Hundreds of children assemble below the orphanage wall. Ghazir, 1922.

Location

Ghazir, Lebanon

Year

1922

Item Detail

The girls' orphanage at Ghazir occupied a former monastery school in the large building at the top of the village, part of a facility for 750 children in the Maronite region of northern Lebanon. Children of both sexes and every age fill the terraced ground below the high retaining wall.The girls' orphanage at Ghazir occupied a former monastery school in the large building at the top of the village. Children of both sexes and every age assemble on the terraced ground below the high retaining wall. It was part of an establishment for 750 children in the Maronite region of northern Lebanon.

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.

View in the Digital Archive

  • Holding Institution

    American University of Beirut, Archives and Special Collections

  • Attribution

    Bayard Dodge Photograph Albums, Volume IV, American University of Beirut, Archives and Special Collections; digital surrogate by the Near East Foundation.

  • Rights

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  • Notes

    Album card: “Ghazir - Girls’ Orphanage.”

    The Near East Relief Newsletter, Vol. III No. 5, 4 February 1921, p. 1, "The Orphans of Syria," places the Ghazir children "in the buildings of a monastery, and in several other rented houses" and "under the direction of Mr. and Mrs. Moultrie of the Near East Relief," with "Christians, Moslems, and Druzes" mingling "in school classes and industries with the greatest harmony."

Hundreds of children assemble below the orphanage wall. Ghazir, 1922.