The last General Assembly of the AGBU to be held in Paris took place on 6 October 1938. The General Assembly scheduled for 4 or 18 September of the following year was suspended sine die because of the War. With the outbreak of hostilities between France and Germany, the organization’s Central Board soon had to consider transferring its assets, held mainly in the form of three British trusts, from Europe to the United States. In a proposal submitted to the AGBU’s board at its meeting of 22 September 1939, the president of the Central Committee of the United States, Arshag Karagheusian, suggested look¬ing into the possibility of making a transfer so as to “be prepared for all eventualities.” The Central Board even asked Karagheusian to set up two trust-funds with U.S. banks in anticipation of a transfer of the AGBU’s assets.1 Zareh Nubar, then president of the AGBU, also envisaged transferring its headquarters to Lausanne, Switzerland.2 But he left for New York in October 1939.3
On 20 May 1940, after Paris had come under direct threat from the advancing German forces, an emergency meeting of the Central Board was called at its Square Alboni headquarters in the French capital. In view of the gravity of the situation, the board decided 1) to transfer the AGBU’s three London trusts to New York; 2) to reassign its own administrative and financial prerogatives to the Central Committee of the United States; and 3) to suspend the operations of the AGBU’s Paris headquarters and send its General Director, Vahan Malezian, to southern France.4 A few weeks later, ...
The Second World War