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Dr. Lorrin A. Shepard narrates the siege of Aintab. 1921.
Location
Aintab (Gaziantep), Turkey
Year
1921
Item Detail
Shepard was the American physician at Aintab and wrote this from inside the compound. Fighting began at Marash on 19 January 1920, where two fifths of the city was destroyed and ten thousand Armenians were killed before the French withdrew. At Aintab the Armenians organized their own defense and held their quarter through seventy days of fighting. Their arsenal made grenades and powder and assembled a cannon they called "The Revenge." The orphanages and Rescue Home put their six to eight months of food stores into the common supply. The Turkish garrison surrendered on 8 February 1921.
Context
Nellie Marie Miller Mann (1897–1997) was a member of Prairie Street Mennonite Church in Elkhart, Indiana, and a graduate of Goshen College. The Mennonite Relief Commission placed her with Near East Relief in 1921, one of two Mennonite women it sent to the Near East in these years. She was appointed on 20 August 1921, sailed the same day aboard the S.S. Patria, and reached Beirut on 20 September. At the Syria-Palestine headquarters she was secretary to the treasurer and, by April 1923, in charge of the individual remittance department. She left Beirut at the end of August 1923.
The collection holds her letters to her family and to her fiancé Cleo Mann, her appointment papers and contract, and the Near East Relief reports, rosters and field accounts she kept. Together they document the Beirut office through the movement of orphans out of Anatolia and Cilicia into Syria and Lebanon in 1922, the Greek deportations of the following winter, and the deaths of two NER workers, Menno Shellenberger at Diarbekir and Lester James Wright on the Aleppo road. David W. Mann published his mother's writings as Letters from Syria, 1921–1923 (2013) and gave the originals to the Near East Foundation.
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Holding Institution
Rockefeller Archive Center
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External Link
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Attribution
Rockefeller Archive Center. Near East Foundation records, FA406. Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14.
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Rights
This material is protected by copyright. Permission has been granted for its non-commercial research and educational display by NERHS. Uses beyond this permission may require permission from the rights holder. Users are responsible for determining rights status and compliance with applicable law. If you believe you hold rights in this material or have information about rights holders not currently reflected, please contact [email protected].
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Notes
Typed in the document: "the Nationalist movement was organized for the avowed purpose of proving to Europe that Turkey was very much alive and would not allow herself to be dismembered as a punishment for joining the Hun and for attempting the annihilation of the Armenian race." / "Fighting between Turks and French began in Marash the nineteenth of January and during the three weeks that elapsed before the French withdrawal two fifths of the city was destroyed and ten thousand Armenians were butchered by the Turks." / "crowning achievements of all, put together a cannon, named “The Revenge”."
Written in ink at the foot of page 5: "written by Dr. Lorrin A. Shepard"
Sources for the Item Detail:
• Anna McIntyre, "Zeitoon Refugees in Marash," autumn 1921, on the same compound and its orphanages. Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• Letter from Marash to Mr. McAfee, 28 January 1923, on the closing of the Marash hospital. Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14, Rockefeller Archive Center.
About this group
• Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14, Near East Foundation records (FA406), Rockefeller Archive Center.
• Near East Relief appointment certificate, 20 August 1921, signed C. V. Vickrey and C. M. Fowle ("Miss Nellie M. Miller has been duly appointed a member of the relief expedition"). Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• Near East Relief, Syria-Palestine Area, Organization and Personnel, 28 April 1923, sheet I ("Secretary to Treasurer & in charge of Individual Remittance Dept. — Miss Nellie M. Miller"). Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• Nellie Miller Mann, Letters from Syria, 1921–1923, transcribed and edited by David W. Mann (Morgantown, Pa.: Masthof Press, 2013).
• Rockefeller Archive Center finding aid, Near East Foundation records: https://dimes.rockarch.org/collections/Ahi2i3M7wcFTbQuXZgxDib
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Document Contents
Five-page typescript titled "The Siege of Aintab, A Phase of the Turkish Nationalist Movement," unsigned in type, with "written by Dr. Lorrin A. Shepard" added in ink at the foot of the last page. Undated, and written after the surrender of February 1921 while peace terms were still unsettled. Shepard traces the Turkish Nationalist movement from the Union and Progress party, describes the arming of the villages, and recounts the January 1920 fighting at Marash and the murder of the YMCA secretaries Perry and Johnson on the Killis road on 1 February 1920. He narrates the outbreak at Aintab on 1 April 1920, the rifle fire on the flagged hospital and orphanage, the Armenian defense organization with its military, food, police, health, housing and judicial commissions, the arsenal and the home-made cannon, the removal of orphans and rescued women to Beirut by French convoy, the armistice at the end of May, the resumption of fighting on 28 July, the arrival of a French column on 11 August, the final investment from 20 November, and the surrender on 8 February 1921. He closes on Near East Relief's part, over thirty thousand dollars spent on food and treatment given to wounded of every side.