Jakob Künzler

The events beginning in 1915 that are now widely referred to as the Armenian Genocide were preceded by outbreaks of large-scale violence against Armenians in Anatolia (Asia Minor) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Jakob Künzler was strongly moved by accounts he had read of the massacres in Urfa of December 28-29, 1895, when some 8000 Armenians perished—one episode in the Hamidian massacres of 1894-6. Only a few years later, Künzler quickly accepted the offer of a position at the Deutsche Orient Mission in Urfa, which had been set up by Protestant missionary Dr. Johannes Lepsius. Like many cities in eastern Anatolia, Urfa was a melting pot of different religions and ethnic groups:  Muslim Turks, Kurds and Arabs, along with Armenian and Syrian Christians.  In June 1915, Urfa would become a key transfer point from which Armenians who had survived deportation marches from areas to the north of Urfa would be taken into the Syrian desert.

Künzler (far left) treating patients in Urfa

Jakob and Elisabeth Künzler were full partners in the rescue work carried out in Urfa beginning in mid-1915. Both endangered their lives assisting the refugees wandering in the streets of Urfa, and Elisabeth was among those who conducted many search-and-rescue missions to collect Armenian orphans and hide them under their own roofs. She also took in Armenian girls who were threatened with forced marriages to Muslims and arranged for their passage to Aleppo, where she had rented two hours for the orphans. 

In the orphanage they ran in Ghazir, Lebanon, the Künzlers ensured that the children learned carpet making or other crafts that would give them employment in adult life. In 1925 a rug woven by four hundred orphaned girls over the course of 18 months was shipped to the United States and presented to President Calvin Coolidge. The Ghazir Rug, or Armenian Orphan Rug, was an expression of gratitude for the continuing American support of Near East Relief, under whose auspices the orphanage operated. 

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Jakob Künzler and Elisabeth Bender Künzler

Bust of Jakob Künzler (Vladimir Antashyan, sculptor)

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The Ghazir Rug, or Armenian Orphan Rug

Künzler also encouraged girls in the orphanage to marry Armenian boys to keep national identity alive in exile. Yet he was also a strong advocate of reconciliation between Turks and Armenians. 

Künzler did not hesitate to depict the atrocities carried out by Turks (and Kurds), but he emphasized that many Turkish families had taken in and protected Armenian orphans. In an article published in 1928 in Der Orient, he wrote that “the rescue of thousands by the Muslim population … shows that there was a conscious admission of the injustice done to the Armenian people. Indeed, in order to initiate a reconciliation or understanding, the leaders, not just the subordinates, must confess.” He also encouraged Armenians to “recollect the time that they really did live 'brotherly' with the Turks, and that they, like no others, understood for hundreds of years how to get along with the Turks. If they could do it again today, completely without reliance on the harmful trust in people from outside, that would be the best for the new Turkey.” 

Jakob Künzler is one of twelve foreigners who were honored in 2015 with a bust in the Alley of Gratitude near the entrance to the library at Yerevan (Armenia) State University.

1871 Born in Hundwil, Switzerland

1905 Marries Elisabeth Bender, daughter of a Christian missionary and granddaughter of an Ethiopian princess

1921 Publishes In the Land of Blood and Tears, a memoir of his experiences in the Ottoman Empire and a testimony of the massacres he witnessed

1923 Jakob and Elisabeth Künzler take charge of an orphanage at Ghazir, Lebanon, near Beirut. Despite having his arm amputated later that year as a result of typhus, "Papa Künzler" runs the orphanage with Elisabeth ("Mama Künzler") for the next 25 years.

1925 The Ghazir Rug, woven by 400 girls in the Ghazir orphanage, is presented to the U.S. President Calvin Coolidge

1949 Dies in Ghazir; buried in the French Protestant Cemetary in Beirut

Deranian, Hagop Martin. President Calvin Coolidge and the Armenian Orphan Rug. Arlington, MA: Armenian Cultural Foundation, 2013.

Künzler, Jakob. In the Land of Blood and Tears:  Experiences in Mesopotamia During the World War (1914-1918). Ed. Ara Ghazarians, Trans. Geoffrey Steinherz. Arlington, MA: Armenian Cultural Foundation, 2007.

Mirak-Weissbach, Muriel.  “The Armenian Genocide: Hopes for Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation.” February 8, 2011. http://www.mirak-weissbach.de/Publications/Archive/files/5fd04d0408c93ef4ae146d9e88e23e23-49.html