The end of the war saw the dismantlement of the structures required by the AGBU’s Armenian refugee programs in Europe and the Near East. Thus, in April 1946, the European Executive Board took official note of the planned dissolution of the Nansen Office, with which the AGBU had worked hand-in-hand in order to reintegrate the refugees into society and provide them with decent housing. The end of the French Mandate in the Levant and the creation of an independent Syria and Lebanon had made the Nansen Office obsolete.19 The final act of resistance to the idea of maintaining the AGBU’s headquarters in the United States came from an eminent veteran of the Parisian Central Board, Dikran Khan Kelegian, who had lived in New York since 1939. According to Krikor Bahry, he met with the members of the old European Executive Board and the District Committee on 14 September 1950 “in order to point out the disadvantages of leaving the Union’s head office” in New York. Kelegian died, however, on 1 January 1951, shortly after moving back to Europe.20 To appease the opposition in Paris and Cairo, Arshag Karagheusian chose not to carry through with the change in the AGBU’s national affiliation voted by the 1948 General Assembly. Peace was thus temporarily restored. On 7 April 1953, Alex Manoogian, a young Central Board member on a business trip to Europe, received a warm reception from the European Regional Board in the Nubarian Library in Paris.21 This was a clear sign that the two sides had decided to bury the hatchet. Read all
AGBU headquarters at 109 East 40th Street, New York, in the 1950s (Arch. B. Nubar/ Paris).
A sheet of stamps issued by the Paris AGBU for the benefit of the “nerkaght” (Arch. B. Nubar/Paris).
Reorganizing the AGBU under New York’s Lead