The AGBU carried out its first major humanitarian operation in the aftermath of the massacres that began in Cilicia on 13 April 1909. Before they were over, twenty-five thousand people had been killed and thousands more left injured or homeless. The survivors found themselves living in precarious conditions in tents set up on the outskirts of cities such as Adana. They needed food and medical attention, while the many children orphaned by the massacres needed guardians. The Armenian Patriarchate in Constantinople took charge of handling the political problems created by the massacre, dispatched a competent medical team to Cilicia, and shouldered the task of opening orphanages. The AGBU, for its part, showed one and all that it could work effectively by rapidly providing the survivors with emergency relief and even finding some of them a temporary haven in Egypt. Very early in the day, the ten thousand Armenian peasants who had fled to Dörtyol, a town near the tip of the Gulf of Alexandretta, sent the Union a request for flour, since they were surrounded by bands of irregulars and were nearly out of food. Given the urgency of the situation, Nubar and Aghaton immediately went to see the Italian chargé d’affaires in Cairo. They prevailed on him to wire M. Cartoni, the Italian vice-consul in Alexandretta, a city two hours away from Dörtyol, with the request that he take personal charge of transporting a shipment of grain to the refugees. Forty-eight hours later, Cartoni delivered the grain that the AGBU had paid for by wire.23
Needless to say, this was not the only relief measure that the Union carried out in Cilicia. It must be remembered that the Adana massacres were followed by looting and destruction; they left the survivors in a situation that was nothing less than catastrophic. Read all
April 1909: A Turning Point in AGBU History
The AGBU’s Kelegian Orphanage in Dortyol in 1913 (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris)