Collections
40,000 lira funds orphanage trades. NER Weekly, 12 Mar 1921.
Location
Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey
Year
1921
Item Detail
The Constantinople Administrative Committee voted 40,000 Turkish lira to start trades in the Armenian orphanages, on the principle that children of thirteen and over should learn one. Kouleli, which held over a thousand boys, was to become the center for the boys' trades, with tailoring, needlework and weaving planned for the girls' orphanages. Edward Shabbaz, an eye specialist in the city, explains how deported Armenians contracted trachoma in the southern deserts and why the United States now closes its doors to immigrants carrying it. The trachoma hospital discharged seven more cured children this week, ten in all.
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. 10. 25 Rue Taxim, Pera, Constantinople. March 12, 1921.'
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
Ernest W. Riggs reports a grant of 40,000 Turkish lira for trades in the Constantinople Armenian orphanages, with Kouleli planned as the boys' industrial center; Edward Shabbaz explains trachoma among Armenian deportees and calls for school and orphanage controls; the Near East Relief hospital discharges ten cured children and continues twice-daily treatment for more than 200; a Konia letter reports a new shelter home for 118 children; Sophie S. Holt describes gardens at the Ismid orphanage; Garabed Seferian writes from the Yedi Koule tuberculosis hospital; the Sailors' Club serves Psamatia children; brief reports address unemployment among more than 90,000 refugees, supplies for Anadolou Kavak, Greek refugees from Batoum and scrapbooks sent to the Ismid hospital; personnel notes cover field movements and Caucasus assignments.