The circumstances that induced the AGBU to make a commitment to this refugee resettlement scheme merit close examination. In January 1927, representatives of the League of Nations asked Levon Pashalian whether the Armenians of the United States might make a financial contribution to the project. He answered that his American compatriots, “like other Armenians throughout the world, are deeply attached to the Nansen plan” to relocate Armenian refugees and orphans in Soviet Armenia; the AGBU-sponsored project to build Nubarashen, he noted, took its place in the comprehensive program elaborated by the Norwegian humanist. “Serious efforts must be made,” Pashalian added, “to show that the two projects [in Soviet Armenia on the one hand and Syria and Lebanon on the other] do not clash, but are complementary.”43
This way of looking at the matter was shared by the AGBU’s central board, which made a concrete commitment to the Syrian-Lebanese resettlement plan with its March 1927 decision to contribute a sum equal to ten percent of the total amount raised for it by pro-Armenian British organizations.44 Thus, in ... Read all
The Building of Armenian Neighborhoods in Syria and Lebanon
Farming settlements inhabited by Armenian refugees in the sanjak of Alexandretta. Sug-Su. (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
Farming settlements inhabited by Armenian refugees in the sanjak of Alexandretta. Kirikhan (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
Armenian refugees settled in the new village of Nor Zeytun in the sanjak of Alexandretta (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).