Aleppo Rescue Home Admissions Records (1801–1900), 1929–1930

Item Detail

Register page recording intakes 1801–1900 (1929–1930). The exemplar shown is Aghavnoush Balayian, age 25, from Adapazar, held in captivity for twelve years before reaching the Rescue Home in 1929.

Context

The Aleppo Rescue Home — referred to in League of Nations documents as the Reception House — was established in Aleppo in 1918 by the American Committee for Relief in the Near East (ACRNE, which became Near East Relief in 1919) as a reception facility for Armenian women, children, and young men recovered from captivity following the Armenian Genocide. In 1920 the League of Nations authorized a Commission of Enquiry for the Protection of Women and Children in the Near East, and the Rescue Home was transferred to League administration. Karen Jeppe, the Danish humanitarian who had worked among Armenians since 1903, served as the League Commissioner, directing the Aleppo branch from 1922 to 1927, and continued rescue work privately until her death in 1935.

The admissions registers document each new arrival's name and parentage, place of origin, age, date of admission, photograph, and a narrative of their captivity and rescue, with the individual's later disposition recorded on the reverse. The League of Nations Archives at the United Nations Office at Geneva holds 1,464 individual intake surveys — one of the most extensive survivor-testimony records of the Armenian Genocide held in any archive.