History of NER in Syria, Sept. 1921
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Location

Beirut, Lebanon

Year

1921

Item Detail

"Written in 1921 before the great exodus of orphans from Turkey"

Context

Nellie Marie Miller Mann (1897–1997) was a Mennonite volunteer from Elkhart, Indiana, who served as secretary to the treasurer of Near East Relief headquarters in Beirut from 1921 to 1923.

A graduate of Goshen College and member of Prairie Street Mennonite Church, she was one of only two Mennonite women to serve in the Near East through the Mennonite Relief Commission during this period. From her desk in the Beirut office, Mann processed correspondence and financial records while the organization managed the evacuation of tens of thousands of Armenian orphans from Cilicia into Syria. She witnessed the Smyrna disaster refugee crisis of 1922 and the murder of NER worker Lester James Wright by bandits near Aleppo.

The collection includes personal and official correspondence, NER administrative reports, field accounts of relief operations in Syria and Cilicia, and documents related to the deaths of NER workers Lester James Wright and Menno Shellenberger. Mann’s letters to her family and fiancé Cleo Mann provide a rare firsthand account of daily life at NER headquarters during one of the organization’s most intense operational periods.

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  • Holding Institution

    Rockefeller Archive Center

  • External Link
    https://dimes.rockarch.org/collections/Ahi2i3M7wcFTbQuXZgxDib

  • Attribution

    Nellie Miller Mann Series (Series 14), Near East Foundation Records (FA406), Rockefeller Archive Center. Courtesy of David Mann.

  • 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.

  • Notes

    David W. Mann published his mother’s writings in Letters from Syria, 1921–1923 (2013) and donated the original materials to the Near East Foundation.

  • Document Contents

    Eleven-page report titled “The Near East Relief in Syria,” with a handwritten note above the title indicating it was written in 1921 about the time of Secretary Stoddard’s visit, tracing the origin and growth of NER work in Syria from the wartime private relief efforts of Mr. Ammon (manager of the American Press, later imprisoned by the Turks at Constantinople) through the closure of American Red Cross Syrian operations and the formation of an eight-American local committee in Beirut. It chronicles the famine winter of 1918–1919, currency speculation in Turkish paper, the dispatch of Major Nicol of the Red Cross Commission to Beirut, and the eventual transfer of Egyptian Expeditionary Force and Red Cross relief operations to NER under his leadership, with orphanages organized on the principles of religious neutrality and industrial training. The September 1921 census on page 7 reports about 4,300 Armenian and Mardin orphans across Aintab, Antilyas, Ghazir, Jubeil, Marash, Mardin, Urfa, Sidon, and Aleppo (partial and temporary aid), plus several hundred Syrian orphans (Greek Orthodox, Maronite, Greek Catholic, Syriac, Protestant) at Ghazir, Homs, Sidon, and Zahleh, and an additional Persian group under partial and temporary aid. The report details policy on village placement, gender separation, agricultural training, and the rural land project at Atimeh, urges that the orphans grow into honest, self-supporting service rather than becoming pauperized, and warns of the danger of sectarian alignment in the work.

History of NER in Syria, Sept. 1921