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.
Athens: Henry Morgenthau & the Refugee Commission
In late 1923, the League of Nations appointed Henry Morgenthau chairman of the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission. Morgenthau had served as U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916; his cables to Washington had become some of the...
Athens: Strangers in a Strange Land
Follows NER’s work in Athens as a reception and transit hub for Asia Minor refugees, linking camp life, housing, and services to the wider Greek refugee crisis.
Near East Relief in Aleppo
In 1915, the Ottoman government deported hundreds of thousands of Armenians from Anatolia toward the Syrian desert. Aleppo, an ancient trading city on the route, became a way station and, for tens of thousands, a destination. Three waves of refugees...
Alexandropol: Making the “Orphan City”
By the summer of 1919, the Armenian Genocide and the collapse of the Russian Caucasus had driven tens of thousands of orphaned children toward a handful of overstretched relief stations. Famine was spreading across the region. Near East Relief consolidated...