Dr. Talin Suciyan Gives Presentation on Armenian Postcards Collected from Villages and Towns

Careen Derkalousdian
Staff Writer

“At the beginning of the 20th century, after the Armenian Genocide, there were two groups of people among the Armenians: those who survived and those who started to gather the remnants,” said Dr. Talin Suciyan.

On Friday, February 28, 2025, Dr. Talin Suciyan, the 21st Kazan Visiting Professor in Armenian Studies presented her second lecture, entitled “Preserved with Compassion: Collections of Hope.” This second presentation of her three-part lecture series focused on one of the largest known collections of postcards of Ottoman Armenian villages and towns, dating both before and after 1915.

After the Armenian Genocide, those who survived tried to rebuild their lives which were devastated by the Ottoman Empire’s heinous crimes. Some of these survivors began to collect letters, postcards, travel documents, photographs, and other materials, “rescuing and reconstructing a lost world” as Dr. Suciyan beautifully put it. “Those who collected…wanted to seal the end of the story with their own hands.”

A prime example of such noble gatherers are Berç and Nadya Fenerci, who are not only postcard collectors, but artists of a historical masterpiece – a visual narrative that weaves together postcards, maps of villages, images of gardens and working farmers, and photos of painters and prominent leaders of Armenians.

Mr. Fenerci is an Armenian from Istanbul, and in his youth, he attended local Armenian schools and had a passion for collecting stamps.

One day, after discovering a postcard sent by his grandfather, the young Berç decided to collect postcards related to Armenians, interested in the stories that they had to tell.

He went to great lengths to compile his collection, even traveling across Europe to purchase postcards from auctions. Over decades, Fenerci compiled and organized a collection of approximately 1,000 postcards from the Caucasus, Iran, upper Mesopotamia, Palestine, Cilicia, Asia Minor, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Italy as well as the towns and villages of the old country.

The first panel of the Fenerci collection displays Armenian kings and prominent figures of Armenian history and continues with monumental buildings of Armenian architecture, monasteries, and churches.

After moving to Canada in 1995, Fenerci began exhibiting his collection across North American cities. Dr. Suciyan described how she came across his collection in Montreal in 2023 when Mrs. Fenerci invited her to their home to view the masterpiece.

It was there that Dr. Suciyan found postcards related to her own research about the fate of Armenian orphans in Greece after 1922. The collection has some very rare postcards, documents, and correspondences from orphans in Greece, specifically from the islands of Corfu and Syra, which are today referred to as Kerkyra and Syros, respectively.

Dr. Suciyan explained that after the Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), Armenians were looking for any way to escape the Ottoman Empire.

Around this time, the Armenian administration in Istanbul made the decision to empty the Armenian orphanages and send the children to Greece.

Many kaghtagans [those in perpetual exile], ended up in Greece, enduring a grueling journey by ship, often facing malnutrition and outbreaks of disease.

Once in Greece they continued to suffer long decades of dire living conditions, Armenian orphans among them.

In the aftermath of the war, Greece was not in a stable enough condition to receive the tens of thousands of Armenian exiles let alone the one million Greeks from Asia Minor (of which approximately 10% were actually Armenians).

Dr. Suciyan highlighted that Greece lacked the infrastructure to shelter the orphans and meet their daily needs. Despite the country’s instability, 16,000 orphans arrived to Greece under the responsibility of the Near East Relief (NER) organization, 9,000 of whom were Armenians.

Mr. Fenerci’s collection compiles together several post-cards sent by the orphans to their siblings. Dr. Suciyan presented images and translations of some of these postcards, the first one being sent from Koharig Tchorbajian in Athens to her brother Vahe in 1924. In this sweet correspondence, Koharig wishes her brother a merry Christmas and encourages him to be cheerful. Dr. Suciyan introduced another postcard sent from the Syra Girls Orphanage to the Syra Boys Orphanage, emphasizing that girls and boys were strictly separated to the point that siblings could only communicate by sending postcards.

According to Dr. Suciyan, the beginning of 1923 marked the complete dispersion of the Armenian orphans around the world.

The Armenian Delegation registered 45,000 orphans, with 22,000 being hosted by Armenia, 8,600 in Lebanon, and 8,500 in Greece.

The rest of the children were sent to countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Switzerland, Italy, and Israel.

The NER does not state where the children went after 1930, and just like the kaghtagans, the fates of Armenian and non-Armenian orphans remain vague and blurred.

“The collector Berç Fenerci must have understood the catastrophic situation that the orphans were going through,” noted Dr. Suciya.

“He devoted a considerable place in his panels to the issue of dispersed Armenian orphans around the world.”

Despite the many tribulations faced by exiles, it is the dedication to the preservation of truth, much like Mr. Fenerci’s, that keeps their stories alive, ensuring that their resilience is never forgotten.

The Syra Orphanage is now a military zone and Dr. Suciyan described how the military personnel are well-educated and sensitive about its history.

As a glimmer of hope that truth never dies, they have established a museum at the entrance of the military base dedicated to the orphanage, even being so careful as to preserve the children’s toys, which are now around 100 years old.

With Dr. Suciyan’s ongoing research over the last twelve years about this dark period in Armenian history and collectors of artifacts such as Mr. Fenerci, light can be shed on the past in a way that both honors it and ensures that its atrocities are not repeated.

Dr. Suciyan ended her lecture with a meaningful quote from Armenian writer and educator Antranig Tsarukyan. “The unaddressed orphanhood of the people without childhood continues to live within our families, deep within our souls, waiting to be recognized, addressed, and honored.”