Tens of thousands of Armenian children fell victim to the Genocide premeditated and perpetrated by the Turkish government. Those who could survive became orphans devoid of parental care; some of them were deprived of the Armenian environment and lost their identity. The Turkish government established special orphanages with the intent to Turkify and Islamize them.

After the Genocide numerous Armenian and international organizations as well as individual relief workers tried to rescue the Armenian survivors. A humanitarian mission unprecedented in the world history aimed at rescuing and ransoming thousands of Armenian women and children who had forcibly been Turkified and Islamized. The American “Near East Relief” organization founded in 1915, was one of the pioneers in this mission.

The seventeen photos, presented below, were revealed on the initiative of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in a family archives living in Yerevan. These photos present the orphan-care activity of the Near East Relief in Alexandrapol (now Gyumri, Armenia), Palestine and Lebanon.

Indeed, these photos have their unique place in the chronicle of the world humanitarian history.