Hear the stories of survivors who are caught in the cross fires of what is known to be worst humanitarian crisis of our era. Filmmaker: Avo Kambourian

Syrian-Armenian Refugees

It’s been reported that more than 80,000 Syrian-Armenians lived in Syria prior to the Civil War. 

The latest reports approximate that 11,000 of the 80,000 Syrian-Armenians have fled to Armenia, 12,000 are living as refugees in Lebanon and another 10,000 have sought refuge elsewhere.

The number of Syrian-Armenian refugees is escalating by the day. And even more alarming is the amount of damage done to their community infrastructure. This is a tremendous loss of a historically significant ancestral territory where Armenians have been rooted for centuries.

Many of these refugees represent third and fourth generations of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. The crimes of inhumanity in Syria today carry a dauntingly familiar echo of the deportation and massacres of Armenians in the region nearly a century ago.

Both the Republic of Armenia and the government of Lebanon, along with Armenian communities within Lebanon, have helped in their resettlement by finding housing and arranging jobs and schooling to help the refugees acclimate to their new communities. Many Syrian-Armenians, like the millions of other Syrian refugees, flee their homes hoping to eventually return and rebuild. The unfortunate truth is that many of these refugees will not have that opportunity.

Displaced Persons Still in Syria

The Armenian community in the City of Latakia in Syria and the Armenian village of Ainjar in Lebanon are hosting many of the displaced families from the mostly Armenian populated village Kessab that was evacuated on March 21, 2014 after Islamic rebels assaulted the village with Turkish involvement. After a more than two-long-month occupation, the Syrian Arab Army regained full control over the town of Kessab on June 15, 2014.