In Paris, in June 1931, Calouste Gulbenkian, who had become president of the AGBU a few months earlier, was invited to meet with Henri Ponsot, French High Commissioner in Syria and Lebanon, and high-ranking officials of the French Foreign Ministry at the Ministry’s headquarters on the Quai d’Orsay. On the agenda was the permanent resettlement of Armenian refugees on Lebanese and Syrian territory. On 24 June, in his Parisian apartment on the Avenue d’Iena, Gulbenkian organized a reception for Ponsot to which other officials of the Foreign Ministry were also invited. In the next few days, further meetings were held between other parties to the plan to make the Armenians permanent residents of the countries under French mandate. Thus the president of the AGBU held talks on two different occasions with Max Huber, president of the League of Nations’ Nansen Office; Huber was accompanied by Major J. F. Johnson and Georges Burnier, respectively the secretary general of the Nansen Office and the delegate of the League of Nations agency ... Read all
The Building of Armenian Neighborhoods in Syria and Lebanon
The state of the Beirut camp in 1925, before construction of the Armenian neighborhoods (Coll. Archives Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
The Armenian camp in Aleppo in the 1920s (Coll. Michel Paboudjian).
Refugee camp in Beirut in the 1920s
(Coll. Michel Paboudjian).
Calouste Gulbenkian
(Coll. Archives Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
AGBU’s Role in the Organization of Armenian Life in the Middle East (Video)