The Allied entry into Aleppo was the prelude to a vast program of humanitarian assistance that eventually embraced the regions lying to the north as well, that is, Cilicia and the area located just east of it. The AGBU conducted relief programs here, too: its well organized and very active Aleppo chapter coordinated operations in Cilicia, where the Armenian deportees were now concentrated, with the Cairo head office.
The occupation of Aleppo revealed the desperation and destitution of the roughly forty-five thousand deportees who had taken refuge in the city and its environs. Some thirty-four thousand Armenians, about twenty-one thousand of them women and girls, were living there at the time. Like their countrymen in Damascus, large numbers of these deportees, orphans included, had worked for the Ottoman army during the War. The army’s hasty retreat from the area, together with the manifold shortcomings of such relief work as was carried out in the weeks following the Armistice, plunged these unfortunates into terrible poverty. A majority were natives of Cilicia and wanted to return to their homes there. According to the information currently available, six thousand of these deportees came from Aintab, three thousand from Kilis, one thousand six hundred from Mardin, one thousand five hundred from Marash and as many from Sasun, one thousand fifty from Urfa, seven hundred from Gürün, and five hundred from Sivas.71
In February 1919, repatriation to Cilicia had relieved greater Aleppo of a good many of the refugees who had been ... Read all
Post-War Aleppo and Armenian Refugees
Aleppo, three refugee couples married in the improvised camp set up in the main barracks
(Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).