Dispatches
Dispatches are stories from the Near East Relief archive. Each one draws on photographs, documents, maps, and contemporary accounts to reconstruct a place, person, institution, or campaign from NER’s history. Together, they show how Near East Relief worked on the ground and how its efforts affected survivors, relief workers, and communities across the region.
Browse by theme to explore the people, places, events, archival materials, and institutions connected to Near East Relief’s work and legacy. New Dispatches are added regularly, so please check back often.
A Single Thread, Part One: Textiles in the Near East
In the Ottoman Empire, an Armenian family might raise its own silkworms and work the silk into a carpet or garment whose deep reds and golds marked it as Armenian. Textiles like these carried heritage and identity from one generation...
In Azad’s Own Words: “Toward Jubeil”
In April 1924, twelve-year-old Azad Kechian published an essay in New Near East about the day he left Nahr Ibrahim. His orphanage on the Lebanese coast had been struck by malaria the previous summer. More than half the boys were...
In the Footsteps of a Saint: Life at Corinth Orphanage
In June 1923, Emma Cushman stepped off a boat at Corinth with thousands of children in her care. Half had caught malaria during the evacuation from Anatolia. The town receiving them, a sleepy port of six thousand, was almost as...
Aurora Mardiganian & Ravished Armenia
In late 1918, on a film set in California, a seventeen-year-old Armenian girl named Aurora Mardiganian was acting out the worst moments of her own life. The film would help raise more than $30 million in humanitarian relief. It would...
Daughter of Freedom: Zadi’s Story
An emaciated baby found by Near East Relief workers in Marash in 1921, named Azadouhi — Armenian for “daughter of freedom” — and the genocide survivor she became.
Leviathan, 1919: Near East Relief’s Pioneering Mission
On February 16, 1919, the troopship Leviathan steamed out of New York harbor carrying two hundred and fifty doctors, nurses, teachers, and builders bound for the postwar Near East. They were the first large American relief delegation to enter Turkey...
What’s in a Name? Near East Relief from Committee to Foundation
Between September 1915 and 1930, one American humanitarian organization operated under five successive names. The staff and trustees carried over from one to the next. The mission held: response to the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Genocides and their long aftermath....
“We Had Nothing Left” (Erivan)
A gaunt man staggered out of the mountains and into Erivan in the early spring of 1922. He could barely speak. He pointed back the way he had come, where eighty-six children were rationing their food at thirty-two beans each...
In a Little Boy’s Face: Antranig Karjian & the Birds’ Nest
Before Antranig Karjian died in 2014 at age ninety-four, he had given his daughters a photograph from his childhood: a small boy saying grace over a bowl of food. It was the only photograph he had from his time growing...
“To Be Thrown Out Into the World”: The Nellie Miller Mann Collection
A Mennonite relief worker’s account of the children at NER’s Beirut headquarters and the orphanages along the Lebanese coast, drawn from letters and photos she sent home between 1921 and 1923.