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Ismid shelters 18,000 refugees. NER Weekly, 12 Feb 1921.
Location
Ismid (Izmit), Turkey
Year
1921
Item Detail
Glee L. Hastings counted 18,000 refugees in and around Ismid, 12,000 Greeks and 6,000 Armenians, housed for the most part in small, crowded, dark buildings, with most of the children barefoot and three known cases of a child starving. The 85-bed hospital under Dr. Elliott was full continuously. Near East Relief assigned $25,000 of its Canadian Fund to Ismid, Brousa and Constantinople, and Wellesley sent a further $5,000 for teachers, school equipment and clothing, which brought its gifts for the year to $10,700. A move of the Broussa orphans to Bardizag and Ismid was being planned.
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. 6, 7, 8. 25 Rue Taxim, Pera, Constantinople. February 12, 19, 26, 1921.' The file holds the combined Nos. 6-8.
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
Glee L. Hastings reports 18,000 refugees at Ismid, with children hungry, families housed in sheds and stables, and the 85-bed hospital continuously full; Near East Relief assigns $25,000 from the Canadian Fund to work at Ismid, Broussa and Constantinople; Wellesley sends $5,000 for teachers, school equipment and clothing; John H. Kingsbury reports food economy, weekly baths, knitting and medical care at Bardizag; Ernest W. Riggs compares food prices at Beirut and Constantinople from April through December 1920; nearly 300 Broussa orphans travel by truck and boat to Bardizag; later notices cover a fire near the personnel house, Esther Green's departure, marriages, engagements and field assignments.