However, the Union was given an opportunity to extend direct assistance to Armenian refugees with the odyssey of the refugees from Musa Dagh, a cluster of Armenian villages located on the northern coast of the bay of Antioch (Antakya). Their inhabitants had been rescued by a French fleet and set ashore in Port Said. The relief that the AGBU provided them prefigured the help it would later offer genocide survivors in Palestine, Syria, and Iraq. The fate of the Musa Dagh Armenians, who succeeded in escaping a programmed death by sheer force of will, stood as a kind of symbol: together with the refugees in the Caucasus, they were the first to withstand the program of annihilation engineered by the Young Turk regime. Informed of the plight of these villagers, the commander of the French First Fleet, vice-admiral Dartige du Fournet, ordered the whole population evacuated. The operation was completed in only two days, on 12 and 13 September 1915. After briefly hesitating over where to settle these refugees, the Allied general staff chose Port Said, on the left bank of the Suez Canal. A big refugee camp containing some five hundred tents was set up for the survivors of Musa Dagh. After a rough start due to poor sanitary conditions, their situation gradually improved. By January 1917, the number of refugees had fallen to 3,200; three hundred fifty had died,111 while a minority, mainly those who had ... Read all
Relief Measures for the Refugees in Port Said
Refugees from Musa Dagh in Port Said (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
Refugee dormitory
(Coll. Bibl. Nubar/ Paris).
Tent serving as a dormitory for refugees from Musa Dagh
(Coll. Bibl. Nubar/ Paris).