AGBU Chapters in Europe
On the eve of World War I, the Armenian colonies of Western Europe count¬ed only a few thousand individuals, mostly merchants and tradesmen, along with a handful of political refugees and students. There were also the two branches of the Mkhitarist order in Vienna and Venice. The AGBU nevertheless boasted several Western European chapters in this period. The transfer of the Union’s headquarters to Paris in the early 1920s and the simultaneous arrival of some sixty thousand Armenians in Western Europe between 1922 and 1925 suddenly conferred the leading role within the AGBU upon France. The French organization’s preeminence was reinforced by the fact that Syria and Lebanon, the two regions in which the immense majority of Armenian refugees were then living, found themselves under French mandate.
The members of the Marseilles chapter of the AGBU in the 1920s, including, notably, Minas Tcheraz and Archag Tchoban-ian
(AGBU arch./New York).
The members of the AGBU’s Lyons chapter in 1932 (AGBU arch./New York).
Early Chapters in France
• Marseilles, September 1910:
Hagop Selian
• Paris, December 1911:
Serovpe Svajian.
• Nice, April 1926: Elisabet
Nahabed
• Saint-Chamond, May 1927:
Sarkis Kebabian
The members of the AGBU’s Paris chapter around 1950 (AGBU arch./New York).
The AGBU’s Local Chapters