The school’s first director, Hagop Voskan, was succeeded in 1922 by Nazaret Fesdekjian, who was replaced in his turn by Hampartsum Berberian in 1923. Every year, the institution admitted children from the AGBU’s Beirut and Jerusalem orphanages. Thus, in 1922, fifty-two orphans from the Kelegian-Sisvan orphanage were received at the Giligian School.
Eighty-eight came in 1924, some of them from Jerusalem’s Araradian orphanage. When the Giligian School closed in 1925, only thirty-two orphans were still living there; all were transferred to the orphanage in Beirut.44
In fall 1921, Karen Jeppe, a Danish missionary who had worked for many years in Urfa, moved to Aleppo in order to devote herself to finding Armenian women and girls who had been abducted during the War.45 She was the representative of the Committee for the Protection of Women and Children in the Near East. Initially affiliated with the League of Nations, this Committee continued its operations after the League decided to dissolve it in 1928. They consisted, notably, in rescuing Armenian women, adolescent girls, and children who were being held against their will by the Arab and Kurdish tribes of Syrian Mesopotamia (Jazira), then under French mandate.
The AGBU's Orphanages in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Cyprus
Karen Jeppe, League of Nations representative in the Near East, responsible for recovering kidnapped women and children
(Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
A group of apprentices from the Giligian orphanage and vocational school in Aleppo leaving for Armenia in 1924 (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).