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.

Amazing Wooden Door

It's sad to see one's heritage pillaged and looted:

AMAZING WOODEN DOOR--to many; and a painful history for many others.

Armenian handmade art work, this door dated 1312 A.D. used to be the door of the Sourp Garabed Church in the Armenian City of Mush - Western Armenia. Present day Turkey.

Currently, the door is part of a private collection in Canada. As to how and why, a piece of the Armenian National Treasures, was looted - sold and bought ...?

In the year 1976 The German Artist Rikhter buys the door from his Turkish neighbor who had it in his position. A year prior, the Turkish neighbor had discovered the door in a neighborhood populated by Kurds in Mush, and had the door transported to Istanbul. Once in Rikhter's posession, he arranges for the door to be transported to Germany with the help of his connections at the German Embassy in Istanbul.... however, in 1996, after Richter passed away The Armenian Historic Sourp Garabed Church door showed up at an Auction in London and sold for $50000. The rest is history....