Collections
Edith Coombs receives the Shefakat. NER Weekly, 9 Apr 1921.
Location
Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey
Year
1921
Item Detail
Sultan Mehmed VI conferred the Imperial Order of Shefakat on Edith J. Coombs for acts of kindness and mercy. The issue prints extracts from Annie T. Allen's diary of a September journey by ship, truck and motorcar from Constantinople through Samsoun, Marsovan and Cesarea to Konia, where she arrived at midnight and found Miss Cushman and Miss Gaylord waiting up for word from the outside world. Camp schools paid for by the Wellesley Fund had 487 Armenian children at their books. Susan W. Orvis describes blind and deaf pupils taught in the ordinary schools at Cesarea and Talas, and a separate school for Moohajir children.
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.
-
Holding Institution
Columbia University Library
-
External Link
-
Attribution
Digitized by Columbia University Libraries; available through HathiTrust (Public Domain).
-
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].
-
Notes
Masthead: 'Near East Relief. Vol. III. No. 14. 25 Rue Taxim, Pera, Constantinople. April 9, 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.
-
Document Contents
Sultan Mehmed VI confers the Imperial Order of Shefakat II Class on Edith J. Coombs for acts of kindness and mercy; Annie T. Allen's September 1920 diary follows a journey by ship, truck and motorcar from Constantinople through Samsoun, Marsovan and Cesarea to Konia; Glee L. Hastings lists charcoal, clothing, food and soap sent to five Armenian camps and aid to Russian-Armenian soldiers and poor Turkish households; Wellesley funds support camp schools for 487 children; Susan W. Orvis describes schools at Cesarea and Talas for blind, Deaf, Moohajir and other children, with trade instruction and an orphanage for more than one hundred Turkish children; personnel notes cover lectures, supply travel and field movements.