Boys read from books outside the orphanage. Homs, 1922.
Location
Homs, Syria
Year
1922
Item Detail
The Homs orphanage housed 200 boys and 150 girls in a Native School building and a mission house outside the city, near the ancient citadel. Robert de Caix, whom Dodge describes as Acting Governor of Syria, had suggested Homs to Dodge in April 1921 as a good place for the children, for political reasons. About a dozen boys hold open books at the corner of the building, in the same striped smocks and caps, with the older boys standing behind those who read. A Syrian staff ran the orphanage, led by Hafiz Abboud Faris.
Context
Bayard Dodge (1888–1972) taught at the Syrian Protestant College, later the American University of Beirut, and was its president from 1923 to 1948. The son of Near East Relief's treasurer, he helped build the network of orphanages that received Armenian children moved south out of Anatolia, and in April 1921 he secured French assurances that 1,000 children from Marash and 700 from Urfa could enter Syria.
The album records that movement and its aftermath through 1921 and 1922: the refugee camp at Alexandretta, the convoys out of Marash, the sailing of 1,500 Harpout orphans to Constantinople in September 1922, and the orphanages at Aleppo, Antilyas, Jebail, Nahr Ibrahim, Sidon, Miamia, Ghazir and Shemlan. A December 1922 count puts some 10,740 children in the Beirut-area institutions. Most were survivors of the Armenian Genocide.
Bayard Dodge Photograph Albums, Volume IV, American University of Beirut, Archives and Special Collections; digital surrogate by the Near East Foundation.
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Bayard Dodge to the Director, Aleppo, 5 April 1921: "Perhaps Dr. Nelson can tell us more about Homs, as M. de Caix thought of that as a very good place for the orphans, for political reasons." Dodge describes Robert de Caix as "the Acting Governor of Syria"; de Caix was Secretary-General of the French High Commission for Syria and Lebanon and deputy to High Commissioner Henri Gouraud. In the same letter, Dodge records that de Caix "expressly asked that we keep the Armenians out of Lebanon." Near East Relief inter-office correspondence, marked "Do not quote or publish without permission." Rockefeller Archive Center, LSRM Records (FA057), Series III-3, Box 8.
