WWI-era ACRNE Photographs (1918–1919)

The 75 photographs in this collection are drawn from the U.S. War Department’s American Unofficial Collection of World War I Photographs. They date from 1918–1919, the period during which the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (ACASR) was renamed the American Committee for Relief in the Near East (ACRNE) and the first large contingents of relief workers reached the field.

The collection documents conditions across the Caucasus (Yerevan, Etchmiadzin, Alexandropol, Tiflis), eastern Anatolia (Van, Erzurum, Trebizond, Aintab), and northwest Persia (Urumia), alongside the American side of the campaign — relief ships departing for the Near East, fundraising drives across the United States, and donors and staff boarding the Mauretania, Mercurius, and Pensacola. Captions are reproduced from the original 1918–1919 War Department records; period language has been preserved. These photographs are held at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.