RECOGNIZING AGBU CHAPTERS, ROUNDING UP ORPHANS, AND BUILDING ORPHANAGES
The first AGBU chapter to be reorganized was the one in Mersin. It resumed operations in January 1919, with Krikor Zelveyan as president and Bedros Urfalian as secretary. Most of the foodstuffs earmarked for the Cilician Armenians were to be shipped from Egypt to Mersin, a port city. The local chapter played a correspondingly important role in managing and distributing the humanitarian aid destined for the region as a whole. Once it had established this logistical base, the AGBU proceeded with the operation it considered its priority: rounding up Armenian orphans. It began by reclaiming Dörtyol’s Kelegian orphanage, which had been founded in 1912 and shut down during the World War. Most of the orphans had been deported; the oldest had been drafted into the Ottoman Army, while others had been sent to the Turkish and German orphanages in Adana and Haruniye. Converted into an Imperial Ottoman school, the institution in Dörtyol had been badly run down during the four years in which it was in Turkish hands: all the furniture had been carried off and the building itself had sustained heavy damage. The work of rehabilitating it began as soon as the Armistice was signed. The AGBU’s central board sent a team of tradesmen headed by the architect H. Kaljian to Dörtyol; it made the most urgently needed ... Read all
The AGBU's Return to Cilicia
The members of the Mersin branch in the local AGBU orphanage with Catholicos Sahag II and Father Mampre, the orphanage's supervisor (to the Catholicos' left)
(Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
Mikayel Natanian (1867-1954), a native of Van, agricultural engineer, representative of the AGBU in Syria
(Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).