Maria Jacobsen was a Danish nurse and missionary who worked in Kharberd. The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute records that she arrived in 1907 and worked at a hospital, learning Armenian to communicate with local people. She kept a diary whose entries span 1907–1919, preserving eyewitness observations of Armenian deportation and destruction.

Her later work continued in Lebanon, where she became closely associated with the Birds’ Nest orphanage in Jbeil. The Museum-Institute’s account describes education and practical training as part of the children’s care. Her diary and institutional work belong to connected histories: witnessing what was being done to Armenians, and helping children live afterward.

Read the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute’s Jacobsen biography. The diary is an eyewitness source; a later biography explains its history and the work surrounding it. These should remain distinguishable when excerpts circulate.

Near East Relief Historical Society documents Emma Cushman’s work with children evacuated from orphanages in Anatolia to Corinth, Greece, in 1923. A trained nurse, she had previously managed an orphanage in Konia. At Corinth, the children’s needs included treatment for serious illness as well as food, accommodation and continuing care.

That history makes visible a difficult part of survival: evacuation could move a child away from danger without immediately providing health or stability. The receiving institution still needed staff, supplies and the means to prevent infection. Nursing was inseparable from the conditions in which people lived.

The same historical account identifies Alice Carr, an American Red Cross nurse who joined Near East Relief in Greece in 1923, with efforts against malaria at Corinth. Those efforts included drainage work involving older orphans and Greek soldiers, alongside attention to standing water and local sanitation.

Explore the Historical Society’s account of Corinth. Cushman and Carr illustrate different, connected demands of relief: organizing care for displaced children and changing the surroundings that were making them ill. The surviving record also shows children participating in the work, rather than appearing only as anonymous recipients of aid.

Medical care also formed part of the response to Armenian women and children who escaped captivity. Karen Jeppe’s relief work offers a related history, although she should not be described as a nurse or physician. The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute documents the Aleppo Rescue Home and the records of survivors received there.

Edita Gzoyan’s The Aleppo Rescue Home: 1464 Accounts of Armenian Genocide Survivors draws on League of Nations archival records. The Museum-Institute’s 2022 presentation describes a publication preserving those accounts with Armenian translations and research annotations. Read the publication announcement.

A reception record can carry a name, an account of displacement and information needed to trace a life. For a survivor whose family had been scattered, being recorded as a named person mattered beyond an institution’s administration. Today, those documents provide a route for historical research and, where evidence permits, family research.

Reports often explain what an institution accomplished. They may devote more space to staff, budgets or buildings than to a child’s own words. Readers can recognize that limitation while still using the information carefully. Whose voice is present? Who supplied the description? Can a named survivor’s account be read alongside the institutional report?

Photographs need the same attention. A group of children outside an orphanage should not be given names, dates or a location that its catalogue does not establish. A compelling caption must remain an accurate one. Keeping the archive reference attached helps other readers follow the record.

Women’s work also deserves accurate professional description. Jacobsen’s nursing, Cushman’s institutional responsibilities, Carr’s public-health work and Jeppe’s rescue activity should not be flattened into a single interchangeable role. Specificity reveals the different forms of labour that sustained Armenian survivors.

For another documented nurse’s life, explore the Sara Corning Centre’s biography. Within AGMC, continue to The First to Suffer, The Last to Be Remembered and Women Writers and Eyewitnesses.

Students and educators can use Teacher Resources to place these lives within the wider history. Return to Women & The Genocide to follow another part of the exhibit.