AVC Multimedia e-Book Series e-Book#3: AGBU 100 Years of History (Vol. I) | Page 38

ROUNDING UP ORPHANS IN JERUSALEM AND APENING AN ORPHANAGE IN PORT SAID

The AGBU was not altogether inexperienced in running orphanages, since it had, on the eve of the War, founded and administered the Kelegian orphanage in Dörtyol. But the situation obtaining then had changed radically since, for the institutions affiliated with the Patriarchate had been dismantled by the Young Turk regime, leaving the Union to pursue the struggle on the humanitarian front virtually single-handed. Future plans would have to be conceived on a much broader scale. Yacoub Artin and his colleagues on the central board of directors had this firmly in mind when they made the decision to found an institution in Jerusalem that was to be the first in a string of orphanages opened by the AGBU over the next few years in the biggest cities of the Near East and Greece. The fact that the board chose to build the orphanage in Jerusalem rather than Baghdad is explained by the relatively small number of orphans living in Iraq and the logistical problems involved in getting food and supplies to an orphanage in Mesopotamia. With every British advance came an increase in the number of children without families who urgently needed care. Read all

Humanitarian Assistance to Genocide Survivors in Palestine, 1917-1918

Victoria Arsharuni (center) and her assistants at the “temporary” orphanage in Saint James Monastery in July 1918

(Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).

Children in the temporary orphanage in Jerusalem

(Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).

Orphans in Jerusalem

leaving for Port Said

(Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).