Camp Oddo and Armenian Refugees

Nansen Passport: My mother and grandmother

My mother, my grandparents, my uncle, and my auntie I never met, were refugees in the 1920s.  They were forced to leave their home which was at one time Western Armenia.  When they ended up in France they stayed in Camp Oddo initially and were issued Nansen passports.  Those were, basically, humanitarian passports given to those without a country.

Today I found out there is a cooperative website that lists my family at Camp Oddo.  I got chills reading their names.  My mother would talk about the camp and her memories of it as a little girl.  She remembered lots of tents, that it smelled and was dirty.

Even little Marie Guleserian who fell ill and supposedly died in France is listed. They are listed on page 37.

http://webaram.com/

ARAM is an acronym and stands for: 

 Association for Research and Archiving of the Armenian Memories

What an incredible effort and thank goodness for the information highway.

It saddens me though when I hear daily of new refugees flooding out of Syria and even Lebanon due to religious bigotry and intolerance, violence and hatred.  Sadly, only recently, a small family drowned trying to get to Greece so they could eventually travel to Canada. They had no identification issued by the government.  Once again, man's inhumanity to man strikes anew.