Twenty workers meet 800 Russian refugees at Proti. Acorne, 21 Feb 1920.
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Location

Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey

Year

1920

Item Detail

Russian refugees reached Constantinople this month, and Near East Relief sent twenty workers to the eight hundred landed at Proti on 11 and 12 February, with about a thousand on the island by mid-month. H. P. Packard reports from Urumia on Mar Shimmon's flight from Turkish Kurdistan with 35,000 followers, the massacre of 24 May 1919 in the American Mission yard, and the remnant of 600 brought to Tabriz. Jessie D. Wallace writes from Midiat, a town of 10,000 reduced to 3,000, where more than 2,000 garments reached over 4,200 people in six days.

Context

The Acorne was the weekly bulletin of the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, produced in Constantinople for private circulation among the Committee's own staff. By January 1920, it printed a thousand copies a week for station directors in the field and for supporters in America.

Issues ran to four pages of short field dispatches and unit reports: orphan care, medical work, refugee feeding, education and workshop programs, with operational notes on supplies, rations, transport and exchange. Personnel notices recorded arrivals, transfers and departures. The bulletin took the title Near East Relief with Vol. II, No. 42 on 23 October 1920.

No complete run is known to survive. NERHS holds seventeen issues of Volume II, drawn from the Harry Pratt Judson records at the University of Chicago, the Martin Weaver Documents at the Mennonite Historical Library, and the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary.

These five issues run from 31 January to 27 March 1920 and cover the Adana district, the massacre at Marash and its aftermath, and American relief in north-west Persia. They reached the University of Chicago through President Harry Pratt Judson, who headed the Committee's Persian commission.

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  • Holding Institution

    University of Chicago (Office of the President)

  • Attribution

    University of Chicago, Office of the President. Harper, Judson, and Burton Administrations. Records (1869–1925)

  • Rights

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  • Document Contents

    'Americans Aid Russian Refugees' on eight hundred refugees landed at Proti on 11 and 12 February and twenty American workers sent to them; 'Three Hospitals in Twelve Hours'; 'Monastery Houses Five Hundred'; 'Passport Bureau Established'; 'Baby Causes Consternanion'; 'New Arrivals' recording 120 more refugees on 16 February and about a thousand on the island; 'Y. M. C. A. Secretaries Killed in Interior' on the deaths of James Perry, Chief Secretary in the Near East, Frank L. Johnson and their two Syrian escorts, attacked half-way between Killis and Aintab on Sunday 1 February; 'News from Marash'; 'American Relief in North Western Persia', signed H. P. Packard at Urumia, on Mar Shimmon's flight from Turkish Kurdistan with 35,000 followers, the massacre of 24 May 1919 in the American Mission yard, the remnant of 600 taken to Tabriz by Gordon Paddock, and the 5,000 exiled Christians; 'The End Is Not Yet', signed Jessie D. Wallace from Midiat, on a town of 10,000 reduced to 3,000 and over 2,000 garments distributed in six days to more than 4,200 people, with a note of her death there from mastoiditis soon afterwards; 'News Notes'; 'Individual Remittances in the Aleppo Area' totaling $66,666.86 to 2,270 payees; 'The City of Aleppo'.

Twenty workers meet 800 Russian refugees at Proti. Acorne, 21 Feb 1920.