In the immediate aftermath of the War, however, it was the American Red Cross which stood out from other, similar organizations by virtue of the depth of its humanitarian commitment to the traumatized peoples of the Ottoman Empire. Throughout the Near East, the Red Cross was replaced by NER on 1 April 1919.43 This organization’s Cilician operations were directed from its center in Aleppo, headed by Dr. Robert Lambert. It focused its humanitarian activities on the Marash, Aintab, and Urfa areas, relying on its own considerable financial resources to pay for them. This, no doubt, explains the AGBU’s relative absence from these areas. Although the Union had reorganized powerful chapters there, it preferred to work closely with NER, through whose channels it was able to funnel relief to local Armenians.
Thus when, in April 1919, the AGBU’s Urfa representative, Dr. Hreshdagian, alerted the Aleppo chapter to the existence of four hundred orphans and large numbers of abandoned women and adolescent girls who had received no help at all, the chapter promptly sent them food and clothing, utilizing NER channels to do so. Most of these orphans were soon taken into the orphanage run by the Deutsche Orient-Mission, then still under the supervision of the Swiss Jakob Künzler, who received a regular ... Read all
Humanitarian Work in Cilicia