Resources for Families
Connecting Personal History to the Archive
If you’re a descendant of survivors, the Near East Relief archive offers a way to understand the historical context of your family’s experience. These records provide insight into the orphanages, rescue stations, and refugee camps where hundreds of thousands of people survived. They contain stories of how grandparents endured, how families reunited, and how lives and communities were rebuilt in the wake of the genocide.
Researching an Individual
Many families reach out seeking information about a relative. While our records do not contain any comprehensive lists of orphans in NER facilities, we are gradually compiling information on individuals. For now, the records are sparse and fragmented, and searching the Archive for specific names often yields limited results.
We recommend researching the locations associated with your relatives. Exploring photographs and reports from a specific orphanage can help you visualize the environment, daily routines, and care they received. You may even recognize a family member in a photo.
To help you begin your location-based search, the archive holds visual and documentary records for major relief centers such as:
Caucasus (Armenia & Georgia): Alexandropol | Tiflis
Turkey (Anatolia): Marsovan (Merzifon) | Marash | Kuleli (Constantinople)
Persia (Iran): Tabriz
Syria & Lebanon: The Birds’ Nest (Sidon) | Antilyas | Ghazir
Greece: Syra (Syros) | Corinth | Zappeion (Athens)
Contribute to the Archive
While institutional records tell the story of the organization, families often hold the personal history. We actively collect photographs, diaries, and letters kept by relief workers and survivor families. If you have historical materials related to Near East Relief, we can work with you to digitize them for the online museum. In many cases, we can also facilitate the physical preservation of original items at the Rockefeller Archive Center.
Note: We focus on historical documents and do not accept general essays or opinion pieces.
