ARMENIAN NATIONAL COMMITTE-SCANDINAVIA
PRYLV. 7
12637 HÄGERSTEN
SWEDEN
CONTACT: SUZANNE K. HOLMQUIST, AGOP KHATCHERIAN
TEL. +46 708 809316
FAX: +46 8 645 65 92
E-MAIL. [email protected]
Net Exhibition National Archives of Norway
Riksarkivet/ Norway
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EXHIBITION TITLE
“Kvinnelige misjonsarbeidere”
Women Missionary Workers
Documenting genocide
Women Missionary Workers (WMW) was established in 1902 after the
pattern of Danish and Swedish sister organisations. WMW soon focused
on the humanitarian situation for the Armenian people, who for some
years had been subject to oppression from Turk authorities.
In 1905 the missionary nurse Bodil Biørn (1871-1960) was sent to
Armenia. First based in the town of Mezereh (now Elazig) and later in
Mush she worked for widows and orphaned children in cooperation with
missionaries from the German Hulfsbund. She witnessed the massacres of
1915 in Mush and saw most of the children in her care murdered along
with Armenian priests, teachers, and assistants. She barely escaped
after 9 days on horseback but stayed on in the region for another 2
years under increasingly difficult working conditions. After a period
at home she again went to Armenia and until she retired in 1935 worked
for Armenian refugees in Syria and Lebanon.
Bodil Biørn was also an able photographer. Many of her photos are
now in the WMF archive, which since the organisation was dissolved
in 1982 has been preserved in the National Archives of Norway. In
combination with her comments, written in her photo albums or on the
back of the prints themselves, these photos bear strong witness of
the atrocities that she saw.
During World War 1 reports out of Armenia and Kurdistan to the outside
world had to be carefully worded if they were to pass the censorship
imposed by the Turk authorities. Extracts of letters from Bodil Biørn
were published in the WMF newsletters to their members all over Norway,
and they constitute eye-witness reports of what has been regarded
as the first genocide of the 20th century. Missionaries from other
nations have made similar contributions.
But it is Bodil Biørn’s pictures of the many people that she met –
smiling and expectant in times when things looked promising, terrified
and despairing in the face of extinction – that leaves us with the
stongest impression.
–Boundary_(ID_6VR4RGRI9i3G0l51E27QHg)–