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NER defines its work and counts supplies. NER Weekly, 7 Jan 1921.
Location
Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey
Year
1921
Item Detail
The first issue of 1921 sets out what Near East Relief is, as a body incorporated by Act of Congress and organized in four independent areas. The supply figures behind that structure are given for the Anatolia warehouses at Constantinople and Derindje, which had sent out 893,500 blankets, 2,803,488 cans of condensed milk and 12,324,000 pounds of flour, while the Constantinople bakery had supplied the city's orphanages with more than 6,500,000 loaves of bread. Edith J. Coombs took Christmas stockings and food to 119 children among the five hundred refugees at the Psamatia camp.
Context
The Near East Relief Weekly Bulletin was a four-page weekly printed in Constantinople for the organization's own staff. It continued The Acorne, the bulletin of the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, and took the new title with Vol. II, No. 42 on 23 October 1920, when the organization itself was renamed Near East Relief.
Because it was written for people already in the field and not for donors at home, the Weekly is plainer than anything Near East Relief printed in America. Station reports give the numbers (e.g., children fed, beds occupied, pairs of shoes made, tons landed at Batoum) and the personnel notes record who arrived, who transferred, who married and who died.
The run covers the fall of Kars, the landing of Russian refugees in Constantinople in the winter of 1920, the famine in Armenia through 1921 and 1922, and the French withdrawal from Cilicia.
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Holding Institution
Columbia University Library
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External Link
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Attribution
Digitized by Columbia University Libraries; available through HathiTrust (Public Domain).
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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: 'Near East Relief. Vol. III. No. 1. 25 Rue Taxim, Pera, Constantinople. January 7, 1920.' The year is a printed error; the issue falls between the December 1920 and January 1921 numbers and belongs to Vol. III.
Most of the people described in these pages were survivors of the genocide of the Ottoman Armenians and of the killing and deportation of Greeks and Assyrians in the same years. The bulletin does not use the word "Genocide," which was not coined until 1944. Its writers say "the deportations", "the massacres", or simply "the troubles", and often say nothing at all about how a child came to be an orphan. Where an issue documents the events or their aftermath, the record indicates this in the Subject field. The period's own vocabulary is kept in the original article titles and in quoted phrases.
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Document Contents
'Object and Work of the Near East Relief' gives the congressional charter, four-area structure and Anatolia program; the supply report counts 893,500 blankets, 2,803,488 cans of condensed milk, 12,324,000 pounds of flour and more than 6.5 million loaves from the Constantinople bakery; Edith J. Coombs distributes Christmas stockings and food to 119 children at the Psamatia camp; 'Marash News' describes the journey of Margaret Reid and Anne E. McIntyre through besieged Aintab and relief for about 3,500 people at Marash; shorter reports cover the departure of John H. Boyd from Aintab, Sylvia Eddy's return, new refugees at Aleppo, a Cesarea orphanage gift, a Balat banner and Y.W.C.A. recreation in the girls' orphanages; personnel notices record field returns and transfers.