioned "Port Said - School children at recess in the afternoon, going to get their little loaf of bread. Will you be one of those to fill the basket?"