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DANISH MISSIONARY MARIA JACOBSEN WAS KNOWN AS "MAMA" TO THOUSANDS OF ARMENIAN ORPHANS
April 8, 2015
SHE PERSONALLY ADOPTED THREE CHILDREN IN ORDER TO SAVE THEM, AND SOON
HAD 3,600 UNDER HER PROTECTION
100 Lives - She saved these orphans during the Genocide in the
American hospital at Kharberd (Harput, modern-day Elazig in Turkey),
and later in a Lebanese orphanage following the mass evacuation of
children from the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s.
But it is not just as a great and selfless humanitarian that she is
remembered, nor as the woman who educated a future archbishop, Husik
Santuryan, at theBird's Nest orphanage for displaced and parentless
Armenian children.
The 600-page diary Maria Jacobsen kept between 1907 and 1919, complete
with heart-breaking photographs interleaved between the pages, played
a huge part in bringing the truth about life and death inside the
Ottoman Empire to the wider world.
Born in 1882, Maria learned when young of the Ottoman "Hamidian"
massacres of Armenians in the 1890s, and after studying nursing she
travelled to Turkey with the Women's Missionary Workers (Kvindelige
Missions Arbejdere, KMA). She was the first nurse to reach Kharberd,
arriving on her 24th birthday, and already referred to by the doctors
there as "the angel of salvation." If her work was made hard by high
altitudes and long journeys, it was nothing compared to what came in
1915. The Genocide caused a sea of children to wash up at her door.
When the United States entered the war and American personnel were
forced to leave, Jacobsen took sole charge of the hospital that cared
for thousands, and at one point was feeding 4,500 children a day. Her
diary entries at the time make for heart-breaking reading. "I thought I
should never be able to smile again," she writes, after turning away a
boy who was later found dead of hunger. "My heart was shattered," she
writes, when a tiny, naked girl is brought to her door with lacerated
feet by policemen who otherwise operated as agents of persecution.
Maria smuggled the diary out of Armenia at great danger to her own
life when, having contracted typhus from the children she worked
with, she was forced to return to Denmark in 1919. Shortly after
her convalescence, she was invited to the United States and spent
seven months lecturing on the plight of her charges and raising money
for them.
Maria soon returned to the Middle East after learning that Near East
Relief was extracting 110,000 children from Turkey in the face of
further persecution. She went to Lebanon and soon founded what would
become the Bird's Nest Orphanage for more than 200 children. She came
up with the nickname because the children imploring her for treats
reminded her of newly hatched, hungry chicks.
Visitors said the Bird's Nest was more like a school than an orphanage,
scrupulously clean and disciplined, the children taking lessons and
the girls learning to produce exquisite needlework.
Amazingly, Jacobsen kept the home operational during World War II,
and in 1950 became the first woman to receive Denmark's Gold medal
award for her humanitarian work.
She visited her homeland for the last time in 1957 and died at the
Bird's Nest in April 1960. She was buried, according to her wishes,
on the grounds.
http://www.horizonweekly.ca/news/details/65209
April 8, 2015
SHE PERSONALLY ADOPTED THREE CHILDREN IN ORDER TO SAVE THEM, AND SOON
HAD 3,600 UNDER HER PROTECTION
100 Lives - She saved these orphans during the Genocide in the
American hospital at Kharberd (Harput, modern-day Elazig in Turkey),
and later in a Lebanese orphanage following the mass evacuation of
children from the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s.
But it is not just as a great and selfless humanitarian that she is
remembered, nor as the woman who educated a future archbishop, Husik
Santuryan, at theBird's Nest orphanage for displaced and parentless
Armenian children.
The 600-page diary Maria Jacobsen kept between 1907 and 1919, complete
with heart-breaking photographs interleaved between the pages, played
a huge part in bringing the truth about life and death inside the
Ottoman Empire to the wider world.
Born in 1882, Maria learned when young of the Ottoman "Hamidian"
massacres of Armenians in the 1890s, and after studying nursing she
travelled to Turkey with the Women's Missionary Workers (Kvindelige
Missions Arbejdere, KMA). She was the first nurse to reach Kharberd,
arriving on her 24th birthday, and already referred to by the doctors
there as "the angel of salvation." If her work was made hard by high
altitudes and long journeys, it was nothing compared to what came in
1915. The Genocide caused a sea of children to wash up at her door.
When the United States entered the war and American personnel were
forced to leave, Jacobsen took sole charge of the hospital that cared
for thousands, and at one point was feeding 4,500 children a day. Her
diary entries at the time make for heart-breaking reading. "I thought I
should never be able to smile again," she writes, after turning away a
boy who was later found dead of hunger. "My heart was shattered," she
writes, when a tiny, naked girl is brought to her door with lacerated
feet by policemen who otherwise operated as agents of persecution.
Maria smuggled the diary out of Armenia at great danger to her own
life when, having contracted typhus from the children she worked
with, she was forced to return to Denmark in 1919. Shortly after
her convalescence, she was invited to the United States and spent
seven months lecturing on the plight of her charges and raising money
for them.
Maria soon returned to the Middle East after learning that Near East
Relief was extracting 110,000 children from Turkey in the face of
further persecution. She went to Lebanon and soon founded what would
become the Bird's Nest Orphanage for more than 200 children. She came
up with the nickname because the children imploring her for treats
reminded her of newly hatched, hungry chicks.
Visitors said the Bird's Nest was more like a school than an orphanage,
scrupulously clean and disciplined, the children taking lessons and
the girls learning to produce exquisite needlework.
Amazingly, Jacobsen kept the home operational during World War II,
and in 1950 became the first woman to receive Denmark's Gold medal
award for her humanitarian work.
She visited her homeland for the last time in 1957 and died at the
Bird's Nest in April 1960. She was buried, according to her wishes,
on the grounds.
http://www.horizonweekly.ca/news/details/65209