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Araxi Djebejian refuses and is hanged. News Bulletin, Feb 1919.
Location
New York, United States
Year
1919
Item Detail
The fourth contingent, 250 strong, sailed on 16 February aboard the Leviathan with 2,000 tons of supplies worth $3,500,000. George E. White led it, and it carried 30 doctors, 60 trained nurses and 102 trained relief workers, together with units from Smith and Wellesley and members of the Mennonite Relief Association. The issue also prints the story of Araxi Djebejian, a native of Aintab and supervisor of its Armenian schools, hanged as a traitor after refusing a third time to marry the Vali of Der-El-Zor and profess Islam. Cablegrams report Alexandropol's wheat exhausted and Erivan down to six days.
Context
The News Bulletin was the monthly publication of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, formed in New York in 1915 and renamed the American Committee for Relief in the Near East during 1918. It was published at One Madison Avenue.
The Bulletin kept contributors and campaign workers informed. Issues carry cablegrams relayed through the Department of State from relief stations across the Ottoman Empire, Syria, Palestine, the Caucasus and Persia, with campaign news, donor rolls, field photographs and accounts by survivors of the Armenian and Greek genocides.
The four 1919 issues cover the thirty-million-dollar campaign, the sailing of the Barton Relief Commission on the Mauretania and of the relief ships Mercurius, West Cape and Pensacola, and the turn from emergency feeding to the industrial orphan homes opened at Marash, Aintab, Adana, Tarsus, Mersina, Hadjin and Aleppo as Christian women and children were released from captivity.
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Holding Institution
Columbia University Library
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External Link
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Attribution
Columbia University Libraries, digitized for HathiTrust
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Rights
No known copyright restrictions. Based on available information, NERHS is not aware of copyright restrictions on this material. Items are presented for non-commercial research and educational use. 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
Masthead: ACASR wording; 'No. 9—Total Number 21.' Editor changes from Nora Waln to Agnes V. Williams
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Document Contents
Cover photograph of the departing medical unit, thirty-seven members in all, under George L. Richards. Lead article 'The Star of Hope in the East' on the silver-star insignia and the fourth contingent, 250 strong, among them 30 doctors, 60 trained nurses and 102 technically trained relief workers, under George E. White, formerly president of Anatolia College at Marsovan, sailing 16 February on the Leviathan for Brest with 2,000 tons of supplies worth $3,500,000; the party includes five kindergarten teachers, ten reconstruction aides, forty missionaries, units from Smith and Wellesley and members of the Mennonite Relief Association. A wireless from Gibraltar reports the Pensacola, which left New York on 25 January, is expected in Constantinople on 19 February. 'The Campaign North, South, East and West' gives a total of $16,239,713.22 raised despite the influenza epidemic, New York City's quota of $6,000,000 with twelve teams already past $1,000,000, and fifteen states at fifty to one hundred per cent; Ohio raised $2,000,000 against a quota of $1,640,000. 'Catholic Diocese Pledges Support' prints Bishop John J. O'Connor's letter. 'Ten Cent Piece "Given in His Name" Raises $100 for Relief Campaign': Charles V. Vickrey read out Mrs. C. C. Dickinson's letter enclosing a coin kept for thirty years because it was found clasped in her dead baby's hand, and C. E. Cremmels bid $100 for the privilege of returning it. 'Miss Araxi Djebejian,' subheaded 'Another Heroine of the Faith Recently Hanged by the Turks': a native of Aintab educated at the American School for Girls at Marash and in London, supervisor of the Armenian schools of Aintab and known through all Cilicia, imprisoned and hanged as a revolutionary traitor after refusing a third time to marry the former governor of Van, the Vali of Der-El-Zor, and to profess Islam. 'I would rather,' she said, 'die on the gallows than live a Mohammedan.' State Department cablegrams from Basra, London, Teheran, Cairo, Constantinople, Tiflis and Paris, reporting that wheat at Alexandropol was exhausted and that Erivan's supply was down to six days.