Revised and expanded translation of Chapter 8: “Maria Jacobsen, KMA og Fuglereden i Libanon” - ”Maria Jacobsen, KMA, and the Birds Nest in Lebanon” from Matthias Bjørnlund, På herrens mark: Nødhjælp, mission og kvindekamp under det armenske folkedrab, Kristeligt Dagblads Forlag 2015 English press release for the book here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/english-press-release-mynew-book-matthias-bj%C3%B8rnlund/ . This edited translation was made by Matthias Bjørnlund. Chapter 8, “Maria Jacobsen, KMA, and the Birds Nest in Lebanon” The context So, where were the ca. 500,000 Armenian survivors in the years immediately after World War I ended in 1918 and the genocide was mostly – but not completely - finished? Many could be found in the former Ottoman provinces of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq, now under British or French control. Others had escaped to the Caucasus or to the West. But there were still at least 100,000 Armenians in what would within a few years become the Turkish Republic. Most were in Eastern Anatolia (Western Armenia) and the South Caucasus, where they were under explicit threat of extermination once more. But many were also in Cilicia, Constantinople (Istanbul), and Smyrna (Izmir). Everywhere, they lived under extremely stressful circumstances – mostly in hiding, fighting for survival, subjected to Turkification and Islamification in Turkish state orphanages, and/or living in Muslim households as slaves or under slave-like conditions.i Others were protected by benevolent Kurds, Arabs, and Kurds, Armenian forces, or Western missionaries, or were living in Allied occupation zones, but they were mostly living on borrowed time as what was known as the Turkish National Movement under the leadership of Mustapha Kemal (Atatürk) pushed forward in all directions. It was therefore first and foremost these extra vulnerable Armenians in these volatile regions that the Danish women from the Danish Women Missionary Workers (Kvindelige Missions Arbejdere, hereafter KMA) and the Danish Friends of Armenians (Danske Armeniervenner, hereafter DA) would attempt to help.ii During the years 1919-1920 several of the Danish women and their organizations tried to resume work in, e.g., Harput and Urfa, where relief worker Karen Jeppe had been posted and wanted to return to. But it quickly turned out to be impossible due to local resistance and the increasing threat from the Kemalists that were led and supported by former Young Turk loyalists. Therefore, they had to wait in Denmark, in Greek-controlled Rodosto (Tekirdag) like former Danish KMA worker Jensine Ørtz, or, like the aging KMA veteran missionary Wilhelmine Grünhagen and her Swedish KMA colleague Alma Johansson, in Constantinople. That was as far as they got in Turkey. Here, Grünhagen became principal of an Armenian orphanage in Skutari (now the Istanbul neighborhood of Üsküdar on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus). After a while both then turned to work with Armenian genocide survivors in Greece.iii That was because Constantinople finally fell, too, like Smyrna, Rodosto, and the rest. Anatolia, constituting the vast majority of the area of Turkey, had ever since the end of the world war become a battlefield, mostly involving warring Turkish and Kurdish factions and gangs, Greek, Italian, and French expeditionary forces, as well as indigenous Armenian, Assyrian, and Pontic Greek self1 defense units. But until 1922, the capital of the dissolving Ottoman Empire was controlled by French, Italian, and British occupation forces and by the relatively liberal, anti-revolutionary Turkish government. The sultan was still in place there, Ankara had not yet officially replaced it as the seat of power, and the last of the Allied forces were evacuated as late as August 1923. Working for relief, development, and/or Evangelization among surviving Armenians in their homeland was no longer an option for Westerners, at least not legally and safely. For big, long-term projects they now had to turn to the masses of refugees in the surrounding areas: In the Armenian Republic (before and, to a limited extent, after it was swallowed up by the Soviet Union), in Greece, and in the former Ottoman domains of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt.iv Thus, Danish KMA initiated a rather large operation in the French mandate of Lebanon among the tens of thousands of poor, starving Armenian refugees, an operation spearheaded by Maria Jacobsen. Lebanon was chosen mainly because of detailed consultation with the American relief organization Near East Relief (NER). They were the main players in the field of Armenian relief work, they had the connections and resources, and they were not alien to the Danes. That was because NER was in part a continuation of the former KMA partners in Harput and Mezreh and beyond, The American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief and The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. War and genocide were over – more or less, and the setting had changed somewhat, but there were still personal and institutional contacts, common goals, and mutual interests between KMA and NER. For instance, like before and during the genocide, the Americans could use the expertise and experience of the Danes, while the Danes could use a senior partner – at least until they had the logistics and funding in place that were necessary to run their own operation. The Danes did have their usual partners, the “sister organizations” of Swedish and Norwegian KMA, but, just like back in the Ottoman Empire, it was not quite enough. Therefore, Maria Jacobsen and her trusted colleague and friend Karen Marie Petersen arrived in Beirut in 1922 as American employees. They came as seasoned veterans with the added bonus of having worked with Americans before, speaking fluent English (as well as Armenian, German, Turkish, Kurdish, and other languages), being professionals in the fields of health care and the managing of an orphanage, respectively, and having witnessed just about every horror a human being can witness without succumbing to it. They were no pushovers.v Lebanon in the beginning To begin with Maria Jacobsen and Karen Marie Petersen worked directly for NER. At first together, then Jacobsen came under the local director Howard Bailey Macafee in Beirut as a head nurse, and Petersen under US war veteran Ray P. Travis, who managed the NER orphanages in and around the coastal town of Djbeil (Djubeil, Byblos), 40 km to the north. Common goals aside, though, the close Danish-American cooperation was somewhat problematic, at least seen from the Danish point of view. The women at Danish KMA acknowledged, indeed admired the huge effort made by NER for surviving Armenians and other persecuted groups in and around Turkey after the genocide. In Alexandropol (Leninakan, Guymri) in Soviet Armenia alone there were up to 25,000 Armenian refugee children in what was called The City of Orphans. In 1919, on average 200 of these children 2 died of starvation and diseases. But after a few years the American humanitarian organization had worked logistical wonders. Working with local authorities and the Apostolic Church they acquired 170 buildings in the city where they housed, fed, and educated the orphans. Thereby they significantly reduced mortality and gave hope for the future in an otherwise seemingly hopeless situation.vi But, according to the pragmatic, but still Evangelical, patriotic, and independent, Danish KMA – a relatively small, lean, effective organization with the motto “women working for women;” explicitly proud of coming from the small, neutral nation of Denmark; and not too keen on being dominated by larger entities, whether coming from Germany or America – there were also certain problems with the NER and their approach to relief work: Basically, they were too secular, bureaucratic, wasteful (perhaps even vulgar at times), and male dominated, even though there were examples of, say, women doctors running health clinics in the field with male employees. Another problem was this: NER, by far the largest and most important actor in region when it came to humanitarian relief and development, with hundreds of employees, a budget of more than 10 million dollars, and direct influence on global and local decisionmakers, would not allow cooperation with German organizations, Germans, or even individuals who had worked for or with Germans before or during the World War. Germany was still the enemy that had to be isolated and shunned by the victors. Therein lied the rub, because that ruled out the possibility that Danish KMA could post key workers such as Jensine Ørtz (Jensine Oerts Peters), Hansine Marcher, and Jenny Jensen in regions where Near East Relief dominated. Hansine Marcher had to stay home in Copenhagen as a travel secretary for KMA, Ørtz founded her own organization, Industrimissionen (The Industrial Mission, IM) based in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, while Jenny Jensen started working for the more secular Danish organization the Danish Friends of Armenians. The DA operation, led by Karen Jeppe, was based around the Rescue Home and the refugee camp in Aleppo and was endorsed by the League of Nations. The Americans had no influence on who were employed there. It was guilt by association, of course, but there was nothing Danish KMA could do about it, NER simply vetoed any Danes that had worked too closely with the Germans. This also meant, for instance, that another organization that KMA and the Danish Friends of Armenians (DA) had worked with since the beginning of the century, Deutsche Orient Mission (German Orient Mission) led by Johannes Lepsius, was barred from working in the Middle East and had to support the Danish organizations in the region instead through donations. In the early 1920s, Lepsius was in fact so marginalized at home and abroad that the chairman and founder of DA, the Danish-Jewish-Icelandic scholar and humanitarian Åge Meyer Benedictsen – who disagreed politically with the German nationalist Lepsius on many accounts – pitied him so much that he sent care packages with sausages and other food items from prosperous Denmark to his old friend and colleague in poverty-stricken Berlin.vii All that aside, for Danish KMA there was no doubt that the benefits of working with NER outweighed the costs, at least to begin with. So the Danish women became part of a vast, American-dominated, but truly international effort to rescue and support Armenians and other former Ottoman minorities. Aid workers came from Sweden and Norway, New Zealand and Australia, France and 3 Switzerland, Estonia and Poland. There were, for instance, the couple from New Zealand, John H. and Maria Knudsen (likely of Danish or Norwegian descent), who ran an Australian orphanage with 14,000 Armenian children in Antelias, the seat of the Armenian Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia, right outside of Beirut. As for Maria Jacobsen and Karen Marie Petersen, for the first couple of months after their arrival in 1922 they were mostly occupied doing interviews with orphaned Armenian children in the refugee camps and at NER’s orphanage for some 1,500 boys at Djbeil, an orphanage that was later taken over by Danish KMA and became the final location for the Birds Nest. The information was used to make short biographies of the children to use for sponsors, the day-to-day field work, the media, and the bureaucracy at home, much like they did under Karen Jeppe’s guidance at the Rescue Home in Aleppo – about where they came from in the Ottoman Empire, what they had experienced before and during the genocide, what they remembered about their parents and other family relations, etc. This kind of personal information was first and foremost useful to find whatever surviving relatives the children may have had – ads with photos, names, perhaps even physical characteristics were put in local and international papers, various organizations and churches were contacted, etc. This process could be complicated, as Armenian genocide survivor Mariam Karoghlanian experienced it. She was an orphan raised at Birds Nest; her brother was found alive after several years, and in 1932 she left the Birds Nest to live with him. He mistreated her, though, and she returned to the Danish orphanage the following year. But personal information about the orphans was also useful when it came to make PR campaigns such as trying to raise more funding among the general public in the US or Denmark. Then as now it is the fate of children that moves us to open our wallets, eyes from which we cannot look away, stories that tell us that these children could somehow be our, that faraway suffering can sometimes seem quite close after all.viii Making the Birds Nest From late 1922, Karen Marie Petersen’s was transferred from working at the refugee camps at Beirut and Sidon. Instead, she began a position she was eminently suited for, namely as ‘Head Majrik,’ an English-Armenian term meaning ‘Head Mother,’ i.e., daily leader at the Near East Relief’s orphanage for boys at Djbeil in Lebanon. Eight of the orphanage’s regular mayriks were old Armenian acquaintances, young women from the Danish KMA orphanage Emaus in Mezreh (Elazig), where Karen Marie Petersen had protected them and more than 100 other Armenians during the genocide. The eight women had been evacuated by Near East Relief and other organizations such as the US Red Cross together with thousands of other desperate and poor survivors from the area during the 1922-1923 period. That was part of a gigantic operation where some 22,000 Christian Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocide survivors, the vast majority of whom were women and children, were forced to leave homes, orphanages, and refugee camps all over Anatolia. They were as unwelcome in their own country under the reign of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a former Young Turk and a product of the party’s ideology, as they had been when the Young Turks ruled. 4 An eyewitness, Yeghsa Antonian, had been in Maria Jacobsen’s care at Harput’s American orphanage during the last phases of the war after the American missionaries left in 1917, when basically only a few Danes were left in the region to protect and feed the survivors. The Americans returned in 1919 to take over from the Danes, but, as noted, not for long. In a Danish source, Antonian is quoted as saying how in 1922, the Americans “put us on trucks and took us to Aleppo. On the road the Turks threw stones at us; we were lying on top of each other so that they could not kill us.”ix Besides from the Armenians at, e.g., Western orphanages and other missionary facilities, it was possible to secure the release of some of the thousands of Armenians still held at Turkish orphanages and private Muslim homes. But many had to be left to a fate of Turkification, Islamification, and what often amounted to a life in slavery or a slave-like existence. Also, there was a limited number of trucks, horses, and donkeys available to NER, so the vast majority of the evacuees had to walk up to 800 km through mountains and desert until they reached safety, mainly in Greece or in the French- and British controlled areas in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. The evacuation and rehousing from Turkey took place head over heels, so there was not always time for well thought-out solutions. This was felt by Karen Marie Petersen and the rest at the NER orphanage at Djbeil in 1922, but also more locally in early 1923, when NER was forced to close a nearby orphanage at Nahr Ibrahim by the Adonis River (also known as the Abraham River) due to its “unhealthy location.” That is no exaggeration. Almost all the 800 Armenian boys at the orphanage had shortly after their arrival from Turkey been infected with a malicious and often deadly form of malaria. Thus, NER decided to move them all to the orphanage at Djbeil a few kilometers to the north, a seaside location with a presumably healthier climate. But this meant that the children already at the Djbeil orphanage had to be moved to make room for the new arrivals. Now, Karen Marie Petersen was once more at the head of what, in practical terms, amounted to a hospital and convalescent home. This, too, she managed until she left after a few years to once more seek new challenges among the Armenian genocide survivors at the refugee camps around Beirut – this time as part of an independent Danish KMA operation. As was always the plan, they were slowly, but surely managing to build up their own relief infrastructure with a clinic, food distribution, and soup kitchen managed by, among others, Danish KMA’s Dorthea Kulager Pedersen. She arrived in Lebanon in 1924, died after less than 20 years, and lies buried in Syrian soil somewhere. And the Danes also got their own KMA orphanage. Maria Jacobsen had indeed since the very beginning of her stay in Lebanon been working loyally and skillfully, if briefly, for NER, while all the while being on the lookout for a proper location and building for a Danish orphanage, mainly along the coast north of Beirut. Maria Jacobsen found it in the summer of 1922, after having worked for NER for less the six months, a place where the ideals and practice that had turned Emaus in Mezreh into such a successful orphanage and educational institution could be continued. It was “a beautiful and sufficiently large house,” as Jacobsen put it, located on a hillside just outside Zouk Michail (Zouk Mikael), a small town 14 km from Beirut with some 1,500-2,000 inhabitants, mainly Maronite, Catholic, Syriac, and Armenian Christians. Jacobsen named the orphanage Fuglereden, Birds Nest (or Bird’s Nest/Birds’ 5 Nest) in English, because of the starving children who looked like hungry little birds to her. And as 'Birds Nest' it quickly became known among the locals. Like in the Ottoman Empire, compromises had to be made by KMA, of course. No matter how experienced you are, it is difficult designing and establishing any kind of institution for starving, traumatized, often seriously ill genocide survivors in a country recently and/or presently ravaged by famine, poverty, and epidemics. Especially when you are an NGO, as we would call it today, with very limited funding. For instance, the orphanage was originally designated to be for girls only and supported exclusively by Scandinavian sponsors. But Armenian boys quickly gained access – they had nowhere else to go and no one at Birds Nest had the heart to turn them away – and support began just as quickly to arrive from broader circles than just the Danish “brother nations” of Sweden and Norway. The women at Danish KMA were not in a position to turn away money, either. Besides from that, the house at Zouk Michail was dilapidated, so Jacobsen got help from local craftsmen, as well as from ten of the most handy Armenian boys at the NER Djbeil orphanage led by Karen Marie Petersen. Already in July 1922, the Birds Nest was ready to take in the first orphans, 28 hungry, dirty, and ragged girls from Cilicia – where once there was an Armenian kingdom by the Mediterranean around Adana, Marash, and Zeitun, and where the last Armenians had to withdraw with the French forces to avoid being massacred in January 1922. That was the first serious challenge at the Birds Nest, to secure the physical and mental wellbeing of those girls. It helped that a big crate filled with dresses and other garments arrived from Denmark after only a few days, but new challenges soon arrived, too. From the fall of 1922, new Armenian refugees from the Harput area began arriving as part of the American NER and Red Cross evacuation – a project partly financed by Danish KMA, specifically to help salvage old friends, protectees, and, more generally, Armenians from that particular region. And Danish KMA was also ready to care for a significant number of the young women and children among the refugees, first and foremost at Birds Nest in Souk Mikael. 26 September 1922, Maria Jacobsen was thus reunited with some of the surviving Armenian coworkers and children she had known and protected before and during the genocide. A warm welcome was prepared at the Birds Nest, when two large trucks arrived with the new residents. A big sign had been made with the words “Pari Jegath” (Pari Yegak), “Welcome” in Armenian, and the girls already at the orphanage sang a song written especially for the occasion. Now there were some 200 children and young women at Birds Nest. The orphanage had become almost like a small village. The children lived in dormitories in the main building, where also the Danish and Armenian Mayriks had their rooms. Around the building were smaller houses with offices and a health clinic, as well as pig pens and chicken coops. The children were divided into 11 groups, separating boys and girls. The older children were responsible for the youngest ones, who went to the kindergarten or the first grades. The young adults, who often already had a relatively good and useful education from missionary orphanages and schools in the fields of health, teaching, or handicrafts, either got work at the Birds Nest, at nearby hospitals, orphanages, and workshops, or in private homes. 6 But every day at the Birds Nest they all had to do homework, take care of the livestock, do housekeeping, and be punctual. Because Maria Jacobsen staunchly believed that – besides from love and security – discipline, hard work, daily routines, fresh air and exercise in beautiful nature, learning to be self-sufficient, and the word of God were the best remedies against the traumas suffered by all Armenians at the Birds Nest. She would, for instance, also lead them in prayer every morning, while Bible quotes and hymns, Protestant as well as Apostolic, had to be learned by heart next to the regular school curriculum.x Moving to Sidon But Near East Relief kept sending Armenian children to the orphanage, particularly the youngest ones demanding the most care, so by the spring of 1923 there were at least 400 children at Birds Nest, a doubling in a very short time. The place simply got too crowded. And since sanitary conditions and the water supply were furthermore inadequate (the wells dried out in the summer, and the nearest streams with fresh, clean water were far away), Maria Jacobsen started looking for a new location, bigger and better. Maria Jacobsen found a bigger and better place for the orphanage in May 1923. It was, indeed, a veritable palace just outside Sidon (Sayda), the third-largest Lebanese city by the Mediterranean with a significant Greek Melkite Catholic population, 40 km south of Beirut. Danish KMA rented it from a local Druze prince, because Jacobsen had fallen in love with the place that lied on a hillside among citrus groves overlooking the sea. Here, a resurrected Birds Nest was to be established. But, as had been the case with the building at Zouk Mikael, the palace was in a bad state after several years of neglect. Those were the conditions, however, when the women of Danish KMA went shopping for housing, because well-kept buildings cost money, and money was almost always short. There was always a willing and able workforce, though, so in a few months they managed to repair the palace, install electricity, make a vegetable garden, as well as build a health clinic, a laundry, workshops, and a bakery, where 900 small breads could be baked each day for the orphanage. Among other things. The transfer of children took place from the summer of 1923 to a Birds Nest village that had become even more impressive – and this time there was ample water supply, a small fountain, and a shady veranda where the children could eat, play, and take a nap outside, even during midday heat. Money was short as always, though, so when the Danish Friends of Armenians were able to donate the substantial amount of 5,000 kroner, some 150,000 kroner or 21-22,000 dollars today, to the newly opened KMA orphanage, it called for a public thank you-note from Maria Jacobsen to the DA chairman in the official DA journal Armeniervennen (The Armenophile) in late 1923.: Mr. Åge Meyer Benedictsen! You and the whole committee of the ‘Danish Friends of Armenians’ should please receive my sincerest thanks for the very generous gift for the suffering Armenian children. It was such a joy for me to receive the money, and I will do my very best to spend them as you wished for. There have been – and there still are – a lot of diseases among Armenian refugees in and around Beirut, just about everyone have been infected with a very malicious form of malaria. 7 As a consequence thereof, they have not been able to work, and some families are actually starving. One family I visited the other day consisted of a husband, a wife, and four children; they were all sick and had no bread. It would be a great joy to get to help them – and there are more, if not many, like them. I would like to ask if I am allowed to use part of the money to take children from very miserable homes into the orphanage. The children will be so much better off here, and they have a better chance of regaining their strength if they come to us. I promise to write home and tell about some of the children who received help. Once more I ask you to receive my most loving thanks for the generous gift that will bring help and joy to many. Kind regards, Your Maria P. Jacobsenxi While the financial situation got better, there was still one important formal issue to solve though, that of the relationship between KMA and NER. The Americans kept sending Armenian children to Birds Nest. That was not a problem in itself; the problem was that it was far from always that financial support followed the children. At the same time, NER wanted to have a final say in matters relating to the Danish orphanage. On this background, Maria Jacobsen and the KMA Armenia board back home in Copenhagen decided that it was time to formalize the Danish-American cooperation. Baroness Schaffalitzky de Muckadell, the new chairwoman of Danish KMA, a woman every bit as authoritative as the name would imply, thus traveled to Beirut herself in the spring of 1924 to negotiate the deal together with Maria Jacobsen and Karen Marie Petersen. It was decided that Danish KMA and NER would split the costs for the 400 Armenian children at the orphanage. The Danes had to pay all other expenses for the orphanage, but from then on there was no doubt that it was a Danish operation. The Danish women had it in writing that they were in full control at Sidon. Four years went by, not uneventful, but years more stable and secure than ever, or at least since the best of times in the Mamouret-ul-Aziz (Harput) province before 1915. Gerda Mundt, a very experienced and socially engaged female politician, active in YWCA and later member of parliament from the Danish Conservative Party, visited Birds Nest in the spring of 1928. She vividly describes a crowded, but cheerful place, where she was welcomed with hand-kisses, traditional Armenian dances, gymnastics show, songs in English, Armenian, Arabic, and French, violin music played by the orphanage’s own girl orchestra, and a theatrical play about Joseph and his brothers (Genesis 37) – an Old Testament theme, just like when the children at Emaus staged a play before the genocide. In Gerda Mundt’s own words: What a joy it was to walk among the children; I have visited many orphanages at home and abroad, but never one so full of life and freshness [sic], diligent labor and beaming happiness; a home, a Christian home, where the bigger ones lovingly cared for the little ones. […] Deep in many those velvety brown eyes lied a shadow of gloomy memories; alas, there were even a few who could not see with both eyes, one had been poked out by the Turks, and several were bearing the marks of abuse for life. But it was as if all this darkness was veiled; living and working was joyful for this happy crowd of children, that shall grow up and bear fruit to the glory of God.xii 8 Here, from the late 1920s and early 1930s, time were changing, though, as life in exile for Armenians began approaching some sort of normality. To many, Lebanon even became “the Second Homeland.” Refugee camps and slums at, e.g., Karantina and Bourj Hammoud were slowly beginning to resemble neighborhoods, albeit poor ones, because people who only a few years earlier had absolutely nothing now got jobs, built houses, and raised families. It was clear that it was here, in Lebanon or in America or wherever, anywhere but in the Armenia that was lost, that a future had to be built – though there were and are and perhaps must be still dreams of the original homeland, Hayrenik, in the diaspora. Near East Relief and other Western humanitarian organizations accordingly began emphasizing developmental aid more than relief work. It was believed that now, Armenian survivors generally had their immediate needs met and consequently had to move on in life, which, according to Western observers in general, they were eminently suited and motivated for. Ideally, Armenians should not just survive and thrive, they should also function as the avantgarde of progress, civilization, and democracy in the Middle East. That was the background of the change of NER’s name in 1930 to Near East Foundation, emphasizing that it was now about building a solid, longterm social, educational, and economic basis. Not just for the refugees, but for the coming generations. There were already Armenian teenagers who had never experienced life in the Ottoman Empire. Danish KMA did not change their name or course like Near East Relief. They did developmental work, but they were never a developmental organization. They were women missionary workers, as they had been since the beginning in 1900, even if they, ever observant and adaptable, of course did realize that things were indeed changing, a change they themselves had helped bring about. But they also could see with their own eyes that it was not a sudden quantum leap, there were some areas where improvement only happened achingly slowly and where time-tested approaches to relief work were still needed. Around 1930, in the Lebanese and Syrian refugee camps there were, for instance, still plenty of huts made of flattened tin cans and sacking, and maybe the lucky ones could add a couple of wooden boards here and there. The camps themselves were still often a dusty hell in the summer, while they drowned in mud in the winter. And even while progress for Armenian survivors in exile was significant, there were psychological issues that were not always addressed. There was often preciously little time, energy, or expertise to deal with traumas induced by experiences during and after the genocide – killings, abuse, Turkification, Islamification, starvation, losses on all possible levels, from faith to language to family and dignity, all in all amounting to what some have called “social death.” Alongside the systematic human and material destruction, this was a main component with ongoing effects of the Armenian genocide. Take Maritza Kalaidjian, an Armenian survivor in Danish KMA’s care. She had been abducted into a Muslim family in 1915 when she was 11. At 16, the father of the house, a Turkish policeman, forcibly married her. As late as 1924 she managed to escape, but, because of her experiences, all the abuse, she never quite managed to fit in or settle down among her compatriots in Lebanon. 9 It was of course not that no one ever tried to deal with these issues among the first generation of survivors. There are significant examples of, say, Armenian individuals and associations, and churches, as well as Western organizations, doing their best to help, heal, and reconcile after, for instance, rape. It was just that it was difficult; many wanted to forget, were pressured to forget or keep silent, felt that they had no choice but to try to forget, or simply had their hands full trying to adapt and make a living. All this they knew at Birds Nest in Sidon, and, as mentioned above, Maria Jacobsen had her way of trying to deal with it, to balance the needs of healing traumas and creating futures of women and children at the orphanage.xiii Completing the circle at Djbeil And they kept coming. Here, more than a decade after the beginning of the genocide, few came from Turkey or from Muslim households in the Arab or Kurdish areas. But there were always local Armenian families who could not feed their children or pay for their education. So, when Danish KMA learned that NER was leaving the orphanage at Djbeil north of Beirut, Maria Jacobsen, Karen Marie Petersen, and all of Birds Nest moved to bigger and better facilities for the last time in April 1928. There were even solid stone buildings here by the beach at the foot of the 12th century Crusader castle, among ancient Phoenician, Egyptian, and Roman remains. At Birds Nest in Djbeil life for Danes and Armenians in the permanent Lebanese exile went on with few changes from 1928 until World War II. Just how permanent it almost invariably turned out to be for all parties involved is shown by the example of Maria Jacobsen’s beloved little sister Anna, who like her big sister had remained unmarried as well as dedicated to the women missionary worker cause for most of her life. Anna Jacobsen went on a holiday from Denmark to visit Birds Nest in 1931, but ended up staying there as assistant Head Mayrik, a more approachable right hand to Maria Jacobsen. Two other key Danish KMA workers at Birds Nest in the latter phase were the priest and teacher Oluf E. Paaske (one of the very few men connected to the organization) and Magda Sørensen, a trained nurse from the mainland Danish town of Horsens, just like the Jacobsen sisters. She had experience with crisis and disaster, as she had helped care for Danish and Norwegian prisoners that were evacuated from German concentration camps as part of the Swedish White Busses Project right at the end of WWII. Like Anna, Magda went on a holiday to Djbeil in 1947 and ended up staying and dedicating her life to Armenians in need until 1971. As Karen Jeppe once wrote, there was something special about those Armenians. Anna Jacobsen with the kind temper immediately became known as “Moster,” “Aunty.” Big sister Maria was “Mama,” “Mother Bird,” or “The Captain,” as one of the orphans remembers her, always awesome (in the true sense of the word), effective, and elegant, neatly dressed and wearing a hat. She was mostly friendly, although she could also at times be very strict and distant, always busy doing administrative work, making sure plans and routines were implemented, and caring for her adopted daughter Beatrice Dingilian Jacobsen, whom she had saved during the genocide in Harput. When Maria Jacobsen died in 1960, it was Anna who took over. She was now as eminently capable as her bigger sister, having been at the orphanage for almost 30 years, including during the difficult years of WWII, where the orphanage was cut off from the usual supplies of money and goods from 10 the Danish KMA Armenia Committee and the sponsors, and when they lost co-worker Dorthea Kulager Pedersen, who died in Syria in 1942. The orphanage even survived the post-WW-II riots in Djbeil, when they managed to keep a good relationship with both rebels and the government. Maria Jacobsen was no stranger to such balancing acts which she had aptly performed before, doing, and after the 1915 genocide.xiv Through the decades, some 7000 Armenian children received care and an education at the Danish Birds Nest orphanages, ending in Djbeil, Lebanon. Here, they brushed their teeth in the Mediterranean Sea in the morning in the years before plumbing was installed, did gymnastics after Danish methods among citrus trees, cypresses, and banana palms, played games and football at the sports field, learned science in French and history in English. They went to service, were baptized, and got married at the Saint Kayaneh Church that was built in 1921 by the orphans themselves. They remembered those who did not make it at their own little cemetery at Merelots, Day of the Dead, and 24 April, the memorial day for the victims of the genocide. And they went on summer holiday in the mountains at Terzaya (Tourza), a beautiful area mostly inhabited by Maronites some 20 km away. In fact, the whole of Birds Nest moved up there to avoid the scorching heat, the older boys on foot, the smaller children by bus or on the back of a truck. Danish-Armenian Madeleine Rasmussen grow up at Birds Nest with her two younger brothers in the 1950s during the last years of Maria Jacobsen’s life, when she was weakened, but kept on working for a better future for Armenian women and children, like she had been doing for more than half a century. At Terzaya, Madeleine Rasmussen remembers how normal life down by the coast was replaced by the somewhat more relaxed and primitive life in the summer residence that was situated next to a field belonging to a mild, friendly peasant named Hassan. Here, water was carried by a depressed donkey, kids were kids, and gender roles were still pretty much what they used to be: Here at Terzaya we resumed daily routines, but without school and homework. It was summer. The daily chores, such as cleaning and doing laundry, followed us. The trick was to avoid the adults so that you did not get caught and made to peel potatoes or clean the floor and the pots in the kitchen. You needed to look busy if they saw you. The boys had more fun jobs to do. They got to paint, saw, help renovate. Tanios was the builder-in-chief. But we did not dare lean against his walls. One day a brick fence that he had built tumbled. After that, the parole was: “Watch out, Tanios built it.” Our spare time we used to gather rocks – mid-sized and flat – to build playhouses. Some houses had two floors. The floor and the roof were made of cardboard held in place by bigger rocks. When two young Danes came visiting, they made everyone happy by making seesaws and a swing set. What was different here at summer camp was also that there was mandatory siesta after lunch. For everyone, regardless of age. Personally, I did not like that arrangement. It was a waste of time, in my opinion. After siesta we made needlework. Primarily of the traditional Armenian kind. We called it “GLOR,” because it had to be round. It was made with a regular sewing needle and DMC yarn no. 60. We knew the 11 patterns by heart, and every pattern had a name. One was called “Trabizon,” it looked like an upright bow and was used as separation between each pattern. You started with a tiny circle on your finger, made it into a dot, and that dot grew into a beautiful piece of art. Others made silk handkerchiefs with fine embroideries and filigree-like borders and corners. These works were either given to prominent persons or sold in Denmark to raise money to run the Birds Nest.xv The Birds Nest is still there at Djbeil on plot 642 today, exactly 100 years after the Near East Relief established first a refugee camp and then an orphanage there in 1920. Now it is a school and orphanage for some 35 children in need from all of Lebanon. They are mostly Armenian, but there are other Christians as well as a few Muslims among them. Danish KMA and the last chairwoman of the organization, sister Kirsten Vind, handed over the orphanage to the Armenian Apostolic Church in 1967, more precisely to the Armenian Catholicosate of the Greater House of Cilicia, but there were still Danes working there for years, and the Danish Lutheran State Church and other Danish organizations have supported or are still supporting the place. Furthermore, it is still easy to see the signs of a Danish past there at the Birds Nest. There is a museum now, dedicated to, not least, the story of Maria Jacobsen; the old Danish Hall is still there; and Maria Jacobsen is buried there as stipulated in her will, lying in the shade under white marble. According to an Armenian priest I talked to there some years ago her burial place is shaped like the tomb of the Phoenician kings, those that once ruled there.xvi i Any discussion of the numbers of Armenians before the genocide and after is bound to be somewhat imprecise, but even Committee of Union and Progress (CUP/Young Turk) leader and chief genocidaire Talaat Pasha’s own figures states that there were 1,7 m Ottoman Armenians before 1915, and some 8-900.000 were “missing, i.e., dead in 1917. Both of those figures are most likely too low – the tally, for instance, does not take into account protestant Armenians, and there were in the region of two million Ottoman Armenians before the genocide. Also, Talaat’s account stops in 1917, so it obviously does not count the hundreds of thousands of Armenians killed after 1917 in the Caucasus, Cilicia, Smyrna, etc.: Ara Sarafian, “Talaat Pasha’s Black Book documents his campaign of race extermination, 1915-17,” The Armenian Reporter, 13 March 2009, p. 3. On Armenian survivors, the continued threat of extermination, etc., see also, e.g., Matthias Bjørnlund, Det armenske folkedrab fra begyndelsen til enden, Kristeligt Dagblads Forlag 2013, passim; Levon Marashlian, “Finishing the Genocide: Cleansing Turkey of Armenian Survivors, 1920-1923,” in Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press 1999, pp. 113-146. Here and in the following endnotes only a relatively brief selection of archival material and literature used in the original Danish publication is mentioned. Any future publication of this English version will of course include those sources. ii Dicle Akar Bilgin, Matthias Bjørnlund, Taner Akcam, Soykırımdan Kurtulanlar: Halep Kurtarma Evi Yetimleri, Iletisim 2019; Matthias Bjørnlund, "'If I Die, I Die': Women Missionary Workers Among Danes, Armenians, and Turks, 19001920," International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies, 2019, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 55-80; idem, “Danish Missionaries in the Kharpert Province: A Brief Introduction,” Houshamadyan - A project to reconstruct Ottoman town and village life, November 2015, https://www.houshamadyan.org/mapottomanempire/vilayetofmamuratulazizharput/harputkaza/religion/missionarie s.html ; idem, “KAREN JEPPE, AAGE MEYER BENEDICTSEN, AND THE OTTOMAN ARMENIANS: NATIONAL SURVIVAL IN IMPERIAL AND COLONIAL SETTINGS,” Haigazian Armenological Review, 2008, vol. 28, pp. 9-43. iii Matthias Bjørnlund & Iben Hendel Philipsen, ” "Sorrow is Turned to Joy": A Play about the 1909 Adana Massacres, Staged by Armenian Genocide Survivors in Greece,” International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies, 2014, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 71-87. See also, e.g., Edita Gzoyan, Regina Galustyan, Shushan Khachatryan, “Reclaiming Children after the Armenian Genocide: Neutral House in Istanbul,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 33, Issue 3, Winter 2019, pp. 395–411. 12 Danish National Archives (Rigsarkivet – hereafter RA), UM, 2-0264, Anakara, diplomatisk repræsentation 1918-1940, Gruppeordnede sager: Konstantinople/Istasnbul, 35. L. 631, “Gesandtskabet i Konstantinopel til Grünhagen, American Orpanage, Korinth, Loutraki, Grækenland,” nr. 15, 15. januar 1923; Maria Småberg, ”On Mission in the Cosmopolitan World: Ethics of care in the Armenian refugee crisis, 1920-1947,” Scandinavian Journal of History, Special Issue: Mission, Relief, and Development: Gender and Nordic Missions in Transnational and Humanitarian Settings, c. 1890-1960, vol. 40, no. 3, 2015, pp. 405-431; F. F. Ki!dsig, En Redegørelse angaaende Missionen blandt Armenierne i Saloniki, Lemvig 1927, passim; James L. Barton, “The Effect of the War on Protestant Missions,” Harvard Theological Review, vol. 12, no. 1, 1919, pp. 1-35; Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Re!igion, re!ief and humanitarian work among Armenian women refugees in Mandatory Syria, 1927-1934,” Scandinavian Journal of History, Special Issue: Mission, Relief, and Development: Gender and Nordic Missions in Transnational and Humanitarian Settings, c. 1890-1960, vol. 40, no. 3, 2015, pp. 432454. v RA, KMA, 10.360, pk. 112, ”Protokol over Plejebørn: Børnehjemmet ’Emaus’, Mezreh, 1909-1917,” letter from Bodil Biørn to Inger Christensen, Danish KMA, 20 October 1920; Mardiros Chitjian, A Hair’s Breadth From Death, London & Reading: Taderon Press 2003, pp. 264-266; Einar Prip, “Af et Privatbrev fra Pastor Prip,” Østerlands-Missionen, vol. 26, no. 2, 15 February 1926; The Colville Examiner, 11 January 1919, pp. 9-10; Nico!a Mig!iorino, (Re)Constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria:-Ethno-Cultural Diversity and the State in the Aftermath of a Refugee Crisis, New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books 2008, p. 47; Vahé Tachjian & Raymond G. Kévorkian, “Reconstructing the Nation with Women and Chi!dren Kidnapped During the Genocide,” translated by Marjorie R. Appel, Ararat, vol. XLV, no. 185, 2006, pp. 5-14; Eleanor Davey, John Borton, Matthew Foley, A History of the Humanitarian System: Western Origins and foundations, HPG Working Paper, June 2013, passim; “Beyond relief in the Near East: The Humanitarian ideals and practices of the Near East Relief during the 1920s. Notes on a work in progress,” 2013, passim; Wolfgang Gust, “The Silent Partner: Imperial Germany and the Young Turks’ Policy of Annihilation,” in Huberta von Voss, ed., Portraits of Hope: Armenians in the Contemporary World, Berghahn Books 2007, p. 55; Panikos Panayi & Pippa Virdee, Refugees and the End of Empire: Imperial Collapse and Forced Migration in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan 2011, passim. vi See, e. g., Elise Bockelund, En Tjenergerning blandt Martyrfolket: Kvindelige Missions Arbejdere 1900-1930, K.M.A. 1932, passim; Bring Lys, passim; Nora N. Nercessian, The City of Orphans: Relief Workers, Commissars and the "Builders of the New Armenia" Alexandropol/Leninakan 1919-1931, Hollis Publishing 2016, passim. vii Matthias Bjørnlund, På herrens mark: Nødhjælp, mission og kvindekamp under det armenske folkedrab, Kristeligt Dagblads Forlag 2013, passim; viii Bjørnlund, 2015, passim; ”Sognets Plejebarn i Syrien” [sic], Vestslesvigs Tidende, 14 September 1933, pp. 5-6. ix Matthias Bjørnlund, ”Recording Death and Survival: Karen Marie Petersen, A Missionary Witness to Genocide,” Haigazian Armenological Review, vol. 32, 2012, pp. 321-340; Verjine Svazlian (Svazlyan), The Armenian Genocide: Testimonies of the Eyewitness Survivors, Yerevan: Gitoutyoun 2011, p. 274; J. Calvitt Clarke III, Rev. Clarke’s Journal of His Inspection Tour of the Near East for Near East Relief, 1921, academia.edu, no year, pp. 16 and passim. x Bjørnlund, 2015, passim. xi Armeniervennen, vol. 3, nos. 11-12, November-December 1923, front page. xii Gerda Mundt, Til Østerland – I Ord og Billeder, København: Gyldendal 1929, pp. 92-95. xiii See, e. g., Keith David Watenpaugh, ”Genocide and the Social Death of Children,” Stanford University Press Blog, 2015; Matthias Bjørnlund, “From Souk Michail to Birds Nest,” Unpublished paper, 2011; various KMA Armenia Committee meeting protocols. xiv ”Fuglereden,” Horsens Social-Demokrat, 18 March 1960, p. 7. xv Madeleine Rasmussen, ”Fuglereden 1” and ”Fuglereden 2 – skolen i Terzaya,” 23 January and 27 February 2015, araratforening.dk. xvi Nefissa Naguib, ”A Nation of Widows and Orphans: Armenian Memories of Relief in Jerusalem,” in Nefissa Naguib & Inger Marie Okkenhaug, eds., Interpreting Welfare and Relief in the Middle East, Leiden: Brill 2008, pp. 48-50; “Some of the Orphanages in the Near East,” Childhood Education, Association for Childhood Education International, vol. 1, no. 10, 1925, p. 4; The Bird’s Nest Armenian Orphanage in Byblos: A Legacy of Survival and Asylum under Threat, Beirut: Protect Bird’s Nest Byblos 2015; Inge Tranholm-Mikkelsen, “Maria Jacobsen,” www.kvinfo.dk; Kirsten Vind, Aldrig færdig – altid på vej, Unitas 2002, passim; “Hun reddede 3600 Børn fra den visse Død – Den danske Udsending, Frk. Maria Jacobsen vendt hjem fra Libanon,” Nationaltidende, 10 May 1950, p. 4. iv 13